Archives for category: Strategy
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Squeezable Marmite Jar

February 4, 2019 //
0

I’ve written before about the need for product manufacturers to design and deliver the whole product solution, or in other words, the entire customer experience, rather than just their product.

This includes the packaging, the accessories, everything you use when you consume the product.

A case in point is the squeezable marmite jar. You either love it or hate it, as the advertising goes, and I’m one of the lovers when it comes to Marmite, always have been. The unmistakeable branding, smell, consistency, taste and round glass jar. In the last few years the Marmite folk have taken to using a squeezable plastic jar to deliver their gooey goodness.

The trouble is, the stuff is so damn viscous that you can’t get more than 70 or 80% of the product out of the jar; the jar won’t squeeze down enough. I purchase a replacement jar – glass – before I realised a good bit of my purchase was yet to be consumed. To get value for your money, and who doesn’t want that, you have to twist the top off and collect the stuff from the inside of the top and the mouth of the jar. It gets everywhere, and leaves your kitchen cupboard, the jar and your hands a sticky mess. Not a good experience.

All the stuff outside of the product itself is an important part of the overall experience. You have to get all of it right, or you risk turning away first-time triers and seasoned customers.

Tags , , ,
Categories Customers, Marketing, Strategy

January Retrospective

January 30, 2019 //
3

I blogged about January earlier this month, about how it’s a ‘kiss me arse’ month. I wrote about January, however, in mid-December or so, since if you blog regularly you tend to have a stock of posts scheduled at any one time.

How did January turn out? Well, you’re reading this at nearly the end of the month, so for you it’s my January retrospective, but I’m writing this with the guts of 10 days to go. I can give you pretty clear steer on it though.

I came back from a great break in the UK with dose of ‘man flu’, which I hardly ever get. It took me a week to get rid of, by which time it had migrated to a chesty, flegmy cough that warranted a trip to the doc’s and the parting of €63 for the visit and the accompanying anti-biotics. About the same time I also re-tweaked my troublesome left calf playing my first game of table tennis for a few weeks, before turning over in bed a few mornings later and precipitating a sore trapezius-back-of-the-shoulder-blade thingy which subsequently reminded me how often I unwittingly engage it in every-day movement.

This is all my own fault of course. I always view January as the necessary evil we all have to get through, the hangover from the party period of the previous month. I had it coming, in that self-fulfillingly prophetic way.

I’m going to take a leaf out of my mate Gaz’s book next year though. He’s always glad when Crimbo is out of the way and looks forward to January. A clean slate, get some things started, that new year, new you kind of a thing.

So I’m looking forward to an awesome January 2020. A new decade, and the world’s my oyster. Bring it on, except not just yet. I have 11 stellar months to enjoy first.

Tags , , ,
Categories Communication, General, Strategy

Empty Buses

January 28, 2019 //
0

Is there a more depressing sight than an empty in service bus in a major town or city? Maybe there is, perhaps a full in service bus in the driving rain that you’re trying to get onto.

Anyway, it’s hard to run through all the reasons in a minute or less as to why I find an empty bus depressing. The lost productivity, the inefficient use of my tax-paying dollars, the additional traffic burden of a vehicle not designed for the narrow streets of an ancient city but which only makes sense if it’s nearly full and takes a number of cars off the road. Where to start?

Buses are designed to ease traffic by offering commuters a cost-effective and convenient way of getting into the centre of town so they don’t have to stomach high parking charges and hideous traffic. Throw in bus lanes, and buses and taxis combine to make city centre navigation by public transport bearable, preferable and sometimes even enjoyable.

But when you see empty buses around the place, then someone has got the load planning way wrong. Maybe it’s political, or maybe they don’t care, don’t want to improve the service, I don’t know. For me, it’s like using a service that’s supposed to be every 15 minutes, but really it’s every 30 minutes because buses gather in twos or even threes and convoy the route, taking it in turns to leapfrog each other at each stop, for an easier life. It’s not in the interests of the paying customer, because the organisation is not genuinely incentivised by and therefore geared to the needs of the paying customer.

