Author: Brendan Cullen

Is your organisation settling down into a new “normal” where people are doing some (or lots of) remote working?

It’s very different isn’t it?

And maybe it has been a bit chaotic, e.g., people using their own laptops and trying to carve out some space and quiet in a home that’s not used to them working there.

But life has gone on.

And perhaps now it’s time to reassess things and think beyond the immediate. It’s time to consider what your organisation needs so that your people can perform well in a sustainable way in their new environment.

You’ll probably have some ideas yourself. Maybe your employees need encrypted company laptops to address data privacy concerns. Or proper office chairs for back support. Or furniture for a more ergonomic working environment.

But you won’t have all the ideas. And that’s because you don’t walk in their shoes. You need to get their perspective.

What are the obstacles preventing them from getting things done?

What wastes their time?

Are they clear on what their goals are and how those goals align with the organisation’s goals?

You can’t read their minds. So how about asking them what they need to be more engaged & productive?

First and foremost, I hope you and yours are staying healthy during this trying time. Health is wealth.

This blog will only be of relevance to businesses operating in Ireland AND which have less than 50 employees.

So if you’re outside Ireland OR you have more than 50 employees, read no further and get on with your day!

Ok – the topic for today is the €2,500 Business Continuity Voucher scheme. This scheme was announced March 26th by Heather Humphreys – our Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation – and the vouchers are available through Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs).

The voucher provides upwards of €2500 worth of consultancy advice on a wide range of topics. The common theme is suggested by the title – “Business Continuity”. Availing of the voucher can help to firstly survive this tough period but also position yourself for the inevitable rebound that’s to come. And there will be a rebound – it’s “when” not “if”.

If you’re aware of the scheme and you’ve availed or are availing of it then well done.

If you’re unaware of the scheme I’d encourage you to find out more about it. This Local Enterprise page is also an excellent resource. It includes a step-by-step guide on how to apply and also provides links to application forms.

NOTE: The pot of money made available by the government isn’t unlimited. And neither is the time. As the official blurb says, “Qualifying applications will be processed and assessed on the basis of their receipt by the LEO to such time as the fund is exhausted or on 15 May 2020, whichever is earlier.“

NOTE: When you apply you have the option of specifying a particular consultant whom you want to work with, e.g., someone whom you know who offers a type of help that would be of particular help to you at this particular time.

I’d be happy to help you, subject to approval by your LEO, if there was a good fit between what you need and what I can offer.

And the sort of areas where I could help you? I’ll mention two:

1. Uncover what your customers are looking for from you – both now AND in the future. This can be done sensitively so as not to be seen to be profiteering opportunistically. The goal is to sensitively identify opportunities.
2. Harness your employees’ ideas on how to ensure your business survives and is better positioned to rebound when the economy emerges from this mess. I know it’s a cliché but they are your most valuable asset and they have hearts and minds that can work in your favour.

If you want to find out more about the scheme in general and/or if you want to potentially get my help, grab a free 15-minute slot in my calendar here and we’ll take it from there.

Your business future depends on the seeds you sow (or don’t sow) now. The choice is yours!

    Back in November my sons attended a kick-boxing class for the first time.  It was run by a guy called Dermot.  As I was depositing them I reached for my wallet only for Dermot to say cheerfully: “first night’s free!”

    Immediately he made a good impression.

    With that small gesture, did Dermot increase the chances of the boys signing up for a regular slot?  Yes.

    Did he increase his chances of getting positive local PR through word of mouth?  Yes.

    Fast forward to last week.  And the positive local PR had done its job.  This time two friends of one of my sons also went to the class.  Another two new recruits for Dermot.

     Would the new recruits have gone if they hadn’t heard positive things from my son?  Did Dermot’s “small gesture” have ripple effects?

    Can you apply this to your business?  Can you do anything for your customers that will increase the chances of them spreading a positive word about you?

If you’re thinking you could be doing stuff, but you’re not sure what the specific things are, then ask them!

     Yep.  Ask those customers.  They won’t bite.  I called one of my customers last week to see what he thought of a particular service he gets from me.  He ended up thanking me for asking him the question – and apologised for a tangent he went off on. 

     And actually, even if they do bite, you’ve learnt something haven’t you?  You not talking to them doesn’t mean they’re not feeling what they’re feeling.  Indeed, you not talking to them might make them feel worse because, from their perspective, you’re behaving indifferently towards them. 

    If their grievance is justified then you’ve action to take.  And if their grievance is unjustified then you can consider if you want to continue working with them.

