For regular value advice
Blog Tags
Archived Blog posts
Social Media and Love have one thing in common – they both stimulate oxytocin
August 3, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
The next time you tell someone that you love Social Media this might be a much truer statement than you realise. Oxytocin is the so called ‘cuddle hormone’ credited with forming the unshakable bond between mother and daughter and in stimulating empathy, trust and generosity. A recent nine year study by Paul Zak, Professor at [...]
7 Ways to Grow Business through Customer Service
August 3, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
Do customers view the quality of customer service as a key factor in deciding whether to do business with you?
The answer may surprise you.
Too many businesses still view customer service as a cost of doing business rather than as an opportunity to do more business. Consequently they outsource their customer service call centres to [...]
To Thine Own Self Be True: Why you really need a true value proposition
August 3, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
Everyone always talks about the rational and immediate term reasons why you need a value proposition, such as: it will improve your sales; it will make it easier for customers to buy from you; it speeds up the sales process and leads to greater profitability. But there are also deeper and subtler reasons which have [...]
Value Propositions. We wanted to know… and you told us!
June 1, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
• 75% of you think that a value proposition is a key part of your business strategy
• Board members and senior management are seen as responsible for creating value propositions
• The main role of the value proposition is to boost sales
During the course of late 2009 and early 2010, Futurecurve clients [...]
How to quantify value
June 1, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
People always say to me, “But value is just like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder”. OK, so one man’s value can be another man’s poison (to mix metaphors) but there are ways in which you can start to quantify value. We always use the equation ‘Value = Benefits minus Cost’, where cost [...]
What happens in politics when you don’t have a value proposition
May 8, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
Today’s Times newspaper shows a great example of what happens when you come up with a great idea, even ‘The Big Idea’, internally but fail to ask and test it with your customers, in this case UK voters. A salutary lesson for all those internally made-up value propositions. As we repeatedly say, you MUST engage [...]
Focus on people (not profit) to make profit
March 8, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
Places with happier employees make more money. Any CEO worth his bonus will tell you that it’s all about the people. Well, there’s some old research and now some new research that proves it.
Creating a High Achievement Culture
In 2001, the great David Maister published the results of a research study of 139 offices of 29 [...]
How to Invent a Profit
February 8, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
“If Bill Gates had been British he’d be running the largest software company in Guildford by now.”
A former Design Council chair once remarked. We seem to be great in the UK at innovation but not so good at bringing ideas to market and making a profit. Why are we so bad at commercialising innovation?
I think [...]
8 Tips to Building a Sales Person’s Value Proposition?
January 17, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
What is a sales person’s value proposition? This very interesting question was posed recently on LinkedIn. The questioner asked: Is it Product Knowledge? Is It Customer Relationship? Is it Negotiation or Communications Skills? In this era of Web 2.0 – where buyers are better informed and demanding and have direct access to vendors and in [...]
Culture Shock and the Customer Experience
January 5, 2010 by Cindy Barnes
Laid up in bed before Christmas with the inevitable holiday flu, I was watching re-runs of QI, a very funny and clever British quiz show hosted by the wonderful Stephen Fry. They were talking about Paris Syndrome which is the extreme culture shock experienced by Japanese tourists upon visiting Paris. Apparently the difference in Latin [...]