Imaginem que o PS estava na oposição

Imaginem que o PS estava na oposição.

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A sério, concentrem-se e imaginem que o PS estava na oposição.

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Como comentaria este resultado?

Basta recordar como comentava a evolução positiva do desemprego ao longo de 2014 e 2015.

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E como é que o PS no governo comenta a evolução destes números?

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Quer que lhe diga? 

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Cá vai: "Exportações portuguesas com melhor resultado de sempre" 

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Qual é o truque? 

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Não falar de exportações de bens e falar do todo (de bens e de serviços juntos). O que é algo estranho porque os números das exportações de serviços saem sempre mais atrasados que os dos bens.

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E o que é que este anónimo engenheiro da província tem a dizer sobre a evolução das exportações de bens em 2016?

Grande força das PME https://t.co/zfQuevR3qw

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) November 10, 2016

Mantendo a coerência do meu critério de anos para avaliar a evolução do desempenho das exportações portuguesas, retiro o efeito das empresas grandes, retirando as exportações de combustíveis e lubrificantes, e as de automóveis e as de ferro fundido.

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E quando fazemos isso, o panorama é muito muito bom:

Será que até ao final do ano de 2016 as PME conseguem exportar mais mil milhões de euros do que conseguiram fazer  em 2015?

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O que diria o PS na oposição desta afirmação do ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros da situação:

"a estimativa do Governo aponta para um crescimento de três por cento, o que representa uma "redução do ritmo de crescimento face a 2015, mas significa também crescimento""

E Trump foi eleito

E Trump foi eleito.
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Alguns escrevem que o foi porque os Estados Unidos aderiram ao euro e deu cabo da sua competitividade o que levou a deslocalizações em massa e consequente desemprego industrial para americanos com baixa escolaridade.
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Mas esperem aí, os Estados Unidos não aderiram ao euro, mantêm a sua moeda própria. Quer dizer que o problema nunca foi o euro?

• "It was never the euro"
• It's not the euro, stupid! (parte I)

Enquanto os economistas-políticos da nossa praça, como Ferreira do Amaral, dizem que o mal reside no euro que nos roubou competitividade. [BTW, não passa de conversa de Saruman, confiram os números da nossa competitividade].

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O que é que sempre defendemos aqui?

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Não era o euro, era a China!!!

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Por exemplo:

• O choque chinês num país de moeda forte (parte I) e (parte II)

Interessante que só agora comecem a aparecer os estudos que vêm documentar o tal impacte chinês, como por exemplo aqui: "Guess What's Destroying the Middle Class?" [Só estranho é que o título retrate o fenómeno como sendo uma realidade ainda a ocorrer quando na verdade a onda da globalização já está a recuar, basta pesquisar o marcador "reshoring"]

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Nunca me esqueço de apresentar esta tabela:

Pena que os economistas sejam tão políticos e fechados nas suas torres de Sarumans e não visitem as empresas que fazem a economia real, não falo das empresas sediadas em Lisboa e no PSI 20, falo das PME.

A alternativa de qualidade

Este é uma alternativa interessante,"Condé Nast: Portugal duplica hotéis entre os melhores do mundo". Em vez de benidorm-like tourism, um mais requintado.
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Ainda na terça-feira ouvi na rádio alguém da Vitacress afirmar que esperavam crescer 15% este ano a ganhar mercado ao Mar del Pástico espanhol. Recordar:

•  A marca Portugal

BTW, "Move Over, Iceland: The Azores Are the Hot New Adventure Destination"

Alinhamento é fundamental

"Fit5/ It’s not enough to have a distinctive value chain. Its various components  should also fit tightly together. Another Porter quote here:
Strategy is creating fit among a company’s activities. The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well — not just a few — and integrating among them. If there is no fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability. Management reverts to the simpler task of overseeing independent functions, and operational effectiveness determines an organization’s relative performance.
Fit, I think, is the key strategic principle that has been the most ignored by traditional companies in the past 30 years. From what I have observed working with those companies and speaking with their managers, most transformative efforts in the past have tried to loosen fit rather than strengthen it."

Trecho retirado de "A Stout Porter: Business Strategy In the 21st Century"

Curiosidade do dia

Comparar com:

"A taxa de desemprego na Zona Euro manteve-se nos 10%, em Setembro, um valor estável face ao mês anterior e que compara com a taxa de 10,6% registada em Setembro do ano passado. Este é valor mais baixo desde Junho de 2011."

