Download here: BI #48 Barry Libert on How ‘We’ Are Smarter Than ‘Me’

Duration: 9 minutes 30 seconds

Show Notes:

Canadian Management Centre’s Business Intelligence Podcast series is pleased to present the American Management Association Strategic Planning Podcast, “How ‘We’ Are Smarter Than ‘Me’,” with special guest speaker Barry Libert.

Online Social Networking is a reality. The millions of people who have a Facebook or a MySpace page, or anyone who uses Wikipedia or Google knows this. But for today’s companies, the question remains, how can we profit from the crowds who are swarming all over the internet?

A lot of today’s leaders have an old school view when it comes to business and are busy being wrapped up in their intellectual property. They don’t see that they’re part of the social environment even though they are. Businesses are not going to change overnight; and a social take to conducting business isn’t going to happen immediately. At present, business leaders will continue to be more concerned with protecting their brand, intellectual property, courseware, and training, instead of taking advantage of the opportunities in the social environment.

Companies that are smart will turn their brand over to their constituents, and let them be the keepers of the brand and intellectual property, which will in turn move them forward in their development efforts.

Economic benefit can be derived from social networking, as customers can be found in big social networking groups, and in turn you can then appeal to them to see what products you should be delivering. Let them design the products they want to see. They can be your research and development team. By facilitating social space and human interaction without censorship, you’ll be participating in crowdsourcing and you’ll find that people will come and contribute.

Crowdsourcing is finding a group of people anywhere in the world that’s interested in your business and letting them have a chance at designing one of your products. Instead of reducing labour costs by shipping jobs offshore, let your customers become the basis of your product development. Because as the opportunity for new products gets smaller and our attention spans get shorter, the only competitive, durable advantage company’s have today is human interaction.

A lot of businesses are still skeptical as they can’t imagine that giving something away will have any real return on investment. But, the more they give to their customers (i.e. trust them), the more empowered the consumer feels and thus the more willing the consumer is likely to give back as well.

Barry Libert is an industry veteran with more than 25 years of executive and growth company leadership experience. Barry is currently the CEO of Mzinga, a provider of business social networks that help companies improve their performance by leveraging the power of “community.”

We’ll leave it to the economists to determine whether our current economic situation is a bona fide recession, a down turn, or whatever. In any case, your company may be tempted to reduce prices in order to increase sales or hold on to market share. In doing so, however, you will accomplish two things—neither of them good.

First, you will be using the wrong pricing approach for the current market cycle. In a mature/declining market, the right pricing strategy is a neutral one. Dropping prices will only cause price wars, eliminate profits, and cause revenues to decline further. Second, this strategy reduces prices on your high-value products and services rather than helping you sell more low-value wares.

The following 10 rules will give everyone at your company pricing confidence:

