BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH
Business development, fuels growth, whether at startups or corporate settings. ‘Biz-Dev’ requires correct hiring, goal and KPI setting, sufficient resource allocation, management involvement, and focused specialization to succeed.
A sales department is responsible for selling specific offerings to customers and marketing determines which specific customer segments to target with specific products and features. But when the opportunity isn’t clear but potential is huge, that’s when business development steps in. Business development aims to identify and flush out new areas of business and this may/will entail new products, markets, partnerships and alliances, distribution channels, marketing tactics, etc., things that the organization has not experienced before.
Definitions
Business development is about growing the organization by giving structure to unstructured opportunities through identifying new partnerships and alliances, customers, and lines of revenue…
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
An insight-driven and well-thought-out product strategy plan can drive an industry into the adoption of a hidden need. Watch the following report by CNBC on how Apple forced a change in the smartphone industry by getting rid of the headphone jack.
Product strategy is the…
CUSTOMER-CENTERED OMNICHANNEL STRATEGY
The pandemic accelerated the trends we had seen during the last decade and leading up to the retail apocalypse of 2017. To lead in the new market environment, retailers need to accumulate a combination of brand, low price, frictionless, and customer experience strategies to find winning positions and deliver on customer demand.
Technology will play a major role in retailers' post-pandemic transition through the integration of online and offline channels. And brands will need to focus on being a force for good, as societal demands are rapidly changing from a ‘ME’ to a ‘WE’ culture.
The ‘Retail Apocalypse’
DIGITAL DISRUPTION
Part 1: What is a disruption? How digital is disrupting? What is the role of the entrepreneur? How quickly is digital disruption happening? How is collaboration shaping in this era?
Every few years we hear that the launch of a new digital product is going to change the world and/or disrupt an industry. But disruption is way more than just a new product or the market frenzy over a new feature.
Disruption can indeed be irritating at times, but we’ll have to get used to it. Disruption is the symptom of a historical period where, at least in theory, all established industries can effectively be disrupted.
Digital: a disruptive innovation
In theory, once a radical innovation is launched, such as the computer in the 1950s or the Internet in the 1990s, markets stabilize for…
MARKETING FOUNDATIONS
Build the fundamentals including the team, processes, and analytics, identify the opportunities through self-declared, deductive, and inductive approaches, prioritize the efforts as there will be limited bandwidth in dealing with all the projects you may have in mind
Personalization is a popular topic in marketing and knowing the techniques for creating a professional personalization program will make a huge difference in marketing results, as sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn’t. The goal of personalized marketing is to help improve conversion rates through customer segmentation rather than dealing with averages.
Furthermore, personalized marketing helps build and enhance efforts around customer differences. …
MARKETING STRATEGY
Defining, managing, and succeeding with Customer Success teams and building a culture that is committed to maximizing the lifetime value of the customer
A customer can become extremely unhappy when he/she is struggling to get value out of a product they’ve paid for and the organization that sold it doesn’t seem to care. In moments such as this, customer success can make a huge difference.
Nearly every software organization, subscription businesses such as Netflix and Amazon, and many companies in other industries have or are building a customer success team. Customer success should be used by organizations that desire long-term customer relationships to maximize their customers’ lifetime value. …
MARKETING STRATEGY
A well-designed customer strategy needs to deliver on customer excellence. Customer excellence is built upon converting customers to promoters, maximizing the customer lifetime value, the level of customer loyalty, and retention rates
Many very well-intentioned business leaders deeply believe that they put customers first in mind when creating value, however, research shows that while 80% of the executives believe they deliver an exceptional and differentiated experience to their customers, only 8% of the customers think that they did so.
This a huge gap in the perceptions of the sides (i.e. demand and supply of the value proposition), and there are several reasons to explain it:
- Often, what gets discussed in boardrooms, is so far away from the front line that it’s hard to tell whether the data is accurate and representative of…
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
The CoS leads the CEO’s office. This is a quick summary of the CoS’s roles, responsibilities, and required skill sets, and what it takes to be a successful one…
While traditionally the Chief of Staff sounded more of a political role such as that in the White House, today, it is becoming common in the corporate world. For example, in the startup and corporate technology sector, based on the number of hirings in the US, the Chief of Staff role has increased in double digits in recent years.
Who is a Chief of Staff?
The core responsibilities of the Chief of Staff
It’s not easy answering the question of what a Chief of Staff (CoS) does, because they’re all so different. But in short, a CoS is someone who plays an operational and strategic role to help the CEO, the executive team, and…
MARKETING AND STRATEGY
By understanding lost customers, establishing communication patterns, and setting up reactivation campaigns
It’s tough to see a customer go when you’ve made the first or even the second sale considering the amount of time, energy, and money you spent to acquire him/her. In accounting terms, aside from capital expenditures, building, and employee costs, the single most expensive thing a business will ever do is acquire a new customer. But in reality, every business will lose customers. However, it’s also a lot easier to win back a lost customer than it is to seek out a brand new one.
Understanding the customer
Knowing when a customer is lost
A difficult question to answer is knowing when…
MARKETING AND STRATEGY
Customer acquisition is the single most expensive activity a business will ever do. Therefore, it makes sense to ensure customer loyalty through an optimized loyalty loop that enhances the customer experience and satisfaction levels — the emotional levers — and creates incentives through well-designed loyalty based reward programs — the financial levers
While many businesses are complaining about customer loyalty, others have learned how to engage their customers and keep them coming for repeat purchases, and because acquiring a customer is the single most expensive thing every company will ever do, it’s important to foster customer loyalty.
Loyalty is a feeling and emotional bond that customers have towards brands and businesses and it's our efforts that create this feeling within them. Without deploying effective loyalty strategies either accidentally or purposefully, you cannot build customer loyalty. Loyal customers are often not swayed by pricing and they’re not swayed by a sudden mishap or…
