Digital Business

Cutting training costs is an old cliche

In tough times, the cliche is that the first things to be axed in a business are the marketing and training. They are easy prey to any CEO or finance director to provide immediate impact on lowering costs within a business when the going gets tough.

But a research article dropped into my inbox this morning which highlighted an affect the recession is having on how businesses, particularly in the news industry, are having to take a different approach to this way of thinking. It’s likely that if you ran a newspaper for any length of time up to two or three years ago, you have lost your job because you did not have the right skills to adapt to the new digital world we are in.

The research article highlighted articles where the new chiefs in newspapers have come from different backgrounds from their predecessors. Here are some of the articles it used:

Papers’ new publisher, CEO to push digital content

Freedom Communications’ chairman sees opportunity

Journal Register Company Names Veteran Media Executive John Paton as Chief Executive Officer

So, it seems that people at the top really do value the right skills in their businesses, and particualry their own skills. If they don’t, they’ll soon be walking themselves out of the door with a P45.

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Do you believe in anything?

I have been trying to persuade a deeply skeptical businessman that his business will benefit from providing useful content on his website for prospective customers to download. His business is very technical and provides technical services to the publishing industry, a global outsourcing company and a number of other marketing agencies who don’t have the technical know-how themselves to  build web solutions for their clients.

Their technical know-how is impressive not only from the software solutions they develop but also the commercial knowledge they possess and the consultancy they provide to help people plan for the solutions they are hoping to achieve. Their main market is the educational and trade publishing sectors where, to be frank, the clients are generally conscious of what they want to do but don’t often have the competencies to implement the solutions themselves. This is where they help them.

As a consequence, the clients need a lot of help in framing what they want to do so that is commercially viable and practically possible. It’s almost a process of educating the clients to help them be successful. It sounds potentially patronising but that’s the reality of how they help their clients. They help their clients by providing pragmatic and impartial advice of what to do.

Most of this consultative work is carried out for free and they only charge for the development work they do on actually building the solution. The particular individual is convinced that people won’t pay for this advice, which might be true. The clients don’t value their skills and experience until after they benefited from them. By then, it is too late for this company to ask for payment and, therefore this individual sees that there is no value in that knowledge to the business.

But this knowledge is one of the biggest opportunities that they have to market themselves to gain more business, which is exactly what they need. They can use this knowledge to find out who is interested in their services and therefore who, potentially, needs their service.

By distilling their knowledge into case studies, whitepapers or tools and placing them onto their website for people to download for free in return for their contact details is a simple way to demonstrate their core value to customers and that they know how to help people and organisations with specific needs.

Trying to persuade someone to your points of view who completely disagrees with you is a challenge. It’s particularly difficult when they are your boss and they hold the resources you need to do what you believe to be the solution to the challenge. But this individual believes that their type of clients don’t look for their type of skills on the web, which is flying in the face of a large technology industry which provides a huge amount of information, tools and answers to people with challenges.

I am trying to show them that this will work but with no current evidence that it will work. They need facts and figures when I am asking for a leap of faith. So, the question in the title of this post is something which I can show how it has worked for other people in the technology sector. They question this individual needs to ask is ‘Why haven’t we done this before?” But some people don’t want to believe. They want certainty without risk. They don’t actually believe in themselves.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a good article by Valeria Valtoni on her blog ‘Conversation Agent’ which argues that people should stop adding value and that “to build a platform today, you need to be of service“.

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Hull Digital Live

Jon Moss from Hull Digital is a man who has found a seam of digital excellence in an area of the country which is often overshadowed by the larger cities in the UK where it is incorrectly believed that the majority of the country’s digital talent is held. Hull and the surrounding area is seen as a deprived trouble spot.

But, the reality could not be more different. Far from being a backwater or a black hole for digital talent, Hull is a vibrant place with a collection of companies and individuals with a rich range of skills and experience in the world of digital technology.

Jon started a networking group where, each month, he invites the local people from the digital talent pool to meet, share ideas and create new business opportunities. From its outset, the networking group called ‘Hull Digital’ has had an attendance of 45 to 50 people at each session. Jon invites two speakers to stand up and talk about aspects of the digital industry in which they are involved or passionate.

