8 habits to generate a return on your investment  attending network meetings

8 habits to generate a return on your investment  attending network meetings

Mar 14, 2018 | Customers, Marketing, Strategy

 

As small business owners, most of us go to network meetings of some sort. BNI, Rotary, your industry association, the local SME network, whatever it is, with the idea that we will make connections with people who may, at some point be useful to us, and to whom we may be useful.

Going to these meetings usually costs a bit of money, but more importantly to time poor entrepreneurs and grinders, it costs us our time.

So how do we make the most of the investment?

It really is pretty simple, all it needs is to be genuinely interested in others, genuinely prepared to help, without necessarily asking for anything in return. This builds trust, and trust is reciprocated.

However, there are some simple things you can do to communicate your value without having to blab it.

Eye contact.

Maintaining eye contact signals sincerity and warmth, weather you are speaking to an individual, or a group. Either way, maintain eye contact. When speaking to more than one, do not  just gaze off into the ether, maintain eye contact with individuals in the audience, move it around, to engage with numbers. Few things annoy me more than meeting someone who is then looking over my shoulder for someone more interesting

Use their name.

Using someones name generates some level of intimacy, especially when we have just met. We are all told that we should repeat back the name of someone to whom we have just been introduced, but many of us do not, so the name goes as we are introduced to the next person. Do whatever is necessary for you to remember peoples names and fall back on the old excuse of ‘I am hopeless with names‘ as sparingly as possible, as it communicates ‘you are not worth knowing‘

Listen actively.

This really just means you give your full attention to the other person when they are speaking. Listen to them, repeat back what they have said as confirmation and perhaps clarification, and ask relevant questions that demonstrates you have been listening thoughtfully, giving their ideas and words your full attention.

Know who you are talking to.

Often this may not be possible, but if you can, know a bit about the person you are talking to by doing a bit of research beforehand. This enables you to ask questions, and make observations to those you meet that will tweak the emotions and motivations of their favourite person, themselves. Often this is impossible, but these days using LinkedIn and the various notifications sent around of who is attending, enables some level of research to be done prior to the meeting. This research always pays off.

Mirroring.

Body language 101 teaches us that people who are interested tend to mirror in very automatic and  subtle ways, the mannerisms and body language of those we are communicating with. There is considerable research that demonstrates conclusively this is not just learned behaviour, but an evolutionary biological process that enables us to distinguish between friends and enemies. It is not creepy to  set out to reflect body language, it is simply empathising.

Be respectful and grateful.

When someone has given you their time and attention, be grateful, and respectful for both.  When you communicate that sense of gratitude, most recipients will return the favour in spades. Wandering through the chairman’s lounge in an airport nearly 20 years ago, I walked past Pat Rafter, at the height of his career, just sitting by himself. By chance, I  caught his eye, slowed down without any intention of stopping, and thanked him for  the pleasure he had given me watching him play over many years. He responded by inviting me to sit, and we had a terrific conversation for 20 minutes until the flight was called. He would not remember, but I do!

Follow up.

This is so obvious it is often missed. Following up a casual meeting at a network group is the first step to be taken in the building of a relationship that might deliver a transaction at some point.  It is also the case that those you meet are often a window into their networks, so even if they are not in your ‘ideal customer’ profile, it is fairly certain that they know someone who is.

Do  not expect an immediate return.

Business is still largely done between people, despite the B2B label much of it goes by. As people, we prefer to do business with those we know,  like and trust, and that implies a relationship into which some investment of time, energy and sometimes a lot of caffeine has been made.

 

Despite all the digital tools, there is nothing like looking into the whites of someones eyes to decide if you want to have more to do with them or not.

Photo credit: Andre Luis via Flikr

The rise and rise of the digital milkman

The rise and rise of the digital milkman

Mar 8, 2018 | Change, Marketing, retail

The retail gorillas, Coles and Woolworths may still have 75% of grocery market share, but they are in the gunsights of a horde of hunters, all using new fangled weapons developed from the base of ‘Digital’ in a myriad of ways.

