Sales and marketing

John and Peter are two salesmen for the XYZ corporation. John sells twice as much as Peter. John earns twice as much as Peter, right? Wrong. John may even earn less. The XYZ corporation’s sales compensation plan is not unique in the modern business world. In the past decade many companies have turned to sophisticated […]

What do the Burroughs Corporation, Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc., and the Union Camp Corporation have in common? Although none of them enjoys a dominant market share, all three earn quite respectable returns on their equity, have healthy profit margins, and continue to maintain strong sales growth year after year. In this article, the […]

Normally, the Olympic Games are a positive force in marketing. Worldwide marketing expenditures increase as official sponsors and unofficial free-riders attach themselves to the Olympic logo, to particular sports, national teams or individual athletes. Global brands, in particular, see the Olympics and World Cup soccer as the two most important international sporting events; brand linkage […]

There's no going back to the old normal.

Strategies for leveraging hidden value.

Companies may want to shift a brand's position--to exploit less crowded territory, for example, or grow sales. Companies have long used perceptual mapping...

Online advertising is opaque and often funnels money to sites that can damage your brand. Here’s how companies can protect themselves.

Many companies approach product development as if it were manufacturing, trying to control costs and improve quality by applying zero-defect, efficiency-focused...

With the first African World Cup now going full blast, South Africans are more excited than I’ve ever seen them. And the corporate gamesmanship here is almost as interesting as the matches being played out in magnificent stadiums around the country. The brand competition began the moment I arrived in Johannesburg from the UK. As […]

The best insights often come from seeing the world through someone else's eyes.

In 1970, Citibank’s services rated poorly when compared with other banks’. In response, management ordered an overhaul of the services area and brought in managers with experience in manufacturing environments to make the services more efficient. That program succeeded in ensuring new processing efficiency and management control; yet it did not go far enough in […]

With new tools, the marketing department can do more than ever.

China celebrated the start of the Year of the Rabbit last week, and the country’s marketers are hoping that a surge in sales will kick off the new year. Demand in the Chinese economy soared by between 15% and 30% during the spring festival last year. In fact, some marketers of baijiu, the liquor that’s […]

I advise companies on their pricing strategies, and I’m surprised how often I hear the same flawed piece of conventional wisdom. Many executives and Wall Street analysts continue to think that a high profit margin signifies good pricing. It’s hard not to see that big differential between revenue and costs as a signal that you’ve […]

As technology becomes more powerful and affordable, your company is only limited by its imagination.

Smartphones make it possible, if you set the right assignments.

The Toyota story has been intensively researched and painstakingly documented, yet what really happens inside the company remains a mystery. Here’s new insight into the unspoken rules that give Toyota its competitive edge.

It’s not ads, but affiliates, that drive revenue.

When Kevin Peters became president of Office Depot's North American operations, in 2010, its customer service scores (as graded by a third-party mystery-shopping...

I've spent the week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where billion-dollar companies unveil multi-million-dollar products looking for...