Subscribe to our Next Level Thinking for CEOS and Business Owners podcast. Click to listen to today's 'Cleaning up with Arm and Hammer and Armand Hammer' episode. For its first 80 years Austin Church and John Dwight’s Arm and Hammer bicarbonate of soda was promoted as an essential item for bakers. In 1860 they even published their mini-cookbooks "V...
Read MoreClick 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 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...
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 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 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 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 MoreLegacy Constraints are the Achilles' Heel of enterprise companies; they are your opportunity. One of our clients is a rapidly growing software as a service (SAAS) company. We are helping them on their way to becoming a global company - which of course takes money. Our initial evaluation showed there were a number of billion-dollar companies that ap...
Read MoreDuring a kick off meeting with a new client we were discussing how best to accelerate beyond his local trading area. We talked about geography, product lines and market segments. When I suggested he focus on a very specific offering for a unique demographic his comment was – “Geez – that market is way too small”. He was confusing small for narrow;...
Read More/kcl-goes-green/HeaderLogo-60x300-ID-e065fb7a-094d-4fc6-d8c1-f4f88e7523f5.png)