Grombles

Business is risky. It has to be so we aren't overwhelmed with an infinite number of businesses all demanding their right to flourish. It's pure Darwinian capitalism. Only the fittest survive, so businesses that don't attract enough revenue or capital to pay their costs, will fold. Cease trading and liquidate what's left. The founders, shareholders, directors, staff, suppliers, creditors and customers need to take a deep breath and move on. Easy to say, enormously hard to do. When you've poured you life, soul and probably your house, marriage and family's future into something, deciding when it's time to call it a day is massively difficult. Usually there are still reasons to be hopeful. An order about to drop; New product around the corner; New strategy to test; New advertising in the pipeline; New management; Competitors failing. Endless reasons to be optimistic, except one. You're running out of money and the risk of the business failing is increas...

Britain is a deeply divided nation. 48% voted to continue to compete amongst the nations of the EU, 52% believed we can compete better outside it. Part of the Brexit argument is that Britain can win more business by developing its own trade agreements (we have none currently), and that if the Pound does devalue (which it has since the referendum and may continue to slide when we leave in 2019), then our exports will be more competitively priced. Without covering old ground about the pluses and minuses of EU membership, the problem we now face is that whether we like to think of it this way or not, we will become a competitor of the EU. So why would the EU27 agree to anything other than the maximum damage in their power to inflict on a competitor to prevent us winning anything at their members' expense? As the old expression says, you're either for 'em or agin 'em . Brexit means agin the EU. And it doesn't matter how chummy smiley Davis and May try to portray us, ...

"They loved it. It's in the bag." (Business buyers are usually polite and often complementary even if they have no intention to buy) "It's getting loads of 'likes' on Facebook. This is a winner." (People are often keen to demonstrate to others how they feel about things. But this is different from deciding to buy where many other considerations need to be satisfied) "The majority of people we asked said they'd buy one." (But would they when you ask them to pay?) It's so easy to confuse 'like' with 'need'. People and businesses rarely spend money on things they just like. What they are far more likely to spend money on are things they need, especially things they can't do without. Businesses need to measure propensities to buy their products far more carefully than superficial reactions might indicate. They also need to consider WHY their products might be purchased, as well as WHEN and HOW, not just IF. ...

I've spent most of the past thirty years trying to invent, develop, launch and sell new products. There's an anarchic side to my character that can't be bothered trying to sell something that someone else already sells. Or perhaps it's not about searching for challenges, but satisfying my insecurities. Maybe I just don't want to be beaten. If I'm selling something that nobody else sells, then if I fail it's not because somebody else is better than me at selling, it's because I didn't get the pitch right in some way, or that the market is simply not ready for my vision - like the company I co-founded which developed intelligent search engines in the mid-80s for example, or the social networks idea in the early 90s. Well they always say that timing is everything. But in the case of New Products there are other factors at play. Now I'm in the twilight of my career, I've amassed plenty of experience in trying to make business successes out of n...

Most businesses these days have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems which store and process vasts amounts of information about us. They use this information to generate communications, amongst other things, which target us to buy their products and services. CRM is all about how a business relates to its customers: Past (keeping them loyal through aftersales and service), Present (helping them buy through bricks and clicks channels) and Future (prospecting). Most businesses will at some stage have declared themselves 'customer-centric'. They will probably have drawn diagrams on whiteboards that look something like these: But there's a problem with this whole approach of keeping the customer at the centre of your world and the focal point for everything you do. Is it what the customer wants ? Of course companies who ignore their customers eventually go out of business. And those who treat their customers well, tend to thrive. But is it really in the best inte...

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about Malala's surprise when she began school in the UK. She was shot by deluded madmen because she insisted on going to school in Pakistan where it's recognised by children and parents alike not only as a privilege, but also as an enjoyable experience that kids universally want to do. They don't here and that amazed her. I suspect the way kids in Pakistan and the UK are taught differ relatively little bar the technology we might use in British classrooms these days (and the flavour of religious dogma of course). A cynic might suggest that Pakistani kids prefer school because it's less onerous than doing chores at home or slaving in factories. They also spend the day with all their friends and they get fed (I presume). So it might be an exaggeration to suggest that Pakistani kids understand the value of school whereas British kids on the whole don't, but there's an important issue here surrounding the way we sell, or don...

