On Sunday I wrote my blog. Nothing unusual about that: I've been writing every Sunday for months now.
Except this one turned out to be different. It was to be my first ever Huffington Post submission.
"Write about something topical" they suggested. But as a writer on business related topics, that's not always so easy.
News that Amy Winehouse had just died on the Saturday was prevalent. A terrible tragedy of a talented life cut cruelly short. Forgive me, but I really do see a certain symmetry here with small business owners, many of whom fail to succeed for a multitude of different reasons.
So that became the topic of my blog. Big mistake.
Within minutes of being published on the Huffington Post, my blog started to attract comments - most of them negative.
Within hours, my blog was being blogged about.
In less than a day, other bloggers had started to blog about me and my blog post. I note, in this world of uncensored journalism that not one of them contacted me for a quick interview.
I apologised online for any offence I had caused. Still it didn't seem to make any difference.
In a public pillorying reserved usually for just the rich, famous and political, I got the equivalent of an online roasting.
Then some of the criticism turned personal. Idiot. Bigot. Narcissist. Reprehensible. Insensitive. The list, regrettably, goes on.
In a McCarthy-esque turn of events, people began to hunt me down. Huffington Post didn't publish their comments so they turned to Twitter to harass me. Others got to me on facebook. Some tried other routes.
So here's the deal (without trying to sound too much like Bill Clinton in my defence):
I did NOT mean to offend anybody. I did see the analogy. I'll take on board the points about sharpening up my writing. And I appreciate that many will have found the content to have been in bad taste. For that I am truly sorry.
I did NOT write my blog as a deliberate link bait. I wrote it because I write about business and, as a Huffington Post submission, it was recommended that is was topical. Inadvertently I seem to have seem to have "link baited" - a terms I didn't even know until Sunday night. It was never my intention. Who would want attention like this anyway?
I DID protect my tweets and my facebook pages. And I make no apology for that. These pages are mine to protect.
I DID initially try to respond to people's comments individually. However when things turned nasty, and I hope you'll forgive me, I decided it was better not to engage in further conversation. Tasteless blog or not. Bullying of any kind, on or offline, is unacceptable. And bullying includes name calling.
And finally, without wanting to sound too cynical here, the Huffington Post small business section is a relatively new area of their site. Most of the other articles, from what I can see, have less traffic, less interaction and less standing in google.
Which really does leave me wondering if I was, naively, the bait.
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Sunday 24 July 2011
Amy Winehouse's Untimely Death is a Wake Up Call for Small Business Owners
It would be terribly remiss of me not to blog about the untimely death of the 27 year old British singer Amy Winehouse today.
Unlike others, I won't be picking apart her chosen lifestyle, nor will I be judging her. She made her own choices and, although it would appear that these choices ultimately led to her death, they were hers to make.
For small business owners there is, however, a lot to be learned from Amy's untimely death.
Although rarely referred to as such, most musical artistes and celebrities are businesses in their own right. In fact, for all those detractors out there that say that being"self-employed" is not a "proper" business, think again. This successful business model is one that has been proven time and time again.
But whether you are a pop star, a plumber or a business consultant, the same rules still apply: you ARE the product. And if that's the case, you are going to need to take really good care for yourself if you want your business to succeed.
Amy got off to a great start. She had the raw talent and the skills to write and perform. She trained herself, brought the right people around her and she made it to the big time. And quickly.
With five grammys and a Brit Award to her name, you'd think she was untouchable. But, like every fledgling, fast growing business, Amy lost control. Her "brand" became driven by her record company. Her "image" was tinkered with, and her relationship with the media resembled more of a cat and mouse game (where Amy was the mouse), than a strategically managed campaign. Little by little the public saw a young, healthy, talented girl, slim down to just a shadow of her former self.
At first, she was talented enough to get by. Live performances, although slightly edgy, were strong enough to forgive the fact that she'd obviously had a few before she went on stage. But eventually, even this all proved too much for her adoring fans and just a few months ago, the quality of her performance was so poor she was booed off stage in Serbia.
