Do you see opportunities or blocks everywhere you go?

It's coming up to 10 years since I finished my MBA (and I'm looking forward to catching up with my old classmates at out reunion in September!).

As I looked back at my old notes I spotted my notes about Gilette launching the safety razor in Malaysia many decades ago.

Gilette's model at the time was simple. Everywhere they had launched, they would give away the razor and then sell you the blades. It's a model that has served them well, and it's still their core business model to this day. (It's also the model underpinning the computer printer industry, the mobile phone industry and quite a few service industries: tie the client into your platform and then sell them the eongoing follow-up. It's a very powerful marketing and sales model, that can work surprisingly well in coaching, consulting and advice businesses, but that's a different post!).

So two sales men were sent from head office to Kuala Lumpur to set up a new sales office.

Within hours of landing the first one was on the phone back home.