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Turning Competing Revenue Team Truths into Market Insight
| Executive Takeaways |
| Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success each see valid but incomplete versions of the market. |
5 Super Tips for a CEO Faced with a Media Interview
Wed, Mar 6, 2013 —
Making our Mistakes Pay – Rather than Paying for our Mistakes
Sun, Dec 9, 2012 — No one likes making mistakes, but we all make our fair share of them. Humans are fallible, products and processes fail, and things slip through the cracks. Even the best-managed companies can go awry. Unfortunately, mistakes are not only inevitable; they can also be very costly. As a CEO you know that mistakes can cause operations costs to rise and productivity to falter—and most damaging of all, they frustrate our customers so that they start thinking about taking their business elsewhere. If we act quickly to fix our mistakes, however, we can make our mistake pay off. Losing and replacing customers is expensive. 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with us again (Source: U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs). If they have the option, they will take their business elsewhere. When customers leave us, we need to expend resources getting new ones—and it generally costs a great deal more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. Think of the difference in the time, effort and money that goes into marketing and sales to bring in new business compared with how little effort it takes to stay connected with a customer you already have. Losing and replacing customers is expensive.
The CEO Is the Chief Team Builder
Tue, Nov 27, 2012 — The concept of team building has been around since the 1960s and continues to multiply as CEOs increasingly embrace developing people and teams as an indicator of their own leadership success. But, to be successful, effective team development for a CEO requires knowing when to do team building—and when not to do team building. I’ve seen CEOs insist on referring to their employees as a team and have pointed to how well their employees get along with one another as the metric of their effectiveness as a team. Calling a group of employees a team doesn’t make them a team, no matter how well they get along. They may just be a group of workers who really like one another—or at least have learned to pretend to like one another. When does a “Group” become a “Team”?
8 Words to Help the CEO Create the Vision
Mon, Nov 5, 2012 — What would DaVinci’s vision be for three pieces of alabaster? Your most important activity as a CEO is to create the vision for success. I once worked for a CEO who was brought in to a struggling company and he only lasted 12 months. The team he was brought into manage correlated his vision to "arranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic." Was his vision flawed? If not, then what went wrong? Did he gain trust, agreement, readiness and shared consensus? Was there something wrong with his vision? How does your team rate you? Let’s think of some great visionaries and what they had in common. DaVinci, Edison, Einstein, Jefferson, Bell, Zuckerberg, Gates are considered great visionaries. They all focused on the result that their vision would achieve. They all created the vision. They all communicated the vision and they all kept trying. Once they created the vision they were single-minded in the mission and strategies to achieve their vision. Did their vision make them trusted leaders? Michael Gelb, NY Times best-seller list author and executive coach, writes in his Vision Crafting article (Executive Excellence Magazine, Jan 1996) on leadership techniques to create a winning vision. Gelb lists 8 key words to remember when crafting the vision. 1. “Juicy - inspiring, energizing, alive“ 2. “Original - a unique expression of you, your company or team” 3. “Succinct - every word packed with meaning” 4. “Inclusive - reflecting the concerns of all stakeholders” 5. “Positive-active - focused, and affirming” 6. “Memorable - everyone knows it by heart” 7. “Aligned - with universal principles and basic goodness” 8. “Integrated - into everyday behavior” Gelb goes on to recommend that the CEO use “Mind Mapping” techniques to craft visions, missions, strategies, and value statements, because the CEO must develop the ability to understand patterns of change and see the web of connections that underlie complex systems. Gelb goes on to state: “Outlining is a reflection of a hierarchical mind-set. Although valuable as a tool for presenting ideas in a formal, orderly fashion, it is useful only after the real thinking has been done.”
The Accidental CEO and 5 Steps to Avoid Being the Reluctant CEO
Sun, Oct 28, 2012 — The Age Old Story You were content in life, working to contribute in operations, sales or product/technology development. You were a master, an expert in your field and were comfortable in your skin. Then the business was rocked when the leading family member became seriously ill; or your key partner suddenly seemed to go nuts — focusing on personal enrichment at the expense of the business; or simply sudden CEO succession was needed. It is an age-old story, a company needs a competent new leader — and through no fault or desire of your own, you find yourself playing the central role of the accidental or reluctant CEO. Over the years, I have met countless CEOs who never aspired to the position of business leader. Some took on the three letter title at startup but never really expected to be the leader of a significant, complex and demanding business. Others were suddenly thrust into the role to save the company or replace a previous CEO. Regardless of how it transpired, these CEOs did not aspire, position or groom themselves to lead a business, but they did step up when required.
The New CEO Mandate
Mon, Sep 17, 2012 — Guest post by Luis Gallardo, Author of Brands & Rousers: The Holistic System to foster High-Performing Businesses, Brands & Careers.
#1 Way to Innovate: Execute
Thu, Jul 5, 2012 — As business leaders, we’re seduced into believing that innovation is the key to competitive advantage. How could anyone argue that an industry-changing product wouldn’t be a company’s ticket to leadership and success? Well, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen make a compelling and empirically-grounded counter argument in “Great By Choice”. Their 10X companies (those with substantially greater long term performance) are actually less innovative than their more innovative but less successful counterparts. Ultimately, it’s the company that “innovates” incrementally that is better prepared (and productively paranoid) that wins the day. The Cambridge Group has written fairly extensively on innovation. In their book “How Companies Win” Kash and Calhoun start with a compelling definition: “Innovation is finding unsatisfied profitable demand, then fulfilling it.” They go on to describe dimensions of Total Innovation: Invention New Product Innovation Product Enhancement Innovation Commercial (non-product) Innovation Operational Innovation Business Model Innovation
Growth Opportunity: The Demand Chain
Mon, Mar 19, 2012 — Efficiency Only Goes So Far The last ten years of American business have been focused on integrating and perfecting operational efficiencies through the perfection and active management of the Supply Chain. For the last couple of years of economic turmoil, many companies have almost exclusively focused on supply chain efficiencies as a strategy for survival. Now the challenge is taking the expertise and company culture focused on linear thinking and introspection of the supply chain and start growing again.
Maximizing Your Position In Your Market
Mon, Sep 26, 2011 — Every company must develop a strategic direction that best fits its capabilities and its standing in its marketplace. Most business categories fall into similar market share patterns. There are three major players who, combined, have roughly 70-90% of the market. Then you have a group of small savvy specialists that have identified an underserved audience within the market. These tend to be businesses that succeed based on lower volumes, by definition, but much higher margins. In general, they tend to have no more than 5% of the market each. And, finally, you have the remaining companies in the category that live on the crumbs that are left over.