There are so many parallels here in business. A young business starts well, and gets busy. The business owner frequently ignores their own health, swapping trips to the gym for an extra couple of hours in the office, eating takeaway dinners instead of healthy home cooked food, scrimping on sleep and generally running themselves into the ground.
This cycle of personal abandonment all leads to poor decision making in business. Recruiting too many staff (usually the wrong ones) too quickly. Missing deadlines. Not responding to Customers. Falling behind with the business finances.
And then the wheels fall off. This is the business equivalent of being booed off stage.
Clients complain, or worse - walk, and businesses are left in a spiral of decline that, in some cases can be irreversible.
So, my advice to small business owners (and pop stars) is this: your job is like a marathon, not a 100m sprint.
You need to train for it. Moreover you need to maintain your own health and fitness first because if you are at the core of the business. You ARE the brand. Start eating healthily, stop scrimping on sleep and start going to the gym.
It may sound simple. But it works. You will benefit. Your customers will benefit. Your business will benefit.
And today, in honour of Amy Winehouse, I am going to go to the gym. For the first time in about six months. She's just reminded me why I should.
Unlike others, I won't be picking apart her chosen lifestyle, nor will I be judging her. She made her own choices and, although it would appear that these choices ultimately led to her death, they were hers to make.
For small business owners there is, however, a lot to be learned from Amy's untimely death.
Although rarely referred to as such, most musical artistes and celebrities are businesses in their own right. In fact, for all those detractors out there that say that being"self-employed" is not a "proper" business, think again. This successful business model is one that has been proven time and time again.
But whether you are a pop star, a plumber or a business consultant, the same rules still apply: you ARE the product. And if that's the case, you are going to need to take really good care for yourself if you want your business to succeed.
Amy got off to a great start. She had the raw talent and the skills to write and perform. She trained herself, brought the right people around her and she made it to the big time. And quickly.
With five grammys and a Brit Award to her name, you'd think she was untouchable. But, like every fledgling, fast growing business, Amy lost control. Her "brand" became driven by her record company. Her "image" was tinkered with, and her relationship with the media resembled more of a cat and mouse game (where Amy was the mouse), than a strategically managed campaign. Little by little the public saw a young, healthy, talented girl, slim down to just a shadow of her former self.
At first, she was talented enough to get by. Live performances, although slightly edgy, were strong enough to forgive the fact that she'd obviously had a few before she went on stage. But eventually, even this all proved too much for her adoring fans and just a few months ago, the quality of her performance was so poor she was booed off stage in Serbia.
There are so many parallels here in business. A young business starts well, and gets busy. The business owner frequently ignores their own health, swapping trips to the gym for an extra couple of hours in the office, eating takeaway dinners instead of healthy home cooked food, scrimping on sleep and generally running themselves into the ground.
This cycle of personal abandonment all leads to poor decision making in business. Recruiting too many staff (usually the wrong ones) too quickly. Missing deadlines. Not responding to Customers. Falling behind with the business finances.
And then the wheels fall off. This is the business equivalent of being booed off stage.
Clients complain, or worse - walk, and businesses are left in a spiral of decline that, in some cases can be irreversible.
So, my advice to small business owners (and pop stars) is this: your job is like a marathon, not a 100m sprint.
You need to train for it. Moreover you need to maintain your own health and fitness first because if you are at the core of the business. You ARE the brand. Start eating healthily, stop scrimping on sleep and start going to the gym.
It may sound simple. But it works. You will benefit. Your customers will benefit. Your business will benefit.
And today, in honour of Amy Winehouse, I am going to go to the gym. For the first time in about six months. She's just reminded me why I should.
Sunday 17 July 2011
Pride: In the Name of Love
I'm definitely a messy pup. In absence for a full time cleaner my house is, at the best of times, in need of a good and thorough tidy up.
