A lighter look at the best ideas in 2006.

2007 tips are here...

Pricing, SEO, and CSO for Dec. '06

6. Know your nomenclature: The Pocket Price is the actually money
    captured in a transaction net of all discounts, incentives, and
    extraordinary costs to serve.
5. A Price Waterfall graphs the difference between your reference price and
    your pocket price.
4 . The Price Waterfall Vector demonstrates how deep your discounts,
    incentives, and extraordinary costs to serve affect your firm’s profitability.
3 . Mishandled SEO does more harm than good. Be ethical in your
    promotion or see short term gains destroy long term value.
2 . Consider if it is time to adjust your position in the “Great Value at a Great
    Discount” game. GM profitably rotated their Price Waterfall Vector to
    achieve a higher pocket price.
1 . As corporate focus on customers and revenue increases, the role of
    CSO, or Chief Sales Officer, is undergoing rapid growth. Up your results
    by upping your expectations of this role.

Pricing and Web Idea Nov. '06

6. In pricing to compete, map your value proposition in comparison to
    your competitors.
5. Whether you are coming in underpriced or overpriced isn’t up to you,
    it’s up to the customer.
4. Not all customers define quality in the same way. Capture the customers
     that seek the benefits you offer, and price it to their willingness to pay.
3. Branding remains the traffic director sending customers to companies
    on the web.
2. In any SEO initiative, define your business objectives, key metrics,
    and your willingness to pay for their achievement.
1. To dramatically enhance search engine visibility, consider making
    content or design changes to the home page

Resonate or Be Irrelevant Strategies for Oct. '06

6. Listen to your market to determine what they care about.
5. Communicate clearly why you solve those particular problems.
4. Excite the few prospects that care about your unique value proposition
     through your resonating message.
3. Don't waist time with uninterested non-prospects. They are most likely
     irrelevant.
2. Listen to the peculiar needs of the few good prospects.
1. Tune your message to further resonate and excite prospects towards
     being a customer with a closed order.

Customer Focus Strategies for Sept.' 06

6. If marketing and sales do not cooperate, the company's execution will
    fail.
5. Develop an organization that can profit from a relatively small number of
    large accounts, a shrinking number of mid-sized ones, and a growing
    numbers of smaller accounts.
4. Reach customers through multiple, overlapping systems.
3. Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy
    customers.
2. The blogosphere builds trust.
1. And, The Zinger for the Week: Customers make tradeoffs between the
    Trust Economy and the Cash Economy. Smart Executives use this to
    promote the attainment of better prices and higher volumes.

2006 Tips for Web Marketing

6. The web is displacing prior media specifically because it is improving
     the match between talent and audiences, and concurrently, the match
     between suppliers and customers.
5 . Experiment and improve your company’s skills in online PR, online
     Advertising, and online Affiliate marketing
4 . Measurable results and continual optimization shifts the value
     proposition in the favor of online marketing.
3 . In every communication, you’re providing a chunk of information with the
     intent of getting somebody to do something.
2 . Determine exactly what you want someone to do, identify who that
     person is and then identify what it would take to take that action.
1 . Leverage the Analytical Horsepower and Rich Media Interactivity
     available through digital marketing to shift your market share.

On Value and Pricing

6. Learn how to convincingly say "Sure we cost more, but we're worth it."
5 . Fractional Ownership changes products into services, enabling
    companies to reap the benefits of the service oriented pricing.
4 . Price signaling between competitors is risky. Beyond the legal
    uncertainties, its success depends upon having
    reliably rational competitors.
3 . Find your sources of hidden value, and exploit them.
2 . Companies can expand their market through Fractional Ownership
    schemes which serve customers that would otherwise be priced out
    of the market.
1 . Expect LCD panel prices to continue to fall as companies pursue the
    next generation of manufacturing technology in advance of an industry
    wide restructuring through mergers and acquisitions.

Market Development Funds and Speed

6. “There are two kinds of businesses: the quick and the dead.”
5 . Market Development Funds pay Distributors to Advertise the Companies
     products.
4 . Market Development Funds are best used to convey two key pieces of
     information:What to Buy and Where to Buy It.
3 . Like any other marketing communications effort, the value of Market
     Development Funds should be measured by their ability to increase
     volumes, prices, or both.
2 . Speed’s importance to entrepreneurs has increased due to greater
     variety of suppliers, greater connectivity with suppliers, and greater
     importance on risk-taking.
1 . Intel’s MDF programs are under scrutiny not because they were a bad
     idea in specific, but because advertising in general has a weaker effect
     on overall demand generation in mature markets.

Forging Competitive Advantage

6. Competitive advantages derive from doing something different from your
     competitors. They require out-of-the-box solutions to well-known
     business problems.
5. Most sources of competitive advantage are temporary in nature. Once
     identified, competitors will imitate and therefore eliminate any
     advantage.
4. The flat world created by the internet increases the pressure to creating
     sustainable competitive advantage, but doesn't destroy the potential.
3. Reject the operational mindset. Focus on the customer, their needs, and
     their behavior. Your customers and their relationship with you is your
     source of sustainable competitive advantage.
2. Buy Hawks, Seagulls, and Mice by Tim Smith, PhD. Learn about the
     customer oriented ideas were too big to put in the Wiglaf Journal.
1. Play Hardball, relentlessly develop and exploit your competitive
     advantage to increase the wedge between you and your competitors.