Trecho retirado de "Desemprego na Zona Euro mantém-se em mínimos de 2011"

"Struggling moments"

"Customers buy and use your product because they want to make their life better. ... This is what we mean when we say “Jobs to be Done is about progress”.
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However, customers hit roadblocks during their journey to become a better version of themselves. These struggling moments are what cause them to reach for a solution…and they belong in your Job [Moi ici: Comparar as duas versões que se seguem]
When I’m lost…
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When I’m lost in a city that I’ve never been to, don’t know the local language, and worried that I’ll be wasting my time in places I don’t want to be in…"

Trechos retirados de "Your Job Story Needs A Struggling Moment"

Palavras fortes para fazer pensar

"If a customer isn’t profitable, they aren’t a customer—they are a leech. It’s all about servicing customer needs... profitably. Not every customer is your customer, or your target customer."

Trecho retirado de "Episode #116: Interview with pricing expert, Tim Smith"

"to form a relationship ... providing suggestions and answering questions"

"Why are more and more buyers avoiding salespeople during the buying process? Sales reps, according to Forrester, tend to prioritize a sales agenda over solving a customer’s problem. If organizations don’t change their outdated thinking and create effective sales models for today’s digital era, Forrester warns that 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce by 2020.
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The answer to the shift away from reliance on outbound sales could reside in social selling, the strategy of adding social media to the sales professional’s toolbox. With social selling, salespeople use social media platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing educational content and answering questions. As a result, they’re able to build relationships until prospects are ready to buy.
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Social selling concentrates on producing focused content and providing one-to-one communication between the salesperson and the buyer.
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with social selling, the goal is for the rep to form a relationship with each prospect, providing suggestions and answering questions rather than building an affinity for the organization’s brand.
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Social selling makes sense for achieving quota and revenue objectives for multiple reasons. First, three out of four B2B buyers rely on social media to engage with peers about buying decisions.
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It doesn’t take a significant amount of time to get started in social selling. B2B salespeople only need to invest 5% to 10% of their time to be successful with social. Salespeople should begin carving out a small percentage of their daily time for social media. Regular interaction with a prospect may not lead to a direct sale this week or quarter, but could result in a significant win within the year.
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After all, social media is too important to be left to marketing. In fact, a recent study found skilled social media sales professionals are six times more likely to exceed quota over peers with basic or no social media skills. It is time to get started with social selling and meet your prospects where they’re spending their time."

Como não recordar a Indium Corporation.


Trechos retirados de "84% of B2B Sales Start with a Referral — Not a Salesperson"

"The market is a goal collective"

Parte I.

Outra perspectiva acerca dos ecossistemas da procura:

"Viewing markets as goal collectives rather than as individual customers is especially critical in business-to-business where multiple key decision-makers are involved, sometimes all present at the same meeting.
The key to business success is the navigation of the goal landscape. This can truly transform the selling approach.
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In the case of a scientific instrument manufacturer, this question started with: who is the customer – the director of the research institute, chief financial officer, procurement manager, lab manager? The answer, of course, is all of them. And each has different goals. Unfortunately, in most instances, the main touch-point had been when the sales person met procurement head on; each side armed with ten-point negotiation plans. By realizing each decision-maker had different goals – ranging from the head’s focus on international reputation, procurement’s focus on sales price and the lab manager’s focus on usability – the sales force was able to map out a goal landscape. Armed with a handy guide, sales people could lead with different sales pitches depending on whom they encountered. They could also zone in on the key player for whom their offering had the most convincing competitive advantage.
The firm also changed its practices by encouraging sales people to visit as many parties within a single organisation as possible compared with the old practice of commanding a specific number of visits to different organizations per day.
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The customer consists of multiple parties, each with their own goals. Success is created by showing how you offer the best solution across these collective goals rather than by focusing on a unique selling proposition for “Barry the island”
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Communications and sales efforts should explicitly focus on multiple parties. Either in face-to-face meetings or by reframing goals by personifying these with co-decision makers, reminding your counter-party that they need to consider a broader range of goals
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To gain legitimacy, companies need to provide value to all relevant parties."