My workplace, however, is a very different story.
While it occasionally dips into chaos (more often than not following several coinciding print deliveries) it is, in the main, a bastion of tidiness and order in which we take great pride as a team.
We're currently working with some businesses who have let that pride slip. Battered down by the ravages of two years' recessionary sales, they've taken less and less care of their appearance and it's become a major problem for them.
Team members no longer really care about how things look, placing items here, there and everywhere. And as the level of clutter increases, the sales figures fall at a similar pace.
So we've suggested something revolutionary to help them kick start sales: tidy up.
Have a good clearout. Hire a skip. Dump it all. Un-deck the halls. Make some space.
We did the same thing ourselves a few months ago. I stopped procrastinating, hired a storage facility and we spent a weekend archiving and shifting boxes. Interestingly we seem to be busier with more client work than ever. A coincidence? I don't think so.
The impact on one business we're working with is equally positive. The business owner is beaming with pride. They have started making plans for the future. They are excited about where they work. Their sales have (suspiciously) started to increase.
And with no "sales and marketing" involved whatsoever.
Take a look around your office tomorrow morning. If it looks like it needs a good clearout, talk to your colleagues schedule in a late evening or a Saturday morning and get it done. It'll make a big difference to your working life. I promise you.
My workplace, however, is a very different story.
While it occasionally dips into chaos (more often than not following several coinciding print deliveries) it is, in the main, a bastion of tidiness and order in which we take great pride as a team.
We're currently working with some businesses who have let that pride slip. Battered down by the ravages of two years' recessionary sales, they've taken less and less care of their appearance and it's become a major problem for them.
Team members no longer really care about how things look, placing items here, there and everywhere. And as the level of clutter increases, the sales figures fall at a similar pace.
So we've suggested something revolutionary to help them kick start sales: tidy up.
Have a good clearout. Hire a skip. Dump it all. Un-deck the halls. Make some space.
We did the same thing ourselves a few months ago. I stopped procrastinating, hired a storage facility and we spent a weekend archiving and shifting boxes. Interestingly we seem to be busier with more client work than ever. A coincidence? I don't think so.
The impact on one business we're working with is equally positive. The business owner is beaming with pride. They have started making plans for the future. They are excited about where they work. Their sales have (suspiciously) started to increase.
And with no "sales and marketing" involved whatsoever.
Take a look around your office tomorrow morning. If it looks like it needs a good clearout, talk to your colleagues schedule in a late evening or a Saturday morning and get it done. It'll make a big difference to your working life. I promise you.
Class Wars: Service is Everything in the Fight for Customers
This week I changed the habit of a lifetime and travelled to London by train.
Opting to avoid the 5 hour pantomime of driving to the airport, parking the car, taking off half your clothes as part of an essential security mission, being felt up by someone you've never met before, putting your clothes all back on again, hanging about for an hour, flying down to London, navigating the Heathrow Express and then the tube to finally reach my destination.
This time I jumped on the train at Perth, had a quick breakfast in Edinburgh, and boarded their first class East Coast Train at 9.30am to arrive at the heart of London some four and a half hours later, having got quite a substantial amount of work done on the train.
It was, in many respects, a first class experience.
But the return journey was quite different. Same rail operator, same first class service.
They started off well - we all got breakfast. But somewhere between London and York it all went horribly wrong.
Not enough sandwiches arrived on the train at Darlington. As a result, staff were left to deal with an increasingly hungry bunch of first class passengers.
We were unabashedly offered a dry croissant (no jam or butter available) and a packet of crisps for our lunch. We were told we were lucky to be offered even that.
Passengers joined together in a first class mutinty to make suggestions to the service team:
- Couldn't they go and get some sandwiches from the paid buffet car?
- Couldn't they offer us vouchers so we could go and get those sandwiches all by ourselves?
