business strategy

Know Your Client [KYC]

KYC is a term in Financial Services and is a requirement within the Wealth Management world around understanding your client and their goals / objectives to make sure their portfolio matches those goals re asset mix versus what makes the broker the most money. I would like to borrow the…

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The 3-Month Strategic Plan

A few nights ago, I was having dinner with some friends, who are also business colleagues. A question came up at the table re how one the guys approaches strategic planning. He is the CEO of Financial Institution [a large Credit Union to be specific]. His answer was interesting based…

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The Price To Win

You would be hard pressed to go through a Deal Review and not have this as a question asked by one of your Executives or teammates. What do you think the Price to Win is? In general, we will always be guessing, but some guesses are more informed than others.

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The Red Team

I was doing some work with two different clients in the past week where the concept of the “Red Team” came up in conversation. Rooted in military history, a Red Team is an inside group that explicitly challenges a company’s strategy, products, and preconceived notions. It frames a problem from…

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Complexity Leads to Commoditization

I get into a lot of conversations about the increasing Complexity in our customers environments and how that rolls down hill to us. All of our worlds are getting more complex as competitive environments intensify, access to information continues to expand and expectations continue to rise. What is the impact…

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Who Is Your Real Competition

Building upon last week’s blog, if we are selling CHANGE, then who is your REAL COMPETITION? Although we all have worthy and formidable competitors, in this new world, our primary competitor is our CUSTOMER or PROSPECT. If you have 100 deals in your sales funnel, more than half of them…

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What Are You Really Selling

When I ask this question of large groups, people know it is a trick question, but still default to common answers. Very naturally, our instinctive response is to think immediately of our specific products or services. The most common answers I get are that we are selling Solutions or Value,…

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WHAT IF GROWTH WAS NOT AN OPTION

I am privileged to get to speak and spend time with hundreds of senior executives every year in various forums. There are smart and driven people as a general rule. There are several common themes that I get to see across this group, regardless of the size of company, industry…

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