Catching the Next New New Thing

6. Alexander Graham Bell created the telephone but Theodore N. Vail
     created the telephone business. Outstanding ideas must be matched
     with outstanding business execution have commercial success and
     spread advances.
5. Online, where reproduction and communication costs are zero, hosted
     grassroots volunteer communities are recreating much, but not all, of
     the value of established and accredited institutions.
4 . Salespeople continue to distinguish their value-add by their ability to
     guide individuals through complex decision making processes.
3 . Locations can be branded just as well as products. Positive results
     beyond tourism include business investments, talent attraction, and
     goodwill towards country-produced goods.
2 . While old-line media suffers from declining audiences, online
     communities are aggregating quickly. It is no-longer sufficient to
     consider “online advertising” as a side-trick within your marketing plan,
     rather it is time to integrate it with all else.
1 . Entrepreneurs benefit from heading the double edged sword, containing
     both a warning and opportunity, of always look for what’s wrong and not
     for what’s right.

An Entrepreneur's Poem (No. 17)

Again, another day into the bluff. Attempting to accomplish that which we have rehearsed in our minds one thousand times over again, only to discover we are lost as we approach the tasting of day.

Fear encroaches upon our space, yet fear hath no refuge here.

Person develops courage. Person determines that fear is not to be allowed, rather, to be overcome, outcast, and destroyed.

Uncertainty in course is generated from a precursor event of approaching a new possibility, full of excitement and hope, with unknown outcome but required execution or the self will cease to be the self, but rather a flower against the wallpaper … Lost.

Our course is not one of being lost, but of defining ourselves through our actions, choices, and accomplishments.

Courage through uncertainty.

Managing Mindspace

6. Niche Monopolies wins mindspace in the people that matter -
     customers.
5. Make Tradeoffs. Pleasing some of the people some of the time is better
     than pleasing no one all of the time. Alternatively put, smallish profitable
     markets are better than largish unprofitable ones.
4. Communicate Resonating Focus of how your offering provides distinct
     value.
3. Corporate Backgrounders are a defensive move. They quell FUD.
2. Customers need to know where you come from before you can take
     them to their solution.
1. HR wins when they focus on employer selection motivations. Underdogs
     win when they focus on customer buying motivations. And, superdogs
     win when they focus on customer buying motivations. You can too.

Customer Loyalty

6. Customer satisfaction metrics are not the same as customer
     loyalty metrics
5. Not all repeat customers are valuable. Know when to invest and when
     to redirect.
4. A loyal customer is one that will make sacrifices on behalf of the brand.
3. Supporting customer loyalty should be an operational goal throughout
    the organization.
2. Building customer loyalty requires meeting ever growing customer
    expectations
1. Across industries, companies that achieve high customer loyalty also
    grow revenue faster than the competition.

Relationship Management

6. The pressure to focus on relationship management is increasing as
     businesses pursue a service orientation.
5. CRM Technology is just a tool. It can make relationships stronger or fail
     faster. The outcome is up to the team.
4. Most anyone can become skilled at relationship development. The key is
     listening and demonstrating a genuine concern for supporting their
    achievement.
3. Nurture unexpected interactions with people of similar interest. Casual
    acquaintances can become valued business relationships at any time.
2. Relationships are a conduit for moving ideas and business. They lie at
     the interstices between professionals. Their very intangibility implies
     their precarious nature.
1. Business relationships are like marriage. You control your divorce and
    continuation rate.

Pricing

6.  Avoid price wars that destroy everyone's profits and yield few, if any,
      positive results.
5.  Consider how the Long Tails approach of serving thousands of niche
     markets can improve margins.
4.  Convince prospects that your offering meets more of their motivational
      factors than all competing offers in order to capture higher margins
      from them.
3.  Use yield management to capture higher margins in high-demand
     environments and manage revenues in low-demand environments.
2.  Transfer profitable pricing paradigms from other industries to yours.
1.  Manage Perceptions to Manage Prices.

Financial Allocations

6.  Use budgeting as a means to get the team behind the company
     strategy. Involve the team in the process.
5.  Prospect through webinars hosted by industry associations.
4.  People impact performance. Train the sales force.
3.  Information asymmetries create wealth opportunities. Do at least 1
     proprietary market research project.
2.  Support the strong. Kill the weak.
1. Budgets are not written on stone, but paper, for a reason. Expect
    changes.

Mergers & Acquisitions

6. Could we execute a similar change organically before the market
     structure changes?
5. Is the acquisition appropriately priced?
4. Can we sell more of our output to their customers?
3. Can we sell more of their output to our customers?
2. Can we successfully integrate the new organization?
1. How does this acquisition fit within our market strategy?