Click to listen to Hot Towels & New Markets podcast. There is nothing quite like wrapping yourself in a nice warm towel after stepping out of a long hot shower. It feels so good that I am surprised that towel warmers are not a standard fixture in bathrooms everywhere. They are, in fact, a rather scarce niche product. You might think that this subse...
Read MoreListen to this week's podcast here. As a kid, I would stare up into the night sky with amazement. It’s pretty obvious that we are a just a tiny part of a very large (one might even say universal) system. The same is true of our businesses – we are simply a small part of a large system. I can guarantee you that nobody really wants what you sell. Th...
Read MoreOver the last year we have been very fortunate and thank all of those who have trusted us to help them grow their businesses. We are working with a world leader in dam safety. They design systems that prevent millions of tons of ice and debris from shutting down power generation.
Read MorePlease excuse the title, I’m writing this just after Halloween... Most companies have lots of old customers – not they are actually ‘old’, but simply companies that haven’t done business with you for a very long time. Why they stopped doing business with you is in most cases a mystery. Perhaps a sales rep annoyed them at some [point, or an order wa...
Read MoreAlmost everyone is familiar with the question – “Would you like Fries with that?” Apart from being a well worn meme, it’s also one of the most profitable questions ever asked. To get your client to a purchase commitment, a finite expense has been incurred so any gross margin from the sale created by Up-selling goes right to the bottom line.
Read MoreWhen I ran Bell’s Eastern region cell phone sales and marketing business, we created a new verb. We called it Frito-Laying. Frito-Lay sells snack food to just about every point of sale you can image. Many of these are Mom and Pop operations where the purchase decision is made on the spot. Frito-Lay had established delivery routes and visited every...
Read MoreAn area that people get wrong all the time is pricing. Some people price high based on the profits they hope to achieve. Some base it on some sort of average industry “cost plus” rule. Some are afraid to charge too much. Still others simply add a few percent to last year’s price. So before you set your next price or quote your next deal here are A...
Read MoreGlobalization doesn’t mean (necessarily) that you have to sell globally but it does mean you are now competing with companies from all over the world. So, how are you going to stand up against competition that’s coming in from Germany or Turkey or China or Chile or anywhere else in the world? Many of these companies are competing globally with a si...
Read MoreI hate waiting for people when I ski. Well maybe hate is a strong word, but waiting does break my flow. My friend Andrew (yeah same name as me) is a fabulous skier - a Level 3 Certified Ski Instructor no less. And for those of you who don’t know about skiing, that’s pretty close to godliness. (Level 4s are the real gods – at least they think so...)...
Read MoreI ask all our clients for a report on sales by customer for the last 2 or sometimes 3 years; but even a single year (as the example below shows) provides great insights. And, with multiple years you also get trends. Next, I do something that is incredibly simple but provides huge insights. I load the data into a spread-sheet, sort by revenue (lar...
Read More/kcl-goes-green/HeaderLogo-60x300-ID-e065fb7a-094d-4fc6-d8c1-f4f88e7523f5.png)