How giving stuff away makes you more money

Years ago (during the industrial revolution) humanity didn't really make much. So selling became an operation around production. If you could make it you could sell it.

Move on a few decades and we started having to sell. There were lots of people making things, so producers had to find ways to shout loudly 'buy this'

The marketing landscape had changed massively from one of under supply to one of over supply.

Then we had another seismic change. People got to know and understand the tricks marketers used and so the tricks stopped working. Marketing had to work towards building relationships with their customers

Wind forward and all of a sudden the landscape has changed again. People can get all sorts of stuff really easily. The big change is that if you give things that people value away for free then you'll make more money.

This weekend I've been out of town. I found a coffee shop and a pub that offered free wifi. In a small town the pub was one of five and I chose them because they advertised free wifi. I bought drinks and food and spent time there. The next evening, when I was thinking where to go I didn't even consider the competitors. The original pub had thrown its competitors out of the game.

I did exactly the same during the day with the coffee shop. Being able to pick up my emails on my laptop is really valuable for me but for the two businesses probably cost £20-£30 per month. Nothing in the great scheme of things.

Think about the sorts of problems your customers face. Can your business give something of value away? If you can tap into this mine of goodwill then it's distinctly possible you could throw your competitors out of the game.

Why Wayne Rooney is like a chip shop

Stick with me on this one...

I was looking at all the ways that football players can leave clubs and thought how it's just like buying and selling businesses.

Clubs can choose to sell a player, can receive an unwanted offer for a player, have the player (or more likely his agent) demand a move, have a player retire or just not perform well enough.

You could choose to sell your business. Just like football clubs distributing details of players that are available (the much discussed transfer list) you could contact a business transfer agent and ask them to circulate your business details. With a bit of luck an interested buyer may turn up and eventually a sale price (transfer fee) gets discussed.

Another business could see yours and think that it looks like a good idea to buy. Maybe it fits in with their offering by complementing or providing a competency they don't have, or maybe they just like the fact that it's very profitable. They contact you and ask if you fancy selling in exactly the way the football clubs CEOs will talk such as in the Gareth Bale transfer saga.

Players these days have a coterie of agents and advisors. Often they get paid when a player moves or negotiates an improved contract so they got to the players current club and ask for just that. The business owners could get exactly that in the form of an MBO. The managers of the club go to the owners and ask to buy the business. Hopefully in the business example the negotiations will be less fraught though!

Sometimes, sadly a player just doesn't perform well enough. The club spend time and money trying to understand why. They employ sports psychologists, trainers, dieticians all to no avail. Finally they allow the players contract to expire or sell them on cheaply or for no fee (or even with a reverse dowry). A business that isn't performing may go through the same ritual. Consultants, accountants, business coaches are all deployed but in the end the owning business just feels it's not worth pumping good money after bad.

Of course some businesses just reach the end of the road. The brand is tired, the people bored and lacklustre and the brand just gets put out to grass in the same way that a striker who gets to his mid 30s retires to own a pub or become a pundit on Sky.

Although this piece started out a little tongue in cheek it's surprising that the similies are pretty much all valid.

Have you got another way that a football club is like a business? Maybe you have another sport in mind.

The more I practice

I heard a story once...

Arnold Palmer* was playing in a major when he hit a drive into a bunker on the edge of the green. He strolled up, selected a sand wedge, chipped the ball out of the bunker onto the green and it rolled neatly into the hole. Behind him a spectator muttered something about him being lucky. Palmer turned to the unfortunate chap and said 'you know what, the more I practice, the luckier I get'.

It's interesting because recently I've been getting that feeling. Not about golf (I'm a lousy player) but about work.

The more effort I put in, the more background reading I do, the more I talk to people and the more training, testing and modelling I do, the better things go.

Sometimes I can see people giving me the old 'why is he asking that question? Of course we've thought of it.' But the truth is that you can never assume that people have thought the same way you do and checked what you would have.

In the future I'll be writing some of my findings from the world of project management. It'd be cool to think that maybe somewhere in the world, someone's project went a little bit smoother because of a lesson I learnt on a tiny project in a little company somewhere in Dorset.



