Nicholas Watkis
If you don’t tell your customers, how are they to know?
Customers should be the first concern of every business, as without them there is no income. Gaining and retaining customers is therefore of prime importance which requires effective two way communication. Initial contact with potential customers is generally thorough some form of advertising...
Cash flow – the lifeblood of business
In a recession, businesses need to be resolute in cutting out waste and un productive expenditure. If you can’t eat it don’t grow it. If activities to do not demonstrably contribute to creating income, why are they being done? For small businesses, resources...
Will it make a shilling?
When presented with any new proposal, the senior director of a famous merchant bank would ask “will it make a shilling?” In other words, how will this proposal assist in producing profit? The purpose of every business, including not for profit organisations, is to...
Performance measures aid good management
At the heart of every business is the management process known as marketing, which generates profit by anticipating and satisfying customer demand. All marketing activities require the investment of money and resources, so chief executives will want to assess and measure the return on...
What are your customers really buying?
Regardless of what economic forecasters say, the evidence is that world trade is going to go through some difficult times in the immediate future. Interest rates internationally will go up, and demand will fall, causing costs to increase, and profits squeezed. Commercial managers, responsible...
Customer Communication must be two way
It is very easy to lose a customer but hard to gain a new one. Businesses only exist because of customers. If you cannot satisfy the customer you won’t retain them. Why is it that so many companies seem to go out of their...
Recession requires Business Vigilance
Business life is getting tough. The days of credit, sales growth and benign economic environment are over, at least for the time being. Now, survival of the fittest is the order of the day. Business will have to adapt to survive or as in...
Home working – a potential minefield
A study, published this month, (June 22) by the Policy Institute of King’s College, London, revealed that six in ten London staff are still working from home at least once a week. Avoiding the daily commute was cited as a key reason...
Business is driven by customers not by administration
The purpose of every business is to make money, which benefits the shareholders, the staff and the customer without whom there is no revenue to produce profit. When profits are down and costs increased, there will be a demand to cut costs. But the...
Effective Communication Requires Plain Speaking
“Intellectual discussion s between marketing executives using flowery language and drawing diagrams on a white board can be a million miles away from reality.” “An orgy of intellectual over-thinking seduces the rest of the management team to applaud their findings with the same blind...
Can Marketing Game the System
“Gaming the system” is a term that refers to the way people in organizations will, if allowed to, operate the corporate organization to their own advantage, rather than to the advantage or objectives of the organization in which they are employed. Gaming the system...
Business Sucess Requires Clear Objectives
For any business to be effectively managed it needs to have a clear objective of its purpose, which may be defined in a Mission Statement. A Mission Statement should define what business the organisation serves and how it benefits the market. It should be...
Forget the Crystal ball, scenario planning prepares for the unknown.
The prospect of the end of the year always brings out the crystal ball for New Year predictions. For all people in business and especially for those in business development, crystal ball gazing may be fun and an interesting diversion, but it more often...
Consultants – Help or Hindrance?
When it comes to finding answers to marketing and business problems, there is rarely only one solution. The question is, not whether one marketing policy or action is the right one, but rather in the given circumstances, is it the best one? When managing...
Are we worth it?
The biggest cost of any organization is that of the wage bill. While commercial organizations, seek to keep costs to a minimum, there is a tendency especially in large businesses, for staff salaries to be supressed while that of senior management to be...
Silo mentality negatively effects management and income
It is a well know observation that as organizations grow, they become more bureaucratic, with a tendency to focus more on maintaining their internal systems than delivering their purpose. In organizations, government or commercial, bureaucracy becomes increasingly important to the detriment of delivery. Little...
Selling is the Foundation of Business
As commercial life starts to return to a semblance of normality and the effects of the pandemic recede, the need for effective selling will be of primary importance. Selling is the foundation of business. When Governments want to grow the economy, they often forget...
Covid’s effect on customer relations
When the current world covid pandemic subsides, the return to “normal” is likely to see some changes in the dynamic of the market and the administration for business. The operation of the consumer market is more likely to change more than that of business...
Is Parkinson’s Law adding to costs?
It was in 1955 that C. Northcote Parkinson published a humorous satirical article in the Economist, which described the natural tendency in the administration and bureaucracy of organisations, for officials to make more work for each other. This commonplace observation that work expands so...
Rating your customer’s experience.
Whether it is a consumer or business to business organisation, the customer should be at the centre, as the customer provides the income. But is this always the case? There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that for many business organisations, especially large...