Our suggestions were shot down in flames. No. You must take the "complimentary" offer. It was the other first class passengers further down the cabin who ate all the sandwiches. We were then told that the food offered up in First Class was not paid for as part of the ticket price (this was in response to the interjection of the American girl, who was sitting opposite us, who bemoaned "But we're paying for it!"). It was a complimentary offer, not a commitment, in other words.
The rousing conversation that followed, involving people of several different nationalities, made me feel ashamed to be British. Expectations of first class service across the globe are consistent, it would seem. But the staff at East Coast Trains have obviously not grasped them.
Fast forward an hour or so and we've changed trains having managed to grab a sandwich at Waverley. Scotrail's First Class experience is quite different: a free cup of coffee and a biscuit, combined with a marginally bigger seat.
Gabor, the first class attendant, who was forced to work in a compartment that was not air conditioned on an extremely hot day and packed to the gunnels, had us all cheered up instantly. So much so, that some of us were threatening to write to East Coast Trains and suggest they needed people of Gabor's calibre on their service.
Because it is just a matter of service.
Gabor, unlike his colleagues on East Coast Trains, understood that apologising for the hot state of the train was undoubtedly the way to go. East Coast? Well, you can judge by their responses to our helpful suggestions that they clearly didn't give a hoot.
It is worth noting that Gabor's first language was also not English.... just in case you hadn't made that deduction from his name. The staff on the East Coast Train service were all (and I mean all) British through and through, with accents spanning the full East Coast line.
And I found myself wondering: Is it a British thing to believe that serving people is beneath them?
Have we mistaken first "class" service to be some sort of socio-political divide?
How would their attitude shift if they knew that the majority of people I spoke to (on the way down and the way up) had "upgraded" to first class as a wee treat to themselves, and were all left bitterly disappointed. My travelling companions included tourists, students, police officers, housewives and nurses. Many of these people are employed by the same British government that owns and operates the nationalised East Coast Trains. With the exception of John Humphreys, I wasn't aware of any of them who were celebrities, politicians and bankers......
It takes dignity and intelligence to serve people. Remember: although you serve them, you are not their servants.
In a class war, your standard of service is everything in the fight to gain and keep your customers.
Opting to avoid the 5 hour pantomime of driving to the airport, parking the car, taking off half your clothes as part of an essential security mission, being felt up by someone you've never met before, putting your clothes all back on again, hanging about for an hour, flying down to London, navigating the Heathrow Express and then the tube to finally reach my destination.
This time I jumped on the train at Perth, had a quick breakfast in Edinburgh, and boarded their first class East Coast Train at 9.30am to arrive at the heart of London some four and a half hours later, having got quite a substantial amount of work done on the train.
It was, in many respects, a first class experience.
But the return journey was quite different. Same rail operator, same first class service.
They started off well - we all got breakfast. But somewhere between London and York it all went horribly wrong.
Not enough sandwiches arrived on the train at Darlington. As a result, staff were left to deal with an increasingly hungry bunch of first class passengers.
We were unabashedly offered a dry croissant (no jam or butter available) and a packet of crisps for our lunch. We were told we were lucky to be offered even that.
Passengers joined together in a first class mutinty to make suggestions to the service team:
- Couldn't they go and get some sandwiches from the paid buffet car?
- Couldn't they offer us vouchers so we could go and get those sandwiches all by ourselves?
Our suggestions were shot down in flames. No. You must take the "complimentary" offer. It was the other first class passengers further down the cabin who ate all the sandwiches. We were then told that the food offered up in First Class was not paid for as part of the ticket price (this was in response to the interjection of the American girl, who was sitting opposite us, who bemoaned "But we're paying for it!"). It was a complimentary offer, not a commitment, in other words.
The rousing conversation that followed, involving people of several different nationalities, made me feel ashamed to be British. Expectations of first class service across the globe are consistent, it would seem. But the staff at East Coast Trains have obviously not grasped them.
Fast forward an hour or so and we've changed trains having managed to grab a sandwich at Waverley. Scotrail's First Class experience is quite different: a free cup of coffee and a biscuit, combined with a marginally bigger seat.