* Of course I've heard this story recounted many times since. Often it's a different golfer involved and the wording is slightly different. Maybe it's true, maybe not. Funnily enough this doesn't seem to matter because the point is the same. Practice, preparation and effort all make a difference.

I knew I liked him!

I'm addicted to The Great British Bake off.

I love baking (as a lot of people at previous workplaces know) and the bake off has been brilliant inspiration for new recipies and techniques.

It's also a reality show that in general doesn't indulge in wholesale bullying of the contestants or use their difference as a stick to beat them with.

My fervent hope is that ITV see that there is a way to make great telly that doesn't end up with the people involved having nervous breakdowns.

Anyway one of my favourite contestants on the new series is Ali. Then i find out he's an Alumni from my own university.

I knew there was a reason i liked the guy - go Ali!

Leicester graduate to take part in The Great British Bake Off — University of Leicester

Producing content is what I do. That's why businesses that need a good blogger come and find me on my content marketing website Yellow Tomato. 

Numbers and levers

In the second of this series I'm looking at why you should always present a number with a lever attached.

When you present numbers to a director or a manager what do they want?

Generally if you ask they'll say words like 'clarity' or 'understanding' but in fact what they are really after is the information to make a decision.

The question they are really asking is 'should I pull this lever'.

Levers can be all sorts of things - 'do I increase my adwords spend?', 'Should we buy more stock?', 'Where should we invest our surplus cash?'

What's important is what drives your business. There's actually very few drivers for most businesses. British Airways for example found that the one Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for their business was the gate turnaround time. If they turned their very expensive aircraft round quickly they were able to run more routes thus increasing their profit.

The question you need to ask is 'what thing drives my business?' There may be more than one of course but it's unlikely there'd be more than say half a dozen.

Some examples of drivers

If you run a shop then a key performance indicator could be the sales per square foot. If  you change your stock mix, increase your prices or bring in new lines then it's likely that your sales per square foot will be affected. Make a change and watch how your KPI changes. You then know whether you should pull the lever that says 'buy different stock'.

A bakery might monitor waste. If you throw a lot of bread away then it suggests you're either not baking what people want to buy or simply baking too much. It tells you to pull the lever marked 'change your bake plan'.

A transport company may monitor MPG. When the vehicles start using more fuel then they are either worn and in need of replacement or a service.

Of course there are things that really aren't KPIs with levers attached. Monitoring your rent is usually not productive. Most firms rent doesn't change month on month and because they are tied to a lease there's little they can actually do about it. No lever. Reporting the rent is simply confusing the picture.

In summary then the figures you report need to be something you can affect by your behaviour. A lever is something that is not only variable but can be affected by management action and all figures reported must have a lever attached.

Crossing the Ts

Sometimes things go right.

In my job there are often times when it gets very tedious. You spend a lot of time crossing Ts and dotting Is.

That's because it's all about detail and preparation. If you put the groundwork in then nine times out of ten things will go well. If you don't then you're in the lap of the gods.

Today things went well. We spent time getting detail right, practicing, testing and finally doing.

It was a boring job - migrating a clients chart of accounts from an old state of affairs to a new, shiny, tidy version.

The best compliment was when the users looked at me as though I was mad when I spent time walking the floor asking if everything was OK. 

 After all - why wouldn't it be?

Everything wasn't perfect

This weekend we visited the Kneedeep festival in Cornwall.

It's a weekend of indie bands, beer and food and interesting because it's non-profit, run by volunteers and not perfect.

We kind of expect everything today to be right. Deliveries on time, Food at the correct temperature, TV on demand, that sort of thing.

So when something isn't perfect then we get irrationally mad. 

But kneedeep showed that not only can people manage when things are a bit haphazard but also that we haven't lost the ability to improvise and adapt.

It rained several times during the weekend but it didn't stop people sitting and enjoying the music, they just put on waterproof, ripped holes in bin bags and put up umbrellas.

The music started at 2pm and there wasn't a whole lot else going on otherwise. Some of the guys got a ball and organised an impromptu game of football. Jumpers for goalposts that sort of thing.

Jumpers for goalposts

There were some great bands there. There were some not so great bands there. Some of them gave the performance of their lives, some didn't. They were all cheered though. The good feeling sat around the camp like a benevolent budda, emanating happy.

