About This site is a collection of thoughts and ideas designed to give simple, practical solutions to everyday business challenges.
For more information, email david@rallystrategic.com, or call +44 (0)1444 240 340.
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Many of you will know my interest in Networking and some of you will have participated in one of my Networking Skills Workshops. As an extension to that, I’d like to draw your attention to an interesting webinar from John Niland and John Braught at Success 121 on the subject of Getting More Referrals.
When it comes to the subject of Selling, these guys really know what they’re talking about and for anyone in a professional services, consultancy or entrepreneurial role, their insights into Referrals should be well worth hearing.
The subject matter covers the following key areas and I’m sure you’ll recognise at least some of them as points of pain!
- why are professionals often wary of referral-conversations?
- how to create the context that makes referrals happen naturally and authentically
- small steps to get started
- dealing with some of the tricky situations e.g. when no specific introductions are forthcoming
- how to follow-up introductions
- pitfalls to avoid
- managing referrals from alliance-partners
It takes place on Wednesday March 24th at 9am UK time, 10 am CET… please register below and stick the date/time straight in your diary!
There is no cost to participants who register using the link below.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/303361968
This essay by Paul Graham of Y Combinator is OUTSTANDING and my sincere thanks to Jack Huang of Dealbunch for drawing it to my attention.
My advice is to do the MBA thang and read the conclusion (entitled The Super-Pattern) first, as this will give you a good idea whether it’s worth YOU reading the rest.
All I can really add is… it’s all so true!
I run a lot, as you can see from my www.fosterRuns.com blog and as such I get through a steady stream of running shoes and other assorted gear. At the point where, early in 2004, I started training for the Berlin marathon, a friend kindly introduced me to Kurt, Fred and Tom at the small specialist running shop Run, in Blatchington Road, Hove.
Now in training for the inaugural 2010 Brighton Marathon, I was back in Run late on Saturday afternoon for my seventh pair of shoes and it occurred to me how the relationship I have with this business and others like it, differs to the one I have with the Utility companies, the Banks etcetera.
I return to this store, ignoring the myriad other sports retailers, because I get the benefit of advice and guidance from specialists: people who know their product, understand my needs as a runner and as a consumer and are passionate about what they do.
By contrast, the specialist roles within the Banks and Utilities have been dumbed down over the last few years, reduced to a lower priced common denominator.
Where I used to have great respect for David Barker, my then Bank Manager, who had many years of experience with people and businesses, I am now faced with a relative youngster who has a multiple choice questionnaire to complete. Where Mr Barker was there to help me with my banking, the young man is there to sell to me, despite having no business experience and scant idea of the challenges that I face.
Crucially, where once I trusted my Bank Manager and would take his advice, thus actually spending money with the bank from time to time, no trust currently exists… and no business. They have become a utility, much like an Electricity provider: a sender of statements, rather than a trusted guardian of my money.
Clearly, in a downturn such as the one we are currently experiencing, there is a clear need to take difficult decisions regarding costs and I am the first to advocate a lean overhead structure. However, many of the aspects that separate outstanding businesses from lacklustre ones cost no money at all.
Company culture should be a cogently planned part of its strategy, as should the dogged pursuit of real experience and empathy in front-line staff. Customers are way easier to retain than they are to gain and what encourages customers to stay is experience, service, trust, passion. This builds relationships which are uplifting for both parties: the benefits are numerous to all concerned, the costs to you minimal.
So dump your forced sales quotas, focus on understanding and assuaging the needs of your customers and you may discover that they actually start to want to buy from you. On a long-term basis. What you’ll also find as a by-product is that your business will end up with a bunch of passionate Brand Advocates who may help to supercharge your marketing effort.
If you want my advice on which Bank to use, you may as well try the mattress shop. But if you want some running gear, you have my sincere, personal recommendation!
Here are some thoughts carried over from last Christmas that are still valid, so before you kick-back and put your feet up for the winter break, here are a few simple tasks to give you a head-start when you get back in 2010.
Clear the decks: If you have a vague lull in work over the next week, take the opportunity to bring your filing up to date. One of the results of eating, drinking and making merry over Christmas is that you’ll hopefully give your mind a chance to relax and forget about work. This actually allows it to throw up new ideas and it’s a whole lot easier both to relax and to get stuck into a new idea in January if you don’t have to worry about tying up December’s loose ends! Also, though it may not seem a very seasonal thing to do, take down all the cards & decorations before you lock-up for the break, as coming back to a Christmas office in January is always a gloomy experience.
