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Category Archives: Sales
To be better, you also have to be different.
Recognising better is really hard when all offerings in the market appear similar. It follows then that you also must be different. This brings in another challenge, being different is not enough, you also have to deliver. Being different just … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Marketing, Sales
Tagged Advertising, Branding, category management, competitive strategy, Entrepreneur, Marketing, Sales
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Create demand, or just fulfil it.
Some marketing activity is aimed at creating demand, alerting people to a value proposition. Other so called marketing activity is aimed at delivering an offer, an important but very different activity to demand creation. Consider the difference between most ads … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Customers, Marketing, Sales
Tagged Agriculture, Branding, Change, change management, communication, Marketing
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Sydney Harvest
The produce branding model used by the agricultural so called marketing programs run by industry bodies all fail the basic test of being consumer centric. Generally they are retailer centric, using grower levies to fund discounts, and sometimes display space, … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Change, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
Tagged Agriculture, Alliance management, Branding, collaboration, communication, demand chain, Marketing, Sales, SME, supply chain, value
1 Comment
New verb. “To Netf..k”
The verb that describes the process of retailers ignoring the shift to digital. Payment, e-shopping, mobile selection of destination, on-line reviews, and so on. The business model is rapidly evolving, whatever your current model may be, nothing is set in … Continue reading
Posted in Change, retail, Sales, Strategy
Tagged category management, Change, change management, competitive strategy, customer, Management, Marketing, retailer, Sales, Social Media
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8 Sales prospect categories
Automation of the marketing and sales “funnel” has many productivity advantages, so long as the implementation of the software works, which is always harder than the smiling assurances of the automation salespeople would indicate. However, there is one benefit that … Continue reading
Posted in Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Tagged analytics, category management, customer, Marketing, Sales, SME
2 Comments
Thinking “Lean” is instinctive.
It is amazing how people adopt to “lean” instinctively, without any planning, or knowledge of the cliches and tools spruiked by consultants (including myself). People are pretty sensible when left to themselves, they do not build waste into a … Continue reading
Posted in Customers, Lean, Operations, Sales
Tagged collaboration, communication, customer, demand chain, lean, Operations, performance assessment
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Be proud of price
Price is always a sticky subject. In most cases, sales people have been trained to slide over answering the inevitable, and often first question about price, until the value of the sales proposition has been established with the potential buyer. … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Communication, Sales
Tagged Branding, communication, competitive strategy, Marketing, retailer, Sales
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Digital selling cycle.
Look at all the verbiage on the net about content marketing, having a personal brand, being a substantial presence on social media, and all the rest of the stuff. Really it is all about one simple idea, making yourself easy … Continue reading
Posted in Customers, Marketing, Sales, Social Media
Tagged Advertising, communication, Marketing, Sales
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Facial recognition marketing.
What will happen when facial recognition is good enough to recognise a person walking into a retail shop, and convey to a device that persons purchase history, returns, sizes, social media mentions and links, and all the rich data that … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Marketing, retail, Sales, Social Media
Tagged Branding, category management, communication, customer, Marketing
1 Comment
Choose your customers
The sorts of customers you have play a significant role in defining who you are. A former client had a customer base that valued the hands on, custom design, and short supply chain they offered on their packaging component items. That … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Customers, Lean, Operations, Sales
Tagged Change, competitive strategy, customer, demand chain, Management, negotiation, performance assessment, Sales
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5 rules for FMCG category marketing
I am old enough to remember doing warehouse withdrawals by hand. Heavens. Then we had early data managers automate the process, an evolution that pottered on for 25 years, through to category management based on scan data, some of which … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
Tagged analytics, Branding, category management, demand chain, Marketing, Sales, supply chain
5 Comments
Pitching an idea
The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them tell you. Ronald Regan used this technique a lot. He did not tell the American people “your economic … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Tagged communication, Marketing, Sales, SME
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Relationships, not transactions.
“Relationships” is just a word used to describe the web of give and take that binds people together over time. A transaction can take place without a relationship of any sort. However, a series of transactions that require choices to … Continue reading
Posted in Collaboration, Customers, Sales
Tagged communication, competitive strategy, customer, managing yourself, Sales, SME
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Websites should be transactional
Things move on petty quickly. It is just a few years ago that even ordinary websites had a reasonable chance of being noticed, and communicate something worthwhile. Not now, a site that just offers static information is as relevant as … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business, Social Media
Tagged Advertising, Branding, communication, customer, Marketing, Sales
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Socialising sales
A mate recently picked up an great new account, on he had been trying to “crack” for a long time, through a piece of good luck, or good management depending on your perspective. All his product and market knowledge, sales … Continue reading
3 way framework for sales performance management.
Sales, or as I prefer to call it, “Revenue generation” is the core of every business. No sales, no business. However, the thinking around performance assessment and management of sales is generally pretty superficial. The demarcation of sales and marketing … Continue reading
Concentration of choice
Modern life gives us an array of opportunities to go somewhere, physically or digitally, and have presented to us a huge range of choice in any category of interest we may have. There is a paradox here. Concentration of anything, … Continue reading
Posted in Customers, Marketing, Sales
Tagged communication, competitive strategy, retailer, Sales, Strategy
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Revenue generation, and a sales metaphor
Some informal research I completed recently amongst businesses in my “patch” turned up a surprising result. One the questions I asked was “what is the most important job in your business? The surprise was that so few respondents nominated “sales” … Continue reading
3 simple Powerpoint tips for Christmas
Everybody, well almost everybody, uses Powerpoint. Some use it well, many use it poorly, and some are just appalling. We have all sat through that presentation by somebody we thought had something to say, and they said it all on … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Marketing, Sales
Tagged Change, communication, managing yourself, Marketing, performance assessment, web stuff
1 Comment
Flawed sales funnel metaphor
We are all pretty familiar with the typical sales funnel, wide at the beginning, narrowing progressively as you get closer to the “business end”. It is a simple, descriptive metaphor for other than an impulse or regular consumer purchase, but … Continue reading
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