One of the great bands at Kneedeep

The lack of plastic, perfectly produced signage was evident and the festival was all the better for it. People were left to organise themselves and they managed perfectly well without a health and safety consultant to guide them. There wasn't an 'official guide' but attendees still found the beer tent and no-one told us to have a good time, but we managed it just as well.

The weekend gave me lots to think about but overall the abiding memory is of a bunch of people in a field determined to enjoy themselves.

If you're not the customer - you're the product

I took the title for my latest post from this blog by Seth Godin here Seth's blog

He makes a very good point that if you are getting something for free then you are probably the product.

We hear a lot in the business world about 'monetization'. In other words how to take something and turn it into cash.

You can monetize a box of widgets by selling them to a customer. You can monetize your addressbook by selling the email addresses and facebook, linkedin, Google+ and all these other lovely free services monetize you by selling access to you.

In this lovely connected world one of the problems we face is actually only being connected when we want to be. I fully expect to see companies sprouting up offering to deconnect you so that you aren't marketed at 24/7.

Of course I'm not sure how they'll monetize that service.

I love being connected

I put an entry into my calendar on my PC at home, Opened up the calendar when i got into the office, checked it on my tablet when i was in a meeting and on the way to the meeting opened up the entry to check the address.

Connectivity is great.

I no longer have a pc at home, I have a laptop connected to a NAS (a little tiny storage box) on which I do most of my work and a tablet that I use to consume information and that I have started to read books on.

My TV is connected to the NAS so I store all my photos in the box and view them on the TV. My CD collection is slowly being transformed into little 1s and zeros and put onto the NAS so that I can access it from any of my devices.

Having stuff connected makes life so much easier.

Take time to remember where you've been

These are my tomatoes. I took the photo so that in the winter, when it's dark and miserable I could look back and remember that it won't always be like that.

It reminded me of a time when my wife and myself were running a business together. In the 3 years since we'd started we'd increased the size by 5 times and had improved the business no end.

But I wasn't happy. I can't remember why but that day I had a right mood on. Nothing was right for me that day. The website wasn't working as well as I wanted, sales weren't good enough for me, the staff training programme wasn't going well.

Then Wifey told me to stop, pause and look back. Think about where you were, look at all you've achieved and realise that actually things aren't that bad.

Yes we should always strive for more but once in a while it's worth thinking about where you've been and giving yourself a pat on the back.

It was a great lesson (the missus is pretty good like that) and it cheered me up no end. The business went on from strength to strength and I never forgot in my quiet times just to think back to where we started and look at how much we achieved.

6 Golden rules of presenting numbers

If you're put in charge of presenting a lot of numerical data to a group then what can you do to make sure people see what you need them to see?

@Joey7Barton is always listening

I have always been sceptical of the value of Twitter, after what of value can be said in so few characters? Who would be interested in what I have to say? However through the encouragement of the Leicester Award for Employability, and due in part to the enthusiasm for the medium of a business colleague I decided to take the plunge and open an account.

It would be fair to say I had low expectations and accordingly set myself simple goals for the project; to better understand how Twitter is used and how it could be useful for me.

Being a technically minded person, in the past I have found it helpful to understand how the mechanism works and then concentrate on content and I used the guides provided through the Award to understand how the platform was organised.

The first step was to find some people to ‘follow’. This was fairly easily accomplished as twitter has become de riguer for any high profile celebrity and I found many people that proved suitable. I set criteria in that I felt it would be less productive to follow random people so I chose a variety such as prolific writers, comedians and sports men and women. I decided to follow not only those who were celebrated for using Twitter but also those who were berated for their outbursts. I felt that this would give me a greater understanding of what not to do!

What I found was that Twitter has its own rhythm and cadence and it’s an art getting your point across in so little space. I also discovered that despite its simplicity, the medium can provide valuable and up to date information but at the same time its immediacy can be destructive as some footballers have found out.

The surprising thing was that I gained followers. Not many, but some people I followed, followed me back and some people I suspect were using a paid for service to follow a lot of random people simply to gain interest and some were people that I actually knew.

