Sales Operations Quotes

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

No business is just a one-man’s job. You need sales, you need operations, you need partnerships, you need even customer and brand loyalty.

Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth.

Capitaine Etienne Relais was known to be incorruptible in an ambience in which vice was the norm, honor for sale, and laws made to be broken, and men operated on the assumption that he who did not abuse power did not deserve to have it.

Brainstorm your big idea(s). (2 hrs) Identify your product, customer, competition, and sales/marketing strategy. (2 hrs) Identify your plan for operations, management, capitalization, and finances. (4 hrs) Create a life plan. (4 hrs) Validate your business idea. (8 hrs) Type up your finished business plan. (4 hrs) Execute and follow through on your plan.

Value can’t be created without understanding what people want (market research). Attracting customers first requires getting their attention, then making them interested (marketing). In order to close a sale, people must first trust your ability to deliver on what’s promised (value delivery and operations). Customer satisfaction depends on reliably exceeding the customer’s expectations (customer service). Profit sufficiency requires bringing in more money than is spent (finance).

A Philippine-brothel-owning member of the House of Lords was staying at the house of a Spanish Chief Inspector of Police. The Lord was being watched by an American CIA operative who was staying at the house of an English convicted sex offender. The CIA operative was sharing accommodation with an IRA terrorist. The IRA terrorist was discussing a Moroccan hashish deal with a Georgian pilot of Colombia's Medellín Cartel. Organising these scenarios was an ex-MI6 agent, currently supervising the sale of thirty tons of Thai weed in Canada and at whose house could be found Pakistan's major supplier of hashish. Attempting to understand the scenarios was a solitary DEA agent. The stage was set for something.

I am the love machine of desire. I’m easy to operate. Just pull on my lever.

They’ll know who the brains of the operation was when they see me smash my clone’s skull on the concrete.

Dreaming of being on Moon cannot get you there. It requires a focused & intelligent effort to achieve what you Dream.

Imagine if you made it your intention to be both ‘world-class’ and ‘the most trusted and respected supplier’ to your clients. It would force a new level of thinking about how you operate.

I’d never trust a surgeon who didn’t wear gloves when he operated. Even if those gloves he didn’t wear were boxing gloves. He might as well, because I know he’s going to beat me up over the price.

It was the task of industrial society to destroy all of that. All that "community" implies -- self-sufficiency, mutual aid, morality in the marketplace, stubborn tradition, regulation by custom, organic knowledge instead of mechanistic science -- had to be steadily and systematically disrupted and displaced. All of the practices that kept the individual from being a consumer had to be done away with so that the cogs and wheels of an unfettered machine called "the economy" could operate without interference, influenced merely by invisible hands and inevitable balances and all the rest of that benevolent free-market system guided by what Cobbett called, his lip curled toward Hume and James Steuart and Adam Smith, "Scotch Feelosophy.

Liquidation Value The liquidation value is what the company’s assets would bring at a forced sale. Normally the liquidation value of a going concern has little relevance since the value of an operating business is much greater than its liquidation value.

In this way the extortion game is similar to the economics of sending spam e-mail. When receiving an e-mail promising a share of a lost Nigerian inheritance or cheap Viagra, nearly everyone clicks delete. But a tiny number takes the bait. Computer scientists at the University of California–Berkeley and UC–San Diego hijacked a working spam network to see how the business operated. They found that the spammers, who were selling fake “herbal aphrodisiacs,” made only one sale for every 12.5 million e-mails they sent: a response rate of 0.00001 percent. Each sale was worth an average of less than $100. It doesn’t look like much of a business. But sending out the e-mails was so cheap and easy—it was done using a network of hijacked PCs, which the fraudsters used free of charge—that the spammers made a healthy profit. Pumping out hundreds of millions of e-mails a day, they had a daily income of about $7,000, or more than $2.5 million a year, the researchers figured.3

Operationally, a business can be improved in only three ways: (1) increase the level of sales; (2) reduce costs as a percent of sales; (3) reduce assets as a percentage of sales. The other factors, (4) increase leverage or (5) lower the tax rate, are the financial drivers of business value. These are the only ways a business can make itself more valuable. Buffett

Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” “Almost precisely.

When a CEO looks around her staff meeting, a good rule of thumb is that at least 50 percent of the people at the table should be experts in the company’s products and services and responsible for product development. This will help ensure that the leadership team maintains focus on product excellence. Operational components like finance, sales, and legal are obviously critical to a company’s success, but they should not dominate the conversation.

I believe I know best in everything I do, and if I don’t, I get trained until I have complete confidence and competence in whatever I am doing. Whether it’s making a sales call, handling my four-year-old, or operating a firearm, I want control over all my various skill sets so that I can lead in all the different areas of my life. I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room—I don’t even need to be right—but I do need to be willing to control things.

For the existing enterprise, whether business or public-service institution, the controlling word in the term ‘entrepreneurial management’ is ‘entrepreneurial’. For the new venture, it is ‘management’. In the existing business, it is the existing that is the main obstacle to entrepreneurship. In the new venture, it is its absence. The new venture has an idea. It may have a product or a service. It may even have sales, and sometimes quite a substantial volume of them. It surely has costs. And it may have revenues and even profits. What it does not have is a ‘business’, a viable, operating, organized ‘present’ in which people know where they are going, what they are supposed to do, and what the results are or should be. But unless a new venture develops into a new business and makes sure of being ‘managed’, it will not survive no matter how brilliant the entrepreneurial idea, how much money it attracts, how good its products, nor even how great the demand for them.

The customer service agents who accepted the defaults of Internet Explorer and Safari approached their job the same way. They stayed on script in sales calls and followed standard operating procedures for handling customer complaints. They saw their job descriptions as fixed, so when they were unhappy with their work, they started missing days, and eventually just quit. The employees who took the initiative to change their browsers to Firefox or Chrome approached their jobs differently. They looked for novel ways of selling to customers and addressing their concerns. When

Our Difficulty in Believing in Providence The first obstacle is that, as long as we have not experienced concretely the fidelity of Divine Providence to provide for our essential needs, we have difficulty believing in it and we abandon it. We have hard heads, the words of Jesus do not suffice for us, we want to see at least a little in order to believe! Well, we do not see it operating around us in a clear manner. How, then, are we to experience it? It is important to know one thing: We cannot experience this support from God unless we leave Him the necessary space in which He can express Himself. I would like to make a comparison. As long as a person who must jump with a parachute does not jump out into the void, he cannot feel that the cords of the parachute will support him, because the parachute has not yet had the chance to open. One must first jump and it is only later that one feels carried. And so it is in spiritual life: “God gives in the measure that we expect of Him,” says Saint John of the Cross. And Saint Francis de Sales says: “The measure of Divine Providence acting on us is the degree of confidence that we have in it.” This is where the problem lies. Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken the leap of faith. They never give it the possibility to intervene. They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God. The founders of religious orders proceed with the audacity of this spirit of faith. They buy houses without having a penny, they receive the poor although they have nothing with which to feed them. Then, God performs miracles for them. The checks arrive and the granaries are filled. But, too often, generations later, everything is planned, calculated. One doesn’t incur an expense without being sure in advance to have enough to cover it. How can Providence manifest itself? And the same is true in the spiritual life. If a priest drafts all his sermons and his talks, down to the least comma, in order to be sure that he does not find himself wanting before his audience, and never has the audacity to begin preaching with a prayer and confidence in God as his only preparation, how can he have this beautiful experience of the Holy Spirit, Who speaks through his mouth? Does the Gospel not say, …do not worry about how to speak or what you should say; for what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it will not be you who will be speaking, but the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you (Matthew 10:19)? Let us be very clear. Obviously we do not want to say that it is a bad thing to be able to anticipate things, to develop a budget or prepare one’s homilies. Our natural abilities are also instruments in the hands of Providence! But everything depends on the spirit in which we do things. We must clearly understand that there is an enormous difference in attitude of heart between one, who in fear of finding himself wanting because he does not believe in the intervention of God on behalf of those who lean on Him, programs everything in advance to the smallest detail and does not undertake anything except in the exact measure of its actual possibilities, and one who certainly undertakes legitimate things, but who abandons himself with confidence in God to provide all that is asked of him and who thus surpasses his own possibilities. And that which God demands of us always goes beyond our natural human possibilities!

Theirs was one of the first cases with a real operational connection to the internet. The internet pervades human existence so thoroughly now that it can be hard to remember how recently life was mainly analog. When was the point of no return? Maybe around 2006. In July of that year, a microblogging platform called Twitter debuted for the public. In September, Facebook launched a new feature called “News Feed” and opened membership to all comers, where before you had to be part of a college or school network to join. In 2006, YouTube was barely a year old. The first iPhones didn’t go on sale until 2007.