This has now developed into what one might call a ‘digital movement’ in the city and Jon has launched Hull’s first digital conference on 14th October called ‘Hull Digital Live‘. Jon is a man with connections and he has managed to attract some of the UK’s digital royalty to speak at the event, including Rory Cellan-Jones from the BBC.

Rory Cellan-Jones writes reports and blogs about a wide range of digital news and manages to make complex digital subjects approachable. Rory is the main speaker for the day long conference.

There are still ‘early-bird’ tickets available and if you want to know how you and your business or organisation can benefit from the digital revolution then you should make yourself available for the conference that Jon is organising.

Digital and technology in the UK today See Rory Cellan-Jones speak here http://ow.ly/lx7O

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Digital skills gap in publishing is critical

This is an interesting article in The Bookseller which highlights the skills gap challenge within the publishing industry. The understanding within experienced, middle management about the possibilities and strategies on how to use digital technology are weak and the creative skills to turn that into fresh, effective and tactical realities are often not there because higher paying sectors make publishing less attractive to enter.

Digital skills gap now ‘critical’ for publishers | theBookseller.com http://ow.ly/k2nA

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Generation M wants to be great at doing stuff that matters

Before you get upset by my heading, I really do mean this as a personal comment. I know several people, including friends, who have been badly affected by the recession in their businesses. I too have had a couple of tough years, most of which came from starting a business at the beginning of 2008 which is still going but for which I am no longer working on.

Bad timing, perhaps, and the recession did not help. The business strategy was ambitious. We were taking a new product to markets we thought we knew well but the clients were cautious and they did not buy as much as we thought despite the benefits available to them. I have learnt a lot in the last two years of my business life and my home life.

One of the main consequences of the business last year is that I have had to look through my personal finances to adjust my lifestyle according to my funds. And it has been a valuable exercise in highlighting how inefficient my household had been in the last ten years with the way we were spending money.

For example, we had borrowed money to extend our current house in a modest way. It improved the house, for sure, but the house has a limit to what people were prepared to pay for it and the growth in the equity has not improved enough to have made it worthwhile. We are selling our house and moving, hopefully, into a new town house which has energy bills half that of our current house. We will drop our mortgage by £100,000 by moving into the new house and it feels good.

Furthermore, it will save us having to drive our children from our current village house to school in town. The children can now walk to school and we save a lot of money on petrol.

Also, I have downsized my car to a car which does 70 miles per gallon (mpg) and 80 mpg if I drive a little more carefully. What was I doing beforehand in a car which only managed 25 mpg? Also, the tax on it is much lower than the previous car.

I admit that I am now becoming a bit obsessive about what I use day to day and I question even the humblest products and their value. For instance, why the heck do I need a razor which has five blades? How close can a razor get before it starts taking your face off anyway? Two blades are fine and the shaving foam I use now is a supermarket brand which is a third of the price of the branded equivalent and just as good. I don’t seem to be the only one either who is changing their ways either. Caroline Eveleigh at Anatec Software and Systems is doing the same with her lighting.

The main point is that we will soon have a great deal more ‘disposable income’ so that our family can invest in the really valuable things in life such as giving our children the best education we can, investing money for the long term, and actually having some fun.

And this is what we are doing in our business, of which I am now a part, too. We question the value of all of our investments very closely. We are investing in the skills of the team. We are investing in building relationships with our new and existing clients. We are making sure we have some fun as business too.

And as the tough conditions continue for businesses and people alike, it seems like their is change in the atmosphere in how people perceive their environment. Umair Haque wrote a very interesting article where he pointed out a change in society in a group which he calls ‘Generation M‘. Generation M is searching for greater meaning in a world which is “full of big, fat, lazy business” but which is seeking “small, responsive, micro-scale commerce“.

I am part of Generation M. I have moved out of big business and into small business where I can make a difference. I am glad that I am downsizing so I am no longer burdened with an oppressive mortgage. I don’t buy products which purport to make me a better human being because the brand tells me so. I am buying products which do a good job and no more. I am getting my life back and getting some meaning into it so that I can enjoy what I do, spend time with my family and friends and just enjoy a simpler life.