Gabor, the first class attendant, who was forced to work in a compartment that was not air conditioned on an extremely hot day and packed to the gunnels, had us all cheered up instantly. So much so, that some of us were threatening to write to East Coast Trains and suggest they needed people of Gabor's calibre on their service.
Because it is just a matter of service.
Gabor, unlike his colleagues on East Coast Trains, understood that apologising for the hot state of the train was undoubtedly the way to go. East Coast? Well, you can judge by their responses to our helpful suggestions that they clearly didn't give a hoot.
It is worth noting that Gabor's first language was also not English.... just in case you hadn't made that deduction from his name. The staff on the East Coast Train service were all (and I mean all) British through and through, with accents spanning the full East Coast line.
And I found myself wondering: Is it a British thing to believe that serving people is beneath them?
Have we mistaken first "class" service to be some sort of socio-political divide?
How would their attitude shift if they knew that the majority of people I spoke to (on the way down and the way up) had "upgraded" to first class as a wee treat to themselves, and were all left bitterly disappointed. My travelling companions included tourists, students, police officers, housewives and nurses. Many of these people are employed by the same British government that owns and operates the nationalised East Coast Trains. With the exception of John Humphreys, I wasn't aware of any of them who were celebrities, politicians and bankers......
It takes dignity and intelligence to serve people. Remember: although you serve them, you are not their servants.
In a class war, your standard of service is everything in the fight to gain and keep your customers.
Sunday 10 July 2011
Awesome? Not Really - We've Seen it all Before.
On Wednesday, the world waited with baited breath. Facebook was going to announce something "Awesome".
It turned out to be video messaging.
Awesome indeed. I can hardly contain myself.
To say that the public was underwhelmed is an understatement. This statement of impending awesomeness came directly from the big guy, Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Has he lost his mind? Connecting up all the individuals on the planet using a a big database and the internet is awesome. Using video phones online (which have been around a while) is not.
It is thought that the new video chat functionality is a direct competitive response to Google's launch of Google+.
However, by over-egging the pudding, the "awesome" announcement seems to have backfired.
While the world clambers for their special invitations to go to the Google+ ball, Facebook's new chat has been left to fester at the right hand side of the screen. Like a debutante waiting to be asked for their first dance.
A classic case of the boy who cried wolf, perhaps.
It turned out to be video messaging.
Awesome indeed. I can hardly contain myself.
To say that the public was underwhelmed is an understatement. This statement of impending awesomeness came directly from the big guy, Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Has he lost his mind? Connecting up all the individuals on the planet using a a big database and the internet is awesome. Using video phones online (which have been around a while) is not.
It is thought that the new video chat functionality is a direct competitive response to Google's launch of Google+.
However, by over-egging the pudding, the "awesome" announcement seems to have backfired.
While the world clambers for their special invitations to go to the Google+ ball, Facebook's new chat has been left to fester at the right hand side of the screen. Like a debutante waiting to be asked for their first dance.
A classic case of the boy who cried wolf, perhaps.
The Hacks can't take the Flack
It would be remiss of me not to blog about the goings on at News International and the fated News of the World this week.
I, like many, have looked on as the British (tabloid) press have allegedly sunk to (apparent) new lows.
Revelations that NoTW employees hacked into murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's mobile phone, deleting voicemail messages, tampering with police evidence and giving her poor grieving family false hope at an extremely difficult time, have been met with an iron wall of collective British agony, disgust and well deserved anger.
News International's response to this crisis, however, took us all by surprise.
In the corporate equivalent of suicide (or perhaps that should be murder), the life of the News of the World has been cut down. Dead.
Intriguingly, the British public have known for months (years, even) that the NoTW was involved in the illegal practice of phone hacking. But clearly our collective conscience doesn't give a hoot for law breaking when the victims of said crime are celebrities, politicians or members of the Royal family. They are "fair" game, apparently.
