If you can get your organization and partners to “live” your value proposition it can do wonders for your customer happiness and business model.
Category Archives: Team Work
Why Authentic Value Proposition ?
The lingering pandemic, the Ukraine war, supply chain problems and inflation has all types of organizations reviewing their “value” proposition. The idea of an explicit contract in B2B and an implicit contract in B2C used to involve fewer parties. If there was a serious dispute there was arbitration, courts or government regulators who would step in and try to sort things out. No longer true in the world of instant social media. Think of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase situation.
For everyday business it’s simply keeping your promises to your customers. To be fair, our experience is that Elon Musk is pretty good with Tesla in keeping customer promises. No matter how the Twitter acquisition plays out.
Since marketing is about customer value, it’s important to clarify the idea of value proposition in these challenging times:
Leadership Style 2022: Jack Welch or Satya Nadella?
Gen X( Born 1965-1980) was willing to go along with the Baby Boomer/Jack Welch leadership style. Gen Y or Millennials ( Born 1981 to 1996) and Gen Z or Zoomers (Born 1997 – 2012) are very different. Gen Y and Z in the workforce and with the Great Resignation since the pandemic and 2021, we thought it was timely to rethink the Jack Welch style as discussed in our very popular posts on Jack Welch. When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he made the reading of “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall B. Rosenberg compulsory for the top management. Nadella’s predecessor Steve Balmer followed a version of the Jack Welch approach without the candor that Jack promoted at GE.
Purpose of a Corporation : What every American needs to know
The most exciting thing for business over the 2019 summer was when the Business Roundtable put out a Statement on the “Purpose of the Corporation.” Signed by 181 American CEO’s all of whose brands are well known to consumers or businesses, the statement reflects the changing times. Download the Roundtable Statement here and check out the 181 signatures from many CEO’s of companies you are already familiar with.American politicians have been telling us what we know to be true – the “American Dream” eludes most folks today due to rapid changes in globalization and technology. Thankfully, leaders of American businesses have taken notice and have decided to move their focus from the “next quarter” to “long term shareholder value” on the shareholder element and have included all stakeholders in the “Purpose of the Corporation”. The times have truly changed in the last decade with all stakeholders having a voice on social media and the old dictum of “just focus on shareholder (short-term) value” can no longer work. See Eric Posner’s article “Milton Friedman was wrong” in the Atlantic.
Why forward looking performance “previews” for business are better
Over the last week there were two speakers who influenced this post. The first was the famous goal setting expert Gary P Latham who spoke at Yale University. And the second was Bob Bowman, (Michael Phelp’s coach) who was interviewed on NBC for his new book “The Golden Rules.” It also turns out that ourContinue reading “Why forward looking performance “previews” for business are better”
Dealing with the power and politics of B2B buying centers
We get frequent questions from innovative solution sellers about how to deal with the power and politics of B2B Buying Centers. This is after you have started talking with people at a prospective customer organization. And yet a deal doesn’t seem to be coming through.Here is our take and we hope this makes our dear readers feel better:
Negative Online Reviews:Customers check “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Winter Marketing Academic Conference(#WinterAMA16) involved a lot of discussion about the impact of online negative reviews on customers. Researchers have been doing massive work with lots of data to examine: Are negative reviews for your business catastrophic? There is cheerful news for all organizations who feel bad about a few negative reviews out there. Now,Continue reading “Negative Online Reviews:Customers check “What’s the worst that can happen?””
Why it’s hard to share feedback in B2B Markets
Frank,regular and constructive feedback is hard to give or receive in any work relationship. For example, HR performance appraisals are dreaded by both the boss and the employee. If you are a great leader your employees deserve to know how they are doing on a frequent basis , according to the legendary Jack Welch (Also seeContinue reading “Why it’s hard to share feedback in B2B Markets”
Front end of new projects: The challenge of engaging clients,bosses and colleagues
The primary challenge for their innovation teams, according to the Innovation head of a Fortune 50 corporation, is to consciously engage the bosses at the front end of the project. The bosses sign off on initial costs and then when things progress to the stage of making prototypes and trial production- the bosses suddenly wake up. “I never realized that there are such big costs involved,down the line…” is a common refrain.
What is your sustainable competitive advantage?
Here is an old Blockbuster video membership card, what nostalgia! Renting video cassettes from Blockbuster video seems like so long ago .. How Internet affects business is one of our favorite topics but there is an underlying larger idea in strategy. That idea is sustainable competitive advantage by which a business maintains enduring success. CompetitionContinue reading “What is your sustainable competitive advantage?”