Archives posted in: Corporate
And You Think Your Employees Aren’t Powerful? …It Only Takes One!
Like comparing apples and oranges? No, apples and employees! The employee that isn’t trained to exhibit excellent customer service skills or takes it upon him or herself to alienate customers is like the proverbial apple that “spoils the barrel”, creating an atmosphere that spawns negativity and steals from your bottom line. It only takes one employee to send your customers running away screaming to your nearest competitor, even in the world of electronic interactions.
The pattern is pretty similar: the erstwhile entrepreneur usually has a wonderful idea for a money-making business. Often they have done enough research to determine that their idea is unique and they haven’t found anybody else doing precisely what they have in mind. They are excited about their concept and seek advice on how to take it to the next step and go into business for themselves. Here is some of the advice I usually hand out to these entrepreneurs.
More In one of the most turbulent and bizarre weeks on Wall Street in recent memory, two of the most important indicators of the future of American business announced their earnings and quickly took a U- turns south. The two companies are Hewlett-Packard and Wal-Mart. Read why.
More For those companies, advertising agencies and other marketing intermediaries that survived the recession, the post-recession, which begins immediately in January, 2011, poses a different set of challenges: Customers, Employees, and Suppliers.
More In October of 2010, Intel Corp. took an unexpected move by granting Achronix Semiconductor Corp. access to its most advanced foundry to produce field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips. Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp. currently dominate the FPGA industry. How serious of a threat is Intel’s move to the historic industry cohorts? More specifically, will this move harm industry profits as competition heats up? And, how should executives and investors react?
More Imagine, your executive just read an article that said she can expect at least a 1% improvement in her bottom line profit if she introduces a pricing initiative. Now, she wants to know what steps you will follow to create a new pricing function with the goals of implementing value based pricing and stopping margin leakage. What resources do you need to be successful and where do you focus first?
More Recently I attended an event where Dan Cathy, President and Chief Operating Officer for Chick-fil-A in Chicago, speech. During the talk Dan evangelized the values of Chick-fil-A which include treating customers and employees with respect. Dan also stated that “We distinguish our product based on the value we provide rather than price.” Though I had never stepped foot in a Chick-fil-A restaurant, that comment tripped me off to the fact that I was about to experience a story about a unique entrepreneurial enterprise known as Chick-fil-A!
More The game in business markets has changed. The opportunity landscape has shifted from the stalwarts of North American and Europe to the onetime turbulent and unstable emerging markets. Furthermore, the pricing power that shrank to the ether is returning to the tangible as markets return to growth.
These are bold claims and require bold reengineering of corporate strategy. Before you the reader consider these to be audacious statements from an ill informed outsider on unimportant and irrelevant industries, let me provide the evidence.
More Global marketers looking for direction from the Obama Administration will have to wait a little longer. There are no clear signals as to whether Obama will embrace free trade, like his immediate predecessors, or revert to a more protectionist policy, favored by one of his primary bases of support.
More Entrepreneurs are a different breed, but what is this breed? Recently, Reed et al. examined the decision making practices of highly successful entrepreneurs, individuals who have grown a company to $200 million or more in annual revenues. They found that entrepreneurs tend to use a more effectual logic rather than predictive logic. What is effectual logic versus predictive logic and how does it help entrepreneurs? … Read on.
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