What's with the current trnd to msspll wrds by tkng vwls away to create business and product names like Flikr and Tumblr? There's a crowd funding website I'm being encouraged to use, annoyingly called Crowdbnk. I can understand making up words. Google is a good example. Story goes that Larry and Sergei thought they'd registered a word that means a large number (10 to the power of 100). But that's a Googol. So why this trend for removing vowels? Creating names makes them memorable, easier to find internet domains for and to register as company names and trademarks. I long ago discovered using numerals to create business names like marketing4motorsport, 2nd Byte, 10ACT (pronounced tenacity!), R9 (when spelled out as rnine looks like the word mine - and therefore cost me less to buy the URL), and my latest business calls2account. But deliberately misspelling a word by leaving out vowels annoys me. It looks like a mistake. I love atention to detail. ;-) Removing l...

After around four decades of trying to work out what does and doesn't contribute to business success, these days I spend much of my time mentoring others to help them discover the same thing (fortunately I can afford to do this because I did eventually manage to work out some of the answers). Over the years I have come to realise that successful business founders share a number of characteristics which seem to be lacking from those who try, but fail. Perhaps serially. So here are some observations: Who is the business being created for? I am often confronted by excited wide-eyed people clutching business plans that tell you about the fortunes they are going to make, but which lack the single most important factor any business requires, and which is answered by the question - Who wants it to succeed most - the founders or their customers? If it's the former, then the business is being created for the wrong reasons. Businesses that provide what customers need and really wan...

Billions of $, £ and € are wasted every year by governments, investment funds, charities and individuals on business start-ups that fail or under-perform at best. I believe that if a professional accredited market research phase is completed before funding is agreed, it would: Ensure start-ups have a better chance of survival. Around half of all start-ups fail within their first 5 years. Around 20% fail in the first year. But virtually all will under-perform against plan in the early years. Success is always harder than anyone ever imagines. Prevent businesses from starting, and funders wasting their money, if propositions don't realistically hold water. Professionalise the owners of those businesses faster than if they learned all their lessons 'the hard way'. So if they do fail, they'll stand a better chance of success next time. The people who perform the market research might become a recruitment resource for the start-ups. The project can be funded by taking ...

I’ve just returned from a conference in Rome where I listened to a procession of impassioned CRM managers from car companies telling an audience of CRM managers about their latest marketing initiative to increase sales and keep customers loyal. All made good sense. All faced similar challenges – legacy IT; recalcitrant dealers; experimentation in new media channels; no money; harsh market conditions (ie no-one’s buying cars these days). But many of them missed arguably the single most important factor which will affect their figures – Selling! Marketing people, and increasingly their sales colleagues along with top management, believe that it’s all about giving the customer what they want, when they want it. Seems logical and sensible. But it‘s only half the story. Sure every business has to do that, and better than their competitors. Sure we need to make the processes involved in attracting prospects, responding to any interest they express, and achieving a happy sale for both parti...

I have spent the past 35 years helping corporations, latterly my own, communicate with customers and prospects (people they want to become customers). When I first entered the world of marketing, we were known by other departments as the 'Gin and Tonic Brigade' due to the long lunch hours with suppliers and the frequent conferences and 'inspection' visits we felt we needed to make. Our work was broadly about creating the right message, in the right place, at the right time to attract the attention and persuade the right people, usually but not exclusively, to part with money. More significantly, our skills at the time focussed mainly on the message, rather than the targeting and timing. This was basically because in those days we only had blunt advertising and direct marketing tools at our disposal. Calculation of Return On Investment (ROI) was an obscure art, universally employed to justify retaining client contracts (if we were agencies) and to encourage bean-count...