EFIGIA RATATULUI: Avand oroare de orice fapta, isi repeta siesi: "Miscarea, ce prostie!" Il irita nu atat evenimentele cat ideea de a lua parte la ele; si nu se zbuciuma decat spre a le ocoli. Prin cârteli, a pustiit viața înainte de a-i fi supt ceva. E un Ecleziast de răspântie, care află în universala nimicnicie o scuză pentru infrangerile lui. Hotarat a gasi ca totul e lipsit de importanta, izbuteste usor, evidentele care sa-l slujeasca fiind numeroase. Iese totdeauma victorios din batalia argumentelor, dupa cum iese totdeauna invins din actiune: are "dreptate", refuză totul si totul il refuză. A inteles prea devreme ceea ce nu trebuie sa intelegi ca sa poti trăi - si cum talentul ii era prea stiutor de propriile functii, l-a risipit de teamă să nu-l irosească în nerozia unei opere. Purtând imaginea a ceea ce ar fi putut sa fie ca pe un stigmat si un nimb, roşeşte si e mandru de minunata-i sterilitate, pe veci strain de seducțiile naive, doar el izbăvit printre iloții Timpului. El isi trage libertatea din imensitatea nedesavarsirilor sale; este un zeu infinit si jalnic, pe care nici o creatie nu-l limiteaza, nici o creatura nu-l adora si nimeni nu-l cruță. Ceilalti ii intorc dispretul pe care l-a revarsat asupra lor. Nu are a ispăşi decât faptele pe care nu le-a săvârşit, al caror numar depaseste totusi calculul nemasuratului sau orgoliu. Dar, in cele din urma, drept mangaiere, la capatul unei vieti lipsite de glorie, isi poarta inutilitatea ca pe o coroană.

Because I’ve really got them over a barrel now. There’s an official report that says I was stabbed by a Nazi assassin trying to kill them. They’d certainly look silly trying to court-martial me after that.” “But, Yossarian!” Major Danby exclaimed. “There’s another official report that says you were stabbed by an innocent girl in the course of extensive black-market operations involving acts of sabotage and the sale of military secrets to the enemy.” Yossarian was taken back severely with surprise and disappointment. “Another official report?” “Yossarian, they can prepare as many official reports as they want and choose whichever ones they need on any given occasion. Didn’t you know that?” “Oh, dear,” Yossarian murmured in heavy dejection, the blood draining from his face. “Oh, dear.

The first port of call was the Americans. In 1974, an initial agreement was reached by which the US agreed to sell two reactors, as well as enriched uranium, to Iran. The scope of the arrangement was expanded further in 1975, when a $15 billion trade deal was agreed between the two countries, which included provision for Iran to purchase eight reactors from the United States at a fixed price of $6.4 billion.55 The following year, President Ford approved a deal that allowed Iran to buy and operate a US-built system that included a reprocessing facility that could extract plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel, and therefore enable Teheran to operate a ‘nuclear fuel cycle’. President Ford’s Chief of Staff had no hesitation in approving this sale: in the 1970s, Dick Cheney did not find it difficult to ‘figure out’ what Iran’s motivations were.

Credit must be given where credit is due. European culture’s politicoeconomic system is wholly at fault for the importation of weapons into our communities. We neither own nor operate any of the 922 gun manufacturers who, in this society alone, produce over 1.5 million legal handguns for sale each year. We had nothing to do with the 250 million handguns already legally in circulation. No, they do not force our youth to buy guns. But their cultural imperative of violence has created and socializes them into an atmosphere where fear begets violence and violence begets more fear and more violence, and the methods and tools for quelling those confrontations become an increasingly more destructive interpersonal arms race. Europeans know that the death of a young Afrikan male is not simply his death. It is also the murder of every coming, exponentially growing generation of Afrikans he was placed here to begin the procreation of. There

OPTIONS FOR REDUCING While thrift stores such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army can be a convenient way to initially let go, many other outlets exist and are often more appropriate for usable items. Here are some examples: • Amazon.com • Antiques shops • Auction houses • Churches • Consignment shops (quality items) • Craigslist.org (large items, moving boxes, free items) • Crossroads Trading Co. (trendy clothes) • Diggerslist.com (home improvement) • Dress for Success (workplace attire) • Ebay.com (small items of value) • Flea markets • Food banks (food) • Freecycle.org (free items) • Friends • Garage and yard sales • Habitat for Humanity (building materials, furniture, and/or appliances) • Homeless and women’s shelters • Laundromats (magazines and laundry supplies) • Library (books, CDs and DVDs) • Local SPCA (towels and sheets) • Nurseries and preschools (blankets, toys) • Operation Christmas Child (new items in a shoe box) • Optometrists (eyeglasses) • Regifting • Rummage sales for a cause • Salvage yards (building materials) • Schools (art supplies, magazines, dishes to eliminate class party disposables) • Tool co-ops (tools) • Waiting rooms (magazines) • Your curb with a “Free” sign

President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), accountable for the overall achievement of the Strategic Objective and reporting to the SHAREHOLDERS who include, on an equal basis, Jack and Murray. • Vice-President/Marketing, accountable for finding customers and finding new ways to provide customers with the satisfactions they derive from widgets, at lower cost, and with greater ease, and reporting to the COO. • Vice-President/Operations, accountable for keeping customers by delivering to them what is promised by Marketing, and for discovering new ways of assembling widgets, at lower cost, and with greater efficiency so as to provide the customer with better service, reporting to the COO. • Vice-President/Finance, accountable for supporting both Marketing and Operations in the fulfillment of their accountabilities by achieving the company’s profitability standards, and by securing capital whenever it’s needed, and at the best rates, also reporting to the COO. • Reporting to the Vice-President/Marketing are two positions: Sales Manager and Advertising/Research Manager. • Reporting to the Vice-President/Operations are three positions: Production Manager, Service Manager, and Facilities Manager. • Reporting to the Vice-President/Finance are two positions: Accounts Receivable Manager and Accounts Payable Manager.

The concept of product/ market fit originates in Marc Andreessen’s seminal blog post “The Only Thing That Matters.” In his essay, Andreessen argues that the most important factor in successful start-ups is the combination of market and product. His definition couldn’t be simpler: “Product/ market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” Without product/ market fit, it’s impossible to grow a start-up into a successful business. As Andreessen notes, You see a surprising number of really well-run start-ups that have all aspects of operations completely buttoned down, HR policies in place, great sales model, thoroughly thought-through marketing plan, great interview processes, outstanding catered food, 30" monitors for all the programmers, top tier VCs on the board—heading straight off a cliff due to not ever finding product/ market fit. Unfortunately, it’s far easier to define product/ market fit than it is to establish it! When you start a new company, the key product/ market fit question you need to answer is whether you have discovered a nonobvious market opportunity where you have a unique advantage or approach, and one that competing players won’t see until you’ve had a chance to build a healthy lead. It’s usually difficult to find such an opportunity in a “hot” space; if an opportunity is obvious to everyone, the chance that you’ll be the one who succeeds is exceedingly low. Most nonobvious opportunities arise from a change in the market that the incumbents aren’t willing or able to adapt to.

In the absence of expert [senior military] advice, we have seen each successive administration fail in the business of strategy - yielding a United States twice as rich as the Soviet Union but much less strong. Only the manner of the failure has changed. In the 1960s, under Robert S. McNamara, we witnessed the wholesale substitution of civilian mathematical analysis for military expertise. The new breed of the "systems analysts" introduced new standards of intellectual discipline and greatly improved bookkeeping methods, but also a trained incapacity to understand the most important aspects of military power, which happens to be nonmeasurable. Because morale is nonmeasurable it was ignored, in large and small ways, with disastrous effects. We have seen how the pursuit of business-type efficiency in the placement of each soldier destroys the cohesion that makes fighting units effective; we may recall how the Pueblo was left virtually disarmed when it encountered the North Koreans (strong armament was judged as not "cost effective" for ships of that kind). Because tactics, the operational art of war, and strategy itself are not reducible to precise numbers, money was allocated to forces and single weapons according to "firepower" scores, computer simulations, and mathematical studies - all of which maximize efficiency - but often at the expense of combat effectiveness. An even greater defect of the McNamara approach to military decisions was its businesslike "linear" logic, which is right for commerce or engineering but almost always fails in the realm of strategy. Because its essence is the clash of antagonistic and outmaneuvering wills, strategy usually proceeds by paradox rather than conventional "linear" logic. That much is clear even from the most shopworn of Latin tags: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war), whose business equivalent would be orders of "if you want sales, add to your purchasing staff," or some other, equally absurd advice. Where paradox rules, straightforward linear logic is self-defeating, sometimes quite literally. Let a general choose the best path for his advance, the shortest and best-roaded, and it then becomes the worst path of all paths, because the enemy will await him there in greatest strength... Linear logic is all very well in commerce and engineering, where there is lively opposition, to be sure, but no open-ended scope for maneuver; a competitor beaten in the marketplace will not bomb our factory instead, and the river duly bridged will not deliberately carve out a new course. But such reactions are merely normal in strategy. Military men are not trained in paradoxical thinking, but they do no have to be. Unlike the business-school expert, who searches for optimal solutions in the abstract and then presents them will all the authority of charts and computer printouts, even the most ordinary military mind can recall the existence of a maneuvering antagonists now and then, and will therefore seek robust solutions rather than "best" solutions - those, in other words, which are not optimal but can remain adequate even when the enemy reacts to outmaneuver the first approach.

