Just a small request…come on cafe owners, hoteliers, restaurants, railway stations, airports and any others places of the like, get to grips with it! You should be providing wireless internet access free of charge in today’s market place. It’s expected like air conditioning in cars, winter holidays with sun, coffee in your cappuccino, cheese on your pizza and towels in your hotel bedroom.

It costs little, provides great customer experience and in some cases may even be a competitive advantage, for a short while anyway! 

You don’t watch a boring television program do you? You don’t listen to a mediocre seminar, do you? Or at least you don’t pass it on to others. No one can hardly hear you shouting from the rooftops about going to see something you struggled to stay awake in. Nor do you pass on a tedious email. You don’t rave to your friends about the latest meal you had at a restaurant if it’s just bored the pants off you either! If it’s lousy, or even average, we don’t shout or create a noise about it. And you certainly don’t post on DIGG the eye shutting, snoozing blog comment you read earlier, (present one excepted of course!)

What we do make a noise about is those positive things that make you jump up and down. The products or services that get you excited, that are interesting, that are a little out of the ordinary. Those are the things that make you rush and tell your friends that you’ve just had an amazing experience at the latest car wash! It takes something special to make a customer an advocate (someone who tells everyone about you without an incentive from you.) 

What makes you an advocate? Was it something stable, dull even reliable? Chances are it wasn’t. How would someone describe the experience they have with your business? Engaging? Energetic? Important? Simple? Influential? Sincere? Weird? Exuberant? Human?

I’ve just come across these eight videos on the Orange website. They include Hiro Harjani, Angus Thirlwell, James Murray, Wilfred Emmanuel Jones, Will King and a few more. They are all talking about starting and running their own business. Useful, interesting and worth the time to watch….good stuff Orange. Link is below:

www.business.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Business&c=OUKPage&cid=1044136938032

I’ve cut and paste an interesting article by Tom Peters that’s shown below. Good point and very true. When was the last time we made our people feel valued?… (I’m talking about more than a pat on the back here and so is he!)

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED/MAKE MONEY
by  Tom Peters

---------------
100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money by Tom Peters. Copyright 2008

by Tom Peters. Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.Click here to view 

the license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode

—————

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED #74:
C(I) > C(E)

This one waltzed into my life when I was speaking to GE Energy 

sales folks earlier this year. I've long said that "forming relations 

inside our own company is almost as important as the external ones." 

While it may not be at Universal, it struck me that in many cases 

"C(I)"--our Internal customers--are in fact...MORE IMPORTANT...

than C(E)--our external customers. In the GE case, systems sales, 

often to "foreigners," the salesperson (my GE informant who's a very 

successful salesperson) wants "an...UNFAIR SHARE"...of a host 

of insiders' time--engineers, logistics folks, the risk-assessment

staff, and even lawyers. Lots of GE dudes are selling lots of 

stuff--and need, yesterday, lots and lots and lots of Inside Help. 

I (salesperson) want to be at the front of the queue for the 

harried risk-assessment staffers time & attention; I want to be 

head of the queue and getting an unfair share of the engineers', 

who must customize the product, time and imagination and attention.

Hence my full set of "internal [customer] relationships” could end up 

being more important, even far more important, than my "external 

[customer] relations.” The applications of this idea range way 

beyond enormous GE systems sales. I, as a professional services 

person at the "client interface," want an unfair share--and 

posthaste--of the Graphics Department's attention when a hastily 

scheduled Presentation looms. As a junior purchasing staffer, I 

want an unfair share of the Legal Staff's time as I prepare even 

a medium-sized contract. As a White House staffer many moons ago, 

I wanted the various Gatekeepers to put my memo to the VP or P or 

Secretary of State at the front of an infinitely long cue of stuff 

from people who waaaaaay outranked me.

So, what have you done lately for your all-important "portfolio" of
internal...CUSTOMERS????? I(I) + C(I) > I(E) + C(E). My Investment in
Internal Customers must frequently outstrip my Investment in External
Customers. Think about it. Clearly. Precisely. E.g., when was the last 

time you took a C(I) to lunch or dinner? Or brought Flowers to the 

Legal Department after they'd done you even a wee favor?

Is a brand a product, a service, a company or even a person? Is it a logo, a marketing strategy or an attitude or a culture? It’s a question often asked and it’s perhaps understandable why so many small business owners get so frustrated by the lack of a clear definition by the marketing specialists themselves.

It’s an elusive concept, if it’s a concept at all? Naomi Klein in her book ‘No Logo’ provides the most appropriate interpretation of brand as ‘the core meaning of the modern corporation.’ Meaning is the main word here…meaning!!!! I think we can assume she includes small businesses. Brand is something we cannot ignore and should be looking for ideas from. Manchester United, Madonna, Sony, Fairtrade, Mini, VW Camper vans are all strong brands, constantly changing and adapting to market trends.

For me branding is a devolution and communication of your companies core values through an identity, a culture, company assets, specific products/services and through your people. It’s something that is coherent but necessarily consistent and it means something to your customers and employees. What brand does clearly do though is that it encompasses the key point; it’s not what you do, it’s actually how you do it that matters.