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Being clear about what you do helps you and your prospects

Most people in business have heard of the ‘elevator pitch‘ which is an a summary of your product, service or idea which you deliver to people that you want to invest with you. The elevator pitch may sound like a piece of business jargon but the principle behind it is sound.

If you can’t explain to someone what you do in a concise and clear manner which makes it easy to understand for the person that asked you the question then you should stop what you are doing and work it out now. Without this clear understanding about your business, idea or project then you put yourself in a weak position from which you will lose opportunities to sell, influence and connect with people.

It’s no good saying that what you do is very complicated and it can’t be explained in a sentence. People don’t have the patience to listen to long winded explanations and, in a competitive world, you will be replaced by someone else quickly who can explain what they do quickly.

When you have worked your pitch out, it has an amazing effect on your marketing and how your team think about their work and where the business is going. Your pitch will then influence how you write copy on your web site, it will affect how you write your emails, it will affect how you express yourself on your stand at shows and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Prospective clients will know whether it is worth talking to you and you will know whether it is worth talking further with them. Your elevator pitch will save you time and help you to either sell more, gain investment or gain important contacts.

Here are my five top tips for working out your elevator pitch:

1. Ask yourself what you are good at. Not what you want to do but what you are really strong at doing.
2. Recall moments when you felt as though you were in your element when working with previous or existing clients.
3. Reduce your ideas and words from the previous point into one or two clear, easy to read sentences.
4. Test your elevator pitch out with some existing clients or prospects and note the difference in how they react to it.
5. Practice what your pitch out loud and then practice, practice, practice until you know it off by heart.

Our business is going through this exercise right now. Our strap-line says ‘Digital Communications Agency‘ but it does not tell people what we do. It hides our deep skills and experience in a particular area and it affects how we explain what we do and how we can help. This is changing as I write and we will soon have a new, clear way of quickly explaining to people what we do.

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Be genuinely interested in what other people do

Networking is an essential activity for anyone in business and it is especially important for people in small businesses to carry out. Small businesses should be very wary of gambling precious resources on buying lists, running advertising campaigns, or carrying out mass mailings.

Networking in its face to face or internet forms is effective, it is easy to measure results and builds strong business for the present and future.As a part of the marketing mix, it has to be near the top of the list for allocation of resources for small businesses.

Nevertheless, it has to be carried out in a professional, targeted and considered way. If you network in an amateur way, you will immediately present your business as one which is less than credible. I network a lot and it is fruitful. I meet a lot of people and some of them become clients and some of them become contacts.

Some events are clear that networking is a definite part of the structure. Some events do not stress that networking is part of the structure but it is implied by the fact that everyone eats and drinks together at the event and if you are not using the time to network then you that’s your bad luck. Some events are well organised for networking. Some are poor.

The more I attend networking events, the more I learn about how to make them work for me and other people. I follow some rules which make the time productive and increase the return that you gain from it. If you are thinking about whether to do more networking as part of your marketing mix, these rules might help you.

Read the rest of this entry →

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Getting leads does not have to be costly

All businesses need sales. It’s probably the most important activity to keep a business alive. With profitable sales, cash flow is the next most important aspect to get right. Most large businesses (e.g. Microsoft and HP) I have worked in have the luxury of being able to test marketing initiatives and they have vast armies of sales and marketing people to develop, test and refine them, along with the budget to do it.

In a small business, you don’t have such luxuries unless you happen to be swimming in cash. Most people start their own business with plenty of determination, some cash to keep themselves afloat, a great idea and the experience to be able to help other people with it, and, perhaps, a list of contacts who they can approach who might want to buy their product or service. Resources for sales and marketing are limited so every penny has to count towards getting sales.

Learning how to sell can often be the hardest part of starting your own business. The fear of rejection. The fear of failure. These are all common anxieties that occur when you are about to either pick up the phone to speak to a prospect, run your first show stand or talk to people at an event who you don’t already know. But you can break these fears and anxieties down by following simple steps in your business planning and not be tempted into sales and marketing activities that don’t fit into your plans.

When it comes to marketing, I hear plenty of worrying stories about business owners who have been recommended to get a web site for their business to bring in sales which, in the end, brings in no leads and, of course, no sales but takes vital cash out of their business. Also, people are often tempted to buy lists of names who are supposed to be qualified prospects in their target market at great expense but which can often be found for free on the internet using business networking sites like LinkedIn.

