Berkonomics

OCTOBER 19, 2023

So, I tell personal stories to show that we all should look for lessons learned by others. Here’s one that is “on me.” As my enterprise computer software company which produced innovative lodging systems for hotels and resorts grew quickly, we found ourselves straining to keep up with the hiring and training of good customer support representatives, a critical part of the equation then and still so today in the 24-hour environment of hotel front desk operations.

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

First customers are critical. Greatly exceed expectations at all costs. There is so much history behind this insight, and so many stories that illustrate this point. Your first customers for any product or service form your reference base, the important group of allies that your marketing and salespeople rely upon when attempting to create buzz and make a mass market for a new product.

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

You might be here: You have a great new product or service that you and your associates love. Early adopters should climb all over each other for a look. But are you HERE? But what have you done to test the concept against the realities of the marketplace? Have you developed a prototype, alternate pricing schemes, even a PowerPoint mockup to show to potential buyers?

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 17, 2023

Preparing for the game… If you have been following our recent insights, you’ll be up to speed knowing that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more. And yet, in an earlier post, we spoke of the problems that come when taking unstructured investments from friends and family.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 10, 2023

Setting your expectations Taking in angel or venture money requires a setting of an entrepreneur’s expectations that may come as a shock at least at first. From the moment such an investor looks seriously at your company, the investor or VC partner is thinking of the end game, the ultimate sale of the company or even of an eventual initial public offering.

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Berkonomics

JULY 20, 2023

Hold it! These are confusing terms. When does a budget become obsolete? Do we rely upon constant changes and call it a forecast? So, let’s spend a few moments defining this sometimes-confusing set of terms. This is a budget: A budget should be created each year after a series of negotiations between departmental managers and their superiors all the way yup to the CEO, all in support of the next year’s tactics previously agreed upon (which in turn support the longer-term strategies leading to the

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Berkonomics

JULY 13, 2023

In these past weeks, we explored the need for a tangible goal and strategies that are measurable as steps toward achievement of your goal. Today, we explore how to create tactics to accompany each strategy, and even suggest a number of tactics to consider for your strategies. Definition of tactics: Tactics support strategies and are shorter term and more procedural than the strategies they support.

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Berkonomics

JULY 6, 2023

Continuing the process of planning… So now we’re getting organized. There are many ways to express the roadmap for your enterprise. One of the most popular was used by the U.S. Army late in World War II and adopted by many high-profile businesses such as Texas Instruments after the War. And I’s my favorite method of organizing a strategic plan. There are two important elements.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2023

I have a good business friend, an experienced manager and teacher with a Harvard MBA, whose creativity and intelligence are admired by many. But he dilutes his effectiveness with wordy PowerPoint presentations. It has become a long running joke between us, as I often remind him that most of us have a very limited attention span and ability to recall important points from a presentation.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

When do you sell your company? Obviously, we all want to sell at the top. And there is the problem. How do you know when you are at or near that right point to sell for maximum value? Those of us in the business of calculating (guessing) this mythical peak in value often make the same mistake as our entrepreneurs. We hang on just a little bit longer, expecting continued or accelerating growth and value as in previous periods of the same.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Celebrating that strategic partnership Many of us make it a priority to find and partner with companies that can add to our offering or extend our reach. And we rightly celebrate each such pairing, often with a mutual press release. And sometimes that’s all we end up doing. Call it a “press release partnership.” Or an opportunity missed. Or a relationship not nurtured.

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 29, 2022

Growth CEOs differ from those who merely station–keep their way into the status quo, protecting the enterprise by reducing risk and cost – without creating a vision and action plan for growth. Here is how to test yourself. Here is a way to test yourself with a tool useful for any leader seeking to create positive change. Authors Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Oglivie have created a framework for creation of a new product or service – one worth spending at least a cycle of time for review.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Here’s the question: Wouldn’t it be great if there were no more digital or printed reports to tell us what happened in the past? I know. We need financial data for comparison, and to a degree – for planning. But we should be thinking of finding ways to make data available to us much earlier when it would be more meaningful and actionable. Let’s give it a name.