1. Replace the discounting habit with a little arrogance. Price discounting is an entrenched attitude in most organizations. To dislodge any deep-rooted attitude, replace it with another. Arrogance—feeling good about your products and services—will help you kick the discounting habit.
2. Understand the value you offer to your customer. You can’t have confidence in your pricing until you have confidence in the financial value your offerings create for customers. Most of your customers are eager to tell you. Ask the right questions and be willing to listen.
3. Apply one of three simple pricing strategies. Know when to price high, when to price low, and develop a strategy for everything in between. Strategies can and should be simple and all stake holders in the company should agree to them.
4. Play better poker with customers. Most customers say value is what they most want, but many are bluffing when they ask for a discount. Some are motivated by price alone. Others want—and are willing to pay for—value. The trickiest types are the poker players, who love to play the pricing game and have learned that if they focus on price, they can get vendors to leave money on the table but continue to provide high-value features and services. Knowing the strength of your own hand—the value you offer—gives salespeople confidence to resist the temptation to close at any price.
5. Price to increase profits. It’s a myth that if you discount price to increase sales, you will see increased profits. Profits result when an organization does many things right, including simplifying costing approaches so they permit more effective use of your company’s resources, be they people or machines. Efficiency, controlling costs, better profit metrics—all are required for pricing success.
6. Add new products and services that give you negotiating flexibility and growth. When customers regard your products as commodities, add services to differentiate products and prop up prices. An effective strategy is to develop a dual offering that covers both the high- and low-end customer needs. If customers want a lower price, subtract features and services.
7. Force your competitor to react to your pricing. Don’t participate in a competitive pricing death spiral. Map your markets. Define where you do and do not have a value advantage over your competitors. Know where and how to compete on price—and where and how not to.
8. Build your selling backbone. To have confidence in negotiation, salespeople and managers need confidence in pricing. This comes from knowing the value of your products or services. It also comes from knowing your customer. Backbone comes from knowing the tricks your customers use to get you to drop price and how to deal with them.
9. Take simple steps to move from cost-plus to value-based pricing. There is nothing wrong with cost-plus pricing as long as it does a good job of leveraging the financial value you create for customers. Value-based pricing is the ideal. It requires sophisticated internal skills and systems. The trick to value-based pricing is to evolve pricing as the discipline and skills of your people improve. Start gradually. Once your people hone those skills, moving forward to real value-based pricing is a snap.
10. Price with confidence: remember who you are. Customers buy results, not rhetoric. Shift negotiations to highlight specific ways you provide them with concrete results. By moving beyond the rhetoric of value you will be able to prove those results to customers.

Author Bio: Reed Holden, DBA and Mark Burton are cofounders of Holden Advisors (holdenadvisors.com), a consultancy that works with business-to-business firms to design and implement value-driven pricing strategies. They are co-authors of Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

(Reproduced with the permission of AMA)

 

 BI #47 Jaynie Smith on How Do You Define Your Competitive Advantage: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: BI #47 Jaynie Smith on How Do You Define Your Competitive Advantage

Duration: 11 minutes 57 seconds

Show Notes:

This week the Canadian Management Centre is pleased to present another podcast in our ongoing Business Intelligence series. The podcast, entitled  “Competitive Advantage,” features special guest Jaynie Smith talking about defining your own competitive advantage.

Companies often confuse what competitive advantage is with what their strengths are. Competitive advantages are those qualities that differentiate and set you apart from the competition. Good customer service, quality, and product/services knowledge are strengths and do not set you apart; they should just be considered givens. So, with the traditional SWOT analysis, most businesses define their competitive advantage by the strengths portion of the quadrant, when in reality, competitive advantage should be a statement about your deliverable that is objective and quantifiable.

Failure to identify competitive advantage can be deadly, as companies have then allowed themselves to become commodity driven, which allows their products/services to become marginalized. That leads them to start to compete on price alone, which can have an impact on the bottom line as prices have to reflect more accurately what your competition is offering.

In addition, sales representatives can make sales easier and more effective as consumers know why they’re buying the product/service other than just the price. It instills confidence in the consumer, which makes it easier for them to make their purchase.

Jaynie L. Smith is the author of Creating Competitive Advantage and president of Smart Advantage, Inc., a marketing/management consultancy whose clients range from mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies. She consults nationally and internationally with CEOs and executives, helping their businesses define competitive advantages.

 

 Business Intelligence #46: C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan on the New Age of Innovation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: Business Intelligence #46: C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan on the New Age of Innovation

Duration: 16 minutes 55 seconds

Show Notes:

Canadian Management Centre’s Business Intelligence Podcast series is pleased to present the American Management Association Strategic Planning Podcast the New Age of Innovation with guests Dr. C.K. Prahalad and Dr. M.S. Krishnan.

During this presentation co-authors Dr. C.K. Prahalad and Dr. M.S. Krishnan of the bestselling book The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks, will review their brilliant new blueprint for corporate growth and innovation.

Dr. C.K. Prahalad and Dr. M.S. Krishnan will discuss why they believe that IT and upper management need to form the fundamental foundation of any company and why the future growth of every business depends on this shift in organizational structure.

