“And do you know what?” Steve said rhetorically, “I’ve had executive coaches before and nothing has changed”.

“why did you bring me in?”, I asked.

“We’ve realised that by keeping on doing what we’re doing we’re going to keep on getting the same results.”

And that’s perfect because every business reaches a plateau where they bump along at a certain level of business. Often they’re not aware of the ways that a business can go to the next level. Because you can drag a business kicking and screaming up to a million turnover. However, trying to get one from one to two million is much more difficult. And you can’t do it by brute force. The same applies for going from 2 to 5 million and then up to ten or twenty million.

A business can only move onward and upward when the people in the business realise that they need to do something different.

I said so to Steve and then suggested we get right into the 145 question business audit I use to understand the business and identify areas to concentrate on.

We sat down and started to go through each question and as we talked I realised that it wasn’t the sales people that were the most pressing issue for Steve and his business.

His most pressing issue was that he didn’t know what his business stood for, why his customers were buying, where the business was going or even, how to get there.

“Right Steve”, I said, “the first thing we need to do is to look at where you’re going strategically and then to decide which tactics will help you get there the fastest”.

“Who needs to be involved in this?” I asked, “because you want people who are going to have an impact within the business.”

Steve thought for a minute and said, “my other director should be in on this and probably our sales people too.”

He ordered some tea for us both and then started ringing his people to come into his office.

After a few minutes there was a knock on the door and Dave Smith walked in. Steve introduced us properly and Dave sat down. As Dave sat down the door opened and a tray of mugs of tea entered into the room followed by Sally, who’d shown me to Steve’s office.

Sally said, “will this take long as I need to get back to the accounts?”

Steve looked at me and said “Sally is my ops director”.

“Ok”, I said, “pleased to meet you. To do it properly it could take an hour or more, it depends on how it goes…”

Sally looked annoyed but sat down.

With that I moved to the flipchart that Steve had unearthed and started to draw some circles. Each circle representing a year starting with this year and then moving into the future.

“Let’s start with what you’d like your company to have achieved three years from now. Maybe starting with the turnover and profit“ and placed the pen on the outer ring of the flip chart.

Sally said, “ I’d like to see us making at least 5 million by then.”

“No, I’d like to think we could be making 7 million”, Steve interrupted excitedly.

I looked at Dave, he looked back with a slightly bored and contemptuous expression on his face.

“What do you think Dave?” I asked him.

“Nothing really”, he said, “we can only sell what we’ve got. And people have tried to tell us what to do for years and it hasn’t worked yet”.

Now, you can probably see why the company is foundering slightly. Because all 3 people have different views of what is achievable within the same company. You may think this only applies to companies with problems. Believe me it doesn’t. And when the better companies sort their strategy out it means they’re going to absolutely be in the best possible position to decimate their competition.

Once again, remember this is a fictional company with fictional people although each element has happened in at least one company I’ve dealt with.

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!

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!

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.

I’d popped in once before because I was intrigued by its location and I suspected that it probably wasn’t doing too well. The first time I’d called I’d tried on several very nice suits and almost bought one. And during the fitting the owners and I had got into a discussion about business. Like you do!

It was clear that they weren’t making much money from it. And I suggested doing a deal where they outfit me with their best and I’d help them with their marketing. I gave them a card and walked out and promptly forgot all about it.

Today when I went back (probably 8 months later) I noticed that they were closing down and having a closing down sale. I talked to one of the owners and he admitted that they were probably making enough to pay the rent, but that was it.

When I again suggested marketing he shrugged and said he’d love to but it costs money.

And of course he’s right to a certain extent…

Marketing needn’t cost the earth. What he hadn’t thought about was that he could have used my services for a ridiculously low price as their costs for suiting and booting me would have been minimal compared to the marketing education and implementation assistance they would have got.

And if they’d wanted to sell they could have then have sold a going concern.

There are so many things they could have done when I talked to them last time.  They could have …

• Worked out an interesting (true) story about the shop that differentiated it from competitors, to tell to everyone
• Started collecting names, emails and mobile numbers of people popping in (like me)
• Collected customers details
• started continually following up that list with offers and news
• re-launched the shop for minimal amounts of cash
• they could have got some PR going
• special invite only nights
• business networking!

The marketing world was their oyster. And yet they simply sat in the shop and looked at the top quality stock they have and wondered why it didn’t walk out the door.

They had well and truly buried their head in the sand and thought sales would come to them. And as a result their shop is going.

It’s such a shame when they’re both lovely people, but lack of sales happens to everyone, even those who really deserve the sales. If they don’t do their marketing right.

New research by specialist small business insurer Hiscox reveals that 75% of SMEs* do not feel completely confident that their office premises are safe from thieves and nearly a quarter (22%) are concerned about e-risks and cyber crime. Since the start of the financial downturn, over a third (38%) believe their offices are more likely to be a target of burglary.

