Why mysticism and marketing are incompatible bedfellows Imagine the reaction of your local doctor if you presented yourself with a cough and a slight fever and proceeded to inform her that you were suffering from tuberculosis! Can you imagine her obediently writing a prescription for Isoniazid and reporting your bad news to the relevant health [...]

It’s a conversation I’ve had time and time again. JR-M: Does that advertising campaign work? Marketing manager: It’s a little hard to say. JR-M: How do you mean? Marketing manager: Well, the phone doesn’t ring, but at least we’re getting our name out there. There they are, those nine terrible words: but at least we’re [...]

[Note: the following post concludes with a challenge. I hope you'll consider proposing a solution!] I can’t stand it anymore. If I hear one more (otherwise intelligent) person mention the concept of a ‘profitable customer’, I’m going to scream! The concept of a ‘profitable customer’ is as big a nonsense as that of a ‘profitable [...]

In her third term as Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher famously said,”… there’s no such thing as society.” She went on to say, “There are [just] individual men and women and there are families.” (Thatcher was responding to a special interest group that was casting its problems as those of society.) A few days ago I [...]

I often find myself asking that question: do you really need all those branch offices? Think what happens when organisations implement our method. Salespeople don’t need an office anymore: they’re always in the field performing appointments. The scheduling of salespeople is centralised (that’s sales coordinators). There’s a whole bunch of reasons why you mustn’t *ever* [...]

I’m often told by potential clients – in answer to the question, ‘on what basis do you compete for customers?’ – that ‘customer service is our point of difference’. In almost all cases service is NOT a competitive advantage. In fact, this answer is normally a tacit admission of a complete absence of one! Let’s [...]

In recent times, it’s become fashionable to talk about ‘internal customers’. The thinking is that everyone in our organisation is a customer service person. If we don’t serve direct customers, we serve internal customers, where these internal customers might be other divisions, co-workers, management, channel partners etc. While this reasoning may form the basis of [...]

I’m often asked by clients how to cope with the ‘appeal to brand equity’ made frequently by (some) marketing people (particularly those selling advertising) in defense of promotional activities. (To review my position on ‘brand equity as a management metric’ you might like to read this article. The marketer’s position is typically as follows: We [...]

I spent a couple of hours with a Sydney-based insolvency practitioner last week. He visited to request assistance with his marketing. (Yes it’s okay, Ballistix is still solvent!) Because this was my first meeting with a potential client I waited a full 10 minutes before challenging the viability of his business model. Fortunately, my guest’s [...]

Whose responsibility, I wonder, is client retention? Most organisations believe it’s the salesperson’s. Consequently, many salespeople spend a disproportionate amount of their time on account management. ‘Account management’ is a polite way of referring to a process that involves driving from client to client, drinking coffee and talking about the football. In the US, they [...]