Posts Tagged ‘Brand’

This paraphrases the situation a friend of mine, selling a sophisticated yet simple product, frequently encounters.  The fact the company he’s selling for can’t get past the objection reflects an indifference to customer sensitivity.  A lack of customer-centricity.

The question today is how to compete moving forward.  If you’re in a market like the U.S., Western Europe, or Japan, you face a mature slower-growing economic environment—current economic challenges notwithstanding.  Using the automotive industry as an example, growth of 20, 30% annually is considered good.  In North America, 2-3% is considered good.

So if your market is mature and you can’t count on a rising tide to float all boats, how do you prosper?

The days of competing primarily on product and price, particularly for commodity-oriented offerings, are dwindling.  If you’re selling a car, there are numerous ‘family sedans’ with almost identical feature sets, for nearly identical prices.

This suggests a new way of competing must become prevalent.

Read the rest of this entry »

‘Removing Technical Impediments to Business Success,’ has clearly represented what I do, for a long time. In many ways it still does. But over time my focus has become more business, more leadership oriented, leveraging my comfort with technology rather than focusing on it.

Today, I am pleased to re-launch my blog, and my brand, focusing on Thoughtful Business Leadership!

The decision to adjust my branding, how I represent myself to you, came after a number of conversations with friends and colleagues. In particular, I would like to thank Susanne C., Andrew Stein, Paul Chandler, and my wife, Kimberly. Each of them were immensely helpful.

There are a couple challenges with Removing Technical… First, it was too long. A shorter message, more easily remembered, and without any potential hidden meaning was needed. Second, ‘technical’ for many folks seems to equate directly to ‘IT.’ Depending on what ‘IT’ meant to someone, I might immediately become mentally pigeon-holed as a ‘network admin,’ a ‘DBA,’ or similar.

Let’s look at the three words briefly.

• Thoughtful: Having intellectual depth; paying closing attention; considerate of feelings and well-being of others (above and below).
• Business: Principal activity.
• Leadership: Applying knowledge, wisdom, and common sense while influencing and motivating others.

So, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while (thank you), the general focus remains the same, the tagline’s simply more well-aligned.

The question was raised earlier this week and I thought it’d make a useful post.

Before asking how to use Twitter (or any other similar service), I think you really need to be able to answer the question: Why?

What is your business goal? Clearly defining the business goal takes you a significant (95% ?) of the way toward defining how you want to use Twitter, FB, or any of the others. What business are you in? This defines which social networks you want to focus on. Maybe Twitter’s not where you’ll get the best bang for your buck; just because it’s trendy doesn’t mean it’s all there is.

Assuming you have some business goals, Read the rest of this entry »

The question, typically phrased more casually, is posed to me almost weekly.  For as big a splash as social media, social networking, and the like have made in recent months, it remains a mystery for millions.  In support of the title question, consider just one example:  For the 175+ million people using Facebook [stats], most do not look beyond its ‘face value,’ beyond finding, being found, and sharing info with their closest friends.

According to Dr. Marlow, Facebook’s in-house sociologist, for a man with 120 ‘friends’, average interaction is with only 4 people [Economist].  Women, a tad more at 6.  Fundamentally, this tells me most Facebook users just don’t look beyond the end of their nose.  I suspect similar behavior on other social networks.

But, we’re talking about blogging for this post.  The Facebook example is simply used to show Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday (3/26/09), I presented, “The Search for Work,” sponsored by Ann Arbor SPARK.  The strong interest expressed afterward has been somewhat surprising.

Given the number of requests and general interest, I wanted to make the presentation easily available, and without concern for email limitations.

Please know I am pleased so many of you felt the information was of value, of interest, and just possibly added a bit of bounce to your step afterward.

Please, download a copy.  I encourage you to make use of it.  Share it with friends.  If you re-use it publicly, or as the basis of your own presentation (perhaps at church, social groups, etc.), simply acknowledge my contribution.

Future presentations are currently being scheduled.  Any input you have for improving the presentation are welcome.  Areas of particular interest may include:

• Overall length (longer, shorter, just right)
• New content
• More/Less in a given area

Cheers!

Recommended Reading:

“The Brand You 50″
by Tom Peters
ISBN: 0375407723

When you buy a car, all of a sudden it seems ‘everyone else’ has the same car. And so, working on my own re-branding in recent weeks, this book jumped out.

Tom Peters does not fail to deliver. Written in ‘99, it’s as current as if written only 18 months ago. Peter’s approach is very direct, blunt with the reader, the way a good friend or mentor might be. He provides positive guidance (50 ways) to effectively brand yourself: Brand YOU!

If you’ve not yet effectively branded yourself, if you’ve not made it a structured process, you really should read this. If you’re an employee-thinking-about-being independent, then you REALLY should read this.

A nice bonus, at the end Tom provides a 2-page recommended reading list.