“Hi there, I’ve come to see Steve”, I said brightly.

As a man they returned their gaze to their computer screens.

They all had the hunched and dejected look of a team that resides at the bottom of the bottom league who are beaten every week they play.

One of them got up, slowly, so slowly I wondered what he was doing at first.

“I’ll take you”, he said and proceeded to walk through a connecting door that led into a cold, musty corridor with a staircase squirreled away at the bottom.

I followed, introducing myself and getting the grunted reply, “Dave Smith, Sales".

Dave didn’t look like any sales person I’ve ever seen. He was wearing a rather dull grey tank top over a white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. His ensemble was completed by a pair of badly creased blue chinos and scruffy brown shoes.

We got to the top of the steep flight of stairs and Dave took me into a cramped room dominated by the biggest desk I’d ever seen. The large, comfy looking leather chair contained a young woman who was completely surrounded by piles of paper and with a mobile ringing for her attention.

“Hold on”, she said and scrabbled through the papers before locating the errant phone.

“Sally will sort you out”, Dave said and wandered out of the room and back down the stairs.

Sally finished her conversation and switched her attention to me. “Sorry about that”, she said, “we’ve got the auditors coming next week and I’d forgotten you were coming”.

Which was strange as Sally had only arranged the meeting with me the previous week, less than 6 days ago.

I made a non-committal noise and said, “So where’s Steve?”

She got out of her chair and shook my hand, almost as an afterthought and then asked me to follow her.

We walked down the corridor and she stopped halfway down and looked over the frosting to see whether anyone was in. Then she opened the door and ushered me to Steve’s office.

Steve got up from his seat.

“Thanks for coming Jim we thought it would be useful to get an outside view of the company”, he said.

I looked round his office as I sat down and noticed the lovely picture of his family and also the dusty model of a sailing ship on a large bookcase containing just two books.

Sally closed the door for us and I could hear her shoes briskly tapping down the hall as she went back to her office.

Steve began to tell me everything that was wrong with the current economy and the reasons why they just weren’t getting sales. The reasons simply tripped from his tongue. He claimed that Dave had an impossible job to do because he knew the prospects too well! That meant he didn’t push them to  make any decision. And unfortunately as Dave was also a highly skilled programmer he tended to let himself get sucked into helping on client projects. Which meant the sales force was often down by one man.

In addition two years ago Steve had taken on a saleswoman called Jean who had been bubbling with ideas at her interview but since then had made one small sale.

Now what thing(s) had given me a clue regarding the state of the company? Oh, and don’t worry the people and this company is pure fiction, however every element has happened in at least one company I’ve coached!

That’s great, what they need to ask themselves is whether it’s realistic at the current stage of their business.

There’s nothing wrong with aspirations at all. However, using goals to try and achieve them in the short-term (by that I mean a year) can be counterproductive.

After all aspirations by their very nature tend to be out of our comfort zone and more difficult to achieve.

So in order to get around the problem of mixing aspirations with goals I like to use a 3 year target so that I can show my aspirations developing over three years.

Aspirational Target

For example maybe I want to have an office in Australia. However, there are a number of things I need to do before I can achieve that. So it makes sense to put the project "opening an Australian office" into year 2 of my target. Year 1 might contain things like increase profit by £250,000 to £750,000 and recruit a new sales person.

So in the target picture the numbers 80 to 60 would represent year 1 (this year), 50 to 40 year 2 (next year) and 30 to 10 year 3 (the following year).

Then on the target you’d write down your aspirations as a line leading from the centre. Then along that line you’d write what could be achieved in each of the 3 year rings.

The net result is that I can show my aspirations being achieved over three years. And obviously each year I create a new aspirational target.

The good thing about doing it this way is that it’s a visual prompt to your brain that reinforces your aspirations and what you want to achieve over the next three years.

Vital Few Goals

Now I have my aspirational target I can look at those I believe can be achieved, or part achieved, this year. Then I decide what are the 3 or 4 Vital Few Goals I need to meet to move forward on those aspirations

I list those down and then brainstorm projects that can help move me forward on one, or preferably more than one, of the vital few.

I assign project deadlines for each project and also a measurement of how I’ll know that I’ve succeeded.

Then I breakdown the projects into steps I need to take to achieve each one.

As I work on each of the projects I know I’m working towards completing them. In completing them I’m meeting the Vital Few Goals and in doing that moving forward with my aspirations.