Reprimono il desiderio solo quelli che lo hanno tanto debole da poterlo reprimere; l’elemento repressivo o ragione ne usurpa allora il posto e fa da guida a chi non sa volere. Milton era impacciato scrivendo di Dio e degli Angeli, e a suo agio scrivendo dei Demòni e dell’Inferno, poiché egli era un vero Poeta, e dalla parte del Demonio senza saperlo. L’Eternità è innamorata delle opere del tempo. L’ape affaccendata non ha tempo per dolersi. Nessun uccello sale troppo in alto, se sale con le sue ali. Un cadavere non si vendica se l’insulti. Ciò che oggi può dimostrarsi, una volta fu solo immaginato. Un pensiero colma l’immensità. Sii sempre pronto a dire ciò che pensi, e il vile ti scanserà. Qualsiasi cosa che si possa credere, è immagine di verità. L’aquila non sprecò mai tanto il suo tempo come quando si mise alla scuola del corvo. Non puoi mai sapere ciò che basta, a meno che tu non abbia conosciuto prima l’eccesso. Il melo non chiede per crescere consiglio al faggio, né al cavallo il leone per afferrare la preda. Se non ci fossero stati gli sciocchi, dovremmo esserlo noi. Come, per deporvi le uova, il bruco elegge le foglie più belle, il prete depone così sulle nostre migliori gioie la sua maledizione. La creazione d’un piccolo fiore è lavoro di ere. Condannare accresce il vigore. Benedire, lo attenua. Il corvo vorrebbe che ogni cosa fosse nera, il gufo, che tutto fosse bianco. Come per l’uccello, l’aria, per il pesce, il mare, così sia il disprezzo per lo spregevole. Dove manca l’uomo, la natura è sterile. La verità detta in modo comprensibile non sarà mai non creduta. Abbastanza oppure Troppo. "Il matrimonio del Cielo e dell'Inferno

Un om se defineşte la fel de bine prin comediile sale ca şi prin elanurile sale sincere. Tot astfel se întâmplă, la un alt nivel, cu sentimentele, inaccesibile inimii, dar parţial trădate de faptele pe care le însufleţesc şi de atitudinile spiritului pe care le presupun. Nu-i greu de văzut că in felul acesta definesc o metodă. Dar e uşor de văzut că e vorba de o metodă de analiză si nu de cunoaştere. Căci metodele implică metafizici, trădind fără voia lor concluziile pe care pretind uneori că nu le cunosc încă. Astfel, ultimele pagini ale unei cărţi se află încă în primele. Metoda definită aici exprimă sentimentul că orice cunoaştere adevărată este imposibilă. Nu putem decât enumera aparenţe şi simţi un climat. Atunci vom ajunge poate la acel insesizabil sentiment al absurdităţii, în lumile diferite dar frăţeşti ale inteligenţei, ale artei de a trăi sau ale artei pur şi simplu. Climatul absurdităţii e un început. Sfîrşitul e universul absurd şi acea atitudine a spiritului care proiectează asupra lumii o strălucire ce-i este proprie, făcând să lumineze chipul privilegiat şi implacabil pe care ştie să i-l recunoască. Toate marile acţiuni şi toate marile filosofii au un început derizoriu. Marile opere se nasc adesea pe neaşteptate, la colţul unei străzi sau la intrarea într-un restaurant. Tot astfel şi absurditatea. Lumea absurdă, mai mult decât oricare alta, îşi trage nobleţea din această naştere lipsită de măreţie. În anumite situaţii, un om care răspunde: «la nimic», când e întrebat la ce se gândeste, poate că doar se preface. Cei iubiţi o ştiu prea bine. Dar dacă acest răspuns este sincer, dacă exprimă acea stare ciudată a sufletului când vidul devine elocvent, când lanţul gesturilor cotidiene s-a rupt, când inima caută zadarnic veriga pierdută, el reprezintă primul semn al absurdităţii.

No matter how many times I read the novel, I am always moved by the scene in which the pastor empties the offering can in front of the congregation, begins to count the money, and tells them it is not enough. He reminds them that one of their own, Helen Robinson, needs help while her husband is in jail. He then closes the church doors and announces that no one will leave until they’ve collected ten dollars. I can honestly say I have never witnessed this in a church service, have never heard of it happening, and can’t even imagine it taking place in real life, but there is something so moving about the pastoral determination of the reverend. In the silence that follows, he begins to call out by name the churchgoers who have not contributed enough. Scout tells us that after several long and uncomfortable moments, the ten dollars are finally collected and the church doors are unlocked. How could you read this scene and not think that we need more pastors like Reverend Sykes of First Purchase Church? You can almost feel the discomfort of the closed door, the sweating, the heat of the room, the smell of perfume, the rhythm of people fanning themselves to stay cool, and Reverend Sykes’s eyes raking over each parishioner as he scans the sanctuary, determined to make sure that Helen Robinson can feed her family that week. Isn’t this the way church should work? Not a soul openly questions the reverend’s authority in this scene. They are set on caring for one another. This was the way the early church operated in caring for its own community: “And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need” (Acts 4:34–35 MSG).

I am excited to report that I may have gotten a job as an elevator attendant. It's a three-flight elevator, and my primary objective is to push one of three buttons, 1,2, or 3. I know, it seems complicated, but I am sure I am intellectually mature enough to handle it. I feel confident that I have this job because the owner of the elevator operating company, Mr. Pushkin, of Pushkin Push-button Services, shook my hand, winked at me, examined my index finger for button-pushing capabilities and then licked my armpit. It was very flattering. Since he is obviously a man who is continually rising in the elevator world, I asked him for some life advice. And do you know what he told me? He leaned in close so that his blue eyes were about two inches from my face, and then he leaned around to my ear and whispered, “Some men never leave the ground floor, and some men rise to the top. Still other men, like myself, enable these penthouse executives to reach the pinnacle of their company. But I never carry on conversation in an elevator, or at a urinal, and I’d never install a urinal on an elevator, for fear that men would be more inclined to converse freely as they traveled and emptied their bladder.” And without hesitation I replied, “Mr. Pushkin, I never shake a man’s hand after he just got done pissing, or shake my penis more than three times after pissing, but I am certain that I could operate an elevator equipped with a urinal. I know how to keep both my mouth and my pants zipped shut.” That’s when he glanced down and noticed that my fly was down. I was so embarrassed until he reached his hand down to my crotch and zipped me up as he winked and said, “It happens to the best of us.” And that’s when I noticed that not only was his fly unzipped, but his penis had been hanging out the whole time he’d been talking to me.

The climate for relationships within an innovation group is shaped by the climate outside it. Having a negative instead of a positive culture can cost a company real money. During Seagate Technology’s troubled period in the mid-to-late 1990s, the company, a large manufacturer of disk drives for personal computers, had seven different design centers working on innovation, yet it had the lowest R&D productivity in the industry because the centers competed rather than cooperated. Attempts to bring them together merely led people to advocate for their own groups rather than find common ground. Not only did Seagate’s engineers and managers lack positive norms for group interaction, but they had the opposite in place: People who yelled in executive meetings received “Dog’s Head” awards for the worst conduct. Lack of product and process innovation was reflected in loss of market share, disgruntled customers, and declining sales. Seagate, with its dwindling PC sales and fading customer base, was threatening to become a commodity producer in a changing technology environment. Under a new CEO and COO, Steve Luczo and Bill Watkins, who operated as partners, Seagate developed new norms for how people should treat one another, starting with the executive group. Their raised consciousness led to a systemic process for forming and running “core teams” (cross-functional innovation groups), and Seagate employees were trained in common methodologies for team building, both in conventional training programs and through participation in difficult outdoor activities in New Zealand and other remote locations. To lead core teams, Seagate promoted people who were known for strong relationship skills above others with greater technical skills. Unlike the antagonistic committees convened during the years of decline, the core teams created dramatic process and product innovations that brought the company back to market leadership. The new Seagate was able to create innovations embedded in a wide range of new electronic devices, such as iPods and cell phones.

