Category: Blog

Unless you’re from Mars you’ll know that JFK was assassinated 50 years ago today.

 

The day always resonates with me – for two reasons.

 

Firstly – he was the same age as my father – another John –  who was born just a few months before him in 1917.

 

Secondly – one of my closest friends – an American John – is named after him.  John was born in February 1964.  There were a lot of “John F.” boys born in America around that time to mothers who were deeply impacted by the loss of JFK.

 

And this year there’s another element to the mix – I’m now older than JFK was when he died.  That’s a bit of a wake-up call for me because, whatever your opinion of his JFK’s politics and character, what is beyond dispute is that he had done a lot by the time he died.  He was active – seizing opportunities – implementing.

 

And yet he had only the same 168 hours a week that you and I have.

 

I know that if I do stuff in my business the worst that can happen is that they won’t work.  If I fail I’ll learn – what not to do – what can be done better.  If I succeed then happy days – I reap the reward and I also learn what to do more of.

 

But if I don’t do stuff?  I can’t learn from the failure or benefit from the success.

 

Just like you, I don’t know how long more I have.  But I am here now – with the chance to do something now.  And so are you.  So what are you going to do next to progress your business?

 

PS : We were lucky enough to have Dad until a month after his 94^th birthday.

 

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“Reversing around a corner”

 

The fearsome phrase is dreaded by many young Irish drivers who, as part of their driving test, are required to reverse around a corner without hitting the kerb, while keeping an eye out for other vehicles and while demonstrating familiarity with their blind spot.  Oh – and there’s the little detail of having to end up reasonably parallel to the side of the road while being no more than half a meter or so from the kerb.

 

Difficult?  Yep!  Enough to cause a lot of sweat and a lot of driving test failures!

 

I was giving my daughter a driving lesson recently and she was having difficulty with reversing around corners.  So I told her we’d swap seats and I’d do it slowly for her to see if I could think of anything that might help her.  We swapped seats, I adjusted my mirrors, and off I confidently went.

 

But guess what?  Yep.  I did it worse than she was doing it.

 

Serious humble pie.  I got a wake-up call.  But here’s the important point : I only got the wake-up call because I did the reversing and measured the results.

 

There’s a big lesson there : you can’t practise something to become better at it if you don’t first know that you need to become better at it.  To be able to move from unconscious incompetence to at least conscious incompetence you need to DO and MEASURE.

 

So what blindspots might you have in your business?  Where are you skating on thin ice?  Now of course awareness on its own is useless.  It’s necessary but not sufficient.  (Implementation is key.)  But awareness IS necessary.

 

So, if you sense you have some blindspots, then you can carry on regardless or you can get in touch and let’s see if I can help you identify them.

 

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PS : Thanks to those of you who expressed concern over my son’s surgery last month.  It went well and he’s a new man.

 

As I type this my son is in surgery.

 

It’s minor.   And his mother will be by his side when he wakes up.

 

But for now we’ve entrusted him to professionals.  It’s up to them to do their job now.  They’re far better at what they do than I would be if I tried.

 

In our businesses we can’t do everything.  This is partly because there are only 168 hours in the week.

 

But neither should we do everything – and the reason for that is simple – we’re not the best person to do all the work.

 

Now of course we’re legally mandated to use outsiders for certain pieces of the puzzle.  E.g., I’m required to use an accountant for certain tasks.

 

But what about the other stuff?  The stuff that we’re not legally mandated to get others to do?

 

Recently I decided to do a telemarketing campaign for a new service I’m offering.  Now I don’t like cold-calling.  And I don’t think I’m very good at it either.  So I decided to outsource the effort to a company that specialises in telemarketing.

 

The jury is still out – time will tell whether there is a positive financial return on investment.

 

But I’m still happy I tried it – for two reasons.

 

One : there’s a decent chance that they’re better at what they do than I would be.

 

Two : It has freed up my time to concentrate on stuff that I’m better at – like taking care of my clients.

 

Is there stuff that you should get others to do on your behalf?  What if you narrowed your focus to concentrating on those areas where you excel and are most productive?  Think you’d accomplish more?  Damn right you would!

 

This is just one example of the pareto principle – if you’re not familiar with it I highly recommend you become so!

 

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Recently a prospective client – a large bar in an Irish town – was looking to raise finance from a bank.

 

They were planning to structurally change their premises significantly in an effort to make it more appealing to young people.

 

So they needed to submit a business plan to bolster their application. And they received good advice from someone I know – let’s call him “Joe” – that it would help their application if their numbers were backed up by valid market research.

