Every one is talking about Arshavin

The baby-faced killer. If you saw Russia’s defeat of Holland, you’ll know why this man is hot property.

Strikers are like salespeople. When they are hot, everybody wants them. When they are not, then they are overpaid layabouts.

We all want someone in our team who plays with amazing skill, power and, yes, beauty. But it is the performance over the long term that builds a lasting reputation. Take that bloke from Hereford Town who scored that goal against, um, Newcastle (?) back in the 70s. The TV clip is always dragged out of the archive and dusted off for some cheap Greatest Ever Goals compilation. (I must admit I always watch those). But I can’t even remember the player’s name, because his time in the spotlight was over in the blink of an eye.

And, as Tyrell, designer of Blade Runner replicants says: “the light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long”.

No, you want a consistently strong Rainmaker who delivers for the team week in week out. Someone like Gareth Barry. Shame Liverpool will benefit from his all round game next season.

Don’t ask, don’t get

I have been amazed over the last weeks how many very skilled people have been willing to give me their time, as I develop a new project that is way ‘out of my comfort zone’.

This very exciting website project has meant a steep learning curve for me, and requires all sorts of expertise in areas that I only know about in theory.

In a funny way it reminds me of the Hollywood saying “Be nice to people on the way up, because you will meet them again on the way down.” Being able to call on advice from top people that usually consult at £450 a day, and to be offered their interested support, makes me feel pretty humble… and lucky!

Let’s hope I can repay the favour somewhere down the line.

Flexible working

An employee is going through a tough time. Her parents, both in their 80s, are becoming increasingly frail and ill. The circumstances are affecting her work and our company.

It is an emotional time (dad has cancer, nasty operation looming) and she needs to spend more time caring for her parents.

I hope our firm adopts a sympathetic and fair view of the situation. There will be emergencies where she may need to leave work unexpectedly, or take unplanned holiday time. It’s possible that, since right now the caring is falling mostly to her, she may need to take extended unpaid leave.

The company’s supportive attitude is the right way to deal with a valued employee. But we can’t ignore the inevitable disruption to company activities. The employee looks after some key accounts and inputs to many projects. In return for flexible working described above, we ask for good handovers and ongoing dialogue, where possible, under the circumstances. With talented, hard-working colleagues to take the strain, it is important for our company to remain focussed and productive, partly so our colleague has a secure job during these difficult times.

Marketing is not rocket science

No matter what you are selling, understanding your customers is the most important thing you can do. Segment customers into manageable chunks with similar characteristics, and suddenly marketing seems a lot easier. You can then market to the most attractive segments.

Customer characteristics might be what products they buy, how often, where they live, how old are they, and so on. When you start thinking about it, you’ll probably find other characteristics that bind groups of customers together.

For instance, a flag maker noticed his online orders for St George flags peaked several times a year. Somehow, he worked out that these periods coincided with the return of Navy ships from overseas. Now he monitors Royal Navy ship movements and directs his marketing at Navy towns at key points of the year. That’s his ‘Navy segment’. But he will also have ‘summer fair’, ‘street party’ and ‘political rally’ segments.

Marketing to small businesses is notoriously difficult, but segmentation can help you reach your targets more efficiently, too. SMEs are considered hard to reach because:

• there are so many of them
• they are invariably very busy
• they don’t want to spend any money

But for business to business marketing it is often possible to identify segments based around an existing network of some kind, perhaps a Trade Association, buying syndicate or drinking club. If you adapt your marketing message for that segment, and gain access to the network’s established communications channel (maybe a newsletter or event), you can get your offering in front of the right people.

Even though these businesspeople are busy they are more likely to take notice of your service as it will be seen within a context they trust.

If you can adapt your product - and it might only be a change of name or slight tweak to the benefits - along with your marketing, then you will increase the chances of a sale.

Some people call that a channel strategy but I call it common sense.

The muse is upon me

Where do business ideas come from? Did you have a ‘eureka!’ moment while soaping up your ducks in the bath? Maybe you got sick of working for ‘the Man’ and stepped sideways to set up for yourself (much more likely).

On last night’s chain-smoking TV show Mad Men, about a 1950s advertising agency, a young copywriter had a ‘mental block’. She just couldn’t come up with any creative ideas to sell a weight-loss product, so asked a senior copywriter for advice. He said “Think about the problem really hard. Then forget about it entirely. The answer will pop into your head sometime after that.”