The Iran/Contra cover-up The major elements of the Iran/Contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal Contra war run out of Ollie North’s White House office were connected. The shipment of arms to Iran through Israel didn’t begin in 1985, when the congressional inquiry and the special prosecutor pick up the story. It began almost immediately after the fall of the Shah in 1979. By 1982, it was public knowledge that Israel was providing a large part of the arms for Iran—you could read it on the front page of the New York Times. In February 1982, the main Israeli figures whose names later appeared in the Iran/Contra hearings appeared on BBC television [the British Broadcasting Company, Britain’s national broadcasting service] and described how they had helped organize an arms flow to the Khomeini regime. In October 1982, the Israeli ambassador to the US stated publicly that Israel was sending arms to the Khomeini regime, “with the cooperation of the United States…at almost the highest level.” The high Israeli officials involved also gave the reasons: to establish links with elements of the military in Iran who might overthrow the regime, restoring the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah—standard operating procedure. As for the Contra war, the basic facts of the illegal North-CIA operations were known by 1985 (over a year before the story broke, when a US supply plane was shot down and a US agent, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured). The media simply chose to look the other way. So what finally generated the Iran/Contra scandal? A moment came when it was just impossible to suppress it any longer. When Hasenfus was shot down in Nicaragua while flying arms to the Contras for the CIA, and the Lebanese press reported that the US National Security Adviser was handing out Bibles and chocolate cakes in Teheran, the story just couldn’t be kept under wraps. After that, the connection between the two well-known stories emerged. We then move to the next phase: damage control. That’s what the follow-up was about. For more on all of this, see my Fateful Triangle (1983), Turning the Tide (1985), and Culture of Terrorism (1987).

supposed weakness on national security. Ours was a brief exchange, filled with unspoken irony—the elderly Southerner on his way out, the young black Northerner on his way in, the contrast that the press had noted in our respective convention speeches. Senator Miller was very gracious and wished me luck with my new job. Later, I would happen upon an excerpt from his book, A Deficit of Decency, in which he called my speech at the convention one of the best he’d ever heard, before noting—with what I imagined to be a sly smile—that it may not have been the most effective speech in terms of helping to win an election. In other words: My guy had lost. Zell Miller’s guy had won. That was the hard, cold political reality. Everything else was just sentiment. MY WIFE WILL tell you that by nature I’m not somebody who gets real worked up about things. When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses. When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. Still, I am not immune to distress. And like most Americans, I find it hard to shake the feeling these days that our democracy has gone seriously awry. It’s not simply that a gap exists between our professed ideals as a nation and the reality we witness every day. In one form or another, that gap has existed since America’s birth. Wars have been fought, laws passed, systems reformed, unions organized, and protests staged to bring promise and practice into closer alignment. No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem. We know that global competition—not to mention any genuine commitment to the values

I’m about to crash for the night, and I’m wearing a bicycle helmet to bed. I make love as if Lance Armstrong were shaped like a bowling pin. But I’ll spare you the details, if you can spare some change for my coin-operated vibrating bed.

My dream as a boy was to write a coloring book, but the nagging problem was always, How do you write a coloring book? Drawing from experience, I knew I’d have to learn how to properly operate a Crayola coloring device if I ever wanted to discover the inner working of the coloring book industry. Crayons are best operated with a fork and knife—you get more precision with your coloring, and they simple taste better when you eat them with silverware.

I called, but the phones were all tied up. And so were the operators who normally answer them. Some were even gagged too.

FIGURE 5.20 The Sales Force’s DNA However, it wasn’t yet a full set of operating instructions. To make the code practically useful, we would need to understand how the framework should be applied to the task of managing any particular sales force. We had the “superset” of things leadership could measure and manage, but we needed clear guidelines to help cull from it the handful of activities and metrics that would enable leadership to focus on its own organizational goals. We needed to know how to apply these insights in a targeted and tactical way. Fortunately, we were on the verge of doing just that.

Szot changed the all-too-familiar call-to-action line, “Operators are waiting, please call now,” to, “If operators are busy, please call again.” On the face of it, the change appears foolhardy. After all, the message seems to convey that potential customers might have to waste their time dialing and redialing the toll-free number until they finally reach a sales representative. Yet, that surface view underestimates the power of the principle of social proof: When people are uncertain about a course of action, they tend to look outside themselves and to other people around them to guide their decisions and actions. In the Colleen Szot example, consider the kind of mental image likely to be generated when you hear “operators are waiting”: scores of bored phone representatives filing their nails, clipping their coupons, or twiddling their thumbs while they wait by their silent telephones—an image indicative of low demand and poor sales.

In West's guide, rule-of-thumb guidance comes in two formats that most valuation experts recognize:  Percentage of annual sales: If a business had total sales of $ 100,000 last year and the multiple for that business was 40 percent of annual sales, the price based on that particular rule of thumb would be $ 40,000.  Multiple of earnings: An earnings multiplier makes the most sense to prospective buyers. It directly addresses the buyer's motive to make money: to achieve a return on investment. In many small companies, this multiple is commonly used against what is known as seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), which are earnings before accounting for the following items: • Income taxes • Nonrecurring income and expenses • Nonoperating income and expenses • Depreciating an amortization • Interest expense or income • Owner's total compensation for one owner/ operator after adjusting the total compensation of all owners to market value

For the purpose of this discussion, it is useful to think about technology acquisitions in three categories: 1. Talent and/or technology, when a company is acquired purely for its technology and/or its people. These kinds of deals typically range between $5 million and $50 million. 2. Product, when a company is acquired for its product, but not its business. The acquirer plans to sell the product roughly as it is, but will do so primarily with its own sales and marketing capability. These kinds of deals typically range between $25 million and $250 million. 3. Business, when a company is acquired for its actual business (revenue and earnings). The acquirer values the entire operation (product, sales, and marketing), not just the people, technology, or products. These deals are typically valued (at least in part) by their financial metrics and can be extremely large (such as Microsoft’s $30 billion–plus offer for Yahoo).

Like the circles of Dante’s Inferno, IKEA descends through several floors towards Hell itself (or the checkout, as people with no imagination insist on calling it). Unfortunately for the unwary traveller, you must venture through every floor no matter what item you wish to procure, whether you want to or not. For example, should you wish, like me, merely to purchase a wok and a couple of bookends to stop Greg’s huge hardback rugby books from falling over all the time, you must also look at every other sodding product IKEA has on sale. You must make your way along the circuitous and tortuous route that the sadistic Swedes have laid out between you and the exit. No one in human history has ever said the following: ‘I’ve just popped into IKEA and picked up some meatballs. You fancy a spag bol?’ One does not simply ‘pop’ into IKEA. One plans the visit like a military operation. Make no mistake: shopping there is not to be taken lightly. Not if you wish to retain both sanity and a healthy bank balance.

Nokia is a great example of the cost of caution. In 2007, Nokia was the world’s largest and most successful maker of mobile phones, with a market capitalization of just under $ 99 billion. Then Apple and Samsung came blazing into the market. In 2013, Nokia sold its money-losing handset operations to Microsoft for $ 7 billion, and in 2016 Microsoft sold its feature phone assets and the Nokia handset brand to Foxconn and HMD for just $ 350 million. That’s a drop in value for Nokia’s mobile phone business from somewhere in the neighborhood of $ 99 billion to $ 350 million in less than a decade—a decline of over 99 percent. At the time, Nokia’s decisions may have seemed to make sense. Nokia actually continued growing even after the launch of the iPhone and Google’s Android operating system. Nokia hit its peak in terms of unit volume when it shipped 104 million phones in 2010. But Nokia’s sales declined after that, and were surpassed by Android in 2011 and iPhone in 2012. By the time Nokia’s management realized the existential threat facing them, it was too late; even the desperation play of aligning themselves with Microsoft as its exclusive Windows Phone partner couldn’t reverse the decline.

At the most senior level, the people with the greatest impact—the ones who are running the company—should be product people. When a CEO looks around her staff meeting, a good rule of thumb is that at least 50 percent of the people at the table should be experts in the company’s products and services and responsible for product development. This will help ensure that the leadership team maintains focus on product excellence. Operational components like finance, sales, and legal are obviously critical to a company’s success, but they should not dominate the conversation.

