Like many, I was not surprised when Facebook renamed as Meta. After all, this was the company that transformed the notion of ‘friendship’, hurling it into virtual space. But when Microsoft recently announced a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, that got my attention.
Musings from the First 25 Years
Twenty-five years is a long time. Yet, operating a business and striving daily to assure clients are satisfied affords little time for reflection about what it all means.
Intuition vs. Bias
In this age of data-driven insights, it’s useful to take a step back and question their source. As Market Researchers, we’re often asked to come up with novel ways to anticipate future events. So, it’s natural for us to think about how it is we come to know anything, which gets to the science of epistemology, the science of knowing.
Winning and Losing – At the Same Time
Usually we think of win-loss analysis as something we do to put losses under the microscope. That way, the common thinking goes, you will see what you did wrong and fix that, in order to win more often in the future. A worthwhile motivation to begin the exercise if you’re not engaged in it already.
Family Factors – What’s Really Driving Business Development Outcomes?
Perhaps a better title for this post would be Family – OR – Factors. Regular readers of my posts know that Win-Loss Analysis is a central theme. After all, if you’ve been focusing on something for over 20 years, you tend to – I’ll admit it, ‘obsess’ a bit about that something.
Through the Lens of Winning
As a provider of Win-Loss Analysis, we interact with quite a few companies about their opportunity set. Depending on who you speak with, they may refer to it as their …
The Fabric of Opportunity in B2B Selling
As companies wrestle with the pain and disappointment of losing a sale to a competitor, especially when confidence was high that they would win, some interesting psychology comes into play.
New Product Development – Where are you coming from, and where are you going?
Many companies are in expansion mode – with new product development, or new market additions. Whether driven by the post-Covid “pivot” or just opportunity seeking, market expansion is what companies …
Does Customer Satisfaction Equal Customer Loyalty?
Marketers are often confused, for good reason, about the connection between these three things: Customer Satisfaction — Loyalty — Retention Customer Satisfaction is most often measured. It has been made …
It’s Not Surprising
So, why are you surprised? As hard as you work on closing significant sales, you think you might know better. Yet, even as a finalist, you find yourself sweating bullets while waiting to hear if you’ve won the deal.