Meanwhile. The gorillas are acting like frogs, quietly doing backstroke across the pan, and back again, as the digital hunters pile wood onto the stove. They do have some digital services, order and delivery, order and pick up, but all suffer from the disease that eventually killed Thomas Dux, they are an offshoot of the current model, not an experiment  designed from the ground up to disrupt and destroy the current model.

In the future, the business model we are all used to, the suburban or mall based supermarket carrying anything from 1,000 Sku’s as does Aldi, up to 12-20,000 as do the biggest Coles and Woollies stores will decline significantly in importance. In the future, the  supermarket as we see them currently will be a much smaller part of the revenue pie, for a number of reasons:

  • Cost of entry is reducing. Cost of entry into FMCG has been, and will be further, eroded. From global sourcing from low cost non proprietary manufacturers, to the ability to cut out the retailers with direct to customer channels. These days, all you need is an idea, a little working capital and youtube channel. This may be a radical over-simplification, but there are now products and brands we have never heard of that are selling successfully using this direct model. There have been some notable successes, like Dollar Shave club, a 2012 start-up recently sold for a billion dollars to Unilever, after becoming the second largest shaver brand in the US. No supermarkets. I have read commentary that a $billion hugely over values the purchase, but given it gives Unilever an entry point into a category where they had no offerings, that is adjacent to their mens grooming and personal care business, it makes a lot of sense. Similarly, Procter and Gamble, not known for knee jerk marketing, is trialling a laundry pick-up and delivery service branded ‘Tide Spin’ in Chicago,  and is experimenting with Amazon Prime, and IoT  again using the Tide
  • Availability is the new benchmark. The gorillas have up to 20,000 SKU’s on their books, most individual outlets will not have more than 10,000 on shelf, available, after local conditions are accommodated. Digital retailers have hundreds of thousands of options, all available within a very short time. If you need it right now, immediately, go to the local store, and if they have it, so can you, but if you can wait a day, you can have whatever you want delivered. It seems to me a that consumers are prepared to pay a premium for convenience, simply an anagram (almost) of ‘Availability’.
  • Customer loyalty is dead. Loyalty to a channel, and individual retailers in the channel has been eroded terminally by the range of purchase options opening up. Coles and Woolies compete on price, and parking, only two of a wide range of options consumers now have available to them to determine ‘Value’  of a purchase channel.

 

The complication for digital ‘mass grocery’ has been that challenging ‘last mile’. How do you get the products to the consumers efficiently, and cost effectively. It can work pretty well for high value dry goods, perishables present  their own particular problems nobody has solved yet. Indeed, Aussie Farmers Direct, one of the groups that seemed to have survived the start-up phase, and had built a customer base and presumably processes to manage customer relationships went into administration on Monday, March 5, citing competition from the supermarket chains as the reason.

However, autonomous everything powered by data will deliver us models that work, just as Uber cracked the taxi industry, and is now moving into home delivery for restaurants with UberEats, Supermarkets are an easy next step.

As I reflect on my commercial history, part of it was in the dairy industry, where there were milkmen calling on pretty much every suburban home every day. There was a ‘Depot’ system covering the country, and every milk company tried hard to get the ‘milkos’ to deliver more than just milk. After all, they were there anyway, so the marginal cost was low. Hindsight, and we knew it at the time, tells me that the communication and payments systems were not up to the job 30 years ago.

They are  now, so I predict the return of the ‘Milko’ just the digitally enhanced model. Pity the dairy companies all took the short term view and flogged off all that real estate with the depots on them!

Photo credit: Ben Watkin Via Flikr.

7 tips on  how not to be boring while presenting.

7 tips on  how not to be boring while presenting.

Mar 6, 2018 | Communication, Marketing, Small business

As small business owners, we are often called on to speak publicly, and like most people, find that intimidating, and for some uncomfortable to the point of nausea.

There are many pieces of advice on how to structure a presentation, thousands of them on the web, and a few contributions from this site, but little about ‘how’ to speak beyond the very good advice on body language.

For most the degree of discomfort is brought on by fear.

Fear of making a dill of yourself

Fear of forgetting the important bits

Fear of boring your audience.

All can be addressed using a few simple things, that will not remove the instinctive fear of being the one outside the herd that in evolutionary times became a tigers breakfast, but at least will give you a few tools to beat the beast off.