To deepen alignment across specialties, the Apple organizational structure was very different from that of most other firms. There were no product divisions that were their own profit centers. “We run one P&L for the company,” said operations head Tim Cook (who became CEO after Jobs’s death).8 Thus, divisions did not compete against each other for customers or worry about "cannibalization.” This proved a huge competitive advantage when Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes. Rival Sony, rich in assets that could have given Apple a run for its money, was undermined by their organization structure, which was divided into profit centers that drove focus on product lines but hampered collaboration across these lines. Sony’s music division and their consumer electronics division were never able to successfully join forces to compete against Apple. Conversely, at Apple, all departments could celebrate a sale, whether a consumer chose to download music through their iPod or iPhone, or send emails using an iPad or MacBook.

Most businesses hustle to create revenue, pay out their various expenses, and with any luck, there’s a little profit left over for the owners.  Here’s what you’re probably learning in business school: Revenue minus expenses equals profits.  Sounds sensible, right?”  He paused for the group of nodding heads.  “Well, it’s not!  It is completely backwards.  It should be taught:  Revenue minus PROFITS equal expenses.” Our chaperoning professors did their best to hide their cloudy faces, but it was clear Mr. X didn’t mind offending them.  “Don’t wait to see if there’s anything left over for a profit.  By carving out a margin before you address expenses, you create a constraint on the resources available.  This constraint unlocks your creativity to meet customers’ needs, streamline operations, and only spend money on that which truly generates value.  There’s no room left for fluff and bloat.  Difficult decisions on how you should run your business become obvious. No longer fat, dumb and happy, maybe you make that extra sales call or hold off on that unnecessary expense.  Business is very competitive, and the difference between the Hall of Fame and the graveyard can be remarkably thin.  Everyone says they want to run a tight ship, but the best way to harness your entrepreneurial verve is to tie your own hands to the yarak mast.  It will turn all of your business SHOULDS into business MUSTS.  I’ve spent a lot of time finding different places to apply the idea of yarak, and it never ceases to amaze me how helpful it is.  So that’s my eighty-twenty secret.  Shh… don’t tell anyone,” he whispered.

From the outset, the drug war could have been waged primarily in overwhelmingly white suburbs or on college campuses. SWAT teams could have rappelled from helicopters in gated suburban communities and raided the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and ecstasy parties after their games. The police could have seized televisions, furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that a few joints or a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone's dresser drawer. Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance and subjected to undercover operations designed to catch them violating laws regulating the use and sale of prescription 'uppers.' All of this could have happened as a matter of routine in white communities, but it did not.

As a result, the most important recommendation for organizations of all shapes and sizes moving forward is to anticipate worst case scenarios at a minimum. Even in cases where organizations cannot or will not make some of the operational changes recommended below, the exercise of focusing on nonsoftware areas of a given business can help identify under-realized or -appreciated assets within an organization. Particularly ones for whom the sale of software has been low effort, brainstorming about other potential revenue opportunities is unlikely to be time wasted. One vendor in the business intelligence and analytics space has privately acknowledged doing just this; based on current research and projecting current trends forward, it is in the process of building out a 10-year plan over which it assumes that the upfront licensing model will gradually approach zero revenue. In its place, the vendor plans to build out subscription and data-based revenue streams. Even if the plan ultimately proves to be unnecessary, the exercise has been enormously useful internally for the insight gained into its business.

The Buffalo Evening News was established in 1880, and for years was operated by a single family, the Butlers. After Kate Robinson Butler died in 1974, the establishment-oriented Republican-leaning newspaper was put up for sale by her estate. It wasn't until the first Saturday after New Year's Day, 1977, that Buffett and Munger arrived in Weston, Connecticut, to talk to Vincent Manno, a newspaper broker who was handling the deal. Buffett first offered $30 million for the paper, but his price was refused. He then raised the bid to $32 million. The offer was high, considering that the Evening News had earned only $1.7 million pretax in 1976. However, the offer again was rejected. Buffett and Munger excused themselves to confer. They returned with a price written on a sheet of yellow legal paper. The amount, $32.5 million, was accepted. It was a daring move, since the acquisition price represented nearly 25 percent of the net worth of Berkshire Hathaway at that time.

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What they didn’t own was the mindspace and shelfspace Cadbury had painstakingly built up over 180 years, especially in emerging markets like India. Cadbury had operated in India since 1948, and have a formidable presence with a 70% share of the rapidly growing chocolate market and a sales coverage that reached over one million stores. The costs and time for Kraft to attempt to replicate this would be unsustainable. Kraft can now use the Cadbury set-up to launch their own brands, and with their superior financial resources are able to add more juice than Cadbury would have been able to. In April 2011, Cadbury India launched Oreo, the Kraft-owned world’s number-one cookie brand, using Cadbury contract manufacturing expertise to source the product locally, Cadbury mindspace to brand the product under the Cadbury name and Cadbury shelfspace capabilities to achieve widespread distribution and prominent display. Mindspace and shelfspace are the valuable currencies of FMCG industries.

gaining shelfspace has become a more strategic challenge for manufacturers. Shelfspace has to be won by planning product offerings to satisfy not just consumers’ needs but also the retailers’ objectives. Because the retailer is overwhelmed with offerings that claim to have consumer appeal – that is now a given – it is in being seen to best meet the retailers’ needs that has become the battleground. Store management wants to increase category sales, improve average margins, provide a good range to shoppers and perhaps offer exclusive products, all the while looking to increase operational efficiency and reduce inventory costs by minimising the number of lines stocked and the workload involved in getting products on the shelf. Manufacturers now have to win shelfspace by working through these complex and sometimes conflicting needs.

Provisions that set forth what the contract is about, referred to herein as the "operative provisions." For example, the operative provisions of a contract to sell the assets of a business would include a description of the assets, the calculation and method of payment of the purchase price, and the mechanics of transferring the assets. An asset sale contract containing only these operative provisions would be a very short document, legally enforceable, but not addressing many of the other important issues that buyers and sellers care about. What

Before the war, five-stories was the rule, and commercial life was carried on primarily at ground level—in streets and showrooms, at sales counters, on exchange floors. After the war, office buildings went vertical, climbing to unprecedented heights—six stories, seven, eight. “Our business men are building up to the clouds,” one newsman exclaimed. The elevator made this possible. Lift technology had improved since the vertical screw used at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Now the “steam and drum” method was available. Steel wire cables were run over a drum at the top of the shaft, which was then revolved to raise or lower the cab. An alternative model hauled the cage up and down the shaft by looping its wire cable over a pulley, then attaching a wrought-iron bucket almost as weighty as the cage. When filled with water from a tank, the bucket descended by gravity, pulling the cage up. At the bottom, an operator emptied the bucket, shifting the weight balance in favor of the cage, which then descended and pulled the bucket back up.

Life is all about selling. Being able to exchange knowledge and move people to co-operate.

David and Neil were MBA students at the Wharton School when the cash-strapped David lost his eyeglasses and had to pay $700 for replacements. That got them thinking: Could there be a better way? Neil had previously worked for a nonprofit, VisionSpring, that trained poor women in the developing world to start businesses offering eye exams and selling glasses that were affordable to people making less than four dollars a day. He had helped expand the nonprofit’s presence to ten countries, supporting thousands of female entrepreneurs and boosting the organization’s staff from two to thirty. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to Neil that an idea birthed in the nonprofit sector could be transferred to the private sector. But later at Wharton, as he and David considered entering the eyeglass business, after being shocked by the high cost of replacing David’s glasses, they decided they were out to build more than a company—they were on a social mission as well. They asked a simple question: Why had no one ever sold eyeglasses online? Well, because some believed it was impossible. For one thing, the eyeglass industry operated under a near monopoly that controlled the sales pipeline and price points. That these high prices would be passed on to consumers went unquestioned, even if that meant some people would go without glasses altogether. For another, people didn’t really want to buy a product as carefully calibrated and individualized as glasses online. Besides, how could an online company even work? David and Neil would have to be able to offer stylish frames, a perfect fit, and various options for prescriptions. With a $2,500 seed investment from Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program, David and Neil launched their company in 2010 with a selection of styles, a low price of $95, and a hip marketing program. (They named the company Warby Parker after two characters in a Jack Kerouac novel.) Within a month, they’d sold out all their stock and had a 20,000-person waiting list. Within a year, they’d received serious funding. They kept perfecting their concept, offering an innovative home try-on program, a collection of boutique retail outlets, and an eye test app for distance vision. Today Warby Parker is valued at $1.75 billion, with 1,400 employees and 65 retail stores. It’s no surprise that Neil and David continued to use Warby Parker’s success to deliver eyeglasses to those in need. The company’s Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program is unique: instead of simply providing free eyeglasses, Warby Parker trains and equips entrepreneurs in developing countries to sell the glasses they’re given. To date, 4 million pairs of glasses have been distributed through Warby Parker’s program. This dual commitment to inexpensive eyewear for all, paired with a program to improve access to eyewear for the global poor, makes Warby Parker an exemplary assumption-busting social enterprise.