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 27, 2022

So, what’s the difference? First, thanks to longtime reader and friend, Harley Kaufman, for the thought and title for this insight. He stated, “Too often it seemed our internal staff was more focused on getting the ‘work’ (daily tasks) done and not enough on the ‘job’ (supporting subordinates with resources and encouragement.)”. Wait. Had I been guilty?

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 13, 2022

Are we who issue orders to associates or employees ever acting as jerks? We’d never like to think so, or we wouldn’t do it in the first place. Here’s a clue…. If someone is saying “This is confusing to me” when you’ve given an instruction or order, there are several ways to respond. Of course, it may be appropriate to explain your reasoning, or ask what part of the instruction is confusing.

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Leading by example. How do you teach your work force that mistakes are OK as long as they learn and don’t repeat them? By being a visible example. A friend and fellow CEO states that he publishes each of his mistakes in his company internal blog along with the lesson he learned. “If the CEO can do this, he gives permission for anyone to confess as well,” he states.

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

It happens all the time when you’re a CEO or manager. . Somebody important leaves or is let go, and you worry over the impact upon remaining employees and customers. You worry that the person leaving will begin to unload all the pent–up garbage from the past, perhaps damaging the company and causing customer defections and even employee unrest. Your worry is real. .

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 25, 2022

Let’s set the scene. One of the CEOs I used to coach started his day by walking the floor of his extended facility and checking in with managers and employees of the various departments, especially the call center. He tried to feel the pulse of the company by the intensity of motion, the metrics of backlog, and the stated problems brought to him as he asked.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 11, 2022

Want the best way to create your core competency quickly and inexpensively? . Think like a startup, with little resources, a limited window of time, and few dollars to spend on expensive experts. Divide the hiring decision into two boxes. This insight comes from a fellow CEO who explains that he leverages his financial resources for growth by dividing his hiring decision into these two boxes.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 30, 2022

As a leader, you set the goals, establish the strategies and tactics to get there (with help from others of course) and sell the dream to all your stakeholders. And that includes potential customers as well as executives and employees. Can unmanaged growth ever happen? Sometimes growth happens without a leader envisioning it, living it daily, evangelizing it to anyone who will listen.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 16, 2022

There are many roads to Rio, so they say. But there is one overwhelming method of appraising the effectiveness of a business leader. Outcomes. We can invent lots of metrics to measure progress for a leader, including revenue, profit, employee satisfaction, cost containment, percentage of available market, and more. But these are all individual roads to Rio – which is the stated goal for the organization.

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Berkonomics

MAY 26, 2022

We seem to be back to 2019 in the trade show world. Shows that shuttered during COVID have reopened, even if traffic and attendance seems smaller so far, but rising. So, let’s spend a cycle on trade shows for the first time in years. Wouldn’t it be magic if we could find one (unique to us) question to ask people passing the booth or table as they pass in the aisle of the trade show?

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Berkonomics

APRIL 28, 2022

Finding your needle in the haystack. There is so much information being shot at us daily via social media streams that we should monitor and control that which pertains to our business – and do so with some level of expertise. Start with a simple tool. There are tools to inform you when your company name or personal name is mentioned. Google Alerts can be set for any parameter and then be set to deliver your results daily or more often using Google.com/alerts.

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Berkonomics

APRIL 14, 2022

If we never advertised, we’d never sell anything. Right? Perhaps right, but there are three major types of advertising, some requiring large outlays of cash, some not. The types of advertising. First, you can advertise your brand so that people recognize it when they see it in later materials. Second, you can make a call to action, using an ad to bring people to your place of offer, buy your services or product, or take advantage of a special incentive.

