Griffioen Consulting Group

Marketing Research – Find Out What Your Customers Want

Jan Griffioen — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:10:50 +0000

Whether you’re selling to businesses or consumers, your company's success depends on your understanding of what customers are looking for, what they're buying and why. Marketing Research can provide the answers to the questions that are critically important.

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Are You Ready for Strategic Planning?

Jan Griffioen — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:07:52 +0000

The main obstacles to successful Strategic Planning are not having good market data or careful analysis, but the obstacles are corporate culture, and people's attitudes and mindset. Here's a rather self-explanatory list of the cultural aspects and attitudes that impact your ability to develop a sound, carefully thought-out Strategic Plan, the road-map to your company's success.

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What Companies Get Wrong In Recessions

Jan Griffioen — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 22:25:09 +0000

from the McKinsey Classics Newsletter: What Companies Get Wrong In Recessions Every business wants additional earnings. It can find them in two ways: improving its current operations or developing new capabilities that could enhance its long-term corporate performance. Top managers traditionally bore down on operations in recessions and mounted transformational initiatives only in good times. [...]

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Don’t Wait for Better Times, Make It Happen

Jan Griffioen — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:40:25 +0000

To grow your business you can’t afford to sit back hoping for good old times to return. You have to take charge and start working on making the changes your business needs to survive and grow. It is easy to get totally absorbed by the day-to-day activities and ignore the bigger picture. Start thinking about 'what' you do, before you fixing 'how' you do it. Become more strategic in your thinking about your business, your marketplace, and your competitors.

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What is Strategy, Anyway?

Jan Griffioen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:51:37 +0000

The term 'strategy' is misused as often as it's used, in particular in business. This post explains some of the fundamental differences between strategic and tactical decision making and why both are important to run a successful business. Strategy deals with asking "Are we doing the right things?" On the other hand, Tactics asks "Are we doing things right?" Strategy deals with creating a road map for the future for your business and takes a longer term perspective. Tactics is operational in nature and focuses on the present.

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Services Are Different

Jan Griffioen — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:32:08 +0000

Services play an increasingly important role in the US economy and in what companies offer to their customers. Services are particularly relevant in sectors where manufacturers are looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. However, the approach to marketing these services is quite different from how you would go about marketing tangible products.

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Company Culture Determines the Success of Strategic Planning – Part 2

Jan Griffioen — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:28:43 +0000

This is the sequel to an earlier blog post about how company culture can impact not only management’s attitudes about Strategic Planning, the effort that goes into creating the strategic plan, and ultimately, whether they’ll be successful. Here are a few more examples of different company cultures and their effect on Strategic Planning: Group Think [...]

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