Tag: strategic planning

What Stops You?

Have you ever had a terrific idea which you didn’t act on? Of course you have. I don’t mean anything fancy either. Nothing earth-shattering. Just a plain old-fashioned good idea which would have made you more money. But you didn’t get moving on it.

Oh well.

I have a friend I’ll call James. James is an independent management consultant and a deep, creative thinker. I have great respect for his abilities to understand his clients and develop unique solutions for them. But…

Customer Advisory Boards

Customer Advisory Boards are a great source of information about your market and your business. Their advice is more valuable than any management consultant’s. They provide real world counsel on what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and most important -how to stay competitive. After all, they’re the customer. They’re the one’s who buy your stuff. Here’s how to use your Customer Advisory Board for best results.

1. Make it win-win.
As much as they might like …

Equity: The Golden Handcuffs

Last month, I wrote about positioning your company to attract and keep top performers. One very effective way to do both is to compensate your key employees with equity.

Performance pay has become a critical factor in keeping top talent; combine it with a sense of ownership and a stake in the future of the business, and you’ve got a powerful set of incentives.

That is what equity does. The basic theory behind equity compensation is simple: generously pay your people in …

Non-Profit Strategic Planning

It is important to mention that it is the size of the organization matters more than for-profit or non-profit status in determining the objectives, steps and activities in the Strategic Planning process. Small non-profit and for-profit organizations have a similar manner of conducting business and planning activities that are different from larger non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Strategic Planning In The Business World

Strategic planning is a method of planning events in a strategic manner in order to accomplish the goal at hand. This type of planning works by looking at the whole picture and you then figure out how you are to get from one place to another. Probably the most important example of strategic planning is that which is done in the military. In this example, we could say that the strategy is to overtake an area while the tactical planning is how you will fight each battle. The st…

The Vital Few

Back in the 19th century, an Italian economist quantified the general relationship between a minority of producers and a majority of output. Sound familiar? The simplified version of Vilfredo Pareto’s ratio, known as the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, says that in most cases, 80% of production comes from 20% of producers.

Quality guru J.M. Juran referred to Pareto’s principle as “The Vital Few and the Trivial Many”. If you are running a company, the 80/20 rule has po…

5 Ways To Beef Up Sales…Immediately

Last week, one of my clients—we’ll call him Rick—had a demo scheduled with a prospect. The standard “show up and throw up” they typically did early in the sales cycle.

Trying to shorten the sales cycle, I asked naively, “Why does the customer want to buy? What are they trying to accomplish?” Rick couldn’t tell me. I asked if he thought the salespeople knew. He said no. I gave him an assignment: he had to find out “Why,” “Why now,” and “What’s it worth.” Otherwise no demo.
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Ten Entrepreneurial Mistakes

It’s hard to avoid certain mistakes, especially when you face a situation for the first time. In fact, many of the following mistakes are hard to avoid even if you’re an old hand. Of course, these are not the only mistakes CEOs make, but they sure are common enough. Take the following self assessment: give yourself ten points for each of these entrepreneurial blunders you are in the process of making. Deduct five points for those you have narrowly avoided. Your score, of cour…