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Strategy as love, not war - MITSloanReview
Personas Make Blue Ocean Strategy Proactive - TynerPlain
Three Steps That Guarantee Every Word of Your Copy Gets Read - CopyBlogger
The Art of the Customer Quote - RocketWatcher
Tackling Telecom: Innovation at Telus - AtomicaCreativeBlog
In Pictures: 10 Remarkable, Recession-Proof Entrepreneurs - Forbes
Spectrum of Online Friendship - Graphic - MikeArauz
Listening to Customers is Not Enough: You Need [...]
Companies trying to do more with less are focusing precious resources on activities that get them through a down economy.
Much of the discussion is about customer retention - how to keep customers in times when everyone is reducing costs and overhead.
Okay, but which customers should you keep. Which customers are profitable? Which ones are costing [...]
A Primer: Here’s How To Calculate Customer Lifetime Value - CustomerThink
Using values: connecting deeply with customers - JohnCaddell
Demand Generation Best Practices - FutureLab
Reseeding R&D - HarvardBusiness
Buyer Behaviour in a Recession - Marketo
Managing Innovation - Pages from Alessi’s Handbook - McKinsey
Why Logic and Value Propositions Matter Less Than You Think - RainToday
Engage Different Consumers in Different Ways - FutureLab
The One-Minute Marketing Test - FixYourBrokenMarketing
Marketers Are Neuroscientists Too - JonahLehrer
B2B Buyers’ [...]
I read The Age of Engage by Denise Shiffman last July. I continue to refer to it (more pages have my underlines and notes than don’t) and think I’ll give it another read-through because in the past year I’ve seen through experience how spot-on Denise is.
Here’s what resonated most with me. In the “live web”, [...]
New York Times
I was working in my office at about 3pm and was restless, so decided to take my work down to the local Yaletown Brewing pub .. who by the way did a light, one-week reno that made a big difference. It’s now much more my kinda place and I will return (kudos to MJG on [...]
Here’s a short and light Harvard Business post: Innovate Like Chris Rock.
As an experimental innovator, Chris “conducts thousands of small experiments”. He tries out new material at a small club in New Jersey. Some jokes fall flat, some sort of work, a few get a good laugh.
It’s just hard to predict where the laughs will [...]
In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers - HarvardBusiness
Less Can Be More: Preparing for the Recovery in Uncertain Times - FutureLab
Time to Start Listening to Front-line Employees - FutureLab
The salesperson’s point of leverage - John Caddell
Front Line User Intelligence Gathering (1 of 2) - John Caddell
Front Line User Intelligence Gathering (2 of 2) - John Caddell
The Best Way to Understand Your Customers - HarvardBusiness
Silver Lining Questions - HarvardBusiness
Now Featuring Benefits! - CopyBlogger
Beyond [...]
Gary Vaynerchuk’s get-with-the-program take: the value of each viewer/user/customer is NOT THE SAME!
Well worth viewing on just about every level. Read the comments to his blog post to see how the whole choir ‘gets it’ .
Freemium Business Model - TylerBlain
Telling Customers to Not Purchase Your Products - Harvard Business
How companies make good decisions - McKinsey Quarterly
Confused Grocers and Won Customers with Canned Pancakes - Fast Company
Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth driven by unexpected uses - TED
Thoughts on the marketing Ps - WebInkNow
The panhandler’s secret- Seth Godin
Three things you need if you want more customers - Seth Godin
When Having No Competition is a [...]
When companies create their first product, they tend to make a few simplifying assumptions without realizing it. They assume the product will:
1 be used as they designed it,
2 be used only by intended users,
3 solve problem as it looks today
And it makes perfect sense to do that.
YOUR FIRST OPPORTUNITY ISN’T [...]
Long term value of customer loyalty - Training Marketer
Scents, Names, Recall, and Imagination - Roger Dooley
Are Those Leads Really Sales Ready? - Rocket Watcher
The rational marketer (and the irrational customer) - Seth Godin
What is loyalty - The Brookside Group
Define and Quantify Customer Value - Fredzimny’s Blog
Measure Customer Value the Customer’s Way - Customer Think
Why won’t customer [...]
