Background Music - What's Yours?

Andrew Penny, December 24 2019

At this time of year background music is everywhere – (the one I dread hearing is ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ – Jesus had a drummer??) Can you hear what I hear…. We all know that stores are not playing it for our entertainment – they want to put us in a better mood perhaps? Well not exactly.

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6 - It’s Not What You Know - It’s Who You Know.

Andrew Penny, December 17 2019

Listen to today's podcast here Hi folks, as you know, the consulting business is based on trust. We have worked with many of you and helped you to improve your strategy, improve your revenues, improve your operations. Some of you have made dramatic shifts in direction others have seen your businesses expand by a factor of 10. We hope that we have e...

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5 - Sales Forecasts and Other Lies

Andrew Penny, December 10 2019

Sales management is a deep topic but this series of podcasts is focusing on the quick and easy ways to increase revenue. So let’s look at some of the obvious stuff which many companies forget to do. The adage “If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it” is absolutely true. “But I do measure sales results” you say! Fair enough.. but do you just man...

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4 - Bring ‘em Back From the Dead

Andrew Penny, December 3 2019

Please 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...

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3 - Would you like fries with that?

Andrew Penny, November 26 2019

Almost 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.

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2 - Frito-Lay Your Clients

Andrew Penny, November 19 2019

When 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...

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1 - The best kept secret for increasing revenue

Andrew Penny, November 12 2019

If you want to increase your revenue, increase your prices. Stunninglyobvious but so few do it. We often don’t raise our prices because we believe we are already at the limit of our pricing ... ... and perhaps it was a few years ago when your service level was lower, when your product quality wasn’t as good, when your competition was different, or...

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Diverse Thinking - Your Team's Secret Weapon

Graham Birkenhead, June 26 2019

I’m a great fan of diversity in the work place – not just those more obvious visible aspects, or the broad range of cultural perspectives and experiential insights that people can bring, but also the way we are all wired differently. This is known as *neuro-diversity. Neuro-diversity can give a team strength by allowing it to ‘see different and to...

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Lesson from a Bee Hive

The Kingsford Team, June 13 2019

Click image to play The way bees operate in their hive can provide an useful lesson that we should think about in our businesses. And while we are talking about bees: World Bee Day is celebrated on 20 May each year (since 2017) in honour of Anton Jansa who was born on that date in 1734 and who is recognized as a pioneering beekeeper.  World Bee Day...

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Meeting Mayhem and Magic

Graham Birkenhead, June 5 2019

I was invited to observe a meeting with a client last week. Ten of the invitees arrived on time but the meeting didn’t start on time because a couple of ‘key’ people were missing.  And then, when it finally got underway, I realized that most of the attendees weren’t sure what the meeting was all about. As the conversation progressed, one or two peo...

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