Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

  From 7 Rules of Power: Surprising — but True — Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career. His seven rules are:  get out of your own way — that is,  speak with confidence and do not undersell yourself,  break the rules — do the unexpected,  show up in powerful fashion — with conscious body language and actual language,  create a powerful brand, network relentlessly,  use your power — do not be afraid to wield power once you have it,  and finally, remember that “success excuses (almost) everything” — the powerful attract and retain support.”    Why Buyers chose your Customer   When buyers were asked to select their top 5 reasons for choosing the winning vendor over other vendors they considered, the top response was that the winner demonstrated a stronger knowledge of the buyer’s company and its needs (68%). (In fact, lack of knowledge of a company and its needs has separately been cited by buyers as their top deal-...

Weekend Reading:  How to kickstart and scale a consumer business:    Here’s what’s in store: Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea ← This post Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your super-specific who Step 3: HOOK: Craft your pitch Step 4: REACH: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale Step 5: RETAIN: Iterate until enough people stick around Step 6: SCALE: Build your growth engine   Marc Andersen on Technology and Web3, Crypto   I think this is a foundational technology change, a new architecture for building an entirely new generation of computing systems. We have become convinced that Web3/blockchain/crypto is foundational. It’s a big hill. It’s as foundational an architecture shift as the ones from mainframes to PCs, from PCs to web, from web to mobile, or from traditional software to AI. It’s a fundamental shift and building this out is a 25- to 30-year process.   How Companies can build In-House Consulting   “Management ...

  My predictions on Macro Economic View of Australia FY23 How Humans and AI are Collaborating  The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Blocks and How to Overcome Them Given the complex nature of B2B lead generation, it goes without saying that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can hinder lead gen efforts. With this in mind, we’re diving into the common pain points marketers experience when filling the funnel while offering solutions that lead to better marketing results. 1. Marketing Without a Cohesive Lead Generation Strategy  2. Marketers are Focusing on Lead Quantity Instead of Quality  3. There are Gaps in Content Marketing Efforts  4. Content Marketing Isn’t Aligned with the B2B Buyer Journey  5. Marketing Efforts Aren’t Consistently Optimised  B2B buyers Transparency make Vendor Purchase Easier Research has shown that nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2B buyers felt vendors placed more emphasis on selling than they did on listening to their needs. Because o...

 

Excerpt from my upcoming book at  amazon.com  - "Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales"  How a Sponsoring Executive of Action Centric (Fire) Persona and Calm and Stable Persona (Earth) will engage with others.  ----- Sponsoring Executive An executive sponsor is a person in the management or an executive team responsible for driving the outcome of a proposed solution to resolve a business problem. In business-to-business sales, an executive sponsor can be on either side, at the buyer's or the seller's end.  At the buyer's end, it is primarily someone who has a keen interest in resolving a business problem or is a decision-maker and strongly influences the outcome of a sales transaction.  At the seller's end, it is primarily someone keen on growing the business by investing capital and resources.    Following are the key responsibilities of an executive sponsor at the buyer's end: • Prepare and own the busines...

Template for driving growth. Grow by Building Market Share  Grow through Developing Committed Customers and Stakeholders  Grow by Developing a Powerful Brand  Grow by Innovating New Products, Services, and Experiences  Grow by International Expansion  Grow by Mergers, Acquisitions, Alliances, and Joint Ventures  Grow by Building an Outstanding Reputation for Social Responsibility  Grow by Partnering with Government and NGOs Source:  Market Your Way to Growth by Philip and Milton Kotler

Source:   How to build Profit Centric Marketing  What businesses need is a framework for profit-centric marketing, with profit creators This can only come from existing customers using 5R –  combining retention,  repetition,  referrals,  reactivation (as opposed to reacquisition)  and replenishment (targeted new acquisition)   This 5R focus needs the 4P framework:   pipes,   partitioning,   properties,   and prospecting This transformation will need the third generation of martech platforms: the first generation was about point solutions and the second generation was about full-stack platforms. The third generation will be about platforms that are Web3 powered and enable the tokenisation that marketers need to make XR (and therefore profit-centric marketing) a reality.

  Bridging the gap: How and why product management differs from company to company Companies, like many in New York, that are introducing solutions to mature industries tend to be sales-driven, so product teams are informed by what customers will readily buy and are measured based on output and revenue. Companies, like many in the Bay Area, that are creating new categories are generally vision-driven, so product teams are more cross-functional and iterative, and are measured based on validated learnings and outcomes. The two models on each end of the spectrum manage risk differently and, with regard to startups, offer a varied range of results. Predicated on introducing solutions to previously unarticulated problems (e.g. Snapchat), Bay Area startups and product managers are tasked with launching moonshots. Failure is more frequent and expensive but success is exponential in size. How Marketing can assist in Maximising Growth Fortunately, there's a good rule of thumb called ...

  B2B Suppliers need to upgrade their Channels for Ease of Sales  Leadership Mantra The salesperson who drives you crazy How to be professional in Virtual meetings Aligning Sales and Marketing

Will DAOs Replace Corporations Story of Indian Economy 86% of B2B Content Consumption Takes Place Outside the C-Suite Best Continuous Discovery Teams How to move faster in marketing Build your insight capabilities to leapfrog the competition Russia and Ukraine - Security Service Providers Must Be Ready  

 Persona of B2B Early Deciders are following: Younger millennials, with more responsibility.   Employed in larger, enterprise-scale companies that are growing fast.   Technophiles who spend more on IT.   Decisive, authoritative, and deliberate.   Promoters of customer experience (CX), innovation, and brand. Source: Forrester Blog

Ways to Connect with your Audience Managing when the future is unclear Build your brand as a leader B2B companies fail at Content and Marketing Collaboration needs to change from Mind to Marketplace

  Technology Crossing the Chasm How to Identify Growth Opportunities How to Price SAAS Product Strategy for Startups The Shift in the Future of B2B Pricing

Weekend Reading Facebook has changed its name (context: Metaverse )  Leaders need to cultivate complementary strengths Increase Business Referrals New rules of marketing Buyers Journey is becoming more like a quest

 Weekend Reading  Atomic Rewards: The Solution to Attention Recession (Part 3) Entrepreneurs need me time Common biases in boardroom culture Four ways Jobs will respond to automation Four signs of founder market fit Successful selling - intelligent choices over dat a

Highlights and Excerpts from my book, " Sellers From Mars and Buyers From Venus, Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales " are published.  This gives a view of what is inside the book.  

  Sales is broken? How to get feedback from your team Why Buyers are disrupting the sales process Who is your customer CMO and CIO partnership in Digital Transformation Tips for scaling product Apples decade of Success “No CEO in history has created as much total shareholder value as Mr Cook. When he took over the company had a market value of $349bn. Today it is worth $2.5trn, more than any other listed firm ever. Under his aegis annual sales surged from $108bn in 2011 to $274bn last year. Net profit more than doubled to $57bn, overtaking Saudi Aramco’s oil-fuelled earnings and turning Apple into the world’s most profitable company. Less widely noticed, during his tenure the “Apple economy”—its annual revenue plus everything other companies make on one of its platforms—has grown sevenfold to more than $1trn.