While reading the newspapers today…..

“The UK economy is like Wile E. Coyote from the Road Runner cartoons who runs off the edge of a cliff and is suspended in mid air, only plummeting to earth when he finally realises his predicament.”

This rather stark simile, taken from today’s Guardian describes the parlous state of the UK economy.

The same grammatical comparison could be used to describe the situation some companies can find themselves in when not using disciplined sales planning & forecasting techniques.

Like Wile E Coyote, his legs spinning fast as he zooms off towards oblivion, sales teams can appear to be successful. The team is out of the office, lots of meetings are taking place, technical resources busy doing ‘stuff’ and lots of lunch receipts and mileage chits are flowing back into the expenses department.

But of course what is important is not just the activity taking place but the movement of opportunities through the various levels of sales cycle from pre-qualification to closure.

The process of planning, delivering & managing marketing/sales activity MUST also include the ability and discipline to measure sales opportunity metrics through the sales cycle. This mandatory aspect of running a business helps alleviate those big surprises that can lead to heavy if not catastrophic landings for SME enterprises.

I’m showing my age here but its the difference between the manic reactive plummeting Coyote and my real favourite, the most effectual Top Cat !

And now an ad break

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High Five Business Limited helps companies reduce the risks of cartoon capers in their sales efforts through consultancy and fully managed implementations of Customer Relationship Management solutions.
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That’s All Folks !!

In my previous blog I described how social media empowered customers with positive experiences of a business’s product or service can be a valuable marketing asset.

Of course, a customer with a negative experience can conversely affect the brand & appeal of a business. In an interesting article in today’s (19th March 2010) Guardian, Mark Sweney quotes David Jones the Global CEO of Havas Worldwide as saying words to the effect that social media is inherently more negative than a positive medium on many levels with a lot of the comments being of a negative style. Sweney’s article was in the context of companies potentially misrepresenting their social responsibility credentials and being caught out by digitally savvy consumers.

Given the article highlighted the negative messaging (to a business by consumers) in the use of social media it got me thinking of three points I regularly raise with clients looking to evaluate social media. The common prefix to each of the following points is;

“Even if you don’t see the value in proactively using social media to communicate outwards”

• You most likely have customers who do use social media and potentially could use this communication to vent their displeasure at a product/service/experience from your business. LESSON LEARNT: Understand what social media channels (if any) your customers and clients use and are interested in.
• What is the risk to your business of not at least monitoring what is being said about your business through social media channels. LESSON LEARNT: Quantify the risk and budget a first phase of a social media strategy to LISTEN to what is being said across the important social media channels your clients use.
• If you find non positive comments being made then what is your strategy to turn a negative into a positive. LESSON LEARNT: Understand the potential viral affect of bad publicity and have a strategy in place to respond to comments as they happen.

A recent interesting example of the latter which I have just found on YouTube is Domino Pizza responding to online and focus group comments regarding the taste of their pizza’s. It’s so interesting to see Domino Pizza turning the table (no pun intended) on Twitter comments through the use of another social media channel ie YouTube to illustrate the companies response to customer feedback. The whole video is interesting but take a look at the first 30 seconds if time is short !

Social media and its impact on the whole customer service experience is immense. The tactics being used by the big brands are available to the smallest of companies. As business owners these tools and tactics are available to us too. To extend a pizza making metaphor (why not !), we share the same kitchen, dough and oven as the big corporate boys. What ingredients to use for the topping usually requires a good understanding of your clients likes and dislikes and a good understanding of your capabilities as a chef.

Understanding how to use social media, getting past the hype and importantly concentrating on a phased approach to implementation that doesn’t overburden a business’s resources is a task that requires consideration and potentially a helping hand in the kitchen.

To add to the rather eclectic mix of articles on this blog I want to pay tribute to the Fulham Football Club’s 4-1 win against Juventus last night. The result now sees them go through to the quarter finals of the Europa League.

I was there with my four year old son to see history being made. It was a great evening for us, as neutrals-supporting-the-cause, as well of course for the club’s die-hard supporters.