Ultimately those aspirations are what makes a company grow and prosper.

And this approach is part of what is incorporated into my time management workshops.

Here are some ways that a meeting can go wrong:

a) attendees arriving late
b) People talking to their neighbour (off-topic) during the meeting
c) People wanting to only talk about their topic and hijacking the agenda
d) Weak chairmanship
e) No agenda, "because we know what we’re going to discuss"
f) No follow-up on action items from the previous week
g) Missing attendees who are needed and didn’t say they would be missing
h) Action minutes from previous meeting not available for the meeting
i) Having people attend for the whole meeting when they are only needed for one topic and could leave after it
j) Allowing one person to dominate the meeting and make their point, air their grievance, change the topic mid-stream or give their biased point of view
k) Allowing agenda items to go way over their allotted time (remember the time allocation is only a guide, but it’s a good guide)
l) Meeting length is dictated by the agenda
m) The agenda should not be so long that people lose the will to live part way through. Only you will know what is the right length. Saying it should be 10 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour is irrelevant if you don’t cover your agenda items.
n) The type of meeting makes a difference, for instance an IT project status meeting can be short, whereas a manufacturing plant meeting could be half a day. It all depends on what you need to do and by when
p) The worst thing to do is to come out of the meeting with no action notes and with people unclear as to what they should be doing. So always have a summary of actions at the meeting end.

q) Not sending out an agenda based on the required actions from the meeting and new issues since

r) Having regular meetings that are no longer productive or required

1. Pull it all together
2. Update the company brochure
3. Regularly update the company web site
4. Agree and release press releases and articles
5. Organise product, people and client photo shoots
6. Produce emails, letters, advertising

and other marketing stuff, not least of which was having the time to update any of the social media sites.

What’s more he hadn’t got the time to bring someone in occasionally and ask them to do some web site copy, or the brochure or emails or anything else.

He couldn’t afford someone full-time and yet he knew he needed to do the marketing. The problem being that if he brought someone in they were only used occasionally and never really got to know his business.

You could tell he was immensely frustrated.

The frustrations mounted, even while getting business

And as he said it wasn’t all about buying a web site, yes he might get some people buying through it.

It wasn’t about tweeting the latest offers, although he was sure he’d get some business.

What it was all about was being able to integrate the lot into a more powerful way of using all the bits and bobs he had.

That meant every piece of marketing supported every other piece of marketing.

Dealing with the right avenues of marketing at the right time was frustrating

It was so that rather than having to deal with all the different marketing related companies such as a PR company, an advertising agency, a marketing company, a printing company, a social media agency, a graphic design company and Uncle Tom Cobbley he could just tell someone his vision of where he wanted to be with marketing and leave it to that one person to pull it all together. They would deal with the PR company, advertising agency, and everyone else whilst maintaining his strategic view of the company direction and marketing thrust.

In a large company that would be the sales and marketing director, or other such person. In the smaller companies (his turnover is about £1 to £2 million) they don’t exist and they wouldn’t even be affordable.

Marketing headache relief

And the solution as he saw it was to employ someone on a part-time basis who’d had marketing experience from social media to marketing strategy and had the ability to manage outside agencies and the ability to write web copy as well as direct mail.

A tall order we both agreed. Until it slowly dawned on both of us that I was that person!

So the new marketing action man is your truly!

So what now?

Luckily I already know his business so I can be productive from day one. First task is to see about an ecommerce site, where I’ll also ensure that the marketing elements we need are included at the design stage rather than an add-on after the fact.

What next?

I thought it was such a good idea that I want to offer it to other businesses who don’t want to pay the significant sums such as person would want if working full-time.

So if you’re interested in having an ex-programme director/marketing strategist/direct mail and email copywriter/blog writer and WordPress blog builder coordinating and implementing the marketing you want email me on marketing at acornservice.com

It could be a lot of fun and very profitable for both of us!

Even the best run company faces the inevitable effect of a downward slide in the economy. 

And of course the thing is, if you don’t know the existence of a tool, technique or strategy to insulate yourself from the worst of a recession how would you ever find out?

That’s where an outsiders eye can really help you.

I’ve helped lots of businesses across the world. And during that time I’ve picked up tips and strategies that they use too. And then I’ve applied them in other businesses and other market sectors to the same success.