So it's not the crime in this instance that has caught the attention of the public, it's the victim. In fact, you could argue that, collectively, we were prepared to forgive NoTW for the crime - in many respects we already had. With 10 million readers, a raft of recent industry awards, and some of the world's biggest advertisers behind it, the NoTW was undoubtedly one of the UK's most successful British newspapers.
But for the irate British public, Murdoch's decision to shut down this 168 year old newspaper is not the ideal outcome - no matter how much initial jubilation it may have caused.
We prefer justice in this country, not corporal punishment. Rupert Murdoch has, in one seemingly well intended action, demonstrated that his unwielding power in this industry is paramount. It won't be the British justice system that brings this corporation to its knees: Rupert Murdoch will make those decisions himself, thank you very much.
The net result: we may never know the full extent or truth of what has gone on behind closed doors at News International. It's very hard to serve justice to a ghost.
I, like many, have looked on as the British (tabloid) press have allegedly sunk to (apparent) new lows.
Revelations that NoTW employees hacked into murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's mobile phone, deleting voicemail messages, tampering with police evidence and giving her poor grieving family false hope at an extremely difficult time, have been met with an iron wall of collective British agony, disgust and well deserved anger.
News International's response to this crisis, however, took us all by surprise.
In the corporate equivalent of suicide (or perhaps that should be murder), the life of the News of the World has been cut down. Dead.
Intriguingly, the British public have known for months (years, even) that the NoTW was involved in the illegal practice of phone hacking. But clearly our collective conscience doesn't give a hoot for law breaking when the victims of said crime are celebrities, politicians or members of the Royal family. They are "fair" game, apparently.
So it's not the crime in this instance that has caught the attention of the public, it's the victim. In fact, you could argue that, collectively, we were prepared to forgive NoTW for the crime - in many respects we already had. With 10 million readers, a raft of recent industry awards, and some of the world's biggest advertisers behind it, the NoTW was undoubtedly one of the UK's most successful British newspapers.
But for the irate British public, Murdoch's decision to shut down this 168 year old newspaper is not the ideal outcome - no matter how much initial jubilation it may have caused.
We prefer justice in this country, not corporal punishment. Rupert Murdoch has, in one seemingly well intended action, demonstrated that his unwielding power in this industry is paramount. It won't be the British justice system that brings this corporation to its knees: Rupert Murdoch will make those decisions himself, thank you very much.
The net result: we may never know the full extent or truth of what has gone on behind closed doors at News International. It's very hard to serve justice to a ghost.
Sunday 3 July 2011
Overselling is Simple: Just Make it Easier for Customers to Buy
This morning I published a blog on how selling is, fundamentally, a simple process. You just need to make it easier for your customers to buy.
Groupon is a prime example of making sales simple. They remove one of the strongest barriers to purchase: price. In so doing, they make the customer's purchasing decision as easy as it will ever be. The result: a LOT of sales.
Feedback on this morning's blog pointed me in the dircetion of an article in today's Sunday Mail entitled "Demand for Groupon false eyelashes deal causes Glasgow Beautician to Close Salon" - regrettably not the only story of its kind, and certainly not the last.
Groupon, the villain in this sorry tale, is being blamed for selling almost 700 coupons for a beauty business that is manned by only one person. Forcing the business to close its doors, renege on the deal and irritating a shed load of people in the process.
But who's really at fault here?
Groupon can limit the number of vouchers sold - their system enables that. So was it greed, naivety or a simple inability to add up the number of available trading hours and divide them by the number of appointments that's behind the beauty therapist's failure? Well, probably a bit of each of them. And since Groupon is more than up front with business owners about their business model and how it works, one might suggest that the business owner who is entering into a contract with Groupon also has a responsibility to fully assess the situation.