 

Joe was spot on – would you lend to someone who didn’t know not just when but whether they’d be able to pay you back?

 

Nope?

 

Me neither.

 

So, given that Joe knows I do good market research, I was contacted about carrying out the work for the bar. And, as I do, I started asking questions. And some interesting answers emerged. Firstly the bar already had architectural plans drawn up. They had a very clear picture of what they were planning to do.

 

But had they spoken to the intended new customers? No.

 

Basically, their interest in carrying out market research was simply so that they could say to the bank : “We carried out market research”.

 

Now I must say that “tick-a-box” attitude irritates me. But leave my irritation out of it. More importantly for them, imagine if the market research said their proposed changes wouldn’t result in a financial pay-back?

 

Imagine if younger people were less interested in the physical structure of a bar and more interested, as my straw poll suggested, in promotions, themed nights, quality of music, quality of sound, DJs, finger food, demeanour of bouncers, etc.

 

So I said I thought their strategy was wrong and I declined further interest in carrying out the market research. I won’t do work for clients that I don’t believe will help their business. Granted that may lose me sales now and again. But there’s the flip-side. If I do work for you then you can be confident that I believe it will benefit you. And that trust is far more important to me than some near-term sale.

 

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In last week’s blog I was talking about the importance of being available to your customers.

 

Well , surprise, surprise – today I’ve actually got a good news story to share with you on this topic.  It happened earlier this week when I called my electricity & gas supplier – the same company does both.

 

After following the robot’s instructions to press “1” for this and “2” for that I was put on hold.

 

About 30 seconds later the robot came back and said “We are sorry that you are still on hold”.  And I was thinking to myself – “here we go – same old same old…”

 

But then the robot said “Would you like us to call you back?”

 

Wow – this I had NEVER heard before!

 

I clicked “1” for “yes”.  Then the robot asked me to press “1” to be called back on the number I was calling from or “2” to provide a different number.  I pressed “1”.  The robot said ”Thank you – we will call you back within 10 minutes.  You may hang up now.”

 

And guess what?  They called back within 4 minutes!  I was delighted I must say.

 

They offered something that was convenient for me.

 

And they followed through with it.

 

And they even over-delivered on what they had committed to.

 

And since it’s a good news story?  The company is Airtricity.

 

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Today one of my admin tasks was switching mobile phones.  It was one of those pain in the a** jobs – but not too mentally taxing!

 

Anyway, at one point as part of that process I needed to email my mobile service provider – by filling in one of those “contact form” thingees on their website.

 

I hate using those contact forms – the only reason I did so was because there’s no actual customer care email address to email with a normal email client.

 

Well – perhaps there was such an address but it was too well hidden for me to find!

 

Anyway – I filled in the form and awaited a response.  Fair play to them – the response came within an hour or so.  However – I had a follow-on query.  And I was about to click reply when I noticed the email address it had came from – donotreply@mymobileprovider.ie.

 

Yep – DONOTREPLY!

 

Now I can guess why they’re doing this.  They’re probably steering people to contact them via the contact form because it makes things easier for them at their end.  E.g., maybe the “choose a topic” option on their form helps their filtering.

 

However, who should they be looking to make things easier for?  Themselves?  Or their customer?  Now ideally the answer is both.  But, if faced with a choice?

 

Is it easy for your customers to get in touch with you?  Of course if you’re a powerful enough company then you may be able to get away with putting barriers in the way of easy contact.

 

But what if you’re difficult to get in touch with and you don’t know it?

 

Maybe it could be a good idea to ask your customers how they feel about your accessibility!

 

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I’m reading John Grisham’s “The Broker”.  It’s good fun – a bit of escapism.

 

In one scene he describes how the jailed main character – Joel Bachman – tried to while away some of the endless hours of incarceration through conducting a survey of how many hours sleep his fellow prisoners were getting per day.

 

Of the 37 respondents on his block the average was eleven hours – though Joel had to discount the answer from one person whom Joel had deemed insane.

 

Now of course this is all fictional.  But Joel recognised something very important.  Bad data can render a result to be not just flawed but useless.

 

Now in a way Joel was lucky.  He had no strong vested interest in the results of his survey.  He wasn’t hoping, for example, that the data would reveal high customer satisfaction levels that he could then use for PR purposes.

 

But either which way – he was still right to remove the bad data!  When you’re making data-driven decisions make sure that data’s good!  Otherwise…

 

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