Thanks to Guy Kawaski for heads-up on recent interviews with Apple founder Steve Wozniak and other ex-Apple nobility.

It is interesting to see that Guy himself worked as an Apple Technology evangelist.

Steve Wozniak was and still is a techie hero. I remember regularly reading in BYTE magazine in the mid-eighties (I was in my teens) of the on-going developments at Apple Computer.

Apple has always typified the techies dream. The passion and pride for the innovative technology and products was powerful but often over-bearing.

In many cases this passion has made the company to be more product/technology focussed rather than market focussed. Its early success in the computing world created a great momentum in the company that it was hard to kill even with the many product/market blunders throughout the years.

Steve Jobs return to Apple with a seemingly more commercial focus that in his previous term provided a great boost. Its good to see Apple still pushing the innovation envelope and being commercially successful also.

I started my career developing on Macs. I still have one of the first Colour Mac II‘s made, a Mac Plus and one of the first Laptops (luggables).

This is a companion post to this months Market Leader Monthly Newsletter.

This outlines the defined stages from Cold Prospect to developing an Ideal Client for your business. This takes time and many steps.

This is a Sales Generation Process that incorporates a good understanding of your target Ideal Client(s), good marketing materials and steady continuous semi-automated marketing and sales activities to develop a client base for your business.

Seductive Marketing incorporates both Marketing and Sales, continuing beyond the first client engagement to develop the client relationship further to being an Ideal Client.

If you have good reference clients then they are likely a definition of your Ideal Client. How do you find more and this enabling you to reduce the number of non-Ideal Clients? See the Business Case for Ideal Client Focus.

This is a typical marketing and sales process for a very established and mature organisations. The Ideal Client Focus Programme enables small and medium sized organisations to inexpensively introduce similar marketing and sales processes and activities.

Read more on the newsletter.

A business will invest more money where the return is more tangible. Improving production efficiencies is tangible. Reducing material handling and shipping costs is tangible. Tangible returns are much easier to calculate with investments in Core Production.

A business will invest more money in their Core Production than they will in their Support Functions. And when the market gets tough, they may significantly reduce spending on Support Functions but increase spending on Core Production to increase efficiencies. We’ve heard recently that Wyeths are reducing the workforce in Newbridge by 250 due to greater automation improvements in their plant. This immediately reduces the overall personnel related costs and Support Functions of the business based on a significant capital spend on the Core Production of the plant.

If your business develops solutions or sells services that improve efficiencies in Core Production then your business should be stronger than those selling to Support Functions.

For example, a brochure Website for many organisations is not a critical spend and will invest a relatively small amount compared to an in-house system to improve their processes. Their Website is a Support Function.

Whereas if the business sells online or carries out critical customer service functions through the website then the website is firmly a Core Production facility and worthy of greater investment.

If you supply to Core Production then you:

Another level of spend beyond Support Function spending is Discretionary Spend. This is when an organisation will only consider spending when everything else is in good order and they are looking around for areas to improve on. These are merely nice-to-haves in an organisation. A website is an example of this for many organisations, as I discovered this hard-way when trying to sell Content Management Systems in a down market.

Does your business supply into Core Production, Support Functions or Discretionary Spend?