 

Tags ,
Categories Communication, Customers, Strategy

Staff Parking in Public or Private Organisations’ Car Parks

January 25, 2019 //
0

I’m sure I’ve written before about US strip malls and the fact that staff park their cars in the furthest away spots to allow their paying customers to take the most adjacent spots. It simple, thoughtful and common sense practice.

You don’t see so much of it in Europe in my experience. Staff seem to get priority. That cosy consultant’s parking space at the front of the hospital. How come they get that? Surely it should be for the nurses or the midwives who do most of the bloody work, no pun intended. Or perhaps, revolutionary thought, the patients, who have to pay to park in the next parish.

Anyway, I was waiting in the car park for my 9 o’clock doctor’s appointment the other day to rid myself of a pesky chesty cough that I didn’t want advancing to a chesty infection. I was 8 minutes early and so people watched from the comfort of my car. By 8:58, the car park was full, since staff had used up both the car park and the spaces behind the surgery which are supposed to be for staff only. There simply aren’t anywhere near enough spaces for both staff and paying patients.

Who has to to park on the curb? The paying patient of course, who in this country funds the vast majority of the salary of the attending staff.

Madness, I tell you. If I ruled the world, or at least administered some of it…

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, Customers, General, Strategy

When is a Sale a Sale?

January 9, 2019 //
0

I saw the headline of an article the other day, and clicked on it, because it looked of interest. Except I had clicked on for the wrong reason, or at least my analysis was wrong.

The headline was: When is a Sale a Sale? I thought it was a cool article about defining when you have successfully closed a sale; some new insight on sales methodology. What we would call closing a deal in B2B. Is it a sale because the customer commits to the order verbally? Is it the receipt of the PO or the contract? Or is it the payment of the invoice or the handover of the cash?

In fact it was nothing of the sort. The article was a consumer-focused piece about what constitutes a selling event, the other kind of sale. It was about the retail industry trending towards a state of permanent sales and how difficult it is now to differentiate a true sales event and a retail status that is claiming ‘special’ sales status when it really isn’t.

Not to mention how difficult it is for retailers to get out of that sales spiral and protect their margins.

So, two different kinds of sale, and I clicked through under false pretences, but an interesting skim-read nonetheless.

Tags , , ,
Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

Food Diary Decade

January 7, 2019 //
0

On the 4th of January 2009 I started a food diary. Actually it was kind of an everything diary. Weight, health and fitness activities, the weather, and a quick scribbled account of what I got up to that day. It detailed exactly what I had for breakfast, lunch, dinner and other snacks, how much water I drank, and how much alcohol. When I look back, I would say that, arbitrarily, it’s 90% accurate. Oh, and there was a two week summer holiday where I recorded the information on my phone and accidentally deleted it before it got to my laptop…

Today marks over 10 years of my food diary. If I want to know – I doubt you will – exactly what I ate, drank and filled my day with on any one of the last three-and-a-half thousand days, I can find out in a couple of clicks.

I blogged some time ago about the benefits of keeping a food diary. It keeps you honest, and that helps with health and weight management. For example, I’m about 2 pounds/1 kilo lighter now than I was a decade ago. I’ve probably lost a bit of muscle tone and maybe 2 centimetres of height, but for someone who during that time moved from his fifth decade into his sixth, I think that’s a pretty decent achievement.

The collected data from 2009 to now must be of some value to someone, I would have thought? If you think so, do let me know.

As you may know, I like round numbers and I like doing things for a set amount of time before I call it a day. I’ve mentioned more than once how I may stop at 1,000 blog posts.

Maybe today will be my last food diary entry. Then again, I was going to retire at 30, 40 and 50…

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, General, Strategy

Human Hibernation

January 4, 2019 //
0

Do we engage in human hibernation? I think we do, to a certain degree. I know I do, to a larger degree.

January is my hibernation month. I love Christmas, it’s my favourite part of the year, but then New Year’s Day always comes around so quickly.

In golfing western Ireland, when you hit a low ‘scuttery’ shot along the ground, instead of hitting one that flies like an angel, you sometimes call it a ‘kiss me erse’ shot. That’s January for me. It’s a bit of a kiss me erse month. You’ve no money, the nights are long and cold, you know you should be gambolling off to the gym like a March lamb, and there’s very little sport to commend itself.

