The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is an EU law aimed at reducing packaging waste and making packaging more recyclable and reusable. It has been adopted by the entire European Union, with surrounding countries adopting similar types of sustainability laws, including Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
Have you ever wonderd why some sales and marketing messages seem to have the exact opposite effect of what was intended. You see it quite a lot in B2B marketing. A company positions itself by attacking a competitor or by pointing out everything that's wrong with a prospect's current way of doing things. On paper, that seem to makes sense. If you can convince someone their current solution isn't good enough, they'll naturally want to hear about yours instead. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always works like that. More often than not it actually makes people defensive and here is why. The moment you criticise a prospect's current solution, you're also indirectly criticising a decision they made. Maybe they bought that software five years ago. Maybe they were part of selecting that supplier. Either way, people tend to justify previous decisions before they're willing to consider new ones.
While the AI Singularity creates a lot of hype (OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the AI Singularity is already here), I think it is more interesting to explore the developments of AI in more detail and their impact on businesses. There is no single definition of what AI Singularity is that everyone agrees on, but the general idea is that AI eventually becomes capable of accelerating technological progress on its own. Instead of humans being the only ones developing better AI systems, AI starts helping in building the next generation of AI, which in its turn helps build the next, creating a cycle of increasingly rapid improvement.
There is so much AI terminology being thrown around these days that it's becoming difficult to know what people are actually talking about. Every week, there seems to be another acronym. LLMs, RAG, Agents, and Inference. If you don’t keep up, it all sounds far more complicated than I actually think it is.
In B2B sales, there are, generally speaking, three stages to a sales process. Demand creation, where you educate the prospect about their problem and the art of the possible in how to solve it. Selling, where the prospect has identified a problem and is looking for a solution. And order taking, where someone has a clearly defined need and a comprehensive understanding of what the solution is, and is only looking for which solution provider to select, typically through a formal RFx process.
A few years ago, the myth surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) was that it would solve all types of manufacturing challenges. Today, the myth has changed. While many manufacturing leaders now accept that AI is real, the problem is that many organizations still believe AI can compensate for poor processes, disconnected systems, and bad data. It can’t.
Nobody cares about your product (at least not yet). Imagine this: you sit down in your office with a freshly brewed cup of coffee. You open up LinkedIn and start checking your notifications. You notice that someone has engaged with some of your content, which is always flattering, and has sent you a connection request with the note, “I’m expanding my professional network and would like to connect with you.” Wanting to be an active member of the LinkedIn community with a growing network of connections, you accept the invite. At this point, you can almost count backwards: three, two, one... and there comes the pitch: “Thanks for connecting. Let me know when you have 30 minutes, so I can tell you about my product.”
LinkedIn is arguably the single most valuable social media channel for prospecting, networking with industry peers, hiring great talent, and finding a new job. It is therefore surprising to see that few people truly leverage this channel to its full extent and still make common mistakes when filling out their profiles.