BOGOF Deals

The Free vs not free argument rages (see the blog entries I want to be free and Expensive is the new free). I say "put your prices up" and they say "offer BOGOF deals" (Buy One Get One Free). The Times Online has very kindly put a whole bunch of special deals all in one place:

Here Times Money lists 10 of the best discounts available on the web this week, with thanks to Vouchercodes.co.uk, MyVouchercodes.co.uk and MoneySavingExpert.co.uk.

Shopping and Groceries

Ocado

The food delivery service Ocado is offering 20 per cent off all orders worth more than £60 until October 5. Enter the code VOU9397362 in the space for a promotional code at the checkout.

Abel & Cole

The organic vegetable service is offering new customers £10 off when they spend £30 online. At the checkout, enter the code TELESUMMER09. The code is valid until October 31.

La Redoute

The French fashion catalogue is offering £15 off all orders over £20. Simply enter the code 8401 at the checkout. It is only available on full priced items in the current season collection.

Millets

The outdoor store will cut 10 per cent from your online bill if you add the code next10 at the checkout.

Jessops

You can get 8 per cent off all compact cameras when shopping online at Jessops until October 9. Simply enter the code CAMERAS8 at the checkout.

Restaurants

Zizzi

The Italian chain is running a buy one, get one for a £1 offer until Sunday October 11. You'll need to register and print out the voucher here.

Pizza Hut

A half price voucher which applies to food but excludes the ever-popular lunch time buffet, happy hour and delivery, among other terms and conditions. It is only available Sunday to Thursday until October 8.

Strada

Two for one on all main meals with this voucher until October 4, although not valid at certain restaurants so check for details. Click here to register and print the voucher.

Ha Ha

Another two for one offer at the chain of bar-restaurants. This one is also for main meals. Offer ends on October 12. Only one voucher per party, per day. Click here to register, print the voucher and read the terms and conditions.

Giraffe

Yep, another two for one. Register and print a voucher for the less expensive dish free at breakfast, lunch or dinner until October 4th, not available on Friday or Saturday.

RELEVANT LINKS

I want to be free - blog entry
Expensive is the new free - blog entry
Times Online

Watching Sales Increase by 150%

As people feel the full bite of the recession, the quest to survive puts more pressure on the need to find more and better clients. One key problem, poor sales performance, is simply more visible in difficult trading conditions.

CASE STUDY (Real Life – Accounting Firm: Jan - June 20XX)

The Background:
Profits and sales were slipping.
Using a number of fairly sophisticated marketing techniques, potential clients were invited to presentations, exhibitions, updates and seminars as opportunities for face-to-face contact. Yet sales conversion rates were disappointing. The practice was simply letting new business slide through its fingers.

The Problem:
Poor sales performance despite having a decent product.

The Reason:
Poorly trained staff and lousy systems.

The Solution:
A few simple changes that will have a massive impact on your bottom line.

It was identified that staff had been expertly trained on the technical side of their job but were lacking the more subtle inter-personal skills that are so important. Accountants are great at doing accounts but not so great at talking to potential clients about why they should be appointed.

Director level support brought the issue out into the open.

Your sales performance will improve if you focus on the following 'crunch questions':

• Who is the ideal/target customer? What are their problems? Why do they buy your product?
• Do you really understand what it is that the customer is buying? Are you selling the benefits rather than the features?
• Why should people buy from you when they can buy from the competition
• What makes you different from the rest?
• How to start and finish a conversation?
• Do you deliver a credible and compelling Audio Logo/Elevator Pitch/One-Minute Intro
• Can/Do you ask for the business? Can you ask for referrals?
• Are you able to close the sale?

For any sales professional this is the stuff that Session One from Day One of a Sales Course should cover (Spookily this is very similar to the programme we take business through on the Bright Marketing courses that I run for Barclays).

The reality was far from the truth.

Your sales people need to be taken through a process like the one outlined above. Add decent measurement systems to your soft skills (targets, some decent prospect data, metrics, and conversion ratios) and selling becomes a simple game: you know how many conversations create an appointment create a new client.

Results:
In the six months we worked with our client we saw their competitors going bust and the industry lose its confidence. However our client saw client sales rocket. Compare the numbers (which lose their formatting on most machines - sorry!)

6m to 31 Dec 20XX

• Leads 300
• Conversations 140
• Proposals 50
• New Clients 20

6m to 30 June 20XX

• Leads 350
• Conversations 180
• Proposals 95
• New Clients 50

Leaving out any complicated/sophisticated explanations, the incredible thing was that new clients had increased by a remarkable 150%.

What does this say to you?
Well, small changes in how you go about the sales process have a massive impact. Many trainers use Micky Mouse numbers to impress their audience but here is an example where the numbers speak for themselves. 

RELEVANT LINKS

• of course you can't write a blog entry like this without pointing out where people can find out how to get their own 150%...
• The Directors' Centre - talk to The DC if you want these benefits
• Read Grow Your Service Firm

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers - the story of success

Just finished 'Outliers - the story of success' by Malcolm Gladwell.


While writing the book, Gladwell noted that "the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work."