It may be a simplistic view of start ups but I think there are two types. In no particular order, the first is the ‘big hit’ business. A ‘big hit’ is an exciting business where you expend the same amount of effort trying to attract one client as you would to attract hundreds. Examples include photographers with libraries, actors, authors and people who have developed a piece of software that can be sold on the internet. With these types of businesses you can make money whilst you sleep. It’s easy to add zeros to your income with no extra effort, you are not restricted by time in the day.

The downside is this kind of start up is only good if you are fundamentally successful. They are tougher to crack and could take a long time to be realised. They are extremely competitive and terribly hard. A few people will take a large share of the pie, leaving the rest in the shadows, contemplating their navel very often through no fault of their own. Ever seen a friend struggling with a business idea for years and years?

The ‘predictable’ business however, is quite the opposite. These types of businesses can only do so much in the day. Typically mediocre, these businesses are consultancies, restaurants, car mechanics, designers. You are paid by the day, or the hour, and you need to be present to deliver your service. Your income depends on your time and effort. It’s largely predictable work and you can only earn so much.

However, in this ‘predictable’ business, we start it expecting a ‘big hit’ scenario, an exciting event that will catapult us towards millionaire status and/or stardom. When, in fact, it probably ain’t going to happen. For most of us, if you have to be present to do your job, it’s unlikely to transpire and if it does, it will be after years of hard graft and continuous effort, driven by mundane and predictable work.

Which business should you start up? Well the ‘predictable’ one. Surprised? The ‘big hit’ start up is not the best thing to do, unless, of course, you are one of the lucky/fortunate ones who are successful but it’s extremely rare. It’s better to earn £30k/£40k/£50k per annum or whatever you do over five years with the odd mildy exciting event rather then hit the big time and earn £150k plus in the fifth year! It’s a hell of a lot less stressful too….

We spend our time on dull things, working on small tasks and small talk. We remain with the comfortable and those elements that are repeatable, even predictable. It’s what us humans are very good at. We rarely ‘push the boat out’ seemingly focused on doing more of what we already do. Perhaps I’m being a little unfair?

However, there is a gap, a gap between what we know and what we think we know. Customer service is a classic example. We believe we are giving a great service, in reality, it’s probably mediocre. It’s important to be realistic about it, even brutal, because what we know can’t hurt us.

In a small business, amongst the plethora of other items, we need to concentrate just as much on what we don’t know as on what we do. Perhaps then we can manage expectations better, avoid catastrophes and those major impacts that can damage our business significantly.

Especially at the start up phase.

The only thing we can truly predict is that we do not know what the future holds so why do we write business plans and forecast financial returns when they are usually no more than fiction. It’s always fascinated me….and I’m prepared for the backlash from my financial and bank friends on this one. It really is a question meant to stimulate debate.

History, we know, does not give us a good indication of the future. Forecasting is usually no more than a finger in the air to see which way the winds blowing or a guesstimate (seriously it’s nothing more.) Pulling financial forecasting together for a bank, venture capital funding or whatever is, at worst fantasy, and at best, a load of b*!!*&cks. Previous performance tells you that, what happened in the past, not what you are going to experience in the future. And if you’re a start up what’s the past? Just because you performed in the comfort of a proper job as an employee, doesn’t guarantee success in your own business. It’s amazingly different, considerably challenging and you start all over again on the curve of learning.

Often the more information we give people at our start up stage, the more they read into it. You give people ‘noise’ and, unfortunately, they and you mistake it for informed data. Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t be setting targets, I’m a great advocate of purpose. But goals have to be tangible with clear added value attached to them. There needs to be a significant dose of realism so those starting up businesses beware.

Those forecasts about numbers of customers, profits, turnover, cash flow can make you resistant. They can make you vulnerable because, at this critical stage, you are too focused, too narrow and we often don’t build in improbable factors. Recognise the limitations of forecasting, don’t concern yourself if you don’t hit them. At start up, the most important factor is being able to have the courage to change, reflect new conditions and react to competition and innovation. It’s about having the guts to just go out and do it!

Been helping a couple of small businesses with some overwhelming time management issues recently. As usual no time to improve and think about developments for the future because the majority of the staff are engaged in fire fighting. It comes from the ‘top’ and therefore is a problem for the ‘top’ to solve. Time management, I believe, is a cultural issue. It’s no good individuals on their own attempting to manage their time more effectively if other people are not respecting it and adhering to the boundaries or working parameters, great time management requires.

We can work quite inefficiently, we often get distracted by random factors in the working day. We prioritise based on noise but work doesn’t come from thin air, it comes from the commitments we make. We came up with a quite a few exercises to help the process. Here’s one:

1. Make a list of all of the outstanding work you have at the moment. Write down how long the task has been outstanding for and the number of hours it would take to complete the task. When you’ve picked yourself back up off the floor. You now know what your backlog looks like and how big or small it is!

2. Collect a days worth of incoming work. Write it down. You now know what you have to do just to stay on top!

3. Put all of your backlog work into a folder then collect all of your work for one day and deal with it in one batch and do that for three days.

4. Spend the fourth day dealing with your normal incoming work but start the process of clearing one item on that backlog list and do that first thing when you get in the office. Keep doing it until the backlog is gone.

Remember whenever you take on something new, something else has to give.

Hit the link below to see an interesting video Malcolm Gladwell presented in 2004 (yes I know it’s 4 years ago) but it’s fascinating. Malcolm is the author of the ‘Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink’ both fascinating books. He is always worthwhile watching. Hope you enjoy it!

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html