The item deemed most at risk, by 41% of SME owners in the study, was computer equipment. E-risks that they face, such as theft of data, online identity fraud, loss of confidential information or hacker damage were also cited as a concern. This comes as no surprise as government statistics reveal that the average cost of the worst IT information security incident to a small company each year is £10,000-£20,000**. Just 17% of SME owners said they were not concerned about anything being stolen from their office.

Hiscox SME insurance expert, John Heaney, comments: “It’s important for businesses to protect themselves against loss of physical property and data theft. It may sound obvious, but following basic procedures such as checking windows and exits are secured, setting alarms and storing expensive equipment out of sight, can be invaluable.”

“SMEs should also consider their online assets and how to protect them. Given the importance of data to businesses it is essential that SMEs have strategies in place to mitigate online risks. Data is currency and while the internet has made it much easier to access information it has also increased cyber risks such as hacker attacks and electronic ID theft. SMEs need to think beyond securing the building and put in place robust online security measures.”

Hiscox offers the following security tips to help SMEs to protect against online and offline risks:

-       Protect information with a need-to-know policy with employees. If storing information on a central file server, manage who has access to files. This can help prevent data loss, whether accidental or deliberate

-       Running an enterprise is a full-time activity and if you do not have online technical expertise seek professional advice on security. This can both save time and ensure the security measures cover the business needs

-       Encrypt important information for extra security so that only authorised users will be able to access them

-       Using the internet and email to conduct business means that data loss becomes a risk. Develop a clear email policy and raise online security awareness and issues with employees

-       Back up your files and check your insurance cover so that you can get business up and running again quickly in the event of an incident.

-       Items like laptops and computer monitors are common targets for thieves and the real cost of a stolen IT asset isn’t just the hardware, it’s the lost data and the lost productivity. Lock servers in a room and move laptops into a secure drawer at the end of a working day

For further advice and information, visit Hiscox, leading providers of business insurance for SME’s including professional indemnity insurance and employers liability insurance cover.

Table of contents for The Apprentice - Series 6

1. The Apprentice: Bangers bring out the “wurst” in the boys
2. Apprentice bitching and beach accessories
3. The Apprentice bakers make a cake of themselves

Lord Sugar meets the Apprentice candidates at Fortnum and Mason, famous for its afternoon teas.

Production and sale of bakery products is this weeks task. The teams have until midnight to get commercial orders for the other half of each team to manufacture. And just to make it more interesting they need to bake products for sale in the markets and streets of London the following day.

Inevitably Lord Sugar throws in a joke about “turning flour into serious dough!”

Lord Sugar mixes the teams up a it more and asks Karen to follow Apollo and Nick to keep his beady eye on Synergy.

Apprentice Project Managers

I’ve noticed that there have been some interesting choices for project manager in this series. And Mouthy (aka Melissa Cohen) put herself forward as project manager for Synergy. After all as she says she has all the attributes required to be the leader in abundance. Is that the right choice of words? I don’t think so, and only time will tell.

Meanwhile over at Apollo surgeon, turned businessman, Shibby Robati likewise suggests he’ll be fantastic as the project manager.

Melissa is clueless

As Synergy project manager Melissa immediately starts as she means to go on by being unable to decide, or help the team decide what to make. And eventually comes up with mixed fruit croissants.  During the initial meeting to discuss products she’d been asked to advise on what to sell as she has current experience in the food industry. Her inability to say anything was painful to watch.

Melissa puts herself forward for Synergy’s project manager. When called on to advise on products Melissa is completely clueless. They can’t decide on what to make. Eventually mixed fruit croissants is the inspired choice.

After Shibby Robati puts himself forward as project manager for Apollo they decide to go for classic breads.

Melissa’s bakery team make bagels and croissants, and at each stage Melissa is completely clueless. Luckily she’d shoved the costings onto Alex who saved the day with the cost per roll.

Paloma meanwhile almost agrees to overload the manufacturer.

Over with the boys, Christopher is running an excellent bakery system. Despite their completely rubbish project  manager.  Shibby’s bakery is a complete mess.

At 5:30am the teams awake ready to hit the streets with the orders from yesterday.

Shibby promised delivery of 1,000 bread rolls. He could only deliver 16 rolls and then paid the chef £130 compensation for non-delivery!

Melissa loses out on the muffins to a patisserie and they just take the bread rolls for £60.

Meanwhile Stuart runs the market stall. Whilst Melissa goes mobile and doesn’t sell much. And, in what seems to be common in the early stages of The Apprentice,  doesn’t take many decisions.

Covent Garden is good for muffins

Bakers Indulgence (aka) Shibby’s team go off to Covent garden to sell. At least it’s a reasonably good choice of selling location. However, seeing as how there are only a few market locations in London it would have been wise for the series Apprentices to swot up on them, such as what sells best there, what their customers are like. Still you can see most of the apprentices are tactical – turn up and just do stuff.

As time progresses at Covent garden Shibby suggests that they concentrate on muffins to the exclusion of the bread. Basically losing money, as the bread they’ve brought will need to be thrown away.

It’s baking in the boardroom

So Synergy makes £999.37 , and their costs are £139.50 giving them a nice profit of £859.87.