After the game, Clint Dempsey, who scored Fulham’s fourth and winning goal said that it was the loudest he had heard the supporters in the three seasons he had played at the club. I agree with him. On a richter scale of support I judge support at Fulham normally around the 4 level. Last night it was a ground shaking, rafters raising 10 at many times during the game. A great team effort that delivered the desired result which included the fan base playing its raucous part. An absolutely win-win situation.

The corollary to the business environment you and I face is very similar.

We marshall our staff and associates with a game plan to deliver against a desired outcome. Our plan, just like a team’s formation needs to be flexible to adapt to changes in the environment we face. But just like last night I bet it feels a whole lot easier to score the winning goal or get that strategic sale when you can count on your customers or fan base to support you in your endeavours. Last night there had to be 22,000 fans and neutrals alike urging the team in white to go that extra mile and as Clint implied in his BBC interview, that support had an impact on the players on the pitch.

Likewise, utilising a social media campaign to listen, react to and augment your marketing and sales activities can significantly leverage the finite resources you have to deliver against your corporate goals.

Anyone following my personal tweets last night during the game will have seen me reference the atmosphere in the ground. Inadvertently, I became part of Fulham’s unofficial marketing team not just for two hours last night but for a good deal longer. Those tweets are locked into orbit in cyberspace for all time. They add to the groundswell of opinion from match day attendees, across a whole range of different communication media about the great customer experience you can get at Fulham Football Club.

Good luck in the quarter finals Fulham !!

I seemed to have spent most of my business life skipping breakfast, especially over the recent decade, in favour of gulping down a coffee while scrolling through my Blackberry’s digest of 24/7 correspondence.

Despite the typical caffeine breakfast I do have a penchant for a classic English breakfast and took the first opportunity after joining the Kingston Upon Thames Chamber Of Commerce (KCoC) to attend a Networking breakfast held on 4th Feb at the Coombe Wood Golf Course in Kingston.

Faced with the chilly drizzle of a classic English February morning, the welcome I received was Mediterranean by contrast. Crossing from the car park to the club house I was already in conversation with my first contact of the morning (even before getting my badge !). So Nasreen ! You get top marks for breaking the ice and good luck with your tax advisory business.

Prior to breakfast itself, Lisa Cagliani KCoC’s Chief Executive, explained the ground rules of the networking breakfast which ultimately distilled down to meet and talk to people you don’t know. That was a particularly easy proposition for me because I was a newbie there !

Breakfast conversation around our table ranged across an eclectic mix of topics from property letting trends, family law issues across EU boundaries, business financing and to one of my specialisations which is the use of social media for SME marketing purposes.

A number of us had an opportunity to introduce ourselves to the whole group towards the end of the breakfast. Roger Chown elucidated the virtues of the Rose Theatre and Rodney Clark talked about Kingston’s upcoming two day contingency planning event. However an analogy about car Sat Nav devices which Jeremy Webb used to describe his business still resonates well with me. To extend Jeremy’s metaphor I’m glad I found Kingston’s Chamber Of Commerce and am equally sure that sessions such as the breakfast networks will provide me value & direction on my journey to build a successful, local business.

Striking out to reach business targets is something most of us do on a daily basis. I would like to draw your attention to a special charitable goal one of my buddies is working to reach in February 2010.

Dean Wood is making a self funded trek to the summit of Kilimanjaro in aid of the charity Help For Heroes. The trek in February takes him to 19345 ft above sea level to the summit of Africa’s highest peak and the highest free standing mountain in the world.

If you would like to make a contribution towards his target and help a charity which does so much to help wounded soldiers recover from serious injuries sustained on active service overseas then please follow this link http://bit.ly/5PiFvT to donate money. All money donated goes to the charity.

Many thanks

Having spent the last 20 years of my career working with leading edge enterprise and internet software I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised at how people react to and dismiss what at times can appear to be to them as an overhyped fad or a technology looking for a purpose.

In my new role of running my own business providing services that include social media skills for small to medium sized businesses, it’s interesting to see entrepreneurs reaction to social media as an element of their marketing plan.

Initial negative reactions can range along the lines of ‘I leave all that stuff to the kids to play with’ through to an almost barked reaction of ‘my clients don’t use twitter so all this is useless to me’

My starting point is always the same. Forget about the social media technologies for a moment. They are just conversation enablers. What needs to be addressed up front by businesses looking to evaluate social media (because it might not be relevant for every business) is an understanding of the organisation’s business goals and how that translates into customer interactions.

