Your supplier is very busy. You know this because you chased your order and were told so with plenty of excuses and apologies.
I’ve always subscribed to the theory that if a customer phones you for an update on completion, you’ve failed. Not in a ‘call the administrators sense,’ but in a service world, the supplier should be driving the contact. If I’ve ordered a TV, a sofa or new roof tiles and I’m told I’ll receive them in 10 days, then it’s no surprise that’s exactly what I expect. On day 11, I’m on the phone. Unhappy.
Preventing my call with one of your own on day nine makes delivering the bad news so much easier. No, I’m not going to do cartwheels at the delay, but I’ll be more tolerant than if I’ve done the dialing. It’s a small but hugely significant difference.
After they take my ‘chase up’ call, your team will say the client was actually fine with the delay. That he wasn’t in such a rush anyway, that next week will be cool. They’re wrong. Just because no-one got blood on their shirt, doesn’t mean the disappointed aren’t thinking you’re useless cretins who don’t care.
Name it whatever you like: diary calls, client updates, whatever. If you’ve got 500 to do, an email template or two is in order but if you’ve got a handful then bespoke contact should be possible. One-man-bands can email me while eating their sandwich or after the kids have gone to bed. Tell me, ‘the news is that there is no news’ or that ‘we’re still waiting on the solicitor’ but tell me something… anything. Get in contact – it is a golden rule. Honestly.
I’ve seen too many organisations revert to the ostrich method: ignore the issues and it might just all come out in the wash. The trouble is, if you wait for the screamers to start deafening you, it’s too late in the game and both you and your business are in for a torrid time.
Yes, it’s time consuming and, yes, it interrupts the actual task of completion, but professionalism demands it. Better still, improve your time and project management and trump your own deadlines (with regular update contacts along the way of course). Photo courtesy of: Thunderchild tm
A business is an organic entity. Most stakeholders would wish their company to ‘grow’ but it can be ‘starved’ of orders, ‘bleed’ cash and ‘haemorrhage’ profits. Yet the biggest indicator of its living matter is the fact that people make a company (well, certainly the vast majority). The attitude of staff is the telling piece here and you’ll not find a more obvious example than Gordon Ramsay.
Look beyond the ‘shocking’ persona and you see a caring and driven business leader who believes in hard work across the board. He has a huge tribe of followers and all those who work with him seem to sign up. Sound like a bullying waster to you?
His latest show from the States is currently airing and is, as usual, over-edited thanks to Channel 4, but Ramsay’s work is excellent. No, he’s not facing challenges on the scale of a motor industry bailout, but he does cut to the heart of the problems and offers simple solutions that he proves can work – usually by making their lives simpler.
A regular SME superman. Perhaps it’s time Jose Mourinho passed on his Special One mantle?
Seth Godin is giving his only UK talk on Tuesday. Yep, yours truly has booked a day off and got a ticket to the Big Smoke to see my man Seth.
He’s not a ground-breaking intellectual – academia would never cite him like they do Philip Kotler et al (and we wouldn’t read him either). But he’s superb at taking ideas and formatting them into cohesive thoughts that spread via his stories. He is a visionary and he’s dialled into leveraging the web 100%.
He’s most captivating because his ideas are top-notch and he shares absolutely loads of them. This, coupled with his style and honesty, make him unmissable.
My wife thinks I’ll meet him in the corridor. She also reckons I’ll dribble and soil myself at the mere presence of a [my] marketing god. Let’s hope she’s 50% right.
Viral campaigns are an enigma. Word of mouth is, by definition, viral, but marketers want much more bang for their brand communicating buck. How can you spread your ‘message’ by engaging users (and potential clients) exponentially without devaluing your brand or using slapstick comedy?
Few marketers can claim to have pulled this business magic trick off, but two significant examples have already been seen this year: T-Mobile and the Best Job in the World.
T-Mobile orchestrated an involuntary dance with 300 people in London’s Liverpool Street station. The fact that the public joined in to varying degrees, with plenty taking out their phones and capturing the moment to relay it to others, was right on cue.
This technology in the participation of the event is a masterstroke. No, they’re not in the dancing business; they’re in the communication business and they demonstrated how we all interact today through some very clever ‘cause and effect’ staging. Over 3 million YouTube views, 7,000 comments and a national TV ad campaign would certainly allow the team to claim that they ‘got the eyeballs.’
Best Job in the World
The self-proclaimed ‘Best Job in the World’ lit the blogosphere’s blowtorch. Marketing RSS feeds squawked with the ingenuity of Tourism Queensland accepting video applications for the job as caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. A once-in-a-lifetime job deservedly received massive exposure and applicants surged forward for six months of ‘work’ at $150K.
The tactic scored right from the off, but a touch of greed must’ve set in as the ad agency started posting fake applicants (which are public viewing). One of these was from the Digital Project Manager for the agency. Oops.
This was the pin to the party balloon. Trust evaporated and respectful praise turned into negative PR with the crying of ‘Fake’ from hundreds of keyboards. When caught they failed to pull the brakes and it went on to be a train wreck – they denied it. This went down as well as an oil spillage.
The job is real – more authentic, even, than T Mobile’s “spontaneous” dancers – but one campaign stepped over the line that the other seems to have courted.
Tread carefully, folks. Innovatively, openly and carefully.
Bonus payments to bankers are far more problematic than the media is allowing. Banning bonuses and capping pay sounds about right for companies that needed tax payers’ cash in order to open their doors. But part-nationalisation was always going to bring about such headaches, and RBS is calling for morphine not paracetamol.