Do not repeat to them what they already know.

Most speakers just repeat lots of stuff in the public domain, things most already know, or they pimp their companies and products.

Both are as boring as batshit.

You have been given the privilege of controlling the time of others, and the status of expert by whoever is organising the event you are speaking at, do not waste it by repeating boring stuff. Even if all you do is reverse the usually quoted factoids, and adding a bit, it will be more interesting. For example, instead of just stating ‘8% of transactions are now carried out ‘on line’,  say ‘while 92% of transactions are still carried out in person,  75% of purchasers do extensive research on line before you see them in the shop. How should that impact on your marketing strategies?’

Do not speak about things where you have only superficial knowledge.

Tempting as it is for some of us to speak at the opening of an envelope, resist the temptation unless you can genuinely impart some relevant and useful knowledge to the audience. Knowing you have valuable information that others will benefit from makes the process of imparting it that much easier.

Do not read to them what they can see.

Reading slides back to an audience is an absolutely sure fire way to ensure they all dive for their phones to check the Facebook update or what their  mother in law is doing for dinner. I cannot believe how often I see this, we have all seen it, yet  many allow themselves to knowingly bore the pants off the audience by doing it themselves. It is simply a response to fear, we can wrap ourselves in a sheet that excludes others, removing the presentation obligation to ‘connect’ with the audience.

PowerPoint has destroyed our instinct to be interesting when we speak, to hold the audience’s attention.

Resist the siren song of PowerPoint. When you use it, which is in most cases, always use it as no more than a memory jogger and to keep you moving along to a plan by having no more than a couple of words on a slide, but using it as a way to communicate in simple graphic manner the point that you are currently making. If you cannot condense that part of the discussion to a single graphical representation, remove the whole thing.

Do not just give them your opinion.

An expert speaker always has a point of view, but to be truly persuasive, that point of view will be based on solid facts, research, and data. Deliver that data, while articulating how you used it to form the views you have. Demonstrate the links between cause and effect. Failure to do this effectively is a large part of why we no longer trust politicians. While they are often slick talkers, they just give us opinions, and mostly we know they are not their private opinions, just the convenient line of the day, without any foundation of relevant fact and cause and effect links.

Do not stand still.

Particularly, do  not stand still behind a lectern.  When speaking, the stage is your domain, dominate it by moving around, using it to make your points, engage with the audience, match your voice to the point you are making, and be interesting physically. Back to evolutionary psychology, the tiger will have less chance at breakfast if the target is moving, so  move!

Do not just recite, tell stories.

Imagine your audience is one of your kids to whom you are telling a bed-time story, and you want more than anything for it to be memorable for them. To be memorable, every story has a structure. A beginning, an end, and a middle bit, drama, tension,  villains, heroes, laughter and sadness, suspense, and a point that you are trying to make. Use as many of them as possible in your presentation, with particular attention to the point to be made.

Do not end with thank you for coming.

You have been given the status of expert, someone worth listening to, by whoever has organised the gathering. Do not surrender that status by thanking the audience for all being there, for their attention. Instead, demonstrate why the investment of their time has been worthwhile, by telling them what to do next.

When you manage all that, I guarantee that not only will you have been of benefit to the audience, you will probably have enjoyed the experience, at least just a bit, and you will be better for the practice next  time.

 

Your ‘Values’ should not be table stakes.

Your ‘Values’ should not be table stakes.

Feb 27, 2018 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media

 

Consultants have delivered a lot of value to many over the years, but in some areas, have screwed the pooch.

One is the confusion that presides over the differences in meaning between ‘Vision’, ‘Mission’, and ‘Values’, and more recently, ‘Purpose’.

The result has been a huge number of well meaning but generic sounding statements adorning many reception areas.

You know  the sort of fluffy meaningless stuff I refer to:

‘XYZ company works as a team applying rigorous standards of integrity and authenticity to everything we do. We are focussed on delivering value to our customers, while having fun at work, and respecting the needs of our diverse workforce and supplier partners’

Bollocks.

