Blog
Marketing expenditure in times of uncertainty? The answer is in the numbers
What marketing performance insights should leadership expect from their management and marketing agencies and contractors? In these times, the greatest service that managers can do is to provide business leaders with quality data and insights that inform and support their decision-making. This is as true…
How To Join The Dots With Sales and Marketing
In many organisations, the Sales and Marketing functions have a testy relationship. As a business owner or leader, what are your options? Appoint a dual role ‘Sales and Marketing’ manager? Create a complicated internal reporting dashboard to try and link the marketing metrics to sales results? Implement a…
Customer Buying Behaviour
What is the buying process, and who is involved? Many business owners and leaders talk about ‘the market’ and ‘their customers’ in a proprietorial way when in fact ‘your customers’ are not actually ‘yours’. They don’t even belong to ‘the market’. In B2B, your customers…
How To Create An Effective Value Proposition
What unique and compelling advantage or benefit does your product or service offer customers to induce them to part with their money given all the other choices they have, including purchasing a competitors product or ‘doing nothing’ and keeping their money in their pocket? A…
You cannot dominate a market by looking and sounding just like everyone else
There are many factors that motivate people to start a business, but no entrepreneur has ever set out with the goal of being average. They want to do something they are passionate about, to do work that has meaning, set their own goals and build…
The value of effective value propositions
In business today, you only have the ear of a prospective customer for a short period of time. If you cannot articulate a compelling value proposition that resonates precisely with their needs and expectations, they will almost certainly move on to your competitors. If another…
Is your sales team armed for success?
Most sales professionals know how to sell. They know how to generate leads, qualify clients, assess needs, develop proposals, manage objections and close deals. In many companies however, employees with history of sales success don’t seem to make the grade. Managers look for fixes such…
The “Fast, Good and Cheap” Analogy
In its simplest form, businesses have two growth options: Increase sales Reduce costs In tough economic times, it can be challenging to grow sales. Cutting costs can appear to be the simplest and most direct way of improving profitability. But at what cost? Recently our…
How more risk taking can help grow Australian businesses
A recent article in the Financial Review discussed the issue of risk taking in Australian businesses. John Wiley, CEO of Lazard Australia and chairman of the Sports Commission stated that Australia has a ‘risk-averse’ culture and believes more guts and determination is needed for Australian…
What Percentage Of Revenue Should Be Allocated To Marketing Expenditure In Your Industry?
The question of how much business expenditure should be allocated to marketing is a continual source of contention and uncertainty for many companies. Unfortunately, there is no straight-forward answer. On a superficial level there is a strong correlation between marketing expenditure and the quality of…
Hope is not a strategy
The goal of strategic planning is to position a business in its market with a sustainable advantage over its competitors that enables it to serve its customers more profitably, gain market share and deliver superior financial returns. Central to this is determining what assets –…
What are the commercial implications for disability service providers of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)?
Approximately 1.2m people in Australia live with severe and profound disabilities. Many of these people receive no formal care and have been disadvantaged through high levels of unmet needs. The introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is designed to address the shortcomings of…
What is the unique value in a member services organisation?
When asked this question, a lot of people will say ‘brand’, ‘history’ or ‘heritage’. Some will even say ‘our people’, ‘our passion‘ or ‘our purpose’. Although you could argue there is truth in all of the above, where is the real value in a member…