As an example, just one tip I gave to a business increased their bottom line by 25%. And I’ve worked on that tip further and believe that it’s even more effective now.

I don’t offer these free sessions very often anymore. However, I’ve been hearing a lot of pain from businesses I talk to recently. So I want to assist you in the best way I can.

I’m only going to be able to make 4×30 minute slots available to do this. So if you’re interested get your name down quickly. Simply send an email to Jim and I’ll send you back a short questionnaire which you need to get back to me quickly so I can assess whether I can help you. If I can I’ll email you some dates and times so we can organise a session that works for both of us. Plus if you want your team to be in on the call that’s fine too.

That said there’s no doubt that the print media dominance has been severely eroded.

I’ve talked before about how the number of readers of print media has been dropping for several years now.

Will print media actually die off though?

Personally I can’t believe it will.

I suspect that what may happen is that we will move to print on demand. Something that everyone was trumpeting as the way forward back in the 1970’s.

Although then I think people probably believed papers would be delivered as though from a fax machine.

And Yet the Kindle…

Apparently Kindle owners rave about their beloved reader. Maybe its technology is a really great replacement for the printed word.

And of course as developers continue to work on the foldable screen pretty soon we wont need to heft a book sized object around. Instead we’ll be able to carry round a folded up piece of paper that when spread out instantly show you what was there previously or allows you to download other stories or information.

Exciting times?

What About the IPad?

Of course the iPad is pretty to look and again all its users are full of praise for this laptop killer. And yet is the screen as good as that used for the printed word?

Maybe not yet, although with the convergence of technology the type of screen we get with the Kindle may find its way onto the iPad 3.

Obviously it begins to look as though it wont be the blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all the other lovely social media that kills off newsprint.

It’s going to be whether the technology can replace newsprint with something equally easy to read and as convenient.

Unfortunately from long and sometimes bitter experience I can attest to the fact that there are very few people who are great presenters from the day they start.

I’ve actually sat through presentations where the presenter simply read from their notes, without looking in their audiences direction. One presenter I saw even got so befuddled with their notes they had to stop and go off stage in a fluster. Others wind their way round to the point they’re making and take so long  that it feels like you’re sliding down an old-fashioned helter-skelter.

At other times I’ve witnessed presenters who obviously thought they were the cream of the presenting crop and yet lack of rehearsal meant they inflicted pain on their audience. That pain was from the obvious fact that they didn’t know which slide was coming up or whether the questions they were asked came up in a later section of the slides.

And of course we’ve all seen presentations where the presenter is so taken with their company that they waste a lot of air talking about their business, their history, their clients, their success and worst of all make their audience sit through the company video.

So if you’re looking to improve a little on your presentation skills learn from what others get wrong…

Presentation technology

It really doesn’t matter how you do the presentation: webinar, Powerpoint slides, flipchart, video or simply standing on a stage. Never blame the technology if you fail to deliver your objectives for your presentation.

The oft-quoted “Death by Powerpoint” is not Powerpoint’s fault. It’s the fault of the wielder of the technology. The types of issues you tend to get with people who use Powerpoint as a crutch are as follows:

1) They start off running without any introductory slide or estimate of how long they’ll take

2) They don’t investigate what their audience is interested in

3) They deliver the same canned content to different audiences (related to previous point)

4) They have slide after slide of text with no images to break it up

5) They have more than about 5 bullets per slide and/or they have long sentences on the slide

6) They read from the slide verbatim without adding any thoughts related to the slide content

7) They spend too much time on each slide, or one particular one they think is important and no one else does

They don’t look at their audience, rather looking at the screen or their notes

9) They have large amounts of data and/or text on a slide, which tends to mean an impossible to read font

The Presentation itself

When it comes to the presentation there are aspects which only the presenter can do. And if they fail to do them a dire result is inevitable.

The issues presenters have include:

1) Not rehearsing so they’re struggling for words or ways to phrase what they’re talking about

2) Going on about them, their company or their product. Instead of talking about the things the people they’re presenting to are interested in: themselves, their company, their issues

3) Not keeping the pace of the slides reasonably fast so that people read ahead and get bored

4) Not varying their tone, pitch and energy levels during the presentation

5) Not having appropriate images to illustrate most slides, even though they’ve heard more information is retained with image and text together than just text alone

6) Not rehearsing the whole thing OUT LOUD, that way they’ll see whether they trip on words they think they say well when they’re rehearsing internally

7) Not looking at their audience or engaging them in some way

Post Presentation thoughts

A bad presenter considers themselves to be an expert and if the feedback is that some of their content wasn’t clear, well it was the fault of the audience. Others might be complacent, because the audience really liked the content and yet they know they could do better. In reality they should go back to their presentation and polish it so that it is better. Particularly so if it’s being emailed out to one or more audience members.