They will also give real life examples of organizations that introduced this change and became empowered to innovate new processes that mobilized and deployed both technology and global resources. This enviably resulted in a unique customer experiences that will delight the end consumer.

Dr. C.K. Prahalad has worked as a manager in a branch of the Union Carbide battery company, before continuing his education in the United States, and earned a PhD from Harvard. Prahalad has taught in India and America, eventually joining the faculty of the University of Michigan’s Business School, where he holds the Harvey C Fruehauf chair of Business Administration.

Dr. M. S. Krishnan is Mary and Mike Hallman e-Business Fellow, Area Chairman and Professor of Business Information Technology at the University of Michigan Business School. Dr, Krishnan is also a Co-Director of the Centre for Global Resource Leverage: India at the Michigan Business School. Dr. Krishnan received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University in 1996. He was awarded the ICIS Best Dissertation Prize for his Doctoral Thesis on “Cost and Quality Considerations in Software Product Management”.

 

 BI #45 Robert Lopes on Growing a Business in the Right Direction: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: BI #45 Robert Lopes on Growing a Business in the Right Direction

Duration: 9 minutes 40 seconds

Show Notes:

Canadian Management Centre is pleased to present the American Management Association’s strategic planning podcast “Growing a Business in the Right Direction” with special guest Robert Lopes.

During this strategic planning podcast Robert Lopes will share his insights into how he is growing Veritude, a division of Devonshire Investors, the private equity arm of Fidelity Investments.  Acting as its president and chief executive officer, Mr. Lopes has spear-headed the tremendous growth over the first critcal18 months of his tender.

Mr. Lopes will explain the importance of creating a three to five year plan to help guide your employees and will review his belief in the importance of establishing a corporate culture that includes clearly defined goals and positive support from management to achieve overall business success.

Before his current position with Veritude, Robert Lopes was a key member of the team that created ExcellerateHRO, a jointly owned business of EDS and Towers Perrin. When the new company was launched, Mr. Lopes assumed the pivotal role of vice president, Global Client Management. He brought together two cultures and more than 400 clients in five geographic regions to ensure a positive transition to the new company.

 

 #44: Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas Kuczmarski on Changing the Way We Lead and Succeed: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: #44: Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas Kuczmarski on Changing the Way We Lead and Succeed

Duration: 14 minutes 01 seconds

Show Notes:

Canadian Management Centre this week is excited to present the American Management Association’s leadership podcast Changing the Way We Lead and Succeed.

During this podcast Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas Kuczmarski will discuss their new best selling book Apples are Square: Thinking Differently about Leadership and their new innovative approach to leadership coined as “Squared Leadership”.

Susan and Tom Kuczmarski will discuss how truly great leaders must have “Peopleship”. People-ship is when the leader takes their focus away from themselves and turns the focus outwards on to the team.

Susan and Tom will also review the six qualities that make up this new type of leader:
1. Humility
2. Transparency
3. Compassion
4. Inclusiveness
5. Collaboration
6. Value Based Decisiveness

Qualities 1 through 5 are self explanatory, but quality 6 Value Based Decisiveness is a unique quality and means that a leader understands and takes into account human capitol and makes it possible for each team member to understand their own personal value and contribution to the organization.

Susan and Tom will also give the seven steps that are needed to achieve these new
leadership goals.

1. Work form the outside in
2. Ask who are you
3. Ask who are they
4. Find common ground
5. Route for people
6. Express your professional passion without losing your creativity
7. Leave some money on the table

Susan and Tom will review in depth each of these seven steps and give real if examples on how to achieve this innovative type of leadership.

Susan Smith Kuczmarski, Ed.D., is an educator, lecturer, and authority on values-based leadership. She was recently selected for inclusion in 500 Leaders of World Influence, Outstanding People of the 21st Century, 2000 Outstanding Writers of the 20th Century, and has been listed in Who’s Who in the World for 12 years. Thomas Kuczmarski is founder of Kuczmarski & Associates, a nationally recognized innovation management
consulting firm. He has been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management for 27 years, and is regularly quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, News week, the Chicago Sun-Times.