Often this comes down to a lack of experience in sales and marketing, which is understandable when these are not your main skills. But, when you start your business, you have to become good at sales and marketing to survive and get yourself into a position to grow your business and make profits.

When you have limited or near-zero marketing funds, then you need to be laser targeted in how you use them to bring you fruitful leads which convert into sales. You need to be clear about the objectives for your marketing. You need to be clear about your sales objectives too. Once you have determined your sales and marketing objectives, then you can begin to work on your sales and marketing strategies.

Sales objectives might sound like this: “To cover my costs each month and to pay myself a living wage, I need to bring in £5,000 of sales per month”. And it might follow on like this: “In order to bring in £5,000 of sales per month, I need to sell two of my widgets per month”.

Sales strategies might sound like this: “To sell two widgets per month, I need to send ten quotes out per month”. Sales tactics might sound like this: “To send out ten quotes per month, I need to make fifty contacts with new prospects or customers per month“.

Marketing objectives might sound like this: “I want to become the first choice when clients need an HR consultant in my local town within two years”.

Marketing strategies might sound like this: “I want to meet one new prospect a week who is in my target market”. A marketing tactic for this strategy might be “To meet one new prospect per week I am going to join my local business networking group”.

Only when you have planned your sales & marketing objectives and strategies, can you start to decide on the right tactics to achieve them. This is where many people starting up their own business start. They start with sales tactics and marketing tactics without fully understanding how they support their strategies and objectives.

For instance, you might say I want to build a web site to sell to new customers. But do your customers buy your type of product or service through the web? This is where your precious resources can be wasted in an instant.

So, before you spend anything, ask yourself how sure am I that I will get any business from this? If, for instance, you are buying a list, check on the web to see if your potential clients can be found for free. Before you build your web site, make sure it supports your strategies.

In my experience in owning and running small businesses, you should keep everything simple, focus on what you do best and learn how to sell. You need two types of lead generating tactics to get you sales. Tactics which can offer you quick access to prospects (e.g. your existing contact list or contact details from tools like LinkedIn), and tactics which can offer you an opportunity to build long term networks of leads (e.g. networking at events or business clubs).

These two are the cheapest and most secure ways to get leads and sales into your business and they are based upon relationships. You need to convince people that you are trustworthy. With short term tactics, it is good to have a nice logo and a well designed web site. They instill confidence in prospects that you are serious.

But, you should not spend more than you can afford until you have enough money to develop them into more sophisticated tools. Keep it simple. Use the great tools which are out there on the web to help you connect to customers which are free and adapt them cheaply. Keep the cash in your business for as long as you can.

You don’t need to spend lots of money on marketing at first. You need to spend lots of time finding prospects and working with existing clients. Always ask yourself how sure you about the return you will get from your sales and marketing investment and whether it supports your plans. Trust your instincts and be firm about how you invest your resources.

If you keep these principles in mind, you can generate good business without spending lots of money.

If you would like to contact me for further consultancy on how you can get leads to your business at low cost, then please email me: will@digitalbusinessblog.co.uk

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This week a documentary started called ‘I’m running Sainsbury’s‘ on Channel 4. It was a fascinating insight into how one of Britain’s largest supermarket works and the decisions they have to make on which products to stock and the revelation that three out of four new products fail when they are introduced to the stores.

The series is based around the premise that Sainsbury’s can benefit from making use of their employees ideas to develop the business because they are closer to customers and, therefore, closer to what customers actually want.

In this particular episode, one employee from the Watford store, Becky, had a great idea about enhancing an already good idea from Sainsbury’s which is their ‘Feed Your Family for a Fiver’ campaign which provides a recipe for four the ingredients for which you can buy for £5 or less. Shoppers would have to pick up the leaflet with the recipe and then walk through their local store to pick up the individual ingredients.

Becky’s idea was to put all of the ingredients into one bag which shoppers could just pick up the bag and go, saving them the time they would have spent wandering around the store looking for the individual ingredients.

The documentary followed Becky’s idea from inception to delivery to the commercial decision not to stock it after the trial period. At the early stages of the process, there were some slightly patronising comments from senior managers along the vein of ‘We thought of this already but never got round to implementing it‘, which gave us a glimpse into the realities of how hard it is to get a successful product onto the shelves and keep it there. It was probably a sniff of frustration from the managers in the supermarket’s head office who know the realities of product development.