They never sit back with a trusted friend and see what they could have done better.

Does any of that describe you? I must admit to one or two of them, but having learnt by trial and error I’m better now! The thing is you don’t need to learn by trial and error. Learn from this. And thanks to some of the people before I’ve trained them in Presentation mastery and in the horrible pitches I’ve sometimes had to sit through for giving me these ugly examples of presentation hell!

Over the years, I’ve realised that there are some people who just need some guidance, a bit of training and focussing to develop themselves and/or their business. And I can really help those people, if they’re the right ones.

So how do I make sure I’ve got the right people to coach?

Simply, when people are referred to me I have an in-depth chat with them, not as in-depth as the company audit I do, but close!

I want to find out if they are people who are …

1) Able to approach business with a sense of humour

2) Actually wanting to grow their business more (and yes I’ve met companies who don’t want to…)

3) Confident that they have a good business that can grow

4) Aware of some (no one is aware of all) of the shortcomings

5) Completely committed to meeting when we agree (either by phone or in person)

6) Understanding that coaching is an investment and NOT a cost

7) Willing to take action, because without action all we do is generate hot air! And I’ll fire you as a client if inaction continues

And I avoid people who are…

1) one man bands, I used to help them, but usually they can’t afford to pay anything, so I’ve written a book that gives them a hand instead

2) Companies that are quickly sliding downward, unless there is a new MD at the helm who is willing to work like a Trojan

3) not nice to know

Whenever I’ve gone against one, or more, of these golden rules I find that the assignment becomes more of a slog. We do achieve stuff but it’s much harder than it needs to be.

If you feel you meet these rules and you’d rather do it under your own steam that’s ok. I can guarantee it will be much slower than coaching, however I can still help you, just sign up to get my book: “How to leap ahead of your competitors.”

You can also connect with me through LinkedIn, just to make sure I connect with you add the fact you’ve come from here in the message.

The CEO of United, Jeff Smisek, was there to congratulate Stuker when he flew into Chicago from Los Angeles.

As a member of the United Airlines Global Services Programme his frequent flyer programme has kicked in big with as United have told him he will never have to queue at airports again. Plus he’ll always get upgraded and to really show how much they love him they’ve named a plane after him.

It seems to me that nowadays not having to queue at all is an absolutely massive benefit and almost worth flying so many miles.

Amazingly Stuker takes his wife on up to five honeymoons a year, presumably paid for through his Rewards Credit card with his colossal amount of frequent flier points?

Martin Hand, United’s Vice-President of Customer Experience, said it took Stuker 19 years to accumulate his first five million air miles and just 10 years to double the mileage.

Of course this is all great publicity for United Airlines and Martin Hands said, "So we figure that we’re going to be here in five years when you hit 15 million miles, because you’re cutting it in half every time."

So you can image the amount of air miles stacked on to Stuker’s airmiles credit card if he manages 15 million of them!

When ABC News interviewed Stuker he said, "People have vacation homes and I have United."

Interestingly enough United didn’t mention the amount of money Stuker must have spent to accumulate all those air miles. Although as a sales consultant I’m sure his clients were happy picking the bill up.

Stuker has 50 million frequent flier miles. In fact he had so many that in the 1990s he used some of them to buy an appearance on "Seinfeld."

In 2009 Stuker flew 700,000 miles and again United Airlines were able to get him into the news. So he’s definitely an airline PR asset.

The club Stuker belongs to at United is a highly selective one and you don’t know you’re a member until you’re invited.

Interestingly until the George Clooney film, “Up in the Air”, these sort of high mileage travellers weren’t really heard of.

Before the final even began it was clear that Jim was a great salesman, Helen was a fantastic organiser, Susan was very young and entrepreneurial and Tom was creative, but nice.

The final turned out to be an exhaustive and exhausting interview for the candidates feedback from which gave Lord Sugar an unbiased view of the candidates.

