Tag: #B2BStrategy
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Product Management Holds the Keys to Effective Strategic Marketing
Over the years we have written several articles about the pitfalls of focusing too much on your product, including: Is it time to take the ‘product’ out of product management? and Warning: No-one Cares About Your Product! This time we are going to make the case that product management is…
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Enter the Matrix…the Ansoff Matrix
Identifying a winning growth strategy for your business can be one of the most difficult and often contentious activities you undertake. The allure of chasing that new “high growth” market is strong. On the other hand, the inertia to “stay the course” can feel comfortable to many. Finding a way…
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Bottom-up is Not Enough
We are on record as strong believers that the best strategies start bottom-up – in fact, we called our book “Grassroots Strategy” for that reason. Our experience is that the best ideas come from the front lines, the people who work day-to-day with customers and/or technologies and can see creative…
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Impactful Strategy Lessons from the Maasai Tribe
You have likely seen pictures of the Maasai – the tall, lithe herds-people wrapped in their colorful blankets or shukas living much the way they did four centuries ago, before European nations began carving up Africa. Much has been written about their culture that they have stubbornly maintained even as…
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“Anyone, Anyone?” Who’s Thinking about Economics?
If you follow pop culture even a little bit, you recognize the reference in our title to Ben Stein’s portrayal of the boring economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Like the high school class staring vacantly as Stein’s character explains the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Laffer Curve*, many of…
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Unlocking the Value Chain
When we conduct our Grassroots Strategy workshops, a task on day one is to draw your value chain – the steps your offering goes through before reaching an end-user. In the business-to-business world, value chains can include different distributors, specifiers, installers and value-added resellers, all of whom can influence what…
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RACI: Love them or hate them, but used correctly, they can add value
After years of documenting key processes, re-writing job descriptions and automating org charts, many organizations still struggle to have clarity and alignment around roles, responsibilities, and authority. This impacts business processes, project execution and day to day decisions resulting in frustration, inefficiency and sometimes poor decision-making. We have seen this…
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The Adventures of 2023 Planning and Lessons From a Tumultuous 2022
By any measure, 2022 was a year of nearly unprecedented change and for many of us, one that we are not in a hurry to see repeated. While 2022 saw most of the covid-related restrictions lifted, experts are still debating the lessons and the long-term cost to things like education…
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So You Want to Be a Software Company?
There is a strong appeal to becoming a software company, but is it really the right answer for your business? As these two examples show, the answer is far from clear.
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Your Organization is Hungry for a Strategy
We recall a rather depressing conversation with the CEO of a medium-sized company several years ago. We were trying to stress the importance of articulating a strategic agenda when he effectively shut down the conversation by asserting, “we have a three-pronged strategy: operational efficiency, organic growth and acquisitions. People need…
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Rest in Peace, Vin Scully, There Will Never Be Another One Like You
Baseball broadcasting legend Vincent Edward ‘Vin’ Scully passed away last week at the age of 94. He was the voice of the Dodgers for an incredible 67 seasons, from 1950 to 2016. The awards and accolades that Scully received during his career are too numerous to mention. As one example,…
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Good Segmentation Schemes Often Start Out Sounding ‘Just Crazy Enough’
One of the benefits of having coached project teams through our needs-based segmentation process hundreds of times across dozens of industries is that we can spot patterns that are difficult to identify for even the seasoned industry practitioner who has typically developed a limited number of segmentation schemes, probably in…
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What can The Rolling Stones teach us about Voice of the Customer?
In a probably slightly twisted sort of way I often think of the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” when I think about Voice of the Customer or VOC. It is almost a universal truth that if you ask customers what they want, they will respond…
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Don’t Wait for the Perfect Mission and Vision Statement to Create a Strategy
We often talk with companies who are waiting to work on their strategy because they are reworking their mission and vision statements. There are key differences between mission, vision and strategy and it is essential they all fit together to drive impact. Successful companies connect these three pieces together to…
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In search of …… silver bullet strategy
Too often, companies believe that the purpose of strategic planning is to find some magical ‘silver bullet’ that will solve all their problems and guarantee a path to profitable growth. A frustrating conversation with a client we had a few years ago comes to mind: Amphora: What do you think…