Trechos retirados de um excelente texto, "So you Think You Know your Customers? de Nader Tavassoli, publicado por International Commerce Review, Vol. 10, nº 1 Spring 2011

Curiosidade do dia

"O suicida não tem horizonte temporal, vive na conjuntura do fim porque para ele não haverá mais nada depois de desaparecer. Quando o suicida elabora o seu orçamento, as contas parecem certas, mas só porque não tem de clarificar o que fará para o orçamento do ano depois desse e porque também já desistiu de pagar os compromissos que assumiu no passado: nem investe, nem paga a dívida.
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Trava-se um suicídio mostrando um futuro diferente, já que o passado ninguém pode mudar. O futuro só não será austeridade se houver investimento e crescimento, se a cultura da dependência distributiva e clientelar for substituída pela valorização da competição e pelo prémio ao mérito, se a construção do futuro tiver como base a recusa de repetir o passado."

Trechos retirados de "O orçamento do suicida"

"Aim to help customers achieve their goals."

Trechos retirados de um excelente texto, "So you Think You Know your Customers? de Nader Tavassoli, publicado por International Commerce Review, Vol. 10, nº 1 Spring 2011

"A single customer may belong to multiple goal segments
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Goal-based approaches to market segmentation – rather than a customer-segmentation approach focused on demographics, for example – have long been argued to lead to more meaningful segmentation schemes.
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However, even when segments are defined according to goals (needs) the next logical step for many marketers is to assign customers to discrete segments.
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However, products and services are not bought and consumed to satisfy personas, if there even is such a person as a Barry. Barry is a different person at work, at play and at home. He is a different person on different days of the week.
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Barry who shifts between independent goals. The implications of seeing consumers as a bundle of goals can be profound.
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Individual consumers can be members of multiple segments if they buy and consume ice cream to satisfy different goals. Unilever has Solero in its arsenal to compete against Coke for refreshment seekers and Magnum to compete with Häagen Dazs for indulgence seekers. On both occasions Unilever is competing for Barry’s custom. To take this point further, Barry might be value conscious in buying family sized Carte D’Or packages on promotion, but not shy away from a full-priced Magnum at the corner shop when he wants to reward himself.
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Consumers and customers choose products and services to attain goals and not for the attributes of the offering. Depending on which goal is most active, their preferences and choices can shift dramatically.
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Using ads, packaging or salespeople, companies try to illustrate a competitive advantage by credibly demonstrating some sort of superiority of product attributes – faster, whiter, smaller, less fatty and so on. This is product-focused selling. Goal-based selling does not exclude a discussion of product features, but its primary goal is to shift the customers’ mindset towards goals that put these into the best light; that activate latent goals that suit your brand at the critical moment. Next, the sales person needs to identify a discrepancy between the desired versus actual state, and demonstrate how the product or service is a means to close this gap."

Preço e JTBD são contextuais

Voltando a este artigo de 2007, "Finding the Right Job For Your Product", encontro um trecho que vem suportar um conselho que dei aos meus vizinhos da Comur na Murtosa.

"Consider another illustration. A maker of boxed drinks, whose products were a mixture of 40% fruit juice and 60% flavored sugar water, had placed its products in the boxed drink section of supermarkets, juxtaposed with competing products that were 100% fruit juice.
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Though the pure juice products were much more expensive, sales of the juice/water drinks were languishing. When interviewed about their purchases, customers, who were mostly parents, revealed that the job they were trying to get done had a functional dimension — to put a healthy drink in their children’s school lunches — and an emotional dimension — to feel like they were taking good care of their children. When pitted against the job candidates that contained 100% juice, the mixture drink simply wasn’t qualified; it rarely got hired. The company then had its drink placed in another location in the supermarket, in snack foods, and sales improved markedly. When compared to the job candidates in the snack aisle, a drink that had 40% real fruit juice solved the emotional component of the “good parent” job much better than the competing candidates."

A venda depende do contexto!
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Recordar as conservas de truta fumada da Comur e o meu conselho em "Conservas e pricing".
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O meu conselho inicial era para situar o preço das trutas fumadas junto do salmão fumado a 3,5€ as 100 ou 150g em vez das latas de sardinhas a 0,60€. Esse conselho motivado pela percepção de que o preço é contextual, aqui é reforçado por uma outra percepção, o JTBD da truta fumada se calhar está mais próximo do JTBD do salmão fumado do que o JTBD das conservas de sardinha ou cavala.