I remember the first time I saw a big splashy, downtown RBC Financial Group centre. I was just looking to deposit some cheques and wondered if I should go in and ask where the bank for regular folks was.
I’m guessing this branch in Kitsilano Vancouver just got so tired of answering the question “Is this a bank?” [...]
Thanks to Aaron over at the Marketing Ninja blog, here’s a terrific post about an old problem that I’m sure continues to plague early-stage technology companies.
Read Aaron’s post —> The Danger of Letting Early Adopters Influence Product Development
Whether you are market-driven or not, the reality is that there is often friction between product managers, product [...]
4 Biggest Reasons for Inter-gen Team Conflict (T Erickson) - HarvardBus.org
Simplicity: The Next Big Thing (Rosabeth Moss Kanter) - HarvardBus.org
Value Scenarios in SAP Business Suite 7 (Kathleen Lau) - IT World Canada
Not Who Customers Are, It’s How They Behave (P Merholz) - HarvardBus.org
5 CMO Steps to Customer-Centricity - Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog
Real marketing done before product [...]
Help - I’m stuck
We’ve all been there: we need to get an important report or email done by the end of the day and just can’t get started.
It got me thinking about something I often notice when editing someone’s written work. When we together try to improve the writing of an awkward section, it just [...]
Product value advice from furniture maker Wendell Castle. I found it nicely framed on Vancouver textile artist Heather Cameron’s True Stitches blog (her original post).
If you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its beauty or value.
It is difficult to see the whole picture when you are inside the frame.
After learning the tricks of [...]
Smart Growth Manifesto - Harvard Business
Economics of Giving it Away (Chris Anderson) - Wall Street Journal
Profits = Revenus Minus Costs (Fred Wilson) - A VC
Turning Prospects into Customers (Carol Aubitz) - Excelsior Marketing
Business Trasformation Is Simple (Idris Mootee) - FutureLab
Involve Customers in Design Decisions (Rita McGrath) - Harvard Business
Customer Experience-Driven Business (Peter Merholz) - Harvard Business
1981 [...]
Ok, I just couldn’t resist doing a quick post after seeing Seth Godin’s post Which comes first, the product or the marketing.
In it is a clip from the a Mad Men TV program episode referencing the Kodak Carousel. If you don’t follow the show, you won’t get the subtext of why Don Draper is in [...]
I read an interesting thing about decision-making today. It was in cognitive psychologist Gary Klein’s respected book Sources of Power - How People Make Decisions (The MIT Press, 1999). See bottom of post for my comments on and links to the book.
Klein tells the story of Peer Soelberg, instructor of a decision-making course at the [...]
Here’s what a department manager once said after we pitched the stunning cost benefits of an email productivity solution for his team:
“Yes they’ll be more efficient but then they’ll just do more of it - I’d rather they didn’t do email at all.”
A few years wiser, I have come to realize that productivity-focused [...]
Make your Service a “Got-to-have” Offer - RainToday
Segmentation one-pager - Steve Tobak
Sage advice to those who love their own products - True Stitches
Segmentation - easy way to get started - Rocket Watcher
Breakthrough ideas for 2009 - Harvard Business Review
Free/pls donate courseware from MIT - MIT Sloan School of Management
BC Canada - Rocket Builders 2009 list [...]
I just started Buyology (Martin Lindstrom, 2008 Doubleday). I didn’t want to buy this book (the title seemed overreaching to me). Why did I? Now that I’m on page 85 I turn warily to the mustard yellow-coloured cover - did my subconscious have a role in this? Why yellow?
Ok I’m over it now .. and [...]
This story makes a great point perfectly: find out what your customers value and do (at least) that.
Customer Service Alone is Not Enough (Karen Dillon) from HBR (Harvard Business) Review Editor’s Blog.
It’s a good example because great service and over-serving gets lots of press (such a nice break from the norm). However, I think you [...]
Buy this book
Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki (Portfolio, 2008).
If I could have read this book ten years ago when we were founding our startup, you would have heard me saying “great advice - does not apply to us”, and “interesting .. unless you have a killer app”.
Reading it now I’m practically rolling on the [...]