    If the time is right for you to get your finger on the pulse of your customers, book a slot directly in my calendar and let’s talk.

In a 1991 film “The Doctor” William Hurt played the main role – portraying a doctor whose manner towards patients left a lot to be desired!

His attitude began to change however when he was diagnosed with cancer and himself became a patient. This different perspective showed him just how badly many in the medical establishment were treating patients.

The experience transformed him – towards the end of the film he actually made trainee doctors don hospital gowns to get closer to the reality being experienced by patients.

The implication was obvious. He wanted them to experience what it’s really like to lie interminably on a trolley, or the loneliness of being treated impersonally at a traumatic time, or the frustration at not really being listened to.

If the trainee doctors could experience this they in turn would hopefully never forget that their own future patients are real people, with their individual stories, fears, hopes & dreams.

Do you know how your business is viewed by your customers?

Do you know what it’s like to walk in their shoes? Don their gown? Get out from behind your literal or figurative counter and look back in?

Do you understand the full customer experience that your business delivers?

To do so requires that you seek out, listen to and hear the voice of the customer. There are many ways to achieve this. You can survey or interview your customers. You can conduct focus groups of your customers. If your business deals directly with the public you can use mystery shoppers. If you’re senior enough to not be familiar to your frontline staff you could perhaps even do some mystery shopping yourself!

So there are a variety of tools available to you. But the starting point, like with William Hurt, is your own attitude. If you want help listening to your customers I’d be glad to help. Just click here to schedule a time for us to talk. We’ll have a short (and free) chat to see if I can help you.

If you want to receive my regular emails on getting the answers you need to make informed business decisions, sign up below!

Do you get a chance most days to do what you do best?

If “yes” – great.

If “no” – what are the reasons? The obstacles?

And the question is also important for your team. All of them. No matter what their role.

Why?

Rest assured this isn’t lovey-dovey, indulgent, woo-woo stuff.

No – the reason is very pragmatic: there is a tight correlation between people in a business answering “yes” to that question and that business’ bottom line.

And how do you get your team ever closer to answering “yes”? You work to engage them more. And how do you do that? Here are some pointers:

• Remove the obstacles preventing them from getting things done.

• Put them in roles that play to their unique strengths.

• Give them clear objectives.

• Provide them with the tools they need.

• Freely give them autonomy on how best to reach those objectives

And how do you know what changes to make to achieve this? One way is to carry out an employee engagement survey. But do it sincerely. Carrying out a survey to tick the box rather than trying to drive positive change will likely be counter-productive as it will disappoint people and invite cynicism.

For more on the importance of employee engagement go here.

If you’re ready to take action, then click here to schedule a time for us to talk. We’ll have a short (and free) chat to see if I can help you.

PS: And the question I posed above? It’s from a great book called “First, Break All the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

If you want to receive my regular emails on getting the answers you need to make informed business decisions, sign up below!

There’s a guy I’m connected with on twitter.

I follow him because he knows more about sales than I do and he asks great questions that get me thinking.

I’m not sure why he follows me!

Anyway, recently he posed this question:

Is it necessary for you to respond to your clients after hours or is it reasonable to reply first thing in the morning.

What do you think?

Is it “Absolutely it is necessary“?

Or perhaps “it depends on what they need“?

Or “it depends on what I’m doing“?

There’s no law on this.

The situations clients are dealing with differ. You might be a plumber and your client might have a flood.

Your own circumstances can differ. You might be in the A&E with a child or you might be sitting in your home office with high energy, with your family away, and with nothing enticing on your social agenda.

But there’s another criterion that you’d do well to factor into your decision-making.

Imagine you sell a chip. Not the edible variety but the “integrated” variety that goes into electronic circuits.

And you’ve two clients.

And it’s early September.

One of the clients is a college student who used one of your chips in a college project the previous year. And he’s now doing some exploratory research for project work he’ll be recommencing once college starts back later in September.

The other client is Cisco who used 1 million of your chips in their network routing equipment and are now urgently looking to kick-start another large production run.

Two very different clients.

All clients are not equal.

The 80:20 principle tells us that we get a majority of our profits from a minority of our clients. A majority of our grief from a minority of our clients.

You have limited resources.

Take those two realities – the clients not being equal and you having limited resources. And the implication is compelling. Your answer to the question on when to call back your clients has to factor in the importance of the client that has contacted you out of hours.

I’ve a spreadsheet I use once a month to rank my clients – or customers as I more commonly refer to them. It’s a numerical ranking based on a number of factors that I measure.

Try it. Even with the simplest measure – revenue. By that measure my most important customer is 296 times as important as the least important.

