Management Questions

1. Do your suppliers have lower operating costs than yours, and do you get low prices from suppliers?
2. Do your suppliers provide you with product or process innovations?
3. Do your suppliers have products and processes of the best quality?
4. Do your suppliers reduce your costs and risk in product launches?
5. Are your suppliers financially healthy?
6. Do you formulate unique plans for each supplier to help you build competitive advantage?
7. Does your supplier base enable you to take advantage of strategic opportunities to manufacture globally?
8. Do you make appropriate investments to reduce operating cost, improve quality, and drive innovation?

Source:
Building the Advantaged Supply Network
by Bill Jackson
strategy+business, Fall 2004

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1. What aspects of your supply chain have the most influence on your brand promise and your customers’ buying experience?
2. Is your brand promise aligned with your current supply chain capabilities?
3. How can you ensure that marketing executives know your supply chain’s capabilities and limitations while supply chain executives know the brand promise and their role in fulfilling it?

Source:
How Your Supply Chain Can Build or Destroy Your Brand
by Bret Kinsella
MarketingProfs.com, April 20, 2004

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• What do you want to do, and how will you know when you’ve done it?
• Who are the intended beneficiaries?
• What benefits do our programs create?
• What do we want to maximize?
• How do we define success?
• What won’t we do?
• What would make us obsolete?
• What do you think your beneficiaries need in order to achieve the intended impact?
• What are the most important elements of your programs’ content and structure? How do these lead to your desired outcomes?
• What was the thinking behind the selection of these elements in achieving your intended impact?
• What is the minimum length of time that a beneficiary needs to be engaged to achieve the intended outcome?

Source:
It’s Back to Business-Basics for Nonprofits
by Jeff Bradach
HBS Working Knowledge, February 23, 2004

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• Which of your goals are “must have” vs. “would like to have?”
• What will you say if the other parry says “no” to your opening offer?
• What concessions are you willing to make? (Check with your accountant about such issues as payment terms and tax implications.)
• What credible excuse can you give if you need to buy time to confer with others and/or think about an offer from the opposing side?
• Who can you bring along to listen to the conversation, ask questions you might not think of, and give you useful advice?
• What are the limits of the other party’s power over you?
• What are the laws governing both sides?
• What has the relationship between the firms been like in the past?
• What other products and services can you offer or buy that could expand the relationship and put the current deal in a different perspective?
• What are your long-term marketing goals and their impact on this relationship?

Source:
Negotiate from Strength – the art of negotiation in business
by Scott Smith
Success, July, 2000

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Traditional Measurement Needs
Financial

• Are we focusing on the right financial measures to judge the success of our company/divisions/units?
• How much of our value is reflected in our balance sheet? Do we have the right balance between financial and non-financial measures to address key intangible assets beyond the balance sheet?

Operational

• Do we have the right short-term operational measures in place to respond quickly when an activity central to the core business (around sales and delivery to customers) goes awry?
• To what extent do we measure both the effectiveness and efficiency of operational processes?

Operational

• How well do we measure and monitor shifts in customer needs and expectations?
• Do our operational teams clearly understand their role in fulfilling customer needs, and are they measured and provided incentives accordingly?

Employee

• Have we aligned compensation to our strategic objectives, and how is performance measured, rewarded, and recognized?
• Do we regularly measure employee satisfaction and take action with the results?

Emerging Measurement Needs
Market

• How well does our measurement system track changes in industry and external forces that impact the continuing relevance of our strategy/business model?
• What do we need to measure and monitor on an ongoing basis around existing and emerging competitor activities?

 Stakeholder

• Do we understand who our stakeholders are, what their needs and expectations may be, and measure how we are meeting those needs and expectations, as well as trade-offs between stakeholders? Do we fall prey to assuming we know what stakeholders want?
• How well do we measure and monitor shifts in stakeholder needs and expectations?

Strategic

• Do our measures align with and facilitate implementation of our strategy?
• Has the measurement system been reviewed/updated for recent events including strategic changes, acquisitions or divestitures, leadership changes, and industry or regulatory changes?
• Does the measurement system tell us if the vision/mission/strategy is “alive” and driving behavior in the organization?

Resource

• Do we have measures in place to tell us how well we are marshalling resources today and whether we have the right tangible and intangible resources to achieve our strategy?
• Do we have the right information to determine where we should be building and acquiring competencies (talent, alliances, distribution channels, software, etc.) for the future?

Source:
Achieving Measurable Performance Improvement in a Changing World
by KPMG

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• Will overall sales strategy – as well as individual company and product strategies – be enhanced by an integrated sales force?
• Is there a large overlap among potential customer segments?
• Do companies market products to common customer segments?
• Do the products require similar types of sales skills?
• Does the sales force contact the same type/level of decision maker?
• Are customers generally amenable to the merger?

Source:
Keeping your sales force after the merger
by Matthias M. Bekier
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2002 Number 4

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• In your portfolio of brands, which ones are candidates for SKU reduction and which are not? In each case, you must use market analysis to make sure you understand the nature of the category and the motives of the consumer.
• What drives complexity and costs in your product line? It may be SKU proliferation, and it may be trade deals or manufacturing and logistical waste.
• If you contemplate SKU reductions, will they be deep enough to affect fixed costs? Unless they are, you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face.
• How many of your SKUs are promotional? What gyrations does your organization go through to produce them? How many can you eliminate?
• What tradeoffs are you making between cost and complexity on the one hand and revenues and consumer loyalty on the other? In a premium category, not all complexity is bad. In no category is revenue reduction good.

Source:
The Complexity of Reducing Complexity
by Vijay Vishwanath
Bain & Company, 1/1/1997

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Use these six questions to gauge the speed of adoption of your product or service:

• Does the target perceive that the product/service adds value?
• Is the product compatible with current practices and processes?
• Is the product/service easy to understand and use?
• Can the product/service be sampled and/or trialed?
• What is the risk factor in buying/using the product? (Tip: lower is better.)
• Is it easy to communicate the advantages of the product/service?

Source:
A Marketing Toolkit for Every CEO
by Laura Patterson
MarketingProfs.com, September 13, 2005

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• What business are we in?
• What market(s) do we serve?
• What are our customers’ special needs?
• Who is our competition?
• What makes us different from our competitors?
• What benefits do clients derive from our services?
• How can we get everyone in our company to tell the same story?

Source:
A Road Map to Advertising Results
by Jeff Propper
MarketingProfs.com

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• How will marketing in cyberspace change your distribution channels and internal business systems, and how rapidly and effectively you can manage those changes?
• What are all of the ways that one of our customers or potential customers can form an impression of our brand, our company or our products/services?
• How much does it cost to acquire a new customer?
• How does your business determine the true value of a customer once acquired?
• What is an average customer worth?
• Are customers buying what you think you are selling?

Source:
From Market Research to Customer Insight
by Mohanbir Sawhney
ManyWorlds, 12/08/2003

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