Guidance for All Stages of Business Development

Global growth and the Power of Inbound I recently joined Sebastian Hammer, a Danish digital marketing expert, on his "19 Minute Marketing Podcast" to chat about my approaches to global growth. Sebastian was a gracious host and I look forward to meeting him in person in Boston in September at Inbound 17 where I'll speak on the power of digital marke...
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Price, Quality & Lead-time If you were involved in the manufacturing world during the 90s you experienced some disruption.  Import competition caused domestic manufacturers fits. They offered lower prices, often shorter lead-times, and although heretical to acknowledge, often even higher and more consistent quality - or importantly, at least adequa...
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Today is immediate...tomorrow can wait In its recently published 2016-17 Private Company Governance Survey, the NACD confirmed with research several challenges that I see consistently in industrial manufacturing firms. Business strategy planning, risk management and cyber security are generally disregarded among the pressing and urgent issues of to...
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It's BAAAAAAACCCCKKKKK!
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What are the threats & opportunities? Let's put aside hackneyed exhortations like "best defense is a strong offense" and look seriously at the revenue growth landscape for middle market industrial manufacturing firms.
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Visual cues reveal outdated fashion There's no doubt or subtlety here. While fashion choices certainly involve a huge component of personality and individual preference there are common standards which are instinctively understood. Many business and general cultural traits are similar. As they change we can observe the gradual shifts and adapt. If ...
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Information that matters Every manufacturing company invents and releases new products, participates in trade shows, hires industry rockstars, moves into larger facilities and wins important orders from marquis customers. They also publish helpful content, run webinars and create resources to help target prospects learn and excel at their jobs. Thi...
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Do you aspire to be average? Psychology Today explains that daytime TV succeeds because it "provides us an opportunity to compare ourselves to other involved in situations that we're glad we're not....we can temporarily feel good that we’re not in those situations ourselves." I see the same thing in the flurry of emails bouncing around the inbound ...
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Is it "Day 1" in your business? Have you read Bezos' 2016 letter to shareholders? He cites three core principles that Amazon relies on to stay relevant. strong customer focus - essentially qualitative or 1:1 observation rather than quantitative, aggregated data; process should enable not constrict embrace external trends - you're not going to chang...
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"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." JFK “The good old days weren’t all that good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems” Billy Joel "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Eisenhower "We always overestimate the change ...
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