A photographer I know recently did a Groupon offer. He operates alone. There's only so much business he can handle. So he restricted the numbers to no more than 100 vouchers to be sold, and asked for the deal to run on a Saturday (one of Groupon's quietest days). The results? Enourmous traffic to his website, around 70 vouchers sold, improved awareness of his business, new customers and a happy Groupon partnership.
Blaming Groupon for your own rash decision making in business is not the answer. If you don't want to oversell, price the offer differently, or cap the number of vouchers available. One thing's for sure, if you don't ask questions, you're certainly not going to get any answers.
Groupon is a prime example of making sales simple. They remove one of the strongest barriers to purchase: price. In so doing, they make the customer's purchasing decision as easy as it will ever be. The result: a LOT of sales.
Feedback on this morning's blog pointed me in the dircetion of an article in today's Sunday Mail entitled "Demand for Groupon false eyelashes deal causes Glasgow Beautician to Close Salon" - regrettably not the only story of its kind, and certainly not the last.
Groupon, the villain in this sorry tale, is being blamed for selling almost 700 coupons for a beauty business that is manned by only one person. Forcing the business to close its doors, renege on the deal and irritating a shed load of people in the process.
But who's really at fault here?
Groupon can limit the number of vouchers sold - their system enables that. So was it greed, naivety or a simple inability to add up the number of available trading hours and divide them by the number of appointments that's behind the beauty therapist's failure? Well, probably a bit of each of them. And since Groupon is more than up front with business owners about their business model and how it works, one might suggest that the business owner who is entering into a contract with Groupon also has a responsibility to fully assess the situation.
A photographer I know recently did a Groupon offer. He operates alone. There's only so much business he can handle. So he restricted the numbers to no more than 100 vouchers to be sold, and asked for the deal to run on a Saturday (one of Groupon's quietest days). The results? Enourmous traffic to his website, around 70 vouchers sold, improved awareness of his business, new customers and a happy Groupon partnership.
Blaming Groupon for your own rash decision making in business is not the answer. If you don't want to oversell, price the offer differently, or cap the number of vouchers available. One thing's for sure, if you don't ask questions, you're certainly not going to get any answers.
Selling is Simple: Just Make it Easy for the Customer to Buy
Today's blog is inspired by Seth Godin's post yesterday on "The Overwhelming fear of Being Wrong" - which got me thinking: Selling is actually very simple. You just need to make it easy for the customer to buy.
But despite this so many companies, big and small, try to over-complicate the process. They befuddle the customer, overstate the benefits and lose the sale. Not because their product is inferior to a competitor's, but because the customer is paralysed with fear that their purchasing decision may be irrevocably incorrect.
Technology marketers are the biggest culprits. Bedazzled by TLAs (three letter anachronyms) and complex technological features, their sales literature either requires a degree in technology to comprehend or you must first spend several hours googling the TLAs until you can vaguely understand what they are trying to communicate (God Bless Wikipedia).
Last week I needed to purchase a digital projector. Unable to understand the difference beween the multiplicity of connections on offer, I found myself caught like a rabbit in the headlights. Conversely, my purchasing problem was simple: all I needed to know was the price and whether the connection between the projector and the laptop was the right one. A simple picture of the connector would have sufficed. The rest of the sales guff was irrelevant to me. I take it for granted it can project pictures onto a wall. It is, after all, a projector.
So I took a risk and bought one on trust. Luckily when it arrived the connector was the right one, but the purchasing process could have been so much less stressful.
Telephone marketers are also guilty of missing the point too. Not the fancy mobile marketers (that's another blog altogether) but the old fashioned, bog standard, plug into the wall telephone. The most remarkable feature of a telephone, correct me if I'm wrong, is it's dulcet ring tone. Too shrill and it'll have you jumping out of your skin every time it goes, too subtle and you'll be missing calls. Moreover, if your telephone rings regularly (which mine does) you'll want something that's not going to drive you up the wall with irritation to the point that unplugging it altogether (defeating the purpose of having a phone in the first place) is your only option.