The interviewers were joined with a very welcome return by Margaret Mountford. The full line-up of interviewers/advisers was Claude Littner, Mike Soutar and Matthew Riley and of course Margaret.

The interviewers soon had the candidates on the ropes. Susan because she’d optimistically forecast a profit of over £1 million in the first year. To be fair to Susan her plan did show costings, but didn’t appear to include the cost of testing for the creams that she wanted to launch. She had put a line in her costings for legal and Patent of £6,000 which would probably cover the majority of the testing costs. However, the testing costs weren’t explicit. Personally I’d have asked her what she meant by the line: “Product research and expertise – £4,000.” After all isn’t she the expert and didn’t she say that she’d already got 4 products in mind?

Margaret made short work of Jim when she said she’d never seen a longer application form She also pointed out that clichés were spread out all over his (long) business plan. And when asked to summarise what he was about without a cliché, Jim marvellously said that he was what it said on the tin! Jim was pulled up about his business name “AMSmart. And as Nick Hewer later points out the business plan is basically “one long seduction letter” set out to charm Lord Sugar.  And when asked how many head teachers Jim had interviewed to see whether they would sign up for the business Jim said. “Direct delivery of this is time consuming, it’s labour intensive.” Jim is asked the question again and replies, “In Northern Ireland the uptake on direct delivery is very high.” Then when asked for numbers, Jim says, “I haven’t divulged the nature of eLearning.” The bottom line is that he hasn’t done any research about eLearning in schools.

Meanwhile Tom was hit over the head with fact that he’d not mentioned the word “chair” in his plan when that was pretty much what it was all about. He also managed to make a complete mess of his figures so they just didn’t add up. Tom admitted that he’d created a prototype so he an idea of probable costs. To which Claude retorted that he hadn’t mentioned the prototype and apologising for the lack was pointless! Later Tom is asked about a previous employer who said Tom wasn’t a starter/finisher.

And then the interviewers got to Helen. Helen is marvellously professional. I’m not sure whether that makes for good TV because you can’t always gauge what she’s thinking. Anyway, the advisers weren’t overly impressed by Helens business plan. As they pointed out to run a concierge service for people you need contacts. Helen’s business sector is food and really she needed to address exactly how she would get the contacts she needed in the business plan. She wanted to be the market leader, which is going to be tough against the raft of already established concierge services. Helen was also aiming at the mass market and I’d argue whether there would be enough people in a mass market to afford a concierge service. One example Helen gave was a reminder for dentist appointments. My dentist also texts me reminders. An obvious way to ensure that they reduce no-shows. So I, and probably many others, don’t need such a service. Then Helen’s asked to show her human side by telling a joke. When she eventually thinks her joke it did actually make me laugh. The joke? Simply, “A fish is swimming along. And he swims straight into something. He goes, ‘oh, dam!’”

Jim summed it up when he said that being interviewed was like a “walk in the park” with people shooting at you and throwing hand grenades at you too. Looking at the other candidates you could see they probably felt that way too!

The advisors consensus was that Jim was “slippery” and trying to get details from him was like “trying to nail custard to the ceiling” and clichés “cascaded from his lips” like “there was no tomorrow.”

Lord Sugar points out the impracticality of offering a back checking service to businesses. After all who would pay for it?

Pretty quickly Lord Sugar fires Jim, recognising him as a good salesman, but ultimately not as a business partner.

When Lord Sugar turns to Helen he expresses his disappointment, as she hasn’t come up with a business plan which doesn’t play to her own industry knowledge.

Then he points out that Susan hasn’t really looked at the real costs of the business she wanted to go into Lord Sugar with. So he fires her. Although he notes that Susan is one to watch.

There is further discussion, including Helen dumping her original business plan and saying she had a backup plan that is in her industry relating to  chain of bakery stores.

Lord Sugar appears to be impressed by Tom’s story of how he got into Walmart.

Finally, Lord Sugar hires Tom.

Was the hiring fair?

As Lord Sugar said Helen would have definitely won the original format of The Apprentice. However, in the new format he was looking for an entrepreneur and preferably someone with the ability to think of new products. And so in reality the two that had shown the most entrepreneurial flair were Tom and Susan. With Susan out of the picture Tom is an obvious winner.

I think that there’s a good chance that the business Lord Sugar set-up could be successful. However, I think it would be even more successful if they had Helen as the manager because things would get organised and done. Helen would also make sure that Tom finished things!