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How to Scare Away a Customer

How to scare away a customer? Simple. Make mistakes, and waste every opportunity to correct the mistake and surprise the customer. Yes, making mistakes is human, and it can happen. But, obviously, this can harm your customer, generating discontent. However, more often than not, it will not be the error itself that will determine the customer’s frustration, but rather the Organization’s (and the people who represent it) attitude towards this error. Often, the way in which the Organization corrects the error, may even increase customer loyalty, if Continue reading “How to Scare Away a Customer”

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The Long Tail Strategy

The Long Tail Strategy

Chris Anderson was born in London, but as a child he moved to the United States, where he graduated in Physics. He started his career as editor of the scientific magazines Nature and Science. In 1994, he started working as an editor for The Economist magazine, where he stayed until 2001, when, then, he started working for Wired magazine, where he stayed until 2012. While he was editor of Wired, he wrote his famous article “The Long Tail” that gave rise to his bestseller The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, published in 2006.

In summary, the author’s thinking unveils a new Continue reading “The Long Tail Strategy”

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The Jevons Paradox

The Jevons paradox was described by the English economist William Stanley Jevons in his book “The Coal Question”, published in 1865. In his analysis, the author noted that advances in the efficiency of steam engines, which provided a lower consumption of coal to produce the same amount of energy, led, however, to an increase of the total consumption of coal due to higher demand. Thus, the Jevons Paradox occurs whenever the increase in the efficiency of use of a given resource leads, not to a reduction, but to an increase in the total consumption of that resource. This is the effect produced by an elastic consumption curve*, that is, the one in which the cost reduction causes a proportionally greater increase in its demand. Continue reading “The Jevons Paradox”

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The Innovation Dilemma

The Innovation Dilemma

Even companies that have good management but always seek to innovate their products within the same standards can fail precisely because they do not innovate outside the standards. If the industry had focused solely on developing VHS technology, it would never have come to DVD. This is the core concept of Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, published in 1997. According to Professor Christensen, not investing in disruptive technology (one that breaks the current paradigm ) can be the differential between the failure and Continue reading “The Innovation Dilemma”

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When Less Is More in Marketing!

When Less Is More in Marketing!

Offering various consumer options may not be a good strategy. Have you ever been in doubt which shampoo to choose. See the options that a renowned brand offers on the supermarket shelves: restoration, hydro-cauterization, fall control, hydration, extreme smooth, defined curls, strength and reconstruction, hydra-vitamin curd, extreme shine, rejuvenating repair, smooth and silky. Easy to choose? Not necessarily! Anxious decision? Very likely!…

Barry Schwartz addresses in detail the question of the choices we make in his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Barry says that Continue reading “When Less Is More in Marketing!”

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The Basic Competence for Success in Sales

While many organizations are concerned with various aspects and characteristics of their sales force, the most important of them is often overlooked. Credibility is the most important skill of a salesperson, and this is proven in many researchs and specialized studies. There is a very interesting quote from the American writer Rebecca Solnit, who expresses well the importance of credibility in people’s lives: “Credibility is a basic survival tool.”

In a study by Brian H. Flynn and Kathleen A. Murray, entitled “Your Sales Force Could Be Your Weakness,” published in 1993, in The Journal of European Business, which evaluated more than 1,000 senior managers, pointed out that Continue reading “The Basic Competence for Success in Sales”