Part of their approach involved making structure change to group competitive work more tightly together and separate it from noncompetitive work. The mind-set required by the two workforces is different—one to strive toward differentiation and excellence, one to aim for extraordinary efficiency. Non-competitive work is not necessarily less important—many non-strategic tasks, such as payroll, sales administration, and network operations, are absolutely crucial for running the business. But non-competitive work tends to be more transactional in nature. It often feels more urgent as well. And herein lies the problem. If the same product expert who answers demanding administrative questions and labors to fill out complicated compliance paperwork is also responsible for helping to craft unique, integrated solutions for clients, the whole client experience—the competitive work—could easily fall apart. Prying apart these two different types of activities so different teams can perform them ensures that vital competitive work is not engulfed by less competitive tasks.

Privatisation of government-owned enterprises is crucial to the project [neoliberalism]. One of the appealing features of tax cuts for neoliberal governments is that reduced revenue provides them with an excuse to sell state assets to meet the sudden budget shortfalls. The sale of state assets creates more lucrative business opportunities for the corporations that can afford to buy such things as power stations, water treatment plants, telecommunications providers, government banks and airlines. It's something of a windfall for a business to acquire an asset that will always deliver a return so long as citizens still need things like water or power supplied to their homes, a bus to catch from one place to another, or a telephone connection. And - unlike a state-owned asset - a private corporation never has to adjust its services due to democratic prompting from the electorate. Why do power prices keep going up across Australia? Because most of the power supply is now owned and operated by private corporations. They're free to price gouge on the supply of an essential service, because they can't be voted out of office. p.58-9

Privatisation of government-owned enterprises is crucial to the project [neoliberalism]. One of the appealing features of tax cuts for neoliberal governments is that reduced revenue provides them with an excuse to sell state assets to meet the sudden budget shortfalls. The sale of state assets creates more lucrative business opportunities for the corporations that can afford to buy such things as power stations, water treatment plants, telecommunications providers, government banks and airlines. It's something of a windfall for a business to acquire an asset that will always deliver a return so long as citizens still need things like water or power supplied to their homes, a bus to catch from one place to another, or a telephone connection. And - unlike a state-owned asset - a private corporation never has to adjust its services due to democratic prompting from the electorate. Why do power prices keep going up across Australia? Because most of the power supply is now owned and operated by private corporations. They're free to price gouge on the supply of an essential service, because they can't be voted out of office.

Founded in 1994, RDTS offers innovative sales and merchandising solutions to manufacturers and banners across Canada and Europe. RDTS is a company offering sales and merchandising services for various banners and brands operating in the retail field. With a team of more than 300 members, we have been helping our clients and partners achieve their goals for more than 25 years in more than 1,500 stores across Canada.

Routines provide the hundreds of unwritten rules that companies need to operate. They allow workers to experiment with new ideas without having to ask for permission at every step. They provide a kind of “organizational memory,” so that managers don’t have to reinvent the sales process every six months or panic each time a VP quits.

The easiest way to describe how to harness the galvanizing power of why is with a tool I call the belief statement. For example, most of Apple’s product launches in recent years feature slick videos with commentary from Apple designers, engineers, and executives. These videos, while camouflaged as beautiful product showcases, are actually packed with statements not about what the products do but about the design thinking behind them: in essence, the tightly held beliefs with which Apple’s design team operates. We believe our users should be at the center of everything we do. We believe that a piece of technology should be as beautiful as it is functional. We believe that making devices thinner and lighter but more powerful requires innovative problem solving. Belief statements like these are so compelling for two reasons. First, the right corporate or organizational beliefs have the ability to resonate with our personal belief systems and feelings, and move us to action. In fact, the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study revealed that nearly two out of three people are now belief-driven buyers.4 And as we saw in our discussion of buyers’ emotional motivators in chapter 3, this works even if the beliefs stated are aspirational. For example, if my vision for my future self is someone who weighs a few pounds less and is in better physical shape, a well-timed ad from a health club or fancy kitchen blender evangelizing the benefits of a healthy lifestyle may be enough to rapidly convert me. In the case of Apple, the same phenomenon results in mobs of smitten consumers arriving at stores in droves, braving long lines and paying premium prices, as if to say, “Yes! I do believe I should be at the center of everything you do! Technology should be beautiful! Thinner? Lighter? More powerful? Of course! We share the same vision! We’re both cool!” (Although these actual words are rarely spoken aloud.) The second reason belief statements are so compelling is because they help us manifest the conviction and emotion critical to delivering our message in an authentic way.

How to Quantify Achievement Stories When hiring managers, recruiters, and staffing firms see a resume or LinkedIn profile or attend an interview with verbiage but no numbers, they don’t know what those words mean. In fact, they know next to nothing until you add the numbers that explain the impact of your work. Here’s how you can resolve this issue. Work With Finance Sometimes the impact of our work is not always clear. At times like this, reaching out to one of your friends in the Finance Department can be very helpful. Finance has access to numbers that are not always readily available to other departments. If you’re no longer with the company, explain to the Finance associate that the numbers he provides could make the difference in determining whether you land another position. Using a Range Per Lily Zhang of the Muse, one reason job seekers avoid quantifying is not knowing the exact number. Lily suggests using a range. Using my work experience, here’s what that means: Before: Chaired weekly product manager meeting. After: Chaired weekly meeting with 7 to 12 product managers so plans could be discussed and coordinated. Confusion and rework were eliminated. Frequency Lily shared that one of the easiest ways to add numbers is to identify the frequency with which you perform a given task. This can help the hiring manager understand how much you can handle. For example: Before: Responded to pricing requests from the Sales Force. After: Responded to 15 to 20 pricing requests from the Sales Force on a daily basis. Scale Everyone on the hiring side of the business loves when candidates provide numbers, because numbers explain the impact of what you’ve done. The most meaningful numbers are those associated with making money, saving money, and driving productivity. Here are a couple examples from my work experience: Before: Reduced time to perform Operations Manager’s role; after analysis showed tasks could be batched and performed at the end of the month. After: Reduced time to perform Operations Manager role by 66%; after analysis showed tasks could be batched and performed at the end of the month. Asked Director if I could take on the responsibilities of employees who were laid off. Before: Analysis revealed misconfigured offers; worked with other departments to correct errors. Implemented process to prevent future errors. After: Analysis revealed misconfigured offers; worked with other departments to correct errors. Recognized $7.2M. Implemented process to prevent future errors.

It's also important for tech product managers to have a broad understanding of the types of analytics that are important to your product. Many have too narrow of a view. Here is the core set for most tech products: User behavior analytics (click paths, engagement) Business analytics (active users, conversion rate, lifetime value, retention) Financial analytics (ASP, billings, time to close) Performance (load time, uptime) Operational costs (storage, hosting) Go‐to‐market costs (acquisition costs, cost of sales, programs) Sentiment (NPS, customer satisfaction, surveys)

