Other Articles:
Robin Johnstone Consulting
On its way from New York to Los Angeles, ninety percent of the time your flight is in the air it’s either straying off course or getting back on course. Nonetheless, it still touches down in L.A. and not in San Diego or Hawaii.
What does this say about planning and decision-making vs. real-world experience? Click on the title above and see how making room for a little messiness can speed things up. In the process, you may actually find that San Diego is where you want to go after all.
You’d think that the more products and services you offer your customers, the more they’ll buy. In fact, it may turn out that offering them more means they’ll actually buy less. Read about this interesting phenomenon, and see if it applies to your business.
The poor used-car salesman. He has all the advantages on his side of the transaction: he’s gotten your name, your address and even your credit rating. He knows the used-car market cold, and he’s got the history of that car you have your eye on. He’s even probably had the car inspected by his mechanic. And yet with all these advantages on his side you, his customer, are full of hesitation, and he may still lose the sale. Hmmm. Could there be a connection here?
This article looks at how asymmetrical information -- one party to a transaction having more information than the other -- can slow the sales process or even result in no sale at all. And how transparency in the sales process -- inviting your customer to share your information -- can speed up the sales cycle and get you a better price for your service or product.
Putting this principle into use enabled one of my clients to reduce the time it took to close a sale from three weeks to three hours.
Articles in this “Other Articles” section are are more general than articles you’ll find under the tabs labeled “Productivity” or “Taxes”, etc. They’re more about process -- and not necessarily about business process. They’re more about how we think and how our customers think; and about how being conscious of how we think can make us more effective business people.
Click on the title of the article to be taken to it. I’ll be adding to them from time to time, so check back.
This article introduces you to the discovery an Italian economist published in 1906, when he pointed out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He also discovered that 80% of the peas in his garden were produced by 20% of his peapods.
Since then, other economists and business people have gone on to discover that there are a lot of places where the 80/20 principle applies (80% of a company’s revenue in many cases comes from 20% of its products, or 20% of its customers, for instance). Looking at your business through this 80/20 lens may lead you to make some powerful choices that could strongly affect your bottom line.
Robin Johnstone Consulting, LLC
Offices in Albuquerque and Santa Fe
