The case for doing something boring. Wool.
All the recent focus of industry development, Control of IP, and sovereign manufacturing, has been on High tech. Should we, or perhaps why don't we, look to areas where we have dropped the ball in the past, but still have the opportunity to shape world...
The simple choice marketers must make.
When building a marketing plan, one of the key choices that must be made early is a deceptively simple one that most fail to recognise. Are you setting out to serve existing demand? Are you setting out to generate new demand? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred,...
The reliable way to forecast manufacturing costs.
Several years ago I became aware of 'Wrights law'. In the 1930’s, Theordore Wright an aero engineer proposed that: 'For every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs will fall by a constant percentage'. This insight came from observing the...
The SME marketers 3 card marketing budget optimisation trick
No business I have ever seen has enough in their marketing budgets to do all they would like to do. Therefore, they often start cutting bits off ‘willy nilly’ to reach a budget that can be managed. There is a better way: Basic marketing 101, which most SME's...
How to grab attention in an AI world
On first glance, the only purpose of a blog post, or indeed any sort of content that comes into your inbox, is to provide some impetus to encourage you towards a transaction. That remains the case, but if that is the only reason, we have arrived at the...
Plans never reflect what happens, so why bother?
Commercial success, that which delivers more than a wage, comes from only two places: Critical thinking The ability and willingness to be a bit different, experiment and embrace risk. Why is it then that the web is full of '7 point plans to….' Templates...
The simple 3 step lead qualification tool
Optimising a sales process is not just about the conversion rate, as that is an outcome, a function of many things that come before and contribute to that outcome. The challenge is more about optimising each stage in the process that leads to a maximised...
‘Is this current explosion of AI real and lasting, or just another tech bubble?’
There is no way around the fact that AI is now with us, and evolving at logarithmic rates. The unanswered question is ‘so what? There are two extreme schools of thought, and everything in between. On one hand we have those who are extremely wary: # It...
Where can a manufacturing business get money for nothing?
There is a simple answer, but the money is just a bit harder to find. It is tied up in your current operations, consumed by all manner of things that do not add value to a customer. Machine down time, rework, waste, on line inventory, double handling, and a host of...
The rule of the niche
Standard marketing advice in this day of homogeneity, and certainly my advice for SME's, is to ‘find a niche and own it’. Be the only one that competes in a market niche that you define. The deeper, darker and more remote the niche the better, because...