I’m sure many of you have heard the joke about how to make a million dollars in the wine industry … you start with 10 million dollars.   Lately, the news has been filled with stories of vineyards in Canada, USA and Europe slipping into foreclosure, often featuring an owner who loved their land, believed in [...]

Read More... from Passion Isn’t Enough

A year ago we did a newsletter on Porsche and their North American Passport Program that got younger drivers into their cars.  At that time Porsche was the envy of the automotive world commanding premium prices and having a coveted waitlist for their cars.  What a difference a year makes!  Today Porsche’s operating margins have [...]

Read More... from Crash test dummies

As 2026 strategic planning kicks off, I’m sure many of you will be evaluating business plans.  To assist you here’s a filter used by Sequioa Capital to separate substance from hype. Before you greenlight any initiative, ask: Who cares? (Is the market big enough to matter?) Who needs it? (Is there real customer pain or [...]

Read More... from Three Questions (to Cut Through Any Business Plan)

Google the words “sales funnel” and you’ll see that perfect triangle. Awareness at the top, purchase at the bottom. Clean, logical, ubiquitous…and completely misleading. A client had a problem they didn’t know existed. Following a standard playbook their sales team was equally divided amongst all accounts.  It didn’t matter if an account bought 3 items [...]

Read More... from The Sales Funnel Trap

Market leaders have the ability to resist competitive challenges by leveraging their superior infrastructure, preying on people’s fear of change, and further entrenching consumer habits. This is the ‘incumbent’s advantage’. To challenge the market leader, “the longest way around is often the shortest way home”1. says Liddell Hart, a 20th century military thinker who postulated [...]

Read More... from Take The Long Way Home

When it comes to marketing a feeling can be more important than a fact.  In the early 2010s, Coke was faced with plateauing sales mostly due to a declining engagement with Millennials and Gen Z consumers.  Research showed that Millennials and Gen Z’s viewed Coca Cola as a generic, mass-market product that had little personal [...]

Read More... from Share a Coke

It wasn’t long ago that Intel was the dominant player in the computer chip industry.  Computers needed more powerful chips and Intel was the major supplier.  Customers demanded more power and the Intel brand delivered, propelling the company to dizzying heights. However, a major shift happened in the market when Blackberry and later Apple and [...]

Read More... from Intel – Strategic Mis-steps

If you’re from the western USA, you’ll recognize “Les Schwab Tire”.  The company became the dominant player in their market, earning profit margins three times higher than their competitors.  From humble beginnings in 1952, Les Schwab, knowing almost nothing about the tire business, sold his home and life insurance policy to buy a failing tire [...]

Read More... from Finding Your Competitive Edge

Rolls Royce was in crisis needing to secure new financing from the markets and assurances from the government that the business would survive. In the middle of the crisis, a new CEO was appointed and in January 2023 Tufan Erginbilgiç took the helm. His opening remarks to the 42,000 employees was a message of both [...]

Read More... from Rolls Royce Transformation