What became clear was that the medium is a busy and vibrant place where getting your voice heard is more than about simply shouting ‘me too!’

Twitter was all at the same time everything I thought it would be and nothing like it. It can be a place full of trolls with only negative thoughts but also people with good hearts and intentions. As someone famous must have once said - all of human life is there.

It is also plain to see that it can be a very useful tool for business to interact with their customers and to this end I will start to use Twitter more, initially on a stream of consciousness basis but also late moving towards a more targeted audience with a specific message. This should help with the development of my own business as it will allow me to speak directly with my customers. I’ll use it with caution though as @Joey7Barton has taught me you need to be careful what you say as someone is always listening!

When Sharon cried wolf

Every workplace has one person who is a constant stream of complaints, it’s too hot, too cold, too noisy. Nothing is ever right and it’s only human nature that we tend to block these out, rather like the story ‘the boy who cried wolf’.

So when Sharon (anonymised) came to me and told me that her wrist hurt my face may have said that I was deeply concerned but inside I was wondering how to get the grime off my barbecue griddle.

I listened as Sharon told me how she was having to click 18 times to produce 1 invoice. I couldn’t see the problem, after all the system hadn’t changed. In the end I asked her to take me to her workstation and show me and sure enough she was clicking a huge amount of times whilst making no input or choices that I could see. I asked if the number of invoices had changed recently and it turned out that the company had started taking on many more smaller clients and so the number produced had rocketed from 50 a month to around 300 and they all got done during one week. No wonder her hand hurt!

So I rang the guys at the software company and asked if there was anything they could do. The voice down the phone sounded deeply concerned but I knew that at the other end he was googling ways to clean barbecue griddles. I realised that the only way it had become real for me was when I actually saw the operation in action and I needed to find a way for them to see it but, as the developers were in York and my client in Bournemouth, and because developers don’t like to travel (at least not during daylight) I was a bit stuck.

Then it occurred to me that if I videoed Sharon carrying out the operation I could send it to the developer guys and it may help them to see the issue. Being a camera geek I set up my DSLR on a tripod (using a 38 -150 lens if you’re interested) and got Sharon to run through the process, describing what she was doing whilst I recorded it. I packaged it up and then sent it off to York with a recommendation of brillo pads.

Two days later the guys came back to me with a brilliant 1 button solution that automatically accepted default choices that Sharon always made and reduced the amount of stress her wrist was feeling immensely. I think that they appreciated the fact that we’d made an effort to show them what was happening rather than just having a good old moan.

When I thought about it later I realised that sometimes, people might cry wolf a lot, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a wolf. At the same time it’s important to use new technology wherever we can to illustrate our point and make issues real for people who may be able to help.

In the future I’ll use this to ensure that I actually listen to the root cause of what people are saying rather than just the tone and I’ll always go and have a look for myself because seeing really is believing. Of course being a geek I’ll make sure that I keep abreast of new technology but now I’ll ensure that I look for ways to use it in a practical way in the workplace.

Hop off the hamster wheel occasionally

I'd been asked to help at a charity near where I live because 'you know a bit about IT'. Which is a fairly apt description of a career spent with software.

They were having a problem. They had recently changed policy which meant that it was taking a lot more time to serve each customer at the paypoint. They asked me to see if there was anything I could do to make the computer faster.

Meeting the staff was a revelation. Despite the fact that they deal on a daily basis with the most unimaginable hardship they remained happy, committed and dedicated. They were not only an inspiration but a good lesson in how to act when things aren't going your way.

So I used some of the skills I'd built up working for 'profit maximising' companies to help a group of people who were pleased and grateful to see me and just doing their best. I spent a short amount of time analysing where the real problems were and having a quick look at the software and it became clear that they needed to be printing out cheques instead of handwriting them because that was where the blockage was - if only they had some cheque blanks we could test the system on.

"Oh yes we've got a load of boxes of them in the back" announced one of the volunteers "They've been there for years but we haven't known what to do with them nor had the time to find out".

Digging out the boxes I was able to set the blank cheques up on a test system and get them to print out properly, then transfer the settings onto the live system. For me it took a very short time but it wasn't particularly technical and the volunteers could have done it if they had rung their software providers helpline.