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Food License Consultant A food license consultant is one type of bridge that can help you to issue your food license. There are many companies available that can help you to grow your business. They can guide your whole process and explain the fee structure and government fee and some legal documents. If you are looking for the best food license consultants in your city then you can visit our website. Here you can get many verified professionals. Here are some details about the food license which are listed below. What is Food License? What is Food License Registration? What are the types of FSSAI Licenses? What are the documents needed for Food License Registration? What is a food License (FSSAI License)? FSSAI stands for Food Safety Standards Authority of India, which is a statutory body established under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. It has been established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which is related to food safety and regulation in India. A food license is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through regulation and supervision of food safety. Food License Registration A food license is required for every person who wants to start a food business, who can involve in any kind of business like manufacturing, processing, distribution, or sale of food products, etc. A food license consists of 14 digit license number, which can print on all the food packages item. It gives all information regarding the assembling and owner’s permit. The motive of registration is to make the food business operators more responsible that can maintain the quality of food products. Types Of FSSAI License There are different types of food licenses that can depend on the scale of business, and on the turnover provided by the business owner. The government issue different type of license based on the food business operator activity. The types if food licenses are as below: 1) FSSAI Basic Registration: The FSSAI basic license registration for those who have a small-scale business. If their turnover is less than 12 lakh then apply for basic registration. 2) FSSAI State License: The FSSAI State License registration for those who have medium-scale businesses. If their turnover is more than 12 Lakh or up to 20 crores. 3) FSSAI Central License: The FSSAI Central License registration for those who have large-scale businesses. If their turnover is more than 20 crores then it can apply for Central License. Document required for Food License Registration The food license registration document required for the proprietorship Concern or a single person 1) Rental Agreement 2) Pan Card 3) Two Photos 4) ID Proof The food license registration document required for the Partnership Firm 1) Pan Card of Partnership Firm 2) All partner’s Id and Address Proof 3) Two Photos of Each Partner 4) Rental Agreement The food license registration document required for Private Limited Company 1) Pan Card of Private Limited Company. 2) Incorporation Certificate of Private Limited Company. 3) All Director’s Id and Address Proof 4) Two Photos of Each Director. 5) Rental Agreement. Best FSSAI License Consultant in India We are a team of FSSAI Registration centers, helping business owners in the registration, and certification procedures all over India. If you have further queries or doubts, then please visit our website. Tags food license online, food license, fssai license, fssai license registration, fssai license registration online, fssai registration, fssai license fee, fssai license documents, food licensing, fssai renewal, fssai apply online, fssai online, fssai registration form, fssai license registration consultant, fssai license consultant, fssai consultant, food license consultant in Ahmedabad, Food license consultant in Delhi, Food license consultant in Mumbai, Food license consultant in Kolkata

We analyzed the ten tech companies worth over a billion dollars that went public in 2014 and 2015, and the average company spent a jaw-dropping $0.72 on sales and marketing for every $1.00 of sales during the three-year hypergrowth period before going public. As a matter of fact, one of the companies, Box, spent $1.59 for every $1.00 in sales! You’re probably wondering, how does a company like Box justify spending more money on sales and marketing than they generate in sales? The answer is “customer lifetime value.” Once Box mathematically proved that they could acquire a customer for less than the lifetime value (LTV) of that customer, they raised a war chest of investment capital and didn’t care if they spent more on sales and marketing than they generated in annual sales, because they knew that they would generate a big return in the long run. You probably don’t have access to a massive war chest of investment capital, but that doesn’t mean you are unable to invest more resources on growth. Instead of benchmarking your growth investment against customer lifetime value, benchmark against your bottom-line profits. Here is a list of financial scenarios and corresponding actions: If you desire growth and have a profitable business, operate at a break-even point and reinvest the profit, or a portion of the profit, back into growth. If you are running a break-even or unprofitable business, spend some time going through your expenditures looking for redundancies or unnecessary expenses. If you cannot find any opportunities to save money, prepare yourself to take a temporary pay cut (you can time this around your tax refund or right after your busy period if your business has seasonality). If you are unable to take a temporary pay cut, prepare yourself to work some extra hours (start by batching activities so you can spend a day per week working from home, and use the time you save when not having a work commute to invest in growth). If you are unable to take a temporary pay cut AND unable to work any extra hours, then read the paragraph below.

Too often aspiring entrepreneurs and managers in established firms confine their focus to only one part of their company’s business model. The sales force worries about the revenue model, or if they are incentivized on gross margin, about the gross margin model as well. The procurement team focuses on the gross margin and operating models, by keeping costs down, whether for COGS or operations. And so on. But, ultimately, if everyone thinks about the business in business model terms, decisions are made differently.

Value can’t be created without understanding what people want (market research). Attracting customers first requires getting their attention, then making them interested (marketing). In order to close a sale, people must trust your ability to deliver on what’s promised (value delivery and operations). Customer satisfaction depends on exceeding the customer’s expectations (customer service). Profit sufficiency requires bringing in more money than is spent (finance).

Revenue Operations comprises two components. First, the management system – our EQ – aligns the people in your revenue teams. Second, the operating system – our IQ – combines technology, processes, and data assets to generate more sustainable and scalable growth. Revenue Operations weaves these two together to grow revenues, profits, and firm value.

Following the tour, the guides usher the visitors into a cavernous hall where interactive displays invite them to press buttons to learn about the different parts of the dollar or to hear about its history. Children press the buttons, but the lights do not go on, and so none of the questions are answered. They rush to the next interactive display only to find that it too no longer interacts. The large room also offers souvenirs for sale, such as a souvenir pen filled with shredded money. In a corner, Japanese tourists buy sheets of uncut American currency from women behind security windows of thick glass. They take the money home with them to use as novelty wrapping paper for gifts and flowers. The twentieth century became the era of paper money. Never before had so much of it been manufactured in so many countries and in so many denominations. Behind the perpetually operating machines of the U.S. Treasury lay a long process whereby paper money won the confidence of ordinary people.

In those days, I tried to operate on a 2 percent general office expense structure. In other words, 2 percent of sales should have been enough to carry our buying office, our general office expense, my salary, Bud’s salary—and after we started adding district managers or any other officers—their salaries too. Believe it or not, we haven’t changed that basic formula from five stores to two thousand stores.

of business. It is one reason why so many small companies fail in their first year. They simply run out of cash. CASH WITHOUT PROFIT But now let’s look at another sort of profit/cash disparity. Fine Apparel is another start-up. It sells expensive men’s clothing, and it’s located in a part of town frequented by businessmen and well-to-do tourists. Its sales for the first three months are $50,000, $75,000, and $95,000—again, a healthy growth trend. Its cost of goods sold is 70 percent of sales, and its monthly operating expenses are $30,000 (high rent!). For the sake of comparison, we’ll say it too begins the period with $10,000 in the bank. So Fine Apparel’s income statement for these months looks like this: It hasn’t yet turned the corner on profitability, though it is losing less

As I was to learn, the process for creating the digital media business would be quite different because there was so much more to creating a great digital media customer experience than simply adding the next retail category to the Amazon website. The first part of the process went as normal. Our team of three or four people developed plans using the tried-and-true MBA-style methods of the time. We gathered data about the size of the market opportunity. We constructed financial models projecting our annual sales in each category, assuming, of course, an ever-increasing share of digital sales. We calculated gross margin assuming a certain cost of goods from our suppliers. We projected an operating margin based on the size of the team we would need to support the business. We outlined the deals we would make with media companies. We sketched out pricing parameters. We described how the service would work for customers. We put it all together in crisp-looking PowerPoint slides (this was still several months before the switch to narratives) and comprehensive Excel spreadsheets.

The market niche must be growing fast A venture is not a star unless the niche where it operates is growing by at least 10 per cent a year. More precisely, the niche must grow at least 10 per cent a year, on average, over the next five years, and preferably for decades. Why is growth important? Because the power of compound arithmetic is such that, in a high-growth venture, sales - and profits, when they appear - will multiply quickly. It is quite different from the great majority of firms, which grow only slowly, and where profit growth is difficult and far from automatic.

Step 1: Intro “Is this Nancy Kowalczik? Koh - wal - chik.” “Yes” “Hey, It’s Justin Michael from Acme Corp.” Step 2: Route “Just curious... Who’s in charge of your CX strategy?” “Why, what’s this about?” “I have some CX tech but don’t want to waste your time... just curious who heads up CX, does that roll up to you?” Step 3: Ruin (Peel the Onion) “Yes” “How do you do that now? Do you handle it internally or work with a 3rd party?

The objective of the Market Coverage sales metrics is to help make staffing and time allocation adjustments that will keep your sales force operating at peak productivity. There

From the outset, the drug war could have been waged primarily in overwhelmingly white suburbs or on college campuses. SWAT teams could have rappelled from helicopters in gated suburban communities and raided the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and ecstasy parties after their games. The police could have seized televisions, furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that a few joints or a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone’s dresser drawer. Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance and subjected to undercover operations designed to catch them violating laws regulating the use and sale of prescription “uppers.” All of this could have happened as a matter of routine in white communities, but it did not.

Take, for instance, the task of training a sales force to sell a new product. The three types of production operations can be easily identified. The conversion of large amounts of raw data about the product into meaningful selling strategies comprehensible to the sales personnel is a process step, which transforms data into strategies. The combination of the various sales strategies into a coherent program can be compared to an assembly step. Here the appropriate product-selling strategies and pertinent market data (such as competitive pricing and availability) are made to flow into one presentation, along with such things as brochures, handouts, and flip charts. The test operation comes in the form of a “dry run” presentation with a selected group of field sales personnel and field sales management. If the dry run fails the test, the material must be “reworked” (another well-established manufacturing concept) to meet the concerns and objections of the test audience.

