Within friction, lies opportunity or demise. If products are products, which they mostly are, and service is service, which it mostly is, where is the next edge of competition? Friction holds the key to unlock your advantage. As it does for your competitors too.

Aurik’s move to bigger and better offices at the end of September shows that growth is possible in a no-growth economy.

Having recently returned from a trip to the UK, I reflected on the comments leading up to it, from people that I was scheduled to meet. “Don’t come now, rather delay to November or next year,” they said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the Pound has been pounded and our politicians are making a real mess of things and our country is socially divided and our business confidence indexes are at an all time low,” they said.
“That’s everyday life in South Africa,” I responded “and, in that environment, our clients enjoyed an average annual revenue growth of 28.9%.”
After a brief pause… “Come they said, come and let’s understand how to grow a business in choppy waters.”

You might have noticed that it takes longer to get deals done in today’s economy. What took 6 weeks is taking 12 to 16 weeks; what took 3 months is now taking 9 months if not a year. There are many reasons for it, but the reality is that to get deals done, you have sell across three domains.

Today, you need product value propositions, mindset value propositions and economic value propositions. Missing out one of them will double up on the time it usually takes you to do your deals.

Listen to the podcast HERE

Pavlo Phitidis announced the launch of Aurik Capital, a S12J Fund to back the growth of established businesses with annual revenues between R15m to R150m.

Pricing sensitivity has driven innovation for years. Because the economy is a massive, complex ecosystem, everything in it is linked and poor growth drives pricing pressures on us all. Yet, the fundamentals of pricing are static. How then do you deal with pricing in this economy when you face the challenges stated in the message below?

This is a Twitter message from a listener “The pricing game is emotional…Suppliers raise prices and you are forced to decide:
1. Do you segment and risk alienating the very people you want to be serving or,
2. Run at a loss until economies of scale kick-in and you can negotiate better bulk cost price. HELP”