Nevertheless, Becky carried on with getting her product developed from the stages of creating and picking a suitable recipe, having it tested by Sainsbury’s staff, having it photographed, having the packaging designed, before it went onto the shelves in one supermarket. The targets for the all in one product were set and the staff in the store set about promoting it.

In short, the product missed its target by half for the week and Becky was bitterly disappointed and took it, understandably, personally and let it knock her confidence. I certainly thought it was not a good trial because it was only a week in one store and it was only one recipe which may not have been something the customers would have jumped at to buy and make. I think they should have given in longer and had more than one recipe on the shelves. People like choice, right?

The main point that this documentary displayed is that it is, actually, quite easy to come up with new ideas on how to sell more products, or to think up new products when you compare it to the difficulty of taking that idea or product to market successfully. Ideas should be encouraged in any business or organisation that wants to ‘innovate’. But employees need to have a whole range of skills as well as the forcefulness to push the idea through the stages of taking it from a concept to a reality that people want to buy.

It is highly likely that your idea will fail. But that should not stop you having the ideas and trying to make them a reality. But be prepared for a lot of disappointment when it does not work. The real skill is to realise that you have to have a few failures before you come across a successful idea. Don’t take it personally. Do be prepared to take some risks which could either be financial or personal (i.e. your reputation) and hone your persuasive skills and business skills to get people to back you.

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Anyone can stand up in front of an audience and present. Presenting well so that people enjoy your presentation and feel moved in some way by it is a skill which takes practice. Many presenters have the attention of their audience for the length of time it takes to say “Hello” and quickly lose them before they even say “I’m…”.

This week I spent two days at a conference in London which had a good selection of people presenting topics covering digital publishing subjects. Overall, the presenters were good mostly, and some were excellent. The presenters that gripped me were not the ones I would have necessarily have thought would have a subject that interested me. No, the presenters that were  gripping, inspiring and interesting were good story tellers.

The poor presenters disconnected themselves with the audience in two ways:

1. They expected us to read their slides.
2. They did not build a relationship with us.

When you watch a film at the cinema, the most text you see in them are the credits. The main film stars, the director and the producers get their names displayed briefly at the start but rarely do you see two names on the screen at the same time. Everyone else gets their names displayed at the end as the audience is walking out. In scenes when a character is, say, reading a note, the director zooms in on the single line of text or they will highlight the important sentence. But the director does not expect you to read the whole letter or newspaper.

So, why then do so many presenters think that we can do the same when trying to follow their presentations? When was the last time you saw a film at the cinema which contained bullet points? I expect you cannot recall one film that used bullet points.

Relationships take time to build. You never start a good relationship by talking to someone you are trying to attract as if you were trying to speed talk. To build a relationship, you speak slowly so that your words are heard. You listen, you watch for body movements and you don’t ask questions which give the person you are opposite no time to think. You ask them questions which are easy to answer.

And yet, so may presenters fail to connect with the people they are trying to attract because they do not make their audiences feel as though they have any empathy with their situation. For instance, Barack Obama’s slogan for his presidential campaign in was “Change We Can Believe In“. It wasn’t “Change I Can Believe In“.

Nevertheless in the conference this week, the zeitgeist on Twitter from the audience in several presentations was along the lines of “This guy is trying to sell to me and I don’t like it“. The audience switched off from listening and moved in protesting. Business life has moved on and people are more sophisticated. You cannot sell to them. They have to buy from you and they only buy from you if pass through a process of building trust to form a good relationship.

As a result, the presenters who didn’t connect with the audience wasted a huge amount money and opportunity at the conference by distancing themselves and failing to entertain us.

Here are my recommendations for excellent presentation skills:

1. Go and watch a film and note how much text you see in it.
2. Judge the script and the acting and ask yourself how you would improve it.
3. Buy the book ‘Beyond Bullet Points‘ by Cliff Atkinson and practice what he preaches.
4. Read this blog – Presentation Zen
5. Spend some time studying relationships.
6. Practice in front of a mirror until you find yourself entertaining.

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