First Rule of Profit Making: Know Your Business The time-honored truth "Knowledge is power" is especially pertinent to the owner-manager of a small business. To keep your company pointed toward profit you must keep yourself well informed about it. You must know how the company is doing before you can improve its operation. You must know its weak points before you can correct them. Some of the knowledge you need you pick up from day-to-day personal observation, but records should be your principal source of information about profits, costs, and sales.

data, models, transformation. Data is the creative use of internal and external data to give you a broader view on what is happening to your operations or your customer. Modeling is all about using that data to get workable models that can either help you predict better or allow you to optimize better in terms of your business.

Sunt oameni a căror prodigioasă viaţă creează aparenţa unui principiu cinetic şi progresiv.Oamenii unei idei,ai unei opere,creiere şi voinţe montate definitiv în aceeaşi schemă,fără putinţă de revizuit,de modelat altor experienţe;imuni şi absoluţi.Chiar după ce depăşesc instinctele,se lasă robi unor dogme pe care nu le mai pot însufleţi,unor scheme inerte sau supersitiţii mediocre.De pildă,superstiţia de a fi şi a rămâne raţionalist,de a fi pur şi bun,de a fi absolut,sau orricare altă schemă nefastă,ce ignoră fundamentala necesitate a omului întrucât vieţuieşte ca om:de a nu fi robul nici uneia din creaţiile sale,de a nu fi nici robul personalităţii sale deja realizate,ci de a încerca întodeauna depăşirea,creşterea,rodirea în pofida oricărei victorii sau agonii.Acesta este unul dintre sensurile existenţei:de a o epuiza conştient şi glorios,în cât mai multe văzduhuri,de a te împlini şi rotunji continuu,de a afla ascensiunea,iar nu circumferinţa,drum care să înfăptuiască toate virtuţile şi să reveleze nu o inteligenţă sau o încrengătură de instincte,ci omul.

Bob Goff, the craziest lawyer, love activist, world-changer I know, and the delightful author of Love Does, says this: The world can make you think that love can be picked up at a garage sale or enveloped in a Hallmark card. But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence. It’s a love that operates more like a sign language than being spoken outright. . . . The brand of love Jesus offers is . . . more about presence than undertaking a project. It’s a brand of love that doesn’t just think about good things, or agree with them, or talk about them . . . Love does.1

Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7).

Asset-light industries are attractive since they require less capital to be deployed in order to generate sales growth. The finest examples are franchise operations, such as Domino’s Pizza, where growth is funded by franchisees rather than by the company. Other

I understand conditions may not be all rosy and that some sales cultures are not ideal. Regardless, your job is to bring your A-game every day. This is not accounting. We can’t just show up and do our jobs well regardless of how miserable we are. Salespeople just going through the motions can’t possibly operate at peak output. If it’s that bad, find another job. Believe me, if you can sell, there are plenty of companies that would love to have you. If it isn’t that bad, engage your heart and bring a winning attitude to the team and the rest of the company.

Ellis had a history of creating fake movements in support of unpopular corporations and causes. In the 1990s, he had headed a company called Ramhurst, which documents revealed to be a covert public relations arm of R. J. Reynolds, the giant tobacco company. Under his guidance, Ramhurst organized deceptively homegrown-looking “smokers’ rights” protests against proposed regulations and taxes on tobacco. In 1994 alone, R. J. Reynolds funneled $2.6 million to Ramhurst to deploy operatives who mobilized what they called “partisans” to stage protests against the Clinton health-care proposal, which would have imposed a stiff tax on cigarette sales. Anti-health-care rallies that year echoed with cries of “Go back to Russia!” If the outbursts bore a striking resemblance to those against Obama’s health-care proposal fifteen years later, it may be because the same political operatives were involved in both. Two of Ellis’s former top aides at Ramhurst, Doug Goodyear and Tom Synhorst, went on in 1996 to form DCI Group, the public relations firm that was helping Noble foment Tea Party protests against the Affordable Care Act.

Unlike traditional retailers, Amazon boasted what was called a negative operating cycle. Customers paid with their credit cards when their books shipped but Amazon settled its accounts with the book distributors only every few months. With every sale, Amazon put more cash in the bank, giving it a steady stream of capital to fund its operations and expansion.14 The company could also lay claim to a uniquely high return on invested capital. Unlike brick-and-mortar retailers, whose inventories were spread out across hundreds or thousands of stores around the country, Amazon had one website and, at that time, a single warehouse and inventory. Amazon’s ratio of fixed costs to revenue was considerably more favorable than that of its offline competitors. In other words, Bezos and Covey argued, a dollar that was plugged into Amazon’s infrastructure could lead to exponentially greater returns than a dollar that went into the infrastructure of any other retailer in the world.

Service is an intangible set of benefits, created by a series of activities. Over the last decade in the IT industry, the distinction between “products” and “services” is blurred, as products are positioned as services, and services are packaged as products. To blur the distinction between products and services is more of a marketing strategy and does not constitute real differentiation. Not only will the sales and pricing strategy between products and services greatly differ, but so will the management approach. Solution is not service, either.

The arcade cabinet has become a rare sight in the United States, but in their best year, coin-operated games collected quarters that, adjusting for inflation, sum to more than twice the 2006 sales of U.S. computer and videogame software.5

Depending on what market you operate in, if you’re able to convert anywhere from 1-10% of cold traffic into customers on that same visit sale, you’re doing very well.

But I paid particular attention to the french-fry operation. The brothers had indicated this was one of the key elements in their sales success, and they’d described the process.

These data rarely exist in one place in the organization so you’ll need to pull in people from multiple functions such as marketing, sales, in-store operations, IT, and beyond. We’ve seen companies create small “SWAT” teams that assemble people from these functions to break through bureaucratic logjams.

That winter was a particularly tough one for the paper cup business. Everything slowed down except for the hospital and medical clinic sales, and I didn’t have any of those places for customers. I didn’t do very well, because I thought of the customer first. I didn’t try to force an order on a soda fountain operator when I could see that his business had fallen off because of cold weather and he didn’t need the damn cups. My philosophy was one of helping my customer, and if I couldn’t sell him by helping him improve his own sales, I felt I wasn’t doing my job.

In the late 1990s, Parachute was the market leader with more than 50 per cent market share. Fresh from its success in taking market share in toothpaste away from Colgate using Pepsodent, HUL entered the coconut oil category to take on Marico. Dadiseth, the then chairman of HUL, had warned Mariwala to sell Marico to HUL or face dire consequences. Mariwala decided to take on the challenge. Even the capital markets believed that Marico stood no chance against the might of HUL which resulted in Marico’s price-to-earnings ratio dipping to as low as 7x, as against 13x during its listing in 1996. As part of its plans to take on Marico, HUL relaunched Nihar in 1998, acquired Cococare from Redcon and positioned both brands as price challengers to Parachute. In addition, HUL also increased advertising and promotion spends for its brands. In one quarter in FY2000, HUL’s advertising and promotional (A&P) spend on coconut oil alone was an amount which was almost equivalent to Marico’s full year A&P budget (around Rs 30 crore). As Milind Sarwate, former CFO of Marico, recalls, ‘Marico’s response was typically entrepreneurial and desi. We quickly realized that we have our key resource engine under threat. So, we re-prioritized and focused entirely on Parachute. We gave the project a war flavour. For example, the business conference on this issue saw Mariconians dressed as soldiers. The project was called operation Parachute ki Kasam. The leadership galvanized the whole team. It was exhilarating as the team realized the gravity of the situation and sprang into action. We were able to recover lost ground and turn the tables, so much so that eventually Marico acquired the aggressor brand, Nihar.’ Marico retaliated by relaunching Parachute: (a) with a new packaging; (b) with a new tag line highlighting its purity (Shuddhata ki Seal—or the seal of purity); (c) by widening its distribution; and (d) by launching an internal sales force initiative. Within twelve months, Parachute regained its lost share, thus limiting HUL’s growth. Despite several relaunches, Nihar failed against Parachute. Eventually, HUL dropped the brand Nihar off its power brand list before selling it off to Marico in 2006. Since then, Parachute has been the undisputed leader in the coconut oil category. This leadership has ensured that when one visits the hair oil section in a retail store, about 80 per cent of the shelves are occupied by Marico-branded hair oil.

Unlike traditional retailers, Amazon boasted what was called a negative operating cycle. Customers paid with their credit cards when their books shipped but Amazon settled its accounts with the book distributors only every few months. With every sale, Amazon put more cash in the bank, giving it a steady stream of capital to fund its operations and expansion.14 The company could also lay claim to a uniquely high return on invested capital. Unlike