Blogs - Dangletech

Jul 14, 2010

Ian Ferguson
CEO Rants and Raves

CEO Perspective: Canada, You suck at Marketing !

I suppose I should say we suck at Marketing as I am in the soup too.
I was just reviewing some of the material from the recent CVCA Conference and heard again repeated remarks like “We have great technology but we need to have better relationships with customers and partners.” – code for we suck at Marketing.

CEO Perspective: Forecasting – The Acid Test of Management

How do you measure managers when there is little objective data to nail to the wall. This can be a challenge even in functions where there is usually lots of objective data, like sales. Even in some sales situations like opening up a new territory or opening up a new product line or large account, there can be long periods of time when there is little or no objective results to look at. This is even more true in marketing, sometimes in manufacturing (ramping up a new line or new plant), customer support (implementing a new organization with customer satisfactions goals).

CEO Perspective: Marketing Spending and Budgeting 101

Early stage companies often make the same mistakes in promoting their product/service. They spend too much marketing money on all the wrong things. Those wrong things depend on the challenges they face but can include items such as expensive, interactive web sites, lavish trade shows, the wrong brochures, and often the biggest waste of marketing dollars, Advertising. As a general rule we in Canada do not spend enough on marketing and I suspect this may be partly due to our trepidation about spending what we do have ineffectively.

CEO Perspective: The Truth, The Whole truth, … ????

Do we tell the truth to employees? Do we tell the whole truth? Do we do it in a timely fashion? The easy answer is yes but we all know it ain’t so and knowing when to tell the truth is important.

CEO Perspective: Finding “A” List candidates

I have succeeded and I have failed .. you have too unless you have the most boring life on the planet. ‘A’ list actors tend to try to hide their failures but that’s not easy given today’s accessible video libraries. The same is true in business. Looking into this further, I have witnessed hundreds if not thousands of employees succeed and fail. The real winners are the ones who turn lemons into lemonade.

CEO Perspective: The 10 Commandments of Leadership

As a CEO you need to be very concerned about your own leadership of the organization and the skills of your management team when it comes to their leadership abilities. We have all dealt with the ‘special’ individual contributor that we put up with because they seem indispensible but when it comes to management, bad behaviour or lack of appropriate people skills is unacceptable and has a multiplying effect on the whole organization. One manager who publicly derides his troops effects the whole organization and is very costly.

CEO Perspective: So you think you’re ready to start your own business

But will it succeed? As we all know there are too many variables in business to find a ‘sure thing’. No risk, no reward. If it was too easy then it would have been done already. However I am of the opinion that up front analysis is often lacking in trying to understand if a business stands a better or worse chance of success. While I have to admit that I am occasionally amazed at successes against all odds, it is frustrating to see businesses fail for the same old predicable reasons.

- “The product we built addressed the wrong part of the market”
- “Our service was ahead of its time”
- “Our added value was not valued by the buyer”
- “The channel never understood how to sell out product”

CEO Perspective: Entrepreneurship and/or vs. Experience

Are Entrepreneurship and Experience really opposite ends of a spectrum?

Which one are we really looking for?

Ideally you want the executive running your company to the entrepreneur of the century but also have industry leading experience, knowledge and skills. Sometimes these are seen as conflicting characteristics: Those with yards of operating experience seem too conservative to be entrepreneurial and the real entrepreneurs have no proven operations experience. Which of these two is the show stopper or the priority for your firm.

CEO Perspective: The Commercial cost of Marketing Ethics

Marketing is more and more used to paper-over re-engineered products of lower value. Is this the right strategy for you.

CEO Perspective: Bad Times - Again it is all about you !

Even if you are not facing catastropic times, you need to make sure you are not adding to the problem.

dangletech

information culture leadership

Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player.