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As Mark Hurd, co-president of Oracle re-emerges on the public stage, we see him once again focusing on the sales force. Within Oracle’s sales force, he has changed job descriptions, reporting structures, compensation plans, staff size, and corporate routines in a stated effort to improve revenue and profits. But what principles guide his sales-force design? Is he a sales-force master architect or a tinkerer that will destroy Oracle’s revenue?
More After engaging in a brief conversation on “promotional pricing” with a business operations executive at a global manufacturer in consumer goods industry, I was inspired to address some misconceptions discussed and provide further insight on how firms in the B2B space implement profit-enhancing promotional pricing tactics. First of all, promotional pricing should be viewed as a means to price segment according to consumers’ willingness to pay, not as a pure promotional strategy. Case in point, consider Remington Arm’s Promotion of Nitro-Steel Load.
More J.C. Penney’s retail makeover spearheaded by CEO Ron Johnson is remarkably similar to another dramatic — and highly successful — initiative taken in another era. Consider the 1957 challenge and change.
More Declining profit margins are forcing companies to find new ways to improve profitability. Most companies have been through the cost cutting and strategic procurement processes and are now looking for the next level to pull. Strategic pricing is starting to become more popular as more senior executive have begun to leverage the power of pricing.
More The troubled economy of the past several years has challenged – and weakened – many businesses around the world. Although business leaders can’t manage the myriad external factors that impact their organization, they can take advantage of wounded competition through solid strategies.
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Fine. Life sucks and then you die. Get over it. Be happy. Do your work. Any executive can blame a bad market…
More Charting a winning corporate strategy is rarely an easy task, and 2012 has been particularly difficult for executive decision-making. Yet difficult times do not get executives off the hook for poor performance. A case in point: Sears is floundering while Target is advancing. What is driving the significant divergence in performance between these two competitors? Is a role reversal possible in the next 18 months?
More Theodore Levitt in his monumental “Globalization of Markets” treatise predicted the future of international marketing will be the truly “global product.” He envisioned products that everybody in the world could use and not worry about such products being customized to any nationality or culture. Everybody would understand how to work the product and not even have to worry about language and directions. Well, the future is now!
More All over the world, existing and new players are working to make point-of-sale mobile payments a reality. The two key challenges in realizing this are building partner ecosystem, and changing consumer behavior to adopt mobile device as a payment instrument. To change consumer behavior, providing a compelling yet secure consumer experience is a critical factor. This paper contends that having the right balance between consumer experience and security is a must to drive adoption.
More How do you know you have a bad (unprofitable) customer (also known as a leech)? Look for one of these known telltale…
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