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Berkonomics

MARCH 10, 2022

Customer empowerment is moving so fast nowadays that many of us are running to just catch up. Yet if we don’t or can’t, it is a sure thing that someone else will. Yes, we can blame the Internet for this. But don’t close your eyes to the fact that your customers have grown to expect your products or services in the form of…. ‘WHAT I want, WHEN I want, and WHERE I want.’.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Here’s the problem: Investors sometimes join into investment rounds that have been pre–negotiated by others, receiving the paperwork already created by attorneys from that negotiation. It is not uncommon for a sharp investor to discover a “stinky” clause or two in such agreements when reading them in preparation for signing. Bill Payne came across just such a stinky clause in a deal we both were joining as investors late in the process.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 27, 2022

Why is this important advice? Because the first rule for raising money is to do it on good news – right when sales are increasing at an accelerating rate. Or when a major customer signs a significant deal. Or when something happens that makes an investor think this company is about to break out. What if you have no good news to offer? Unfortunately, the longer you wait without significant upward news, the harder it is to get attention.

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 23, 2021

Here’s the question: This piece of wisdom came from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, during a board meeting for one of the companies where he sits as board member. Jeff asked the question “Is there anything big or small, which is working better than you expected? Is there anywhere we could double down?”. What a great insight. Bezos’ point was that we spend a lot of time focusing on what’s not working in Board meetings (especially during difficult times) and not enough time focusing on what is sur

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Berkonomics

DECEMBER 9, 2021

Digging through your IP closet for gold…. In past years, several times a month I’d have lunch with one of my CEOs, and each time we’d find ourselves digging into the intellectual property developed by the company over the years, just to refresh ourselves about what the intended use was back then and whether new developments or technologies might make these older ideas and patents relevant again.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

So, your business has begun to take off. You’ve figured out your channels of distribution, pricing model and how to support your growing list of customers. Don’t be alarmed by this next statement. That’s relatively easy. You can be the one to develop a product or service, promote it, and support it when you are a small operation. But what if you need to repeat the process of positioning, selling, and supporting your product ten thousand or more times as often as you do today?

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 28, 2021

Is this a problem or an opportunity? This insight is like a Hans Christian Anderson parable, but aimed at you and your business… There are big fish and small fish, potential customers, all swimming in the sea that is your potential marketplace. You, the lonely fisherman, must weave a net to catch your fish. Should your net be large and bulky, requiring more effort and expense to weave?

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Reward failure? . That may be a difficult concept for an executive. And there are limits of course. We wouldn’t reward a failure to follow laws, or protect lives, or deliberate endangerment of the company or its people. There are “good” failures. But should we reward a research team that fails for the fourth time to find the solution to a nagging problem – on the way to a new product?

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

To start: “new source of energy” and “new ideas.”. When a new CEO or manager is hired into a company, for a while lots of energy flows from the top and new ideas seem to be generated daily. It is one reason not to fear the unknown when upper-level management long in place turns over, often leaving most everyone worried about the future of the company and for their own prospects.

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Berkonomics

JULY 29, 2021

This is a trick headline. . There can be three “whys” or twenty, depending upon the issue and the responses. To make the point, the word “why” has to be one of the more powerful words in your vocabulary. Asking the question forces the other person to think beyond the usual “what” that generated your first “why.”. It sure is a way to get to the bottom of an issue. .

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Berkonomics

JUNE 24, 2021

It is hard to coach or teach leadership in a few paragraphs. But let’s try by limiting this short insight to a list of the five principal tactical skills of a great leader. These are not the strategic visionary skills, like leading companies through risky product launches, or steering the course through economic storms where leaders become oversized personalities for their superhuman efforts.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 3, 2021

How easily it happens…. Sometimes it is easy for someone to make a statement that, in the enthusiasm of the moment or to make a point, crosses the line between fact and fiction. Sometimes it seems to you to be just an unimportant little stretch of the facts. An estimate of the number of customers, of the amount of traffic to your website, of the numbers of products sold or hours spent in development – there are thousands of areas where a number sounds better when it is larger.

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Berkonomics

MAY 27, 2021

First, the short answer. No matter what your size, if you intend to grow your business into more than just a lifestyle workplace, you should create a board of directors. If you take money from knowledgeable investors, you will be required to create a board as a part of the investment process. So, why go through the effort? Boards perform two important types of task.

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