Many years ago, I was employee #14 at Bell Mobility in Canada, serving as Vice President responsible for securing dominant market share in Quebec and Eastern Ontario. At the time, we sold cellular subscriptions through phone retailers, whose sales reps could earn up to $1,000 per phone. While our competitors doubled down on this retail gold...
Read MoreIn a recent Tuesday TUNE-UP, I talked about PESTLE analysis. The timing was uncanny. Because Canada just got a new Prime Minister: Mark Carney. And on day one, he laid out one of the most business-relevant political agendas we’ve seen in years. Here are 10 key drivers you need to
Read MoreEvery Strategist knows the acronym PESTLE. It helps us to consider the context in which any planned course of action would take place. I encourage all leaders to put PESTLE into their strategic planning sessions. For those who don’t recall, PESTLE reminds us of the key areas to
Read MoreAbout 2500 years ago, 100km west of Shanghai, a young military scholar developed some unconventional ideas about strategy. He took the surprising step of documenting them in a book he called “The Art of War”. Importantly for our SMB clients, his approach was very much that of the
Read MoreBuyers are increasingly using AI to solve problems such as ‘How do I manage a sales funnel? How do I seal glass to aluminum? Where should I stay in Atlanta? They do this because they will get answers rather than a list of ‘sponsored’ web pages they could visit. And they typically get a prompt asking if they would like to know where they can buy...
Read MoreSome companies spend way too much time developing insignificant incremental features for their products. Nobody buys a product, or service for that matter, based on how long the feature list is. Once it can get the job done, the product capabilities become irrelevant. What becomes more important, as Pete Townshend might ask,
Read MoreThe simple reality is that 99% of the attendees are not, and never will be, buyers – no matter how hard you try. Desperately trying to lure them in with free pens, gimmicks videos, magic shows and so on is simply a waste of time, money and energy. The harder you try the less likely it is that anyone will
Read MoreHenry VI , Part 3 While working with clients we often use a mnemonic called P-E-S-T-L-E; Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. The idea is to look at these areas through the lens of your company to see where the threats and opportunities may lie. Typically, this is done as part of strategy development sessions....
Read MoreThere is a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) issue that pervades most companies, and they try to be attractive to as many buyers as possible. And when I say attractive, I am not referring to their product or service alone – I am including the whole package: product, price, packaging, brand, support and so
Read MoreIn my ongoing quest to explore coffee shops, I recently came across another of note in one of the small towns near me. From the street, it wasn't too obvious, and on closer inspection, it had an eclectic mix of tables and chairs, curious décor, and other bits of furniture placed around the edges of the room - and so looked interesting. It was...
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