I always try to delay my return to work as late as possible in January, to make it a shorter working month. It’s a month for making lists, putting the fire on and planning what you’re going to do with the year, if only you can get 8-and-one-third percent of it out of the way first.

Pretty soon, the 1st of February comes around, it’s a short month, and Rugby’s 6 Nations and Football’s Champions’ League ease us into the year proper. Happy Days.

But for now, let me pull the proverbial duvet over my head and give me a nudge in 4 weeks’ time.

Tags ,
Categories General, Planning, Strategy

Taking Stock

December 31, 2018 //
0

I’m on holiday as you read this. I’m not even in the country where I normally write these posts. I’ve jetted off with the family I helped to create to visit the family I was born into, as many of you do this time of year.

It’s a time for taking stock, considering where you are, and what you’re going to change or do differently next year. I always try and take off between Christmas and New Year if I can. I’m very conscious of people who work in the service industry, or people like my friend who works in the supply chain industry, that this time of year has a very stop-start feel to it. They can’t use this time of year for taking stock, they have to do it another time.

You can’t take stock in a couple of days. You need at least a week’s run at it, so you can decompress, assess and figure out the old traffic lights: what will I give the red light to and stop doing, what will I review on amber, and what will I give the green light to and continue or start doing? Then you can recoil yourself, ready to get into it.

Some people like to be working this time of the year, with a day or two off here and there. Some people have to work. I’m lucky, I have the luxury of not having to, usually, and so for me it’s a good time for taking a break, taking soundings from others and taking stock.

Tags ,
Categories General, Planning, Strategy

Why Are You in Business?

December 28, 2018 //
0

When we’re taught the rudiments of writing a press release, we’re sometimes encouraged to get to the ‘five w’s’ in the first paragraph. Who, What, When, Where, Why?

Why is often the last W to be addressed, and it’s probably the most important W. Why are we doing this? What impact are we hoping to have?

I remember an ad campaign for a national newspaper a few years ago, for a broadsheet rather than a tabloid, which was all about the why. I thought it was a great campaign. The answer to why is this happening or why did this happen is the most informative answer.

Why is a very pertinent question to ask in business as well. Why are we doing this? Why are we in business? This is a concept popularised by Simon Sinek in his book Starting With Why. I hadn’t heard about the author or the concept until a good friend told me about it some time ago. It’s a really simple and profound way of thinking about your business or your organisation and what its purpose for existing is.

I love the concept, but I haven’t read the book yet. It’s sitting digitally on my Kindle, working its way up my list and I’ll get to it over the holidays. What we do is something every company knows. How we do it is something that a smaller proportion of them knows. Only the very special ones understand, throughout the organisation, why they do what they do, why they’re in business in the first place, and that’s where great organisations should start. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to read the book, take exactly 5 minutes to watch this abridged TED talk, it’s well worth it.

Then you can ask yourself the question why are you in business. And if you don’t have a good answer, maybe start a new organisation with a new answer.

 

 

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

New Biz or Existing Biz for Scaling SaaS Companies

December 24, 2018 //
0

A while back I wrote a post called Churn or Growth for Startups, and referenced the excellent content from the VC blogger Tom Tunguz. The answer was churn.

What should be the focus for the SaaS company looking to scale its business and grow at a rate that attracts heathy valuations and juicy multiples for an IPO or an exit? It’s grown by bringing on new companies and keeping them, so surely it should keep adding new logos, right?

The beauty of the SaaS model is that on the first of the year you can count on the revenues for all your customers who are renewing their annual commitment. Going from $80m to 100m in one year may seem like a giant jump, but the successful SaaS company has close to the €80 coming in during month 1, so it’s not such a big leap and, indeed, many such companies see themselves growing at phenomenal annual rates, far in excess of the 25% in my example.

The scaling company should focus on keeping and growing its existing customer base.

Have a look at this post from Mr Tunguz, which he said in an email recently was far and away the most popular post he did in 2018, 10 times more popular in fact than the next most popular post. Which is intriguing, since the post he links to is from 2016…

So startups should focus on preventing churn, and more established companies should focus on renewals, which is to say they should focus on preventing churn…

Tags ,
Categories Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »