Competition never sleeps

Summary : It is a basic principle of tactical awareness that the competition never sleeps. You must assume that they are always trying to find areas of competitive advantage and working to reverse any areas of competitive disadvantage. During the eighties, the ascent of Japan's semiconductor equipment industry was accompanied by high customer satisfaction with their tools and general dissatisfaction with tools made by western suppliers...

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Sell yourself, your com ...

When it comes to big ticket capital items, the customer is not just buying a product, they are making a long-term commitment with you and your company. If the product doesn’t work, their career will be on the l ... See more

CEOs must make on-the-s ...

Advantest, JSR, and TEL: Why they were so successful when so many others failed. ... See more

Strategic versus tactic ...

Confusing the two is a dangerous mistake. Not understanding the difference typically leads to tactics with no strategy. Tactics will then often conflict with the implicit strategy. Yet, these are very common ... See more

Confuse the customer wi ...

Never believe that naming is trivial. It’s the first thing people must remember before they decide to buy. That alone makes it one of the most important things an executive must do. For if they can’t remembe ... See more

If you apply classical ...

It’s not that classical marketing is totally ineffective. But it is only marginally so. The reason is that classical marketing is what tech-marketing gurus refer to as the fluff part of marketing. It appeals ... See more

Tech Business Strategy ...

Most confuse the two and in reality I doubt there is any formal definition for marketing. In military circles the definition is clear... I believe that this definition works well for business with some modific ... See more

It is a strategic princ ...

Misalignment of external and internal communications is a common leadership failure. They are often seen as isolated entities. Two failure modes accrue when two separate messages are sent. One is the percept ... See more

The stock will take car ...

15 Jun 1988

This is something our industry’s marketing legend, Bob Graham, used to say whenever his people got worried about their company’s stock taking a dive. I was reminded of it when I heard Jack Dempsey, Twitter’s CE ... See more

Risk versus Uncertainty ...

Risk is when an outcome’s probability is known. Uncertainty is when an outcome’s probability is unknown. Know which is which before you weigh your decisions ... See more

The need for alignment ...

As companies get larger, it is natural that sales and marketing split. When this happens, they often run into problems as the two become misaligned. Marketing develops products that sales can’t sell, they don ... See more