Review 2009: With the heady combination of Christmas and economic gloom, it’s easy to forget what you really achieved in the last year and this is a poignant moment to reflect on both your failures and most importantly, your successes. It helps to put things in an excellent perspective and hopefully demonstrate that you’re pretty damn good at what you do, despite facing challenges like everyone else.
Preview 2010: Think forward to this time next year and imagine that you’re opening a bottle of expensive bubbly to celebrate a stonking year. Consider what kind of achievements would actually make it a GREAT year. Close your eyes and listen to the cork popping, hear the amber liquid fizzing into the glass and taste the sweet Champagne as the bubbles go up your nose. Imagine toasting the people in your team and watching the looks of pride grow on their faces. Having a clear vision for the year clearly makes it far easier to achieve, whilst visualisation is a very powerful way to get your subconscious behind your plans.
First 100 days: Sketch out the tasks that you need to do in the first quarter of next year that will make a real difference to your success. Don’t get bogged down in detail at this stage, just focus on what needs to happen. Once you’ve finished this outline, share it with your team so that everyone can see where you want to get to and how they can contribute.
First two weeks: Plan in detail how you will spend the first couple of weeks after the break. It’s too easy to waste time at the start of the year if you don’t have a clear plan and this period will really set the tone and pace for the other 50 weeks, so aim to be very busy indeed. Not just busy though: busy working on important things, things that matter and make a difference.
You’ll be surprised that these visualising and planning tasks do not take long to do. You’ll be amazed at how much more relaxed you’ll feel over Christmas having put 2009 to bed and with the clarity about what you’ll be doing when you return. The people around you will also be delighted at the amount of positive energy you’ll bring to work (and life) from the moment you get back.
Have a relaxing Christmas and a healthy, happy and highly prosperous 2010! You really deserve it… just as soon as you’ve got these last few easy tasks wrapped up!
PWC’s latest Turnaround Directors survey makes interesting reading and whilst it does not specifically relate to the SME market, some very useful points are made.
Firstly, that there is a general reluctance of management to admit that they are struggling.
In addition to this being a primary barrier to seeking help, it also points to the inexperience of management teams. This should not be taken as a slight however, as it merely denotes lack of experience in the range of challenges they currently face. My perspective is that SME owners and management teams should not be cowed by the prospect of admitting that they don’t have all the answers. How could they… no-one does.
By their very nature, Entrepreneurs tend to be sector specialists, highly knowledgeable in their own field. The more successful the company has been, often the more focussed they have probably become. As we hone our business strategies to keep a commercial edge, so we become more and more like a thoroughbred racehorse… very fit for purpose, but not so useful when we suddenly need to turn our hand to other things.
The PWC report also highlights the preponderance of sub-optimal strategy or business models in challenged companies, along with operational issues above and beyond those caused by the recession. This also ties firmly back to the inexperience of management teams and to the many challenges associated with change.
It is human nature to believe that we need to work harder when the going gets tough. This results in our becoming more and more focussed on the problems at hand, rather than standing back and seeing the challenge with a more holistic perspective. The easy analogy is to think of Neo in the Matrix Trilogies, who by learning to look at the world in a different way, is able to be faster and more effective.
But even Neo did not make this transformation alone. Often it is perspectives of people outside of the management team who hold the key to unlocking renewed vigour, passion, creativity… not to mention breakthrough business & marketing strategies or operational restructuring.
This can be leveraged internally, through the harnessing of valuable and often forgotten insight from employees… and engaging with this knowledgeable and frankly interested mental resource has the secondary benefit that it can also help revitalise all-important internal communication.
Turnaround transformation can also be leveraged through the engagement of externals, be they business coaches, company doctors or turnaround managers, depending on the size of the company in need and the depth of the problems. Viewed with the fixed mental model of a management team in distress, they might represent a cost that the company might ill-afford. But they also represent a huge opportunity, far beyond their price.
In addition to helping the embattled SME management team to refocus and reinvigorate their troubled company, they are also helping to broaden the management experience of those concerned.
We don’t actually tend to learn a lot by succeeding, so we have two other alternatives:
- Much is learned by failure, provided we then have the opportunity to reflect comprehensively on what has happened… and provided we can afford to fail in the first place.
- Alternatively we need to be prepared to receive wisdom from outside.
And since we also learn most not by being told, or even shown, but by being involved, the involvement of an external in helping us solve our crises is as much an investment in personal development as it is in turnaround.
The PWC report bears reading from this perspective and also sounds a note of warning to those Directors and owners who fail to take heed. Too many owners are being forced into Administration when they could have worked their way out of their current predicament… but only if they are prepared to take action early.