But of course they were so busy helping people that needed them that they didn't have time to stop and analyse the situation to see how they could save themselves some time or as the volunteer put it "step off the hamster wheel".

The experience reminded me how difficult it is to step back from a fraught situation, take a breath and pause to analyse whether you are doing things in the right way - especially when you are doing everything you can to keep your head above water. I had the luxury of coming at the problem with new eyes and an empty 'to do' list.

It also reaffirmed my faith in human beings. Some people do things for the best and purest motive. They don't get paid and don't ask for thanks. Just helping people is it's own reward.

The experience was like a breath of fresh air and one I want to repeat in the future. I've agreed (after only a tiny bit of arm twisting) to help out some more by becoming a board member. I think that this will give me an opportunity to broaden my experience into other sectors and bring different point of views into my daily life. It'll increase my personal network outside of the usual corporate world and it I'm sure it'll make me a happier person.

Which can't be all bad.

There's nothing like good customer service...

...And this was nothing like good customer service!

We ordered a barbecue because the old one was rusty.

I paid extra to get it delivered at a time I knew I would be in.

The BBQ didn't turn up.

So I sat in all day and waited for nothing to arrive. It wasn't total loss as it was on the first day of the Tour de France so I sat and watched with the sound down so I wouldn't miss the doorbell that didn't ring.

We all make mistakes though. So I emailed customer service to ask what had happened.

And customer service decided to ignore me.

Two days later I rang customer service to see if everything was alright, after all they may have had a fall or something.

They were OK. But it seems that the van had broken down and although they tried to call me, mysteriously they had the wrong phone number. Odd because they had phoned me the day before the non delivery to tell me to wait in especially so that they could deliver nothing.

So I asked them to deliver and they said they couldn't for two weeks. I asked them to put this in writing and they said that they couldn't because they weren't the puttingthingsinwriting department, they were the talkingtoannoyedcustomersonthephone department. I'd have to email in.

I told them that I'd already had the benefit of being ignored by the puttingitinwriting department and they said 'yeah, we've had loads of complaints recently'.

I suppose that if you've got lots of annoyed customers then what's one more?

But to take something positive from the whole experience it just reinforced what I've learned about cocking up.

Say sorry quickly, don't make things up and make it as better as you can.

I once spoke to guy who used to own a marina. He said there was one particular company that had awful quality control but was massively loved by its customers because they had an exceptional customer service department. Buyers valued the fact that when something went wrong (which it did often) they said sorry, never argued and put it right immediately.

Aren't us customers odd?

Weavo's MBA Blog!: Here goes the virgin blogger!

My old mate from the MBA course has written a blog.

Weavo is one of those guys you look forward to seeing because he's the life and soul. Not bad for an accountant!

Good effort mate


Weavo's MBA Blog!: Here goes the virgin blogger!: They say there's a first time for everything.... never a truer word spoken..... Blogger   & you can't teach an old dog n...

Seth Godin is Right

Seth's Blog

So I'm searching the inter web and I come across a blog by Seth Godin.

He's the guy that wrote an excellent book about purple cows that I loved.

Myself and Seth haven't been on speaking terms recently, I'll admit I've been a bit distant, but now I'm back and ready to rekindle my (purely platonic) man love for the god of marketing.

He wrote this excellent post which I am unashamedly re posting or whatever it is that bloggers do.

It's all about the point of blogging and to be frank it's probably the only thing that would keep me writing.

Thanks Seth.

Why on earth am I doing this?

I'd like to think it's a pretty good question for my first blog post.

The first reason is that I've started a summer course at the University of Leicester alongside my MBA.

Part of the course is all about online presence.

Part of online presence is having your very own blog.

No blog no course credit.

Of course the fact is that for people who work in the IT industry connectivity is everything and I spend my days telling people about all the great software that's out there. How could I possibly do this if I don't take part myself?

The other possibility is that with my knowledge, training and experience I may just be able to help the odd person out. And a few who aren't so odd.

So what will your blog contain? I hear you ask.

Well there will probably be a fair bit about home brewing, some football, some unbridled man-love for Will Wheaton's blog and occasionally I may find the time to crowbar in some interesting business information that I come across.

Stick around - it might be fun!