On page 285, he sums it all up:
“Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

His style does meander even if he does use some interesting case studies and even if the conclusions are self-evident . Quite a 'nice' read but a bit disappointing. Maybe it was more auto-biographical and self-referencing than intended - it was his journey he was analysing. Gladwell has created his own brand and followers and it will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

Launching A Business With A Cause - Quick Update

Last year I reported about Launching A Business with a Cause and I thought that we should have a quick look to see what's happening to Madécasse, the business I featured. The answer is that they are still going strong as reported in the New York Times Tasteful Company/Madecasse:

"These days my favorite chocolate isn’t U.S.D.A. organic certified and it’s not Fair Trade or Rainforest Alliance stamped. It’s Madécasse, made from cacao grown in Madagascar’s naturally organic forests. It’s traded fairly and is environmentally friendly."

One rave review however does not make a business.

At the end of the day Madécasse may need to literally break into the Vanilla and/or Chocolate markets and that will cost money. As said before, success is not about having the best product. Marketing is not a battle for the product but a battle for the mind of the customer.

This may be a traditional conundrum of just how much money will they need to make an impact on well developed markets. With chocolate they are competing against the big boys and in vanilla their product is competing with 'industrial' alternatives.

So how easy is it to be the next Green and Blacks/Ben & Jerry/Innocent Drinks 'successful' high-quality offering and what are the odds of breaking through?

Will the success of this business boil down to the depth of their pockets? Or the quality of how they market their product (= money, again)?

Is it possible that, ironically, the business's success may be more about their ability to raise capital than the quality of their product and ethics!

Compulsory Retirement Age - A Good Thing?

SW (a regular commenter to this blog) has suggested that we look at and discuss the BBC's UK Retirement Age Challenge Fails news piece.

SW asked "Robert, what is your opinion on the Federation of Small Businesses lobbying and supporting for the compulsory retirement age being kept at 65?"

(At least) Two things to discuss
1) Should the FSB hold such a view (to represent its members)?
2) Should there be compulsory retirement age at 65?

This really is a can of worms.

Accountability

Consultancy, training and coaching fails on a regular basis. There's nothing wrong with the process - usually it is all good stuff. The problem is with the 'afters'. You should only participate in these activities for what happens afterwards - the change in behaviour or the results. The context here is the business.

Most interventions are all about the process and not about the results. And that's why they fail.

The key issue is around accountability. If you (as client) are not accountable, if you do not have to report back the results then the whole intervention process will probably collapse.

At the Directors' Centre, the accountability issue is pushed because the consultants know that without accountability then the client can avoid the 'action' piece. Not enough consultants, trainers, coaches, mentors, accountants etc make their clients accountable to them for results.

And so the client doesn't get the desired results. That's pretty poor!

Paul and the team in our consultancy group seem to have cracked the accountability conundrum. The result: clients have to deliver; they get results; everyone is happy.

RELEVANT LINKS

The Directors' Centre - management consultancy (with accountability) for growing businesses

And now I am getting hate mail

It seems that my ‘Beating The Credit Crunch’ ology is like marmite. People love it or hate it.

The messages are pretty straightforward. You shouldn’t even think about increasing sales until you have done the following:

- Put up your prices if you can

- Compete on everything but price

- Screw your suppliers feet to the ground

- Sort (or sack) under-performing customers, staff and suppliers

- Collect money 10 days quicker; spend it 10 days slower

There is no point getting more sales if you aren’t making money on the additional sales. Only once you have done the above (i.e. fix the financial model) should you even think about selling more.

Most people seem to ‘get’ what I am saying but there is a bunch of people who seem to miss the whole point. They describe me as callous, insensitive, cruel, mercenary, short-sighted, and selfish to use a few of the nicer words.

I will list the top few grumbles and my reply.

“It is impossible to put prices up in a recession. All your customers will go to the competition”
Answer: Only the people buying on price will leave but they tend to be the ones who are the hardest work that you would be happy to lose. We recently surveyed some 500 businesses that have put up their prices since autumn 08 – all felt that their businesses have benefited from the price increase (poor clients have left and profit per sale have gone up to outweigh any sales loss) .

“It is impossible to put prices up in my industry.”
Answer: Nonsense. Put the price increase into the contract, or do it annually, or do it based on raw material price increases, or repackage the product, or bundle products together, or do it by stealth. There is no shortage of ways to put up prices.

“You can’t go around sacking people yet expect the rest to remain loyal.”
Answer: In the first instance you should only remove staff that are not pulling their weight or delivering the expected results.

“It is dumb to expect to be able to screw suppliers feet to the ground yet not get screwed yourself”
Answer: You should be selling on everything but price and you should be confident that your customers/clients understand this. As for your suppliers, while they would prefer to keep your business, there are plenty of others who may wish to win your business with low prices.

“It is dumb to expect to be able to get paid 10 days quicker yet pay 10 days slower. It is also immoral”
Answer: Most of us collect the money (that is owed to us) much too slowly; many of our suppliers don’t seem to be too bothered about how quickly we pay them.

Without making sweeping generalistions, I seem to have wound up a brigade of people who feel that their business deserves to do well because of their good intentions. These people hope to be able to survive by being nice.

I am afraid that nice is not enough, especially in these recessionary times. Like pulling off a plaster, the best way to make the decision is to brave up to it and get on and do it. Procrastination does not help anyone.

So, take a morning out with your key business partner or colleague, take a blank piece of paper and make the tough decisions that you will implement over the next two weeks. You will be amazed at how this decisiveness will give you the energy, focus and direction that might have been lacking of late. Go for it.