Management teams with experience will do this and they are the ones who have the most to gain by their actions.
http://www.pwc.co.uk/pdf/turnaround_directors_survey_executive_summary_oct09.pdf
Just a quick apology. I didn’t realise that the permalinks on this site had not translated from the previous theme.
This is now fixed and the archives are accessible again.
Getting a Grip of Pricing
For our first TMA Brighton event of the autumn season, hosted by award-winning Acumen Business Law, we are delighted to be joined by Cliff Burgin of the pricing consultancy Burgin Associates, who gave a well-received presentation to the London region recently which was highly informative as well as entertaining.
Cliff will share his practical tips for improving profit quickly by addressing the pricing strategy and tactics of a failing organisation. He will cover the following:
- Seizing Control of Pricing – One of the first tasks of a turnaround manager is often to get a grip on the price the company charges. How best to do this without jeopardising future business or losing key staff.
- The 6 most popular ways companies give away margin through pricing – Almost all businesses under-price some of their customers. Businesses in difficulties do it more than most. Here are six places Cliff has found are the most likely to reveal margin leaks.
- Pricing Quick Wins – What actions can you take quickly on price that will yield profit without damaging long term customer relationships. How to break the news to customers (if indeed you have to).
The mission of the TMA is to create a forum for the exchange of industry information and knowledge, to promote high standards of practice, to raise the visibility of TMA and the professionals involved in the revitalization of troubled companies.
The event is CPD accredited and a light buffet with drinks will follow the presentation. Places are limited: for further details of the event and to sign up, go to www.tma-uk.org
If you are currently facing tough trading conditions or are interested in the Turnaround Management space, one of my colleagues at RiVO partners recently wrote this very interesting article http://www.tma-uk.org/uploads/Rivo%20-%20Distress%20is%20painful%20delay%20deadly.pdf
I have also recently taken on the role of Regional Event Co-ordinator for the Turnaround Management Association (TMA UK) in Sussex so if you are interested in attending events in this region, please let me know.
This is a quick note to say that we have launched new websites for executive or SME coaching at www.rallystrategic.com and for mid-market companies in need of turnaround or performance improvement at www.rivopartners.com
Running can be a great time to allow the mind to make connections and here are a few thoughts that I connected this morning as I ran out.
Our unconscious can hinder us from achieving difficult things, quietly robbing us of the resilience to keep going or preventing us from seeing how far we’ve come. I was watching a brilliant lecture on TED the other day where Benjamin Zander was talking about Music & Passion. He showed how children are able to hold bigger and bigger musical phrases in their mind given time, allowing them to play more smoothly and competently. Sadly, he pointed out that many don’t reach the final, more satisfying level, instead giving up just before they do.
In a marathon, this is the wall that people speak about – having run 22.2 miles, your unconscious tries hard to persuade you that you can’t run the last four.
I’ve been using my running blog to galvanise me to run for 20 months now, whilst also exercising my writing ability, one week at a time. Both writing and running slowly improve and the resilience it has developed spills positively out into other things.
It is a different matter if you decide not to do something. A friend recently closed down one of his companies as their key client no longer had a requirement. His colleagues would have been happy to continue, part-time and unpaid, to see if they could bring in more work. But a clear decision cuts off the slow drain created by overheads and allows (or forces) everyone to focus on other more profitable things, probably to better effect.
I practice Chi-Kung, ancient Chinese breathing & stretching exercises, every morning & night for ten minutes. It would be easy to give up as there are no clear instant benefits, but I know that over time it will enable me to stay flexible and positive. I can’t see any reason NOT to carry on doing this until I physically cannot.
Vipassana taught me that you have to be gentle with yourself when you’re learning to do new things. And persistent. When you notice that you’ve lapsed in your New Years resolution to go to the gym, don’t beat yourself up about it or think how much ground you’ve lost. Instead, just accept that your mind was elsewhere and start going again. Coaxing the unconscious into a new way of working is the technique that works best, provided you keep applying gentle pressure.
So to business. Here is some thinking exercise for you.
If it were easy, what would you change about yourself, your business or the way that you do business? Now imagine that you’ve made that change… how would you behave in this new reality? Would you stand straighter, dress sharper, look people in the eye, listen longer to your employees or be more direct? Practice this behaviour, in a small way to start with, but at some point during every day if you can. And when you realise that you’ve lapsed practicing it, start again. And though it would be easy to stop going, choose not to and instead keep returning to it.
You may be surprised at how effective this very simple approach is and also how the resilience that you’re building up may start to positively affect other things that you try to achieve. Emile Coue said that If we imagine that it is not possible to do something, then it is indeed impossible for us to do it. My sense is that if we can imagine how something will look and start behaving appropriately, then we are a long way towards achieving it.
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