Despite colossal losses, employees within RBS will have smashed targets and proven themselves thoroughly deserving of the rewards offered when negotiating their terms of employment.
Of course, public contempt is such that our knee-jerk reaction is to cease and desist on ALL bonuses. Today’s coerced apologies will do little to reverse that derision. But this would almost certainly breach employment contracts, anger deserving staff and demoralise a non-too-confident team.
I can hear myself saying, “So what? They ruined the business. We own 70% of RBS and if they don’t like it…” Well, we need the banks to drag themselves back from the brink and pay back our investment. We do hope to get our money out remember and like it or not, we’re in bed with these bankers.
Whipping all RBS staff with the same ferocity and capping salaries will lead to a two-tier City: capped, non-bonus work for the Chancellor; and, non-capped, bonus-rewarding. Barclays appear to want to be in the latter group. Which of the two sectors do you think the brightest talents will be attracted to?
Carl Icahn writes, “The real problem is that many corporate managements operate with impunity—with little oversight by, or accountability to, shareholders. Instead of operating as aggressive watchdogs over management and corporate assets, many boards act more like lapdogs.”
Many would vote for re-opening Alcatraz to house Sir Fred and his brethren. The negligence and recklessness of these ‘industry leaders’ and their ilk has brought the world to its knees. The greed of bizarre derivatives and securities filtered through their investment arms like heroin. They’re more deserving of pistol-whipping than a pay packet. These guys should get nada.
But below board and senior management level the bonuses will probably stand, albeit deflated and with more leaning to deferment. And rightly so I think. Staff should be grateful the bank is still solvent and paying salaries, let alone bonuses. Scores of other employers weren’t felt so valuable to the UK that they be given CPR (think Woolies, Adams, JJB et al). Banking has proven itself a special case. I pray it can do something special in return.
Bottom line: the reason this all smells like a rotten carcass is because that’s exactly what we taxpayers bought.
[You noticed how few females have featured in this whole debacle?]
Twitter, much revered as THE social media application by those heavily engrossed within, also finds itself slammed as a catastrophic misspend of one’s precious time by those on the sidelines (if they’ve heard of it at all). It’s all very Yin and Yang.
I got to thinking there’s a simile to be drawn with the recent snow across the UK that has loads of people excited (especially my daughter) while causing massive inconvenience – and obvious cost – for business.
Substitute Twitter or snow fights for the following viewpoint:
Sideline humbug of snow fight/Twitter – fruitless waste of energy spent on juvenile entertainment in existence purely for its own sake. Where workers are engrossed in something pleasing to themselves with no business outcome but for the few (e.g. grit suppliers in the case of snow, contacts in the case of Chris Brogan).
or
Engaged participant ofsnow fight/Twitter – liberating and inspiring in the sense of something different from the monotony. It’s not a task ridden process and outcome – it’s original, genuine and creative. It improves your outlook and certainly broadens it. No, ten more widgets weren’t sold but maybe, just maybe, my heightened spirits and/or that new connection I made might just turn out for the better.
What say you? Is Twitter the best social business tool since the telephone, or is it a toy for time wasters?
[BTW Stephen Fry is the most popular person on Twitter. President Obama is followed by the world's terrorists and every political party under the sun, so we'll claim his numbers void. Ergo Fry wins.]
Some purchases in life fall to the mundane. Regardless of how soft my toilet roll is or how easily the diesel flows from the pump, my heart beats at the same rate.
But some shopping can be a much more emotive affair: the pride of a dad’s first pram; unpacking a new Mac; the smell of new running shoes; freshly laid carpet at home; the sound of a new golf putter. All can hit you with a lot more gusto than buying postcode credits for your website.
It’s not news to you that some brands, not just product categories, can make that difference as well. MP3 players are pretty simple machines in today’s superconducting world but few would argue it’s easier to be impassioned about a new iPod, than a £9 Sweex.
And I’m feeling much the same about this bike. I could’ve bought six other brands, all with very comparable machines but I’m drawn to Specialized. They’re arguably the BMW of the bike world but they’re not the obvious choice for the layman. Chavs haven’t heard of them and the masses won’t be interested even if they do stumble into a store that carries them. High prices should be enough of a barrier for that.
If Stephen Fry were buying a commuting bike, I could easily see him on this: technical enough for Steve Jobs (our Fry is an all-out Apple geek) but understated with a hint of performance about it.
I might be thinking (or is that feeling?) totally different about it if Beckham’s seen riding one and sales go intergalactic. But for now my heart feels secure knowing my bum gets to work a couple of times a week on my Apple-esque bike.
Unlike the frost, I hope my high isn’t short lived.
Your supplier is very busy. You know this because you chased your order and were told so with plenty of excuses and apologies.
A business is an organic entity. Most stakeholders would wish their company to ‘grow’ but it can be ‘starved’ of orders, ‘bleed’ cash and ‘haemorrhage’ profits. Yet the biggest indicator of its living matter is the fact that people make a company (well, certainly the vast majority). The attitude of staff is the telling piece here and you’ll not find a more obvious example than 
Bonus payments to bankers are far more problematic than the media is allowing. Banning bonuses and capping pay sounds about right for companies that needed tax payers’ cash in order to open their doors. But part-nationalisation was always going to bring about such headaches, and RBS is calling for morphine not paracetamol.
Twitter, much revered as THE social media application by those heavily engrossed within, also finds itself slammed as a catastrophic misspend of one’s precious time by those on the sidelines (if they’ve heard of it at all). It’s all very Yin and Yang.
Some purchases in life fall to the mundane. Regardless of how soft my toilet roll is or how easily the diesel flows from the pump, my heart beats at the same rate.