The flyer arrived in the mail at the right time. It came from a window treatment company at the very moment I was planning to contact various window treatment companies. It felt like serendipity, so I called them. It also saved me valuable research time. Sadly, my experience was not a good one. …
Senior managers and business owners will not think twice about investing in the most common tools for growing their sales team: sales training, coaching, incentives, superstar searches, bonus/commission plans; motivational events, etc. About 90% of the time, these investments lack the key ingredient to ensure an ROI. Very few companies provide sales teams with…
Since I do a great deal of speaking to c-suite executives, I am often asked, “Why don’t more companies succeed at defining their competitive advantages?” I have thought long and hard about that question. Some answers are obvious; some a little less evident. If you have struggled with carving out your differentiation, here…
Every year the pundits, bloggers, social media hounds, all make major assessments of Super Bowl ads. Enough is said about that and football is not in season, so we won’t be going there. Unless your business has pockets so deep that you can afford the $5 million for the 30 or 60 second spot,…
What’s Your Website’s Mission? Clear Objective or Cloudy Obstruction? There is something nagging about a company’s website. It is often the nemesis of many business owners. There is frequently no clear vision of what the website is intended to accomplish. Some CEO’s tell me “I don’t even know what is on our site.” Others report,…
Yesterday I was driving behind a produce truck that had an interesting, albeit somewhat disturbing message: “XYZ produce…From Farm to Fork Handled by Professionals.” Now I ask you, do you want your produce handled by professionals? What comes to mind? Did they wash their hands? Is the produce bruised from all the handling? Did they…
What do you know about your competition? Do they know more about you than you know about them? Let’s Answer… It’s one thing to think you are truly better than your competition–most often, this is a subjective evaluation—it’s another thing to be able to prove it. In our work with companies of all sizes,…
How misaligned is your organization and what is it costing you? According to Forbes Insights, “leading companies excel at providing consistent sales messages”; and “three fourths of top-performing organizations have strong alignment between sales and marketing; poorly performing companies notably do not.” Where are you? I have asked hundreds of CEO’s to name what…
2016 Budget ROI – Are you leaving out the most critical investment? Warren Buffet’s buying criteria for stock and/or companies has always been that they have “strong competitive advantage” and “a solid management team”, yet few mid-market companies have any disciplined process in place to ensure they have and maintain leading differentiation. In the last…
Marketing guru, Jay Conrad Levinson once said, “I believe companies should focus solely on competitive advantage and nothing else, for it is the wisest investment a company can make.” I have come to not only believe him but be able to prove his point. This is truly a lost discipline in most businesses today. …
