If your sales activity is completely or partially conducted through channel partners, here are the 8 key questions you should be asking your channel managers: 1 On a scale of 1- 10, how important are you to your partners’ business strategy? Typically, partners have many different products or services to promote, but those that are crucial...
Read MoreSometimes the best way forward is so obvious that we often overlook it. This is true with companies wanting to increase their revenues and to become more profitable (of course the two are not necessarily synonymous...) They look at new markets, new products, new partners, complicated sales promotions, advertising campaigns and so on. All of which c...
Read MoreThose elephants just sneak into the room with you, hide in plain sight whilst tucked away in corners, and cause havoc with your company’s performance. If only we could do something about that. Humans have an amazing ability to see and notice things that are different or changing, but we are generally less good at seeing things that don't change....
Read MoreTo my dismay it happened again. I drove to a car show in Vermont and won a prize… I joined over 500 cars at the British Invasion in Stowe, Vermont. It’s about 5 hours from Ottawa with lots of pretty and really twisty roads. I go to these shows because I like cars, especially British cars. My car is really only an excuse to hang out with a bunch o...
Read MoreOK, so you have determined that investing in a new market is the right way to move your company forward. And you have determined which is the best market segment to focus on. The next challenge is determining how you actually get into that market, in other words what is your market entry plan? Your market entry plan is going to be highly situationa...
Read MoreI have worked with senior managers and executive teams who wouldn't recognise strategy if it bit them on the proverbial; conversely, I have worked with great strategic thinkers in the most unexpected places with much less responsibility. The ability to think strategically has nothing to do with your role or seniority, although one hopes that execu...
Read MoreWe often have a strategy for this and a strategy for that - and we have strategic plans etc. Having quantized approaches to achieving goals can work well, especially when you know where you are and you well understand the nature of the system around you. However, when we are running businesses, with bigger, fuzzier and further out goals and much m...
Read MoreAnyone remember VUCA? It’s an acronym that stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. I’ve used VUCA as a strategic planning tool when trying to understand what was going on around me and so increase the chances of coming to an optimal course of action. As a concept, it was first described by the leadership guru Warren Bennis in...
Read MoreThere is a great analytical tool called PESTLE - an acronym for Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. It is typically used to ensure a thorough scan of all external factors affecting a proposed plan of action. You use it to identify the forces working for you and against you – and your competitors – and your cu...
Read MoreThe talk about ‘recession’ has many owners rattled. Most of you reading this own small or medium sized businesses and by corollary have a small share of the markets you serve. If the overall market you serve shrinks by 1% it will have very little effect on your ability to expand. Your growth, or lack of it can’t be attributed to the overall economy...
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