Growth Insights for CEOs

Beyond the Buzzwords: How CEOs Can Build a Truly Resilient Business
In every keynote, article, and boardroom conversation, “resilience” gets tossed around as the Holy Grail of leadership virtue. But resilience is more than just surviving economic turbulence—it’s about turning disruption into a competitive edge.
Too many CEOs treat resilience as a slogan rather than a strategy. Real resilience is built in advance, not claimed during a downturn. It starts with clarity regarding where you are in the economic cycle, where you’re headed, and how to align your people and resources accordingly.
Recent Posts
How ONE MINOR FLAW can RUIN the Customer Journey
Mon, Dec 13, 2021 — Are you checking every step in your company’s customer journey to make sure that the passage is smooth and rewarding, and in fact, DELIGHTING for your customer? DELIGHT takes so much work by so many people – the product, the website, the employee service training. And DELIGHT is what builds lasting loyalty. And it can all, unfortunately, be spoiled by a minor detail.

More Returns = More Sales? Amazing!
Thu, Nov 5, 2020 — How do you decide who your “favorite” online merchants are? With online ordering going through the roof, online brands and sellers have been focused on the best customer experience. They have focused on the “front end” – an easy to use web site, wide selection of items, and fast delivery, maybe even one or two days.

The Retail Resistance: Is Amazon Suddenly Vulnerable?
Mon, Nov 18, 2019 — From its humble beginnings as a quaint online bookseller, Amazon has become a global colossus. By selling everything from Salad Shooters to servers, and from tiny doll houses to REAL tiny houses, today’s Amazon accounts for about half of online transactions conducted in the U.S. Clearly, Jeff Bezos has unlocked the secret to how things should be sold online. For any retail business, how can you lose by joining up? But, crawling from the shadows cast by the Amazon monolith is the beginning of a resistance movement – being led by a surprise rebel.
Stay up-to-date with the latest from Chief Outsiders
4 Tips to Achieve Quantum Growth with Expansion into Retail
Wed, May 29, 2019 — Whether your brand/product is sold purely on-line, through healthcare professionals or other professional channels, retail offers an opportunity to achieve quantum growth. Indeed, the rewards of selling through retailers can be enormous. Depending on the outlets you pursue, a successful retail launch can generate opening orders of 200,000 units or more. I recently launched a medical product primarily into the big three drug chains and Walmart that achieved that delightful opening order size. And, appearing in front of millions of consumers on retail shelves couldn’t hurt brand awareness. Some experts estimate that retail shelf presence alone can increase brand awareness by 20% or more.

What B2B E-commerce can Learn from Consumer Retail
Tue, Apr 25, 2017 — The world of consumer retail is in the midst of rapid transformation. Traffic in brick-and-mortar stores is decreasing. Consumers are moving away from shopping malls. Traditional advertising—whether via direct mail, TV ads or newspaper and magazine ads—is losing its relevance.