But try to find out what a telephone sounds like before you buy it and you'll find yourself becoming quickly regarded with suspicion. Retailers will look at you perplexed when you request to hear the phone before you buy it. "Why on earth would you want to know what it sounds like?" "Well, you're right Ms Fox, it doesn't tell you on the box." But..... isn't that what I'm buying? I don't need to know that it has a state of the art digital keypad (woo!), and it's memory can hold up to 100 phone numbers (wow!) and it's battery life is 8 hours (yay!). I want to know what it sounds like.
We recently met with a company who was about to embark on an overseas sales trip. They have a great service at a great price but were making the fatal mistake of leaving it up to the customer to decide how much of that service they wanted to buy. I suggested they "package" up their service into 3-4 simple price based options that are easy for the customer to buy. Their email to me following the return from their trip speaks volumes for the success of making it easy for the customer to buy:
"We got a lot of positive feedback on the new structure and 16 out of 18 companies we met are interested in what we are offering."
16 out of 18 companies? That's an 88% hit rate...... imagine what a difference that would make to your business.
So , if you do one thing this week, take a cold hard look at your sales literature and decide to make it easier for the customer to buy.
But despite this so many companies, big and small, try to over-complicate the process. They befuddle the customer, overstate the benefits and lose the sale. Not because their product is inferior to a competitor's, but because the customer is paralysed with fear that their purchasing decision may be irrevocably incorrect.
Technology marketers are the biggest culprits. Bedazzled by TLAs (three letter anachronyms) and complex technological features, their sales literature either requires a degree in technology to comprehend or you must first spend several hours googling the TLAs until you can vaguely understand what they are trying to communicate (God Bless Wikipedia).
Last week I needed to purchase a digital projector. Unable to understand the difference beween the multiplicity of connections on offer, I found myself caught like a rabbit in the headlights. Conversely, my purchasing problem was simple: all I needed to know was the price and whether the connection between the projector and the laptop was the right one. A simple picture of the connector would have sufficed. The rest of the sales guff was irrelevant to me. I take it for granted it can project pictures onto a wall. It is, after all, a projector.
So I took a risk and bought one on trust. Luckily when it arrived the connector was the right one, but the purchasing process could have been so much less stressful.
Telephone marketers are also guilty of missing the point too. Not the fancy mobile marketers (that's another blog altogether) but the old fashioned, bog standard, plug into the wall telephone. The most remarkable feature of a telephone, correct me if I'm wrong, is it's dulcet ring tone. Too shrill and it'll have you jumping out of your skin every time it goes, too subtle and you'll be missing calls. Moreover, if your telephone rings regularly (which mine does) you'll want something that's not going to drive you up the wall with irritation to the point that unplugging it altogether (defeating the purpose of having a phone in the first place) is your only option.
But try to find out what a telephone sounds like before you buy it and you'll find yourself becoming quickly regarded with suspicion. Retailers will look at you perplexed when you request to hear the phone before you buy it. "Why on earth would you want to know what it sounds like?" "Well, you're right Ms Fox, it doesn't tell you on the box." But..... isn't that what I'm buying? I don't need to know that it has a state of the art digital keypad (woo!), and it's memory can hold up to 100 phone numbers (wow!) and it's battery life is 8 hours (yay!). I want to know what it sounds like.
We recently met with a company who was about to embark on an overseas sales trip. They have a great service at a great price but were making the fatal mistake of leaving it up to the customer to decide how much of that service they wanted to buy. I suggested they "package" up their service into 3-4 simple price based options that are easy for the customer to buy. Their email to me following the return from their trip speaks volumes for the success of making it easy for the customer to buy:
"We got a lot of positive feedback on the new structure and 16 out of 18 companies we met are interested in what we are offering."
16 out of 18 companies? That's an 88% hit rate...... imagine what a difference that would make to your business.
So , if you do one thing this week, take a cold hard look at your sales literature and decide to make it easier for the customer to buy.
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