Marketing includes “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.” Sales include “operations and activities involved in promoting and selling goods or services.” The two disciplines are clearly linked in a neverending search for the golden ticket. In order to be effective, Sales and Marketing professionals require a particular kind of talent.
Impressions of Value in Exit Planning Business owners, advisors, and buyers frequently have widely different impressions of value when it comes to a business. The Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Survey canvasses intermediaries who sell privately held Main Street and mid-market companies. One question is about the … Read More » Supply Chains and Labor Shortages Supply chains and labor shortages are the chief topics among the 40 or so business owners I currently work with. Their anecdotes are widespread and widely varied. I wanted to know why, so I did some research on behalf of … Read More » The Nimble Small Business Almost since time began, the nimble small business has been axiomatic. Large corporations are like big ships, the common knowledge goes. They take a long time to change direction. That is a comforting thought to business owners who choose to see … Read More » Exiting a "Time and Place" Business “The purpose of middlemen in the marketplace is to provide time and place utility.” I remember the light bulb going on in Economics 101 when my professor said that. Suddenly, I understood the concept of added value. Someone had to get the … Read More » How Much Does that Gorilla Weigh? How much does that (fill in your preferred number here) pound gorilla weigh? I always refer to an 800 pound gorilla, but I’ve heard others use everything from a 400 pound gorilla (which is pretty close to their real size) to … Read More » Good Customers Can Be Bad When can good customers be bad? What could be wrong with a customer who buys a lot, pays promptly, and never has a service problem? They might be buying too much. No matter how strong or comfortable a sales relationship is, … Read More » The New Information Direction: Push Over Pull Ever since we started using computers in virtually every business, we’ve been putting data into them. Unfortunately, the issue has been getting information back out. In the middle 1980’s I ran a manufacturing company together with a couple of Australians. They thought … Read More » Help Your Friends, Not Your Competitors' I hear it all too often. “A customer just called us for a quote. They have always done business with our competitor. We’re going to give them our best deal, and see if we can take their business.” Before you … Read More » Small Businesses Fantasies: Service As an evangelist for small business, I am the consumer equivalent of the locally-grown food movement. I spend as much of my discretionary income as possible with the owned-and-operated businesses in my area. As a consultant and coach to owners, I also … Read More » Time to Grow Up Young industries no longer have the time to grow up. The cycle of maturation has long been accepted as a fact of life when a new concept becomes a business. There are a few pioneers (defined here in Texas as … Read More » Talk to Your Competitors In my two decades of managing over a dozen peer groups, I frequently had the opportunity to sit in meetings with a business owner who competed with a member of another Board. I occasionally had to bite my tongue as someone vilified … Read More » The Seventh Entrepreneurial Sin -- Pride Every business owner should be proud of his or her business. If you are the founder, you built every system, and probably landed the biggest customers. If you bought the business, you took what was in place and made it … Read More » "Congratulations -- You are the Low Bidder!" The sentence that titles this post could be defined as the epitome of mixed emotions for a business owner. You won the business, but only because you are willing to work for less than everyone else. Perhaps you deliberately cut … Read More » The Quest for Recurring Revenue Recurring revenue is the current Holy Grail of business. Barriers to Entry, a traditional way of assessing your differentiation against competition, have been replaced by Barriers to Exit, how to make it at least inconvenient or at most excruciatingly painful for … Read More » When a Customer Outgrows You There is nothing that quite matches the excitement of landing your first really big customer. It often brings with it the confidence that comes with knowing, really knowing, that you can compete in the big leagues. There could be the added security of … Read More » |