I say customer interactions because there are many potential uses of the various forms of social media. It’s not just about prospecting for new clients in the traditional marketing sense. Social media can help with customer service initiatives, branding, thought leadership and even employee development, loyalty and morale.

So we look at business goals, the existing marketing plan and evaluate their customers and where they might interact across the spectrum of social media formats. And guess what ? We talk to their clients for this insight too.

We listen to what is being said on the web too about the company we work with. Listening to what is said about their competitors too can be useful as well.
A plan using SMART goals is devised and we embark on the journey where what matters most, and one that we focus on continually is whether the plan hits the business goals and objectives thereby adding value to the business.

A local businesswoman started a conversation with me yesterday that she leaves social media to her kids.   That it was of no interest to her particularly because of time constraints but also as I gathered later because she did not understand the value to her business.

I am loathed to refer to social media networks as ‘social media’.  In so many ways their real value is to business as a means to create empathy and trust with prospects and customers.

Here is a quote I have used elsewhere on the site which illustrates how a simple, free, Facebook site has driven revenue to a local pub;

I don’t go out much because I have two young kids.  But I have followed the pub I like on Facebook for the last 18 months.  I get updated on their events and pictures of the parties etc.   I feel a bit like a local even though I don’t get the chance to go there much.   When it came to finding a place for my 40th birthday there was only one choice and that’s where my friends and I will be on the 12th December.   We’ll be spending hundreds there that night.    Quote from Dominique B.

Most pubs still rely on posters in the pub and the odd advert to promote upcoming events.  Some will also update their website.   But all these approaches require an effort on the client to be in the right place (to see a poster) or make some effort (go to a website) to know that an event is happening.   Furthermore, these approaches don’t easily lend themselves to further promotion.

The majority of businesses would benefit from at least evaluating the use of one or more of these networks.   For example, how much more effective would a shop’s January sales be if it was able to use a few of the social media networks to communicate the top 5 offers to its existing clientele.

Unbeknown until yesterday to my friend running her shop, the social media environment has not been left completely to the kids !   Businesses big and small are rushing to develop communication approaches on networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  They are doing this not least because they understand that user demographics on certain networks are constantly evolving to include larger percentages of more mature user.

In response to requests for a structured approach to trialling this technology High Five Business Limited have developed three packages  all of which provide a managed, step by step approach to using the key social networks.  Further details can be found here.

As part of the launch of the company this week I had to take a look within my marketing plan at the branding around the non digital promotional assets I have.  For the launch this included a variety of items including business cards.

In an increasingly digitalized business world it is possible sometimes to overlook the ongoing value of the business card as a means of portraying a professional image of you and your company.  Interestingly, while the purpose of a business card may well not have changed over the three decades of my business career, the type of content on it certainly has.

In the early 1980’s there wasn’t a lot of personal information to include on a card.  If I had kept a card from my first job I would probably find my name, title, company address, switchboard and telex number on the card.  There was no direct dial number to my desk, mobile phones and websites hadn’t been invented and even email wasn’t in the mainstream.

Now my card, in addition to the numerous contact details, also has information on it that points to additional sources of information about myself and the company.  The card provides its recipient with a gateway to my website, twitter and linked-in worlds.    How times have changed !

I decided to get my cards printed on both sides.  One side shows my contact details and the reverse shows a brief statement and some of the core services we deliver.

Given that I had a good idea of the content and style of card that I wanted the next step was to get the cards printed to a high quality and to a deadline.

I looked at a few sites on the web but frankly was left unimpressed by the lack of engagement on those sites.

After some further searching on the web I found my local Prontaprint shop and sent through an email with the images for a quote.  Later in the day I met up with  Alan Davey at the store and he spent a considerable amount of worthwhile time showing me various types of cards and the approaches used to produce a first class card.  I accept I paid a premium price compared to the online sites but the value to my business of a good quality business card is more than worth the extra few pence a card.

My recommendation of the week for great customer service therefore goes to Alan & KD at Surbiton Prontaprint.

