Dec 20, 2012 | Marketing, Personal Rant, Small business
Yesterday in the midst of a sizeable gathering, one person was moaning about the rip-off represented by Christmas hampers, specifically one she had received the previous day. “Full of stuff I could have bought and probably cost half as much, what a wank”
Unfortunately for the moaner, the business that had given her said hamper was a client of mine, so I was aware of the thought, time, degree of personalisation, and genuine care that went into the construction of the hampers as a means of acknowledging the value they placed in the relationship. They did not have to give hampers, they wanted to. Whilst the costs incurred were important, the real importance to my client was elsewhere, a point entirely missed by the moaner.
It seems my client wasted the money they spent on that particular hamper, misjudging the total lack of grace of the receiver, but hopefully she was one of a very few who failed to recognise the intent.
I can say for sure that the mistake will not be made again with that particular person.
Merry Christmas to all my readers, I cannot send you all a hamper, but I can send you my genuine thanks for coming, commenting, and generally participating in making the writing of this blog a joy rather than a labour.
Merry Christmas.
Allen
Dec 17, 2012 | Communication, Marketing, Sales
Everybody, well almost everybody, uses Powerpoint. Some use it well, many use it poorly, and some are just appalling.
We have all sat through that presentation by somebody we thought had something to say, and they said it all on packed, almost illegible slides, which they then read to us!
Sigh!
So here are three simple, practical steps to take to make a boring presentation engaging, assuming of course that what is to be said has merit in the first place. No way to make a silk purse…………
- Use big fonts, the bigger the better. You therefore cannot get much on a slide, so need to distill the information down to the idea you are trying to convey. If you cannot distill the verbiage down to a few words that is the core of the message, work on your message, not the presentation.
- Use photos, drawings and graphics that convey a message, one per slide. As above, plus it gives you a visual hook onto which to hang a story. There are millions of images on the net, there will be many that convey the core message in a memorable way, you just have to find it.
- Do things in threes. For some reason my psychological friends can probably recite, our brains work in threes, we can remember three, and sequences of three, using this innate ability helps to organise your thoughts and presentation, and creates a flow for the audience.
If Powerpoint no longer does it for you at all, eventually the world does move on, then something like Prezi evolves, and simply makes the old stuff look, well, old.
Dec 11, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
Web based A/B testing goes a long way towards eliminating dumb mistakes, making the best choice, creating a discipline around innovative activity, and encouraging change, and has been made far easier in a whole range of areas by the data collection capabilities of the net.
But what happens when you cannot test, when you are doing something so completely new that the frame of reference necessary for good test results does not exist?
Try testing the Model T in 1890, only a few would have seen the possibilities because the horse was the frame of reference, the early cubic paintings of Picasso, art that so broke the rules as to be outrageous, or the calculations of Copernicus demonstrating the earth was not the centre of the universe, something catholic church felt pretty strongly about.
At some point testing becomes a redundant tool, you simply cannot test everything, and you have to rely on the guts, instinct, and insight of the few outliers who see things differently to make meaningful change
Dec 3, 2012 | Leadership, Management, Marketing
Can’t see the forest for the trees!.
This is a pretty common expression, almost a cliché observing that the pressure of the detail overcomes the view of the whole.
However, a tree is a part of the foundation of the forest, in the same way a single challenge or task is a part of a whole project, and it plays a role in the “fabric” of the whole.
The challenge is to see both the forest and the tree, the forest offering the context, the tree offering the vital details and relationships between the details, at the same time.
Failure to see both, and manage ambidextrously, will compromise both.
Nov 23, 2012 | Customers, Management, Marketing, Operations
Sales forecasting is a common activity, you need to know how much revenue is going to be generated in the coming months. Usually it is done by sales, usually by a straight extrapolation with a few adjustments, and the only thing you know for sure is that it will be wrong.
How cool would it be if your marketing people were able to forecast revenue with some accuracy?
Marketing is an investment in revenue generation, which is an outcome of demand, so it would seem sensible to focus attention on demand in the market, not what sales you did last month. Mindset is important. When you treat something as an expense, it is easy to chop and change based on short term conditions, but when it is an investment, it has longer term implications, and what could be more important than an investment in revenue generation???
To truly be treated as an investment, there must be a reliable ROI calculation that can be made, which means the collection of data, and the agreement on a set of metrics to be applied.
There are lots of tools emerging that claim to automate the marketing process, and generally they do it well, using the traditional sales tunnel metaphor connected to the marketing tools of the net. Whilst it is creating another source of operational complication necessary to get the data, it should be seen as a part of the investment strategy.
However, the mindset change is simple. Recognize that the role of marketing is to create demand, and the cost of using all the tools of branding, innovation, channel selections, and all the rest, are the costs implementing those investment decisions.
Nov 22, 2012 | Communication, Innovation
Innovation is all about seeing beyond the obvious answer, making the connections others miss, recognising cause and effect relationships differently.
Most also accept that with training, our bodies perform better, we run faster, further, jump higher, etc.
Surely it is the same with our brains? The more we stretch the boundaries in our nuts, the better we become at doing it. Therefore, it seems to be pretty sensible to do some training. The cryptic crossword in the local paper, deliberately inserting yourself into situations that are different and uncomfortable, and even, yes I am assured by my 30 year old son with a couple of degrees, playing some of the more creative video games (cannot bring myself to do that one).
I often start a workshop, presentation, and even casual conversation with a conundrum of some sort to try and get the juices going, so these two posts from Holly Green are gold.