"not all customers are created equal"

"In the enterprise space, sales are lumpy and a couple of deals may represent most of this quarter’s new revenue. So every prospect is strategic. We go the extra parsec on every opportunity; we see each proposal as a must-win. We’ve never met revenue that we didn’t want, and any technical challenge can be solved with a one-off fix. After all, there aren’t enough F2000 companies that we can chance losing even one to fussy product concerns.
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But not all customers are created equal. At many enterprise software companies, I see one or two outlier customers consuming an inordinate share of support time, product management attention, engineering cycles and roadmap focus — hugely out of proportion to their actual revenue or market value. Maybe we should fire just those two, and free up scarce resources for dozens of more relevant customers.
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Pareto analysis implies that 20% of our customers generate 80% of our profits. Philip Kotler suggests an even more unbalanced mix: that our top 10% of customers represent 150% of profits, and our bottom 10% account for minus 100% of total profit. (In other words, firing the right 10% of our current customers would double profitability!)
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Aren’t They All Just “Customers”?
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Take the Lead with the Customer
Once we’ve sold the idea of firing a customer internally, we have two other big tasks: designing an equitable “out” for the customer/prospect, and having an uncomfortable discussion with them.
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Outlier customers misapplying our products can waste tremendous amounts of time and attention. Sometimes, we have to fire one or two to serve our core customer well."

Trechos retirados de "Let’s Fire a Few of Our Customers"

“Price matters most when the seller believes price matters most.”

"In one of my keynote addresses, I often share that:
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“Price matters most when the seller believes price matters most.”
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When I work with individual companies to improve their margins, each and every one of those engagements starts with someone emphatically telling me that their “Clients are different. They really only care about price.” After seeing results, my clients realize that most of the perception about price is borne by the seller, not the buyer.
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There are three specific steps you can take to ensure that you and your client appreciate value more than price.
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Step 1: Don’t Focus On Price
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often, the person doing the selling starts the conversation with their client about price without even realizing it.
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focus on results and value, not price.
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Step 2: You Are Not A Commodity – Recognize Your Value
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You might think that you provide the same stuff as your competitors. If your business involves human beings, you are not a commodity. The buyer may want you to think of yourself as a commodity, but unless you are simply delivering the same people (as sometimes happens with government contractors), then you are different. More important than having marketing material that says you are different, you and your colleagues need to believe in what makes your company’s products and services different. Then you can focus your efforts where that differentiation matters most. Your unique attributes often pertain to your experience rather than the general services.
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Step 3: Find Impact Together
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When speaking with your client about the issue they hope to solve, recognize that the “issue” is the tip of the iceberg. In our research we know that customers make buying decisions when they appreciate “What problem you solve and why they need what you offer.” While discussing their issue (for example, hiring a new IT provider) might uncover what problem they are trying to solve, we don’t yet know “why they need it.” To uncover the magic of why they need it, you ask questions like “What happens if six months from now you still haven’t solved this?” If they cannot convince you that this Issue has enough Impact associated with not solving the Issue, then it might not be worth your time to pursue the opportunity. If you are more passionate about solving the issue than your client, bring your wallet…you’ll have to pay for it.
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When you avoid bringing up price, when you recognize your value, and when you find impact together, you’ll carve out a niche where customers appreciate value over price. And the next time you think that your customer is focused on price, step back. You might be the one concerned about price."

Trechos retirados de "What To Do When Customers Only Care About Price"

Curiosidade do dia

Não é preciso fazer um desenho para juntar esta outra "Curiosidade do dia" com:

• João Vasconcelos: "Há empresários que têm dificuldade em acompanhar o aumento do salário mínimo"
• João Vasconcelos: "Nunca tivemos tanta intenção de investimento como agora"
• Portugal lidera queda das vendas a retalho na UE

The Mid-market (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Does all this activity mean the mid-market is finally disappearing, or can operators in this segment of the market evolve to survive? We ask the experts... [Moi ici: Seguem-se trechos da resposta de Richard Millman]
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They need a clear strategy and proposition for the consumer, differentiating on quality of product and service. They need to find their point of difference, both as a chain and as individual clubs. Going upmarket — as some mid-market operators are trying or have tried to do — presents a marketing challenge. It's easier to do if you have just one club than a chain, because to successfully make this move, operators must really understand their local marketplace — what their USP is locally — and how to capture new groups of customers. There are still lots of new audiences out there, provided clubs can define their proposition and find something unique to offer their particular geographic and consumer market."

Acerca da importância do alinhamento.