Yep – 296 times as important.

There’s an incredible lever available to you there. Just waiting. Hidden in your business. Ready to be uncovered.

I’m not for an instant saying that how I rank my customers would be the right system for you. But I am suggesting that you rank your customers using some system.

So – what are you doing? And what’s your next step?

If you sense you’ve work to do in that area, then click here to schedule a time for us to talk.

If you want to receive my regular emails on getting the answers you need to make informed business decisions, sign up below!

And the guy on twitter? He’s Paul Castain.

These days most of us don’t just have a single career.

We have a sequence of them – most people having at least 2. Or we might be involved in more than one business at a time.

In a past life I was a manager with a team that developed software products. The products we developed were used by electronic designers.

So at one end of the chain was me. And at the other was the electronic designer working in my customer’s organisation and who was actually the end-user of the software.

That chain was a long one.

Colleagues of mine in other areas of our (very large) organisation such as Sales and Field Application Engineering did deal directly with customers. And I did speak with those colleagues of mine in such forums as Product Review Teams.

But there remained issues.

Firstly, the customers were often not users. The people making the purchasing decision were usually not the electronic designers who actually used the products.

Secondly, I was not even talking to those customers. Let alone the users.

You can see the gap – a wide gap between the two ends of the chain.

The effect?

It was a serious challenge to ensure that the software we developed provided what the users wanted.

Do you have any such challenges ensuring that you understand the perspectives of the end-users of your products/services?

Have you any niggling doubts about that?

If you sense you’ve work to do in that area, then click here to schedule a time for us to talk.

You ask someone something.

And they give you an answer that baffles you.

And you wonder how the hell they came up with an answer to a question you didn’t ask.

So you ask yourself if they’re maybe a bit “slow”. Or maybe deliberately trying to be awkward.

But maybe there’s an alternative explanation?

Check out the following Q&A from the classroom:

Yep – we need to first look in the mirror at the person asking the questions.

Humility goes a long way in survey design!

When the time is right for you to grow your business by doing more of what your customers want from you, I’ve a few tactics to ensure that you and they are on a wavelength – before they answer! That way you can be confident in making decisions based on the answers they give you!

If you want to receive my regular emails on getting the answers you need to make informed business decisions, sign up below!

What book(s) are you reading at the moment?

Or, given the technologies available to us now, what book(s) are you listening to at the moment?

The best one I’ve read (for work) in a while is “High-Profit Prospecting” by Mark Hunter.

In one of his stories he was consulting with a bank. And he put in place a scheme for the bank to call its commercial and personal customers every 6 months.

Their goal for the calls? To gain referrals.

But the calls allowed something else to happen. Through talking with people, the bank got feedback on its services, as well as the opportunity to try and sell additional products and services.

Those customers of yours? What might you learn by talking to them?

Maybe you’ve had similar experiences to Mark’s bank client? If you’ve benefitted surprisingly from interactions with customers I’d love to hear about it. Email me – and I promise to personally reply to you.

If you want to receive my regular emails on getting the answers you need to make informed decisions, sign up below!

One day last week I went into two different banks with my son.

Typically I manage to avoid visiting banks but on this occasion we were putting the wheels in motion on opening an account for him.

Into the first bank we go. There were two cashiers and one enquiries desk. There were no members of the public present except ourselves. Eventually one of the cashiers raised her eyes towards us and directed us to the enquiries desk. The woman there was doing nothing. Literally.

But she said they were too busy to have someone see us then. She then proceeded into a lengthy and confusing explanation as to how opening the account required some convoluted combination of online form-filling AND a physical meeting.

She was also directing everything she said at me, talking about my son in front of him like he wasn’t there.

I was none the wiser really – but we did manage to make an appointment to see someone – a week later.

We walked out the door and my son says “Dad, since we’re downtown anyway, how about we go to [name of other bank]?”.

So we did. We walked in the door of the 2nd bank and were immediately greeted – warmly. We were asked to sit in comfortable seats and to wait 5 minutes. In less than 5 minutes we were seen and the person spoke directly to my son in a very respectful way. The information provided was crystal clear – utterly devoid of ambiguity and waffle. And it was delivered in a friendly and engaging manner.

Which bank did we choose?

No contest. It so happened that they also have friendlier opening hours but that wasn’t the determining factor. Neither was it interest rates, withdrawal limits, ATM card provision, etc. No. It was simply how we were both treated. And that’s a mindset. A culture. An attitude.

Sometimes it’s that simple!

What do your customers want from you? Maybe ask them?