Archive for 2017
Sales, Marketing, Finance and Pricing in Price Management
Our own research—that of Homburg, Jensen, and Hahn—as well as research by Hinterhuber and still other works by Liozu, repeatedly indicated firms that engage sales, marketing finance, and pricing leaders in pricing decisions outperform those that don’t. At this point, we may even call this settled managerial science.
Read MoreWho Will Survive the Retail Revolution?
In The Future of Shopping, a 2011 article by Darrell Rigby—a partner in the Boston office of Bain & Company—sees retail today as part of a 50-year cycle. Rigby writes 150 years ago, the railroads promoted the growth of big cities and the rise of the department store. One hundred years ago, the automobile made possible the shopping center and 50 years ago, we saw the rise of the Big Box category killers.
Read MoreA Wiglaf Prediction
“As for his real estate properties, my advice would be to divest himself of all his upscale properties. The cash infusion this would generate would encourage Trump to develop a large chain of medium-priced hotels in smaller markets. They would cater to the Trump voting bloc, and could also be very profitable.”
Read MoreStrategic Movements: May 2017
Let me get this right: Grainger’s “pricing action” was to lower prices. The result was higher volumes and lower gross profits. The aim was a clear market share take. And CEO Donald Macpherson is happy with the result?
Read MoreProduct Management v. Sales: Profit Based Incentives for Both
Can both product managers and salespeople have their incentives and key performance indicators aligned to the corporate goal: profits? Yes. They can and should, but it won’t be the same for both and we need to get specific. In my last article, Product Management v. Sales: Don’t Confuse Your Market, I explored how sales responsibilities…
Read MoreShould You Fight for Market Share?
Market share is not intrinsically valuable. In the world of business, good profit dollars are what has intrinsic value. Profit dollars, earned by serving customers, are the existential purpose of a firm. Anything else is merely instrumental.
Read MoreMarketing High-Quality Commercial-Free Cable TV – And How It Makes Money?
Since programming is the coin of the realm for the cable networks, an annual expenditure of $60 million is chump change when compared with the basic subscription revenue stream as well as lucrative secondary and merchandising market streams of income.
Read MoreProduct Management v. Sales: Don’t Confuse Your Market
Notice that the solution many companies have taken results in sales and product management being unaligned. Sales focuses on their individual account needs while product managers focus on creating solutions to address challenges, which may be faced by multiple customer segments.
Read MoreComplacency and Panic
Aspects of both complacency and panic probably sound familiar to most people who have worked at any number of companies. It doesn’t lead to a healthy company, either in its internal operations or its external relationships with suppliers and customers.
Read MoreStrategic Movements: April 2017
What can sales managers do to reduce the risk of account loss? According to their research, putting top salespeople on the account doesn’t do the trick at all. Rather, putting a person familiar with the account’s industry on it, even if their past sales performance is average or even below average, can almost eliminate the risk of account loss.
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