Barry Urquhart Travels from WA
Fee Range: :$5001 to $10000
Barry Urquhart's Biography
From profit squeeze and changes and challenges in your industry to how to future proof your business Barry Uquhart is a business consultant and expert helping many businesses and organisations smart enough to engage him.
Barry Urquhart, Managing Director, Marketing Focus, Perth, is an inspiring speaker, author of Australia's top two selling books on customer service and an international consultant on dynamic innovation and creativity. Barry is renowned internationally for his strikingly accurate forecast of the finish of the economic boom in 2008.
His well documented projection from early in 2006 of a specific date made media headlines around the world and enabled clients to plan for the event … 10.35pm, Sunday 24 August, 2008. It was the closing moments of the Beijing Olympics. Barry's subsequent warnings of the credit meltdown, increasing unemployment levels and branch, plant, model and services closures have enabled companies, large and small, to gain and sustain competitive advantages. Barry is author of six books, including the two largest selling publications on service excellence in Australasia. His latest is “Marketing Magic – Streetsmart Marketing”.
Each year Barry travels some 300,000 kilometres on five continents to deliver up to 120 keynote addresses, and to facilitate around 15 strategic planning workshops. He is a regular commentator of consumer issues on ABC radio, is featured on a series of interview topics on “Today Tonight” and contributes articles to 49 magazines throughout the world.
Barry Urquhart is a former lecturer in Marketing and Management at the Curtin University of Technology and has degrees in marketing, political science and sociology. He is a regular commentator of consumer issues on ABC radio, is featured on a series of interview topics on “Today Tonight” and contributes articles to 47 magazines throughout the world. Barry Urquhart is a former lecturer in Marketing and Management at the Curtin University of Technology and has degrees in marketing, political science and sociology. His sixth and latest publication is "Marketing Magic – Streetsmart Marketing". Barry is renowned for his conference presentations, "Business Warfare" and "Breakthrough Merchandising" and "It Is Better To Be Different Than It Is To Be Better". His address, "Service that Sells" focuses on the need for improved customer service to achieve enhanced sales, profits and customer satisfaction.
Barry Urquhart contributes to 42 marketing, business and trade magazines on five continents, records weekly commentaries for the national network of ABC Radio and a monthly feature for the in-flight audio magazine, "Strictly Business".
The nature of business is changing rapidly. Competition is intense. Margins for error are wafer thin and lead times are becoming progressively shorter. Each business, each product or service and each marketplace is unique and different. However, there is a commonality in the issues that must be addressed by management and staff.
In recent times Marketing Focus has been retained to assist client entities to develop original and creative solutions and to integrate those into strategies and tactics. Among the key issues which have been addressed are:-
Consumer Resistance - Increased resistance, cynicism and procrastination among existing and prospective clients. Previously successful advertising, marketing, promotional, merchandising and selling campaigns are not achieving the same responses and results.
Price Discounting - Encroachment by competitive and substitute products and services with price and advertising volume advantages.
Short Term Focus - A tendency for corporate executives to regularly refine and amend strategic plans, with an emphasis on operational issues. Those actions increase costs and there is little evidence of short or long term improvements in cash flows or profits.
Corporate Culture Change - The dynamics of the external marketplace have dictated the need for the articulation and implementation of a new, cohesive corporate culture which promotes the concept of a seamless organisation structure in which all people contribute to a common set of goals.
Restructuring Implications - A trend to downsizing, outsourcing and re-engineering has demanded more flexible, responsive leadership styles from all management levels.
Service Must Sell - Concern by managers that the investment of time, people, money and resources into staff training on quality customer service is not impacting on business growth and development. Reticence by staff members to sell and to exchange information is impeding sales potential and performance.
Co-Branding - A lack of recognition and respect of the importance of company and product branding/co-branding throughout the retail and distribution networks.
Relationship Marketing - Inadequate comprehension of the concept of "relationship marketing" between manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
Lack of Loyalty - A noticeable lack of loyalty among existing clients, notwithstanding the offer of loyalty incentive programmes.
Profit Squeeze - Marginal increases in turnover are not sufficient to offset significant increases in operational costs.
Distribution Networks - A profusion of indistinguishable products and services which are available from multiple outlets.
Category Killers - The actual or pending threat posed by the emergency of aggressive category killers".
Doubtless, some or all of those issues will sound familiar. Marketing Focus has the expertise and experience to collaborate with management teams to address and to redress these issues.