Old, Cranky and Gay

Well- after repeated requests to revitalize my blog, I've decided my fan base has spoken, so I'm putting it back into publication. This is the first of many entries that will bring you up to speed with what's been happening over the past 2 months.

The whiskers are long gone and I'm back to full speed in my studies... but not for long- I have a few more weeks of projects and essays and then I'm done my MBA entirely

I'm completing my assignment for B2B marketing- I'm having writer's block writing a value statement for a home gym (weights station and treadmill) versus a membership at a fitness club. I've crunched the numbers and of course and the home gym comes out on top for the scope of the project which asses the Value In Use of the product.

This semester in my two electives- Sales Force Management and B2B marketing I contributed to class discussion referring to the place where you can still see old school closing (read Zig Ziggler hard close approaches) at work- in any fitness club.

The context is dichotomous to say the least- the fitness club industry is a mature market- highly competitive, price driven, with intense capital investment (real estate and expensive equipment) which would defend pure hard close techniques employed. However, it also has elements of emerging markets- that is a user base that's growing, a distinct value differentiation, and limited brand significance; which suggests value based selling techniques would be more suitable.

Additionally- it's a membership based business model with recurring fees as opposed to one-off, which is also the place for value driven sales techniques.

I've had nightmarish experience with membership coordinators getting pushy, using all sorts of old school closing techniques (the alternate close, the Ben Franklin, the Assumptive close, the Puppy Dog) and then try the good old "Criticize the other person's training program" approach and when that fails- try to rip me off.

So- that's where the problem emerges- the client needs an emerging market soft close for piece of mind, but economics of the industry requires management to impose strict quota and mature market sales approaches.

I also completed an essay this weekend applying McGregor's theories of management technique to real world examples. Ubiquitously known as Theory X and Theory Y management techniques tie in psychology and sociology of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Very interesting stuff- even if pure application of Theory X and Theory Y is rarely going to be effective- I tried to prove in my essay the places where strong Theory X or Theory Y heavy management would give the best results.

I did a project on Apple for Business Policy. Over the course of the research- I must say that Apple lost some of it's luster. I didn't know that Apple had so many issues! I guess that's the benefit of having only 5% of the market- your serious issues can fly under the radar, and the brand loyalty is so strong- a cult-like bond that the customers over look the problems. I guess that's love for ya!

I also am doing a project for Financial Statement Analysis. We have a guy in the class who got hired by McKinsey consulting, and circulated the McKinsey model for valuations. I applied it to the financial documents of my company and I got some strange results- so I double checked the model... Then I realized I was actually applying the Kinsey model, not the McKinsey model.

I guess that explained why it said my company was 2/3 gay.