Podcast on Breaking Failure book
Interview by the "Flourish With Failure" podcast show on the topic of failure. The show can be found at Podcast on Failure or at the iTunes store at http://apple.co/1NY0Tmb
What does Vince Lombardi & Engineering have that McDonald’s should consider emulating? Metallic hamburger buns anyone?
McDonalds is one of 10 companies currently on our Failure Watch, its latest initiative seems to have not just stalled but potentially backfired…. with its franchisee’s. Several media outlets like the International Business Times and the NY Post picked up on a survey conducted by Japanese finance company Nomura of 29 franchise operators who own [...]
The shiny object compulsion
When Vince Lombardi took over the until-then losing Green Bay Packers football team, he was asked what he was going to change. The players, the strategy, the plays, or the training? Lombardi replied that he wouldn’t change any of these but would instead concentrate on being “brilliant on the basics.” His response came to mind [...]
Featured Speaker at the 2015 PDMA Conference November 10th
Very excited to be speaking at an organization near and dear to me, the Product Development and Management Association. My first article on the topic --the use of Root Cause Analysis --was published in the March 2011 edition of the PDMA's "Visions" magazine. I will be the Keynote speaker at the 2015 PDMA Annual Conference [...]
Failure Watch-Top 10
The following are products and companies which are on our Failure Watch The following are the reasons I put these products and companies on the Failure Watch list, for those not familiar with Altman's z-score, it is a formula that helps to predict the likelihood that a company will be facing bankruptcy within a 12 [...]
Is Search Engine Submission Necessary?
The simple answer is no - search engine submission isn’t necessary. The majority of search engines nowadays (most notably Google) crawl and index pages by following links. Using that logic, a single inbound link from any already-indexed page will identify your page to the engine. Subsequently, if that page links to other pages within your site, they [...]
Sales Funnel Audits and Benchmarks
One of the things companies need to do is audit their sales funnel: below is an example of how you should benchmark your top vs. the average salesperson's performance. In this example, it appears that the average salesperson will outperform the top salesperson-an audit however would reveal that the best sales representative converts better [...]
The Importance of Anchor Text in Back-links
The importance of anchor text with respect to a linking strategy cannot be overstated. Back-links are a huge part of the search engine algorithm. When initiating a linking campaign, it is vital that external sites link using the appropriate keywords and terms in the anchor text. Almost always, linking candidates will use the company name as anchor [...]
Absolute Links vs. Relative Links – SEO Value
The debate between absolute links and relative links continues to live on in the SEO world. The individual significance of each has been contested, but it is widely regarded that absolute links provide better SEO value on the whole than relative links. Many believe that absolute links have less potential for getting messed up when search engines [...]
Incorporation of Company Branding and SEO
SEO is not an exact science. This becomes apparent when trying to incorporate both SEO and branding into a strategy. This process is finicky to say the least. On the one side, SEO deals with the placement of keywords and phrases. On the other side, branding deals with company loyalty and culture. Incorporating both sides dilutes the [...]