This is a great book for marketers looking to engage around the sustainability debate. What sounds like an oxymoron, "Sustainability Marketing", is examined as part of the evolutionary process of marketing thought. The authors propose that this approach needs to be brought into the mainstream of marketing. They suggest that sustainability marketing is marketing that is:

Surviving and thriving in the modern world of business, means determining, defining and delivering a competitive value proposition to your customers.

As I work with sales teams both in South Africa and abroad, I am amazed how quickly they respond to the question, “Why should I buy from you?” with a somewhat vanilla “because of my personal service.” Whilst service is to be commended, the research shows that that customers tend to punish bad service more readily than they reward delightful service. Delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty, rather reducing your customers’ effort –the work they must do to get their problem solved- does. 

 I had the privilege recently of meeting Vanessa Hall, Founder of Entente International Movement of Trust and author of, "The Truth about Trust". Vanessa's personal story and the journey that she has travelled in exploring the role that trust plays in society is extremely thought-provoking. Vanessa uses a simple but profound model to explain how trust, or the lack of it, underpins our interactions with one another. Trust is based on expectations, needs and promises (either implicit or explicit). When expectation or needs are not met and promises are not kept, then trust is broken. Vanessa's recommendations for building trust are:

It is a cliché to say that South Africa is an extraordinary country with

extraordinary people that passed relatively unscathed through an

extraordinary time. Yet it is only a cliché to us who live in this

extraordinary place everyday of our lives, and have become blasé about our

achievements.

After 18 months of testing of a range of virtual delivery platforms, Andrew Brough Communications has decided to become a licensed provider of virtual training solutions using the Adobe® Connect™ platform. This is an ideal platform for our delivery of  elearning, webconferencing, web seminars and virtual classroom programmes in leadership and organisational development, sales training, negotiation skills, presentation skills and even high performance intact and virtual teams.

GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS- Andy Brough

Global virtual teams communicate and work asynchronously or synchronously through a range of technologies such as telephone, electronic mail, bulletin boards, audio,/video/data conferencing, automated workflow and even collaborative writing. In spite of all of this technology trust is built most effectively through face-face communication. a global team. The further apart people are from one another geographically, the more they need to focus on developing trust with one another. Paradoxically, the further they are from one another, the more difficult it becomes to build trust. This situation creates fragmentation, isolation and confusion. When we add the issues of cross cultural communication into the mix, this becomes even more challenging.

Creating and communicating value –by Andy Brough

If you aim to survive In the modern world of business, determining competitive advantage is a non-negotiable. This week as I worked with two different sales teams to define their  competitive advantage , I was struck by how quickly they responded to the question, “Why should I buy from you?” with a somewhat vanilla “because of my personal service.” Whilst service is to be commended, Dixon, Freeman, and Toman, (2010) observed that customers tend to punish bad service more readily than they reward delightful service. Delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty, rather reducing their effort –the work they must do to get their problem solved- does.