Trechos retirados do número de Outubro da revista "Health Club Management"

Market-driven ou market-driving (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
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O exemplo da aceleração que a Benetton introduziu na sua forma de trabalhar para tentar fazer face à Zara, H&M et al:

"These transformations in the company’s logistics and operations have enabled to increase the number and structure of collections. Before 2003, retailers had to order the most of the items (80 per cent) before the beginning of the commercial season and only two collections were available, the Spring/Summer and the Autumn/Winter. The rest of the items (reassortments or flash) were mainly reorders and, only in small amounts, orders of new products designed during the selling season (20-30 per cent)
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Because of this rigidity, customers searching for the last fashion trends did not return to the shops. To face this problem, the Benetton Group has increased the number of collections and decreased the amount of orders received before the selling season. The traditional seasonal collection was substituted by two main collections (Contemporary 1 and Contemporary 2) articulated in four launches: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter with a time-to-market between four and eight months. In addition, in order to favour customers’ footfall to shops, Benetton has introduced new collections during the selling season:
• trends, a collection more sensitive to the fashion tendencies with time-to-market between one and four months;
• just in time, a collection that aims to satisfying sensitive customers fashion;
• continuative items, these items represent the core of the Benetton collection and are manufactured in stocks and brought to the market in a very short time (seven days in Italy and 15 days throughout the rest of the world); and
• nice price articles, which are basic yet original and are inspired by the practical needs of day-to-day living."

 Talvez o melhor que a Benetton podia fazer seria não tentar competir no campeonato do fast-fashion. Encolher, fugir dele e procurar manter-se como uma empresa market-driving.

"it is the situation rather than the customer"

Voltei a este artigo de 2007, "Finding the Right Job For Your Product" e, mais uma vez tive de concordar com: nunca é tarde para aprender, às vezes é demasiado cedo.

Não sei há quantos anos li este artigo pela primeira vez. Ontem, tinha de começar a trabalhar numa empresa por volta das 10h30 e resolvi aproveitar para dar uma caminhada matinal de 7 km onde aproveitei para o reler. Este trecho caiu bem dentro e ainda está aqui a ressoar:

"The problem with focusing on customer needs is that a customer finds herself needing different things at different times. [Moi ici: Recordei logo um projecto em curso em que os clientes só dão o trabalho à empresa em certas circunstâncias e optam por um concorrente quando estão sob outras circunstâncias] In contrast, the situation, or the job, is a simpler, more stable point of focus because it exists independently — disembodied, as it were — from the customer. [Moi ici: Para quem começa os projectos de estratégia à procura dos clientes-alvo, significa que na verdade estamos à procura dos JTBD-alvo] Although there may be a  correlation between customers with particular characteristics and the propensity to purchase particular products, it is the job that causes the purchase to occur.
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Another reason it is so important to understand the situation that precipitated purchase is that this yields insight not just into the functional dimensions of the job to be done but into the emotional factors as well: fear, fatigue or frustration; anxiety or anger; panic, pride or pain; and so on. Products don’t engender emotions. Situations do. Hence, to provide the set of functional, emotional and social experiences in purchase and use that are required to do the job completely, it is the situation rather than the customer that must be the fundamental unit of marketing analysis."

Quando estou apertado com o tempo, preciso de uma XXXX e não quero falhar na promessa que fiz ao cliente...

Quando preciso de ajuda para me ajudarem a criar uma XXXX e conseguir surpreender o cliente ...

Quando um cliente me vem visitar e precisamos de ajuda sobre um contratipo de uma XXXX para tomar uma decisão rápida ...
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Estou habituado a dizer que o cliente-alvo valoriza:

• rapidez;
• consultoria;
• disponibilidade

E na verdade, talvez seja mais correcto dizer que naquelas circunstâncias é o que o cliente valoriza. Talvez quando esteja sem pressão do tempo ou pretenda um trabalho corriqueiro o preço seja o seu factor preferido para a selecção.

E assim se faz Mongo

"In addition to meeting the perennial need for growth, marketers have been launching more brands in response to the fragmentation of traditional segments. Consider, for example, how customers are migrating out of the middle to the low and high ends of the market in cars, clothes, computers, retailing, and other industries. At the same time, while globalizing consumer tastes are creating segments in some markets that cut across geographies, growing ethnic diversity in other markets is exacerbating fragmentation as customers seek products with local flavor. Furthermore, it's increasingly feasible for marketers to develop and launch brands cost-effectively for fragmenting customer segments. Distribution costs and communication costs are falling, and manufacturing flexibility is on the rise."

Recordar "Polarização do mercado ou como David e Golias podem co-existir"

Trecho retirado de "Profiting from Polarization"

Curiosidade do dia

No tempo da PàF isto seria ridicularizado como não sendo assunto.