Jul 16, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Sales, Strategy
Planning for your business takes up a lot of time and resource, which is often hard to allocate, particularly in small businesses.
It is a bit like the planning that goes into your daughters wedding, many things seem trivial at the time, but when it goes right on the day, aren’t you glad you did it?
Think about the cost (to your sanity and peace of mind) of stuffing up the flowers, or the cars on the day, and consider the relative value of a bit more planning.
Many small businesses do not spend the time planning, they are so busy getting stuff done that the time is not easily available. Often when they think about it, much of the activity that takes all the time is fixing things that have gone wrong, or take more time than necessary, that could have been mitigated by a bit of planning.
You plan your daughters wedding to the last detail, shouldn’t you do the same for your business?.
Jul 16, 2009 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
The notion of an organized, planned, tidy strategy development and implementation process, whether it be for a multinational, or a small local business is profoundly flawed by the simple fact that it requires forecasting accurately a number of things, including many beyond the control and understanding of any business, and the only thing we know for sure about forecasts is that they will be wrong.
Strategy development and implementation is an organic process, filled with false starts, blind alleys, and pain, all of which add to the evolutionary “learning” process, which sometimes delivers commercial sustainability.
To be useful strategy implementation must have the capacity to “learn” , to see the impact of its actions, and adjust to accommodate changes, misunderstandings, and opportunities.
Most SME’s do not think much about strategy, they are usually tactical in outlook, and that is a failing. Strategy is as important to a small business selling through “alternative” channels, as it is to the multinationals selling through established channels.
Only with hindsight is strategy implementation an orderly process, when all the speed humps can be ignored or explained away
Jul 13, 2009 | Sales, Strategy
The sales job has changed substantially with the emergence of the web.
In the past, many sales people were mobile, human brochures, the keepers of the information. No longer.
Most of the mundane information on specifications, performance, competitive advantages, and so on is freely available on the web, often out of your control, in customer and consumer forums for important products or large purchases.
Sales professionals now have to assist the customer to a solution to their problems and competitive challenges, which is much, much harder than being a human brochure.
Are your sales people up to the task?
Are you giving them the appropriate support and information
Are they spending their time in a manner that will give you a return on your considerable investment in their time and training?
Jul 12, 2009 | Marketing, Sales, Strategy
A short time ago I purchased a new pair of black “Julius Marlow” shoes from a major retailer. Within a month, the body of the right shoe had separated from the sole, hardly a reasonable result from a purchase worn around the benign environment of a carpeted office.
I contacted JM, owned by Pacific Dunlop as I discovered, via the web site, after some searching, but OK so far.
Eventually, I got an automated response to my note of complaint, which required me to engage in more automated “discussion” with the web site, by which time I was pretty annoyed.
After several more automated responses with me becoming more specific about where I would like to stick the machines micro-processors, a very pleasant young lady rang me. Potentially a step forward, but a bit late, and to get anywhere I had to invest the time to take the shoes back to the store I got them from (I’m sure the staff will be pleased to see me) along with the proof of purchase. Not an option, so as an alternative I could bundle them up and send them, at my cost, to Melbourne, where they would “look at them” .
So, JM failed to deliver what I had paid for, and reasonably expected, having worn many of their shoes over my life. After they failed, they expected me to spend more of my time, and money, to further satisfy them of their failure, with no notion of any outcome to me. The final indignity, after the final email from me, was an automated response that quoted the “incident” number, followed by the words “Incident resolved”
Through this saga, I was reminded of the work by economist Ernst Fehr, and an experiment well known as the “trust game” which seemingly identifies a biological link between peoples behavior in getting revenge against those who have dudded them, even when the revenge behavior appears on the surface to be well over the top.
The point to all this is if you set out to communicate with customers when they are a bit off put, and fail to meet their expectations in that communication, and the ensuing resolution, a bit off-put can turn into behavior that seeks to extract revenge for the dudding, and in the world of the web, that revenge has the potential to stuff your brand very quickly indeed. Imagine, I made short video of obviously brand new JM shoes with the sole half off and putting it on you tube with some creative fun being had, sending it to a few friends, and having it go viral. How much damage could that do to the brand (but probably unfortunatley not to the dills responsible) who stuffed up a simple communication with a long term and relatively loyal customer?
Jul 9, 2009 | Management, Operations, Sales, Strategy
Selling is a tough job, and getting tougher, as the number of ways a potential customer can purchase expand with the web, and consumer confidence is fragile, despite the stunning Australian figures a couple of days ago.
No longer can sales people fulfill their budgets by being accurate and sympathetic purveyors of information, and doing a lot of calls, they now need to be able to add value in ways that competitors and no other channels can duplicate at the price.
How do you do this?
- Have only skilled sales people, ones who without thinking, empathize with customers and their problems. Make sure they know your products intimately, and the business of the customers as intimately so they can identify unique ways your products can add value to the customer.
- Have in place the sales support mechanisms so that every opportunity identified is optimized. Sales people make sales talking to customers, not chasing late orders through your systems.
- Have a “sales culture” where the whole organisation recognises that customers are the reason they are in business, and it is everyone’s job to sell, not just those with a bag.
The bad news for sales professionals is that there will be less of you as time goes on, the good news for those left is that they will be paid a lot more than they are now as their value is recognized.