Over in team Apollo they make £974.92 have costs of £308.93,giving another reasonable profit of £665.99. And to be fair even if Shibby’s rushed and ill-judged compensation payout is taken out of the equation they would still have lost.

Apprentice muff their chances with Lord Sugar

Shibby chooses Paloma and Sandeesh to return with him to face Lord Sugar. Paloma certainly stands her corner although as Nick has pointed out Sandeesh doesn’t really do much. A fact that is reflected in the girls sales figures:

Sandeesh sold £62, Paloma £146 and Liz £203.

Ultimately though it is Shibby that goes as Lord Sugar says, he’s been examined and it’s bad news!

Apprentice firing was it fair?

Obviously it’s incredibly difficult at this stage to see how individual team members perform. Which means that the project managers are exposed a lot more than when it’s further into the whole process.

However, Shibby made some real bad errors. The first was not planning what they were producing against what the customers were likely to want. After all a hotel is obviously going to want to buy lots and lots of rolls. The fact that he only made 16 for the hotel is appalling. The second was that he offered compensation without waiting to be asked.

And finally he refused an order, nothing wrong with that. However, he did it in (as Karren Brady said) a very sulky manner. Which is not good business.

LiveJournal Tags: The Apprentice,Series 6,Lord Sugar,Laura Moore,Melissa Cohen,Paloma Vivanco,Liz Locke,Stella English,Joy Stefanicki,Sandeesh Samra,Joanna Riley,Alex Epstein,Stuart Baggs,Chris Bates,Dan Harris,Raleigh Addington,Shibby Robati,Christopher Farrell,Jamie Lester

How do I know?

Firstly, I live in Manchester and I’ve seen notices tied to lampposts telling me where I can’t park as filming is happening.

Secondly I’m getting an amazing number of tweets about Captain America from many of the people who use Twitter in Manchester.

And interestingly, from people who don’t live in Manchester but have connections there.

If you’ve a business do you see the power that can give you?

Captain America filming has generated a vast amount of interest across the UK and in Manchester in particular. People are almost queuing up to tweet about it. Certainly if you search on “CaptainAmerica” you’ll see tweets every few minutes at the moment.

Do company press releases do the same thing? Usually not. And yet if you’ve something interesting you can say via Twitter you can also generate interest in your followers and the people who follow them.

And if you’ve set Twitter up correctly a lot of your followers should be the market you’re serving. Exactly the right people to get your message.

And that’s not even counting the people blogging about it at the moment.

So maybe this social media thing can be used by business!? What do you think?

And yet that isn’t obvious to an ambitious, or desperate, business owner.

Many times a business owner wants to have a quick hit that boosts sales now. Like a punch drunk boxer they’ll grab hold of anything that seems to promise to support their sales and give them a breather.

Using Yellow Pages

A business advertises on Yellow Pages because:

1. Everyone else in their market sector does
2. The salesman was very persuasive
3. They just felt “they should”

And often when it comes to renew the advert they will. And yet their advert is usually pretty much like most other advertisers in their section of the directory.

They become just a “me too” and then have to fight on price with all those other advertisers.

Running Pay Per Click Campaigns

PPC, or pay per click, campaigns are highly effective at driving traffic to a web site.

However, if no thought has gone into what the business does with the arriving traffic the vast bulk of the traffic is likely to be wasted because only 3% of people are buying now, this minute.

If they’re starting a new campaign their traffic immediately goes up (assuming correctly targeted keywords) and so do their sales. And the business owner never realises that their sales could have been much more than they’re getting for that pay per click cost.

Advertising in Their Markets Trade Press

Some companies who are thinking about their market may choose to advertise in their trade press magazines.

There tends to be 2 problems here:

1. businesses don’t stick with an advertising campaign
2. Adverts don’t have any call to action

The results are that few people respond to the one-off adverts that appear or even to those adverts that are part of a campaign if they’re not asking the reader to do something.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is often seen as a black art and businesses tend to shy away from it and outsource to specialist companies to do their SEO for them.

The problem here is that like Pay Per Click (PPC) if you don’t know what you want to do with the traffic you get it will simply click away to another site. And even if you do know what you want to sell them what do you do with the ones that aren’t buying now?

The other point is that if you’re not different in some way from your competition like a Yellow Pages listing you can become involved in a beauty competition that you’re not even aware of and lose the potential business to a competitor with a “better” web site.

Strategy Wins Every Time

The reason many people don’t use strategy is that unless they do use it they simply don’t realise just how many potential clients they lose by using a tactical approach.

I’ve listed some well known different tactics of getting business above.

If the businesses had worked out before hand things like:

1. how to handle non buying prospects
2. how to ensure they captured more of the Yellow Page eyeballs
3. made sure their site stood out and ensured that people signed up for more

The business would have got more sales. More sales they wouldn’t have had to chase. More sales means business becomes less about chasing any sale and more about chasing the right sale for your business.

That’s a more profitable and strategic position to be in.