BI #58 Jack Miller on How to Recession Proof Your Business: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: BI #58 Jack Miller on How to Recession Proof Your Business

Duration: 13 minutes, 34 seconds

Show Notes:

This week, Canadian Management Centre is pleased to present the American Management Association’s strategic planning podcast “How to Recession Proof Your Business” with special guest Jack Miller.  Jack Miller is a prominent Chicago area entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder and former President/CEO of Quill Corporation, which became the nation’s largest independent direct marketer of office products, employing over 1,300 people with annual sales in excess of $630 million.

During this podcast Jack Miller will discuss how a company can weather this current period of economic downturn.  Mr. Miller will give real life personal examples of how a company can survive the recession by always looking for ways to cut costs and by striving to only take on initiatives that will benefit the bottom line.

Mr. Miller will also review what industries will be affected the most and those that will thrive during this current recession.  Mr. Miller will also discuss that if a company has already found itself in a pinch and is starting to feel this downturn then they really should start to cut the fat within.  But he cautions management that is looking to downsize. Mr. Miller explains why management must not only look to cut production and support positions but also look at the VP level.

Mr. Miller will give examples of how during good economic time’s companies have tendencies to overlook challenges within, and ignore  employees that are not necessarily team players or productive attributes to a company.  These are the employees that should be let go as they are not only a drain economically but can become a liability.

 

 BI #57 Jim Champy on How to Outsmart Your Competition: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: BI #57 Jim Champy on How to Outsmart Your Competition

Duration: 12 minutes, 52 seconds

Show Notes:

This week, Canadian Management Centre is pleased to present the American Management Association’s strategic planning podcast “How to Outsmart Your Competition” with special guest Jim Champy.

Jim Champy is chairman of Perot Systems Corporation’s consulting practice and head of strategy for the company. Champy inspired legions of business leaders with his bestseller Reengineering the Corporation. In his new book Outsmart!, Champy describes nine companies that have achieved breakthrough growth by consistently outsmarting the competition. Champy tells their fascinating success stories, revealing powerful, counterintuitive strategies for finding distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages for growth.

Finding a niche that your competitors aren’t taking advantage of can be key to double or triple digit growth over a sustained period of time. Although these opportunities aren’t always seen by the average person, they sometimes are, but people don’t take advantage of them because they can be seen as so big and daunting that they are perceived as impossible or far too much work. So, this kind of strategy takes a combination of both seeing an unmet consumer need, but it also takes a lot of persistence and hard work. This is not a business model that is built easily.

Another strategy is to compete by seeing outside the bubble. There are so many companies that are stuck in the assumption of how their industry has to operate; they’re stuck in the “bubble” of a set of industry rules, and they have a very hard time of thinking outside that bubble.

Additionally, another strategy that can be used is to tap into the success of others. There are a lot of interesting phenomena out there if you’re observant and willing to ride on someone else’s success. For example, Jibbits were created as an accessory to Crocs and grew to a $10 million a year industry, which although did work off the Croc product, also helped increase Croc sales as well.

Competing by doing everything yourself counters some of the contemporary wisdom about outsourcing and off-shoring, which, although an appropriate method of doing business for many companies, there are some that can benefit by doing everything themselves. This strategy also requires you to have a high-margin product. Customers need to be able to/want to pay to keep everything contained with in one company and not outsourced to others. Although an expensive strategy, if you work on this model, there can be a real benefit to keeping everything contained within.

Companies that Outsmart have relied largely on intuition, whereas those that have been outsmarted have depended greatly on research and analysis. Businesses that outsmart tend to walk in the marketplace and have a sense for consumer needs and they develop these senses and intuition, so that when an opportunity arises, there isn’t as much analysis done, they tend to move and make decisions a lot more quickly and thus don’t lose opportunities.

Corporate culture can have more of an impact on corporate growth than processes, roles and controls. If you’ve instilled enough of a culture in your employees (i.e. innovation), than the top-down growth leads to inspiration and excitement from employees, causing growth and ideas to come from all over the company. You want your employees to do the right thing at the moment of truth, not necessarily be bound by strictures of rules and guidelines set in place.

 

 #56 Lois Kelly on Conversational Marketing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Download here: BI #56 Lois Kelly on Conversational Marketing

Duration: 11 minutes, 09 seconds

Show Notes:

This week, Canadian Management Centre is pleased to present the American Management Association’s marketing podcast on “Conversational Marketing” with special guest Lois Kelly.  Lois Kelly is the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word of Mouth Marketing. She’s dedicated her career to helping organizations talk about their companies and issues in ways that get people to buy, believe and change, no matter how complex the topic or how competitive the market.

During this podcast Lois will review the differences between conversational marketing and word of mouth marketing.  Lois will give real life examples of the importance of conversational marketing and will review how the web 2.0 movement has brought this old marketing technique back to the forefront of effective marketing.

During this presentation Lois will discuss the keys to an effective conversational marketing campaign.  And explain that starting the conversation is the first step but in order to have a productive campaign they have to then listen to the consumer.

Lois will also review that the conversation happens not only person to person and from company to consumer but also from impartial online means directly to the consumer. By incorporating and embracing the web 2.0 movement a corporation can monitor the effects of a specific campaign to ensure goals are met.

Because the web is an open forum the conversation has to be monitored and any good or negative feedback can be addressed in real time and the learning’s can be incorporated immediately into an existing campaign or carried forward to future campaigns.

This podcast will address the challenges that most corporation have between their marketing team and sales teams relating to each other and how conversational marketing can assist bridge that gap.

Lois Kelly will also give examples of existing corporations that are incorporating conversational marketing into their marketing mix and succeeding.