Each element of that fluffy nonsense is table stakes if you want to stay in business, and in addition, that statement could apply to any business from the multinational supplier of coal to the local massage therapy franchise.

Building a brand, a position, a purpose, however you wish to define it for your business is a hard, long term job. It requires deep consideration of what it is you do, how you add value, and  what makes you sufficiently different to be  noticed and engaged by customers. Having a set of core beliefs that delivers on those three elements is what gives your brand the power and presence to stand out.

If you run a delivery service, speed of delivery is a given, as would be reliability. Having those two words on a board  in your reception will do little to differentiate you from your competition.

It is not easy to come up with the words that reflect the persona of your business, the way you would like others to see you.

It is however, worth the effort.

Good examples are few and far between, perhaps I am just being an old curmudgeon again. Ask Dr Google to give you some examples, and there are millions of responses, all with similar words.  Passion, integrity, respect, innovative, accountability, and so on all feature, largely it is just so much undifferentiated mush.

However, there are a few do stand out, beyond the few like Apple and Google that we all know:

Patagonia: ‘Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.’

Warby Parker: ‘To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price. While leading the way for socially conscious businesses’

Both these businesses have been standout performers over the recent past. Obviously it is more than their values statements that delivered that  outcome, but it helps.

My local mechanic, to demonstrate you do not need to be a cashed up multinational to have a great statement that defines you, has as his positioning statement on the wall for all to see ‘Our deep experience and attention to the detail ensures that your car stays reliably, safely and comfortably on the road longer.’

This always struck me as a useful expression of why I should be taking my precious old Merc to him.

 

 

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Do we still need book stores and publishers?

Do we still need book stores and publishers?

Feb 23, 2018 | Change, Marketing, retail

 

I love books, real books, items where you physically engage with them, turn the pages, scribble in the margins, pass them onto friends with a handshake and a ‘you will enjoy this‘.

Behind me (chronologically) are those who have grown up with e-books, blogs, podcasts, and all the other digital distractors, who have missed the joy I have always had in a bookstore. Instead they browse the Amazon catalogue and recommendations, and look up ratings by people they do not know on sites that have no interest in being transparent.

Very efficient, but to an old fart, not always a substitute.

Despite the gloomy outlook, I still think that the few bookstores still around will survive, having identified a clientele who like me values a real book. Stores like Berkelouw books in Sydney  with 10 stores, and 200 years plus in the business, where a book is more than an item in a catalogue, where the staff live and breathe books, and communicate the passion.

Perhaps not, the numbers seem to be against them, although Amazon opening bricks and mortar bookstores should tell you something. There are also a few specialised book publishers around, those with a deep knowledge of their topic domain, that seem to be hanging in there.

Authorearnings.com has a database that records all book sales, a treasure trove of information if you are a book tragic. Here are some highlights from the January 2018 report, and some thoughts.

  • Amazon sells half the ‘books’ in the US. That number is made up of e-books 55%, print 39% and fast growing audio books making the balance.
  • The dollar shares are very different, print sales make up 63% of the value, unsurprising when you consider the relative value of a $3 e-book and a $100 textbook, which are still largely print. How long this print bias in textbooks will last is anyone’s guess, but mine is not too long.
  • The sales split in categories of books, unsurprisingly, is very different. Digital has consumed fiction, with 90% of romance purchases are e-books,  while poetry and drama are still overwhelmingly print, albeit off a way smaller base.

Books are the original long tail business, millions are ‘published’ and most sell only a few copies to their friends, colleagues, and mum. However, some are still of great value to a few, and we would be diminished by their absence. Digital has made the long tail accessible to us all, suddenly those lost gems are easy to find, even if you do have to read them on a ‘device’

The strategic question is will there still be a need for publishers in a decade?

I think the answer is ‘Yes’ but not like  they  are currently and have been in the past. They will become more like collaborators, and business partners, than just another cog in the supply chain as they have been. Publishers play an important role in the curation and editing of books. Authors  want to write, and often do not want to be bothered by  the commercial end of  the business, and in any event often have little marketing and commercial skills, so need a third party to help.