BTW Alan’s own Prontaprint twitter account is a super example of local branding and customer engagement.   On this point one of next week’s blog posts will include success details of the High Five Business ‘twitter test drive’ programme.

Today we formally launch High Five Business Limited and get this website up and running.

Thanks go to Paul Webb and his colleagues at Robert James Partnership for handling the company setup and also to Nicola Short, my business manager at NatWest.   I’m lucky too, to be working with Helix Websites who offer excellent practical advice and support services, so deserved thanks go to Jonathan and Karen.

My experiences of this last week have reinforced my views regarding DIY website design and why it’s a better use of time and resource for most entrepreneurs to work closely with a friendly web design company than spend too much time doing it themselves.

At this point I should point out that one of my partners, Helix Websites, is such a company so you may feel I have a particular axe to grind with this post.  I hope you’ll accept the post as friendly advice and not just a blatant sales pitch for them and highfivebusiness.com.

Now that is out of the way I’ll explain.

Although my business has been going for a while, the demands of 24/7 business/paperwork et al plus a young family meant the website had not progressed beyond a basic idea.  So a week ago the wheels were put in motion to go virtual !

I knew what I wanted to do from a look and feel perspective and had a clear idea on the content mix but I still had to decide how the site was going to be developed.

I wanted a website development tool that was easily supported, had plenty of options for the future and had some integral blogging capability too.   Too many websites are fairly static in nature and I wanted to have the capability to easily amend the ‘static’ content and also easily add posts to the blog element of the website.

A number of solutions stood out from the crowd and I was left with a short-list of Drupal and WordPress.   Both have their strong points and I opted for WordPress because most of the feedback I read implied it was more user friendly.  If you are after a sales pitch regarding the benefits of Drupal particularly for websites that need a fair amount of functionality then there is plenty of info on the web or indeed contact Jonathan at Helix because I can’t stop him raving about the benefits of it.

Having played with WordPress on its own site I was sold.  Next stop was to strike a deal with Helix for them to provide me hosting space and email services.   They setup the environment extremely quickly with WordPress also installed on one of their servers.   There are literally thousands of WordPress ‘themes’ available to customize the website that a user interacts with.  A lot are for free although I ended up paying for the ‘Thesis’ theme this site uses because of Jonathan’s recommendation and the functionality it has.

To check out Thesis then follow the link below

I wanted a clean, minimalist feel for my site but Thesis is so customizable that you would not recognize other web sites built on it as sharing the same ‘parentage’ as mine !

Although WordPress and Thesis are sold as out of the box packages they do require a certain level of knowledge to manage past issues that arise.  Without that initial knowledge you can lose a lot of time researching, playing and eventually getting rather frustrated.  I now know this from personal experience.  Thankfully Jonathan came to the rescue a good number of times with sound advice and configuration tips.  Elsewhere on www.highfivebusiness.com I mention that ROI is measured these days in not just dollars or pounds but also in minutes and hours.  I realise that without the help I received so far, the opportunity cost of working the site myself would have far outweighed the gains for at least quite some time.

So my lessons learnt from the last week are;

• If you want your website to be easily maintainable, extensible (so that new functions can be added in the future without starting from scratch) and supported then go with a technology that is based on open source or an open application programming interface.
• Save a lot of time in set up and ongoing site management by getting professional help up front.  A good website/internet marketing professional is as important to your business as your accountant or lawyer.  I recommend not relying on faceless corporations for this type of service.  Get to know the people beforehand because your web presence over time will become an integral part of how you attract and interact with your potential and existing clients.    How a site is initially setup helps immeasurably with how search engines index (search engine optimization) the contents and rank your site.  My site is highly SEO compliant from day one which should save me a lot of heartache in the future.
• And finally and most importantly.  Before you get too excited about the presentation and logistics of the site (eg it’s fun buying stuff like domains et al) work with a colleague/friend or professional business partner (that’s an ad for me) to;
  • scope out who the audience of your site is,
  • what messages you want them to receive
  • how you want the site visitor to interact further with your business (eg placing an order, requesting online information, a representative calling back etc)

This up front planning and focus means that once all the technical components are in place you can have your content uploaded and site launched quickly.   Doing it the wrong way round can create unfocussed sites that lack direction where more often than not site visitors don’t return.