Editing is also a must, if a book is to be more than a jumble of words. Steven Pressfield in his great ‘Writing Wednesdays‘ blog makes it clear that he could not do what he does without his editor Shawn Coyne. If a writer of the skill and experience of Pressfield needs help, the rest of us are in real trouble without it.

Photo credit. Geoff Roberts. Goulds Books Newtown Sydney.

PS. After posting, a friend referred me to this video of the 6 most beautiful bookstores in the world. Suck it up Amazon!

 

 

 

How to build a super effective customer ‘Persona’

How to build a super effective customer ‘Persona’

Feb 19, 2018 | Customers, Marketing

 

Who is your ideal customer, the one who will not haggle the price, who loves the product you sell, and proselytises for you? Knowing that person in great detail would be marketing and commercial gold.

Like all gold, it is hard to find, subject to all sorts of distractions and false starts, but immensely valuable when discovered, and discovery is usually incremental, rather than a ‘eureka’ moment. This means it is also a demanding challenge.

What is often also forgotten in the effort to define that ideal customer, is that every customer also has an ideal supplier, one who meets all their needs, delivering value in excess of the cost to them. It is a two way street, and a relationship only prospers where there is value being delivered to both parties.

It is always worth remembering that customers will buy when they are ready to buy, and that is not necessarily when you are ready to sell.  The name of the game is to be around when they are ready, with the credibility and value proposition that is compelling to them, which means that the better you understand them, the more effective your revenue generation efforts will be.

How do you define your ideal customers?

I have used the ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why & How’ model extensively to define the ideal customer with my clients. It is an iterative process, deceptively demanding, as it requires decisions about who is not an ideal customer, and therefore excluded from primary consideration. Choices like this are challenging, but necessary, particularly for small and medium businesses which do not have the luxury of a big pot of marketing money, you have to get it right or waste limited resources.

Following is a quick explanation that will enable you to at least start the process

Who: Is the demographics they may exhibit. Where they live, age, sex, education, job,  and all the other quantitative characteristics that are available. These parameters are pretty much all that  was easily available in any detail until digital tools came along.

What: are their behaviours. Do they go to the opera or rock concerts, perhaps both, do  they travel overseas for holidays, what sort of causes, if any, do they support, are they likely to demonstrate their beliefs publicly, or are they just internal. All the sorts of things that offer a picture of how they think, feel, and behave in all sorts of situations.

Where: will you find them digitally, as well as in the analogue (perhaps real) world, and what means can you use to make a connection. Are they likely to be avid users of Facebook, Linkedin or other social platforms, are they comfortable buying on line, do they ‘showroom’ digitally then visit the physical retailer, do they get their news from Facebook and Reddit, or more focused news sites, or even, surprise, surprise, newspapers and magazines.

When: will they be ready to buy? In some markets this is not a big issue, but in many, it is a huge one. For example, if you want to sell to government, the best time to be on the doorstep with an offer is towards the end of the financial year when departments have unspent money left in their budgets. Normally there is a Strong ‘use it or lose it’ mindset in government departments, and they are loathe to lose it, as that will reduce their bargaining power at the next budget round. In private enterprise, the two items that require watching are the budget cycles, getting a major purchase into the budget is often a part of the game, and being aware of changes in the customer and markets that often acts as a catalyst is the second. Takeovers, personnel movements, large contracts being let, are all situations where change is occurring, and the enterprise is normally more receptive to new ideas, and new suppliers.

Why: should they respond to your entreaties, to do whatever it is you are asking of them. What is your value proposition to them? What promise of a new and better tomorrow can you deliver? What can you deliver that is different and more valuable to them than any alternative? If you cannot answer these questions, it will come down to price, and winning a price war is a great way to go broke.

How: will you service the transaction, and the subsequent relationship that may emerge. This is usually down to questions about your business model and the ‘fit’ that has with the customer.

An essential adjunct to the creation of a persona is to create a customer journey map. This is the process that your ideal customer will go through from the initial itch, to awareness, consideration, preference, then to the transaction. This will enable you to use the persona to inject yourself into the decision making and buying process a customer is going through to optimise your chances of success.

I would be delighted to assist you to work through the process, it will deliver significant rewards when done well and implemented effectively.