Is it the same with business ideas? Few businesses ideas are based on innovations. Why should they be, if there is room in the market for someone to deliver an existing service better? Here’s a tip. If you are thinking of setting up as a plumber, the London boroughs of Kensington, Westminster and Camden have one plumbing business per 6,000 of the population (1/10th the national average). Whereas Norwich has one plumber per 500 people.* Hmmm…

The Springwise newsletter suggests many new business ideas are web-based. Perhaps the most unusual is ExBoyfriendJewelry where unwanted bling can be unloaded. Amazing niche. Now where’s my ball-cock?

* Barclays trade map

Big Swinging D****

Brad Rosser’s seminar at the Business Startup exhibition was a sell-out. I thought that was odd, considering he’s a corporate highflyer, and the room was full of super-keen start-ups. Isn’t that a mis-match?

Rosser learnt his chops as Executive Assistant to Alan Bond, followed by a spell at McKinsey and Co, and was Richard Branson’s right hand man at Virgin. So there is no doubt he’s successfully mixed it with the big boys. But what advice could he possibly offer us?

It turned out that that Rosser’s ‘Five pillars of building successful businesses’ were incredibly down to earth and practical. I won’t reproduce the talk here, but here are a couple of his notes:

1. Many entrepreneurs never get off the starting blocks because they are waiting until their product is ‘perfect’. But ‘perfect’ does not exist. Much better to launch a good product, take in feedback from the market, refine and re-launch. That nugget alone will springboard a lot of nervous start-ups forward.
2. Starting up is nothing more than a series of deals. You’ve got to be able to negotiate: with suppliers, staff and customers. Identify what your negotiation partner MUST HAVE and what they would LIKE TO HAVE. This makes the negotiation manageable and you’ll reach a deal quicker.

It became clear that Rosser has - subsequent to the big business career - been involved with a series of business start-ups, so these were tips grounded in experience. No wonder they rang true.

Business Start-up 2008

This massive show takes place 25-26 April at Excel, in London. I’ve been to the show before, and there’s no doubt you can pick up a lot of good info and advice, and indeed inspiration.

If you are feeling brave, Viking Direct is once again hosting ‘The Midas Touch’, your chance to pitch an idea to some very successful businesspeople (it’s broadly modelled on the Dragon’s Den).

Of course, one downside to wandering around Excel’s a vast shed is the inevitable physical and mental fatigue. That malaise is not unlike the culture-blindness that results from trying to pack in from one art gallery too many.

Many of the exhibitors will be trying to get you to get your wallet out, understandably. So long as you’re mindful of this the array of free advice and tips and entertainment on offer makes the show well worth it.

How not to sell

This bloke phoned me up just now trying to sell me a fairly complicated service. I might have been interested, had he let me speak.

After answering the phone he pitched me for three and half minutes, non-stop. I thought it might have been a recording at first… but let him ramble on, once I was sure it wasn’t, just to see how it would turn out. 

I admire the determination, in a way, but complex solutions cannot be sold in this way. Funny thing is, I have a feeling I might just meet this fella at an upcoming event, so hope he doesn’t read this blog (no one does anyway!).

You complete tube

I see HSBC’s excellent Business TV is now also on YouTube. Incidentally, I wonder if YouTube has a universal appeal in Northern Ireland, since the phrase ‘you tube’ has a quite different meaning in that part of the world…

I digress. Other good stuff I have come across in the last few days includes Venture Navigator which has some useful business diagnostics, and is very easy to, err, navigate. Might take about 15 minutes-plus to complete the diagnostic I look at, though.

Fresh Business Thinking is at beta stage but could develop into a useful resource as its tools and content grows (but it is London-centric).

Rain-makers

At an entrepreneurs’ Question Time event last night I put a question to the panel. “We are having trouble recruiting and keeping committed salespeople. Getting the risk and reward system is difficult. Has the panel found a sure-fire way of finding and keeping ‘rain-makers’?”

Robert Craven was frank about the challenge and suggested there is no simple solution. He reckoned the best approach was to have a system where everything in the sales cycle was carefully measured: the marketing, leads generated, sales calls made, proposals and deals. When all sales costs and sales revenues are clear, then it is much easier to decide how much a new sales is worth, and how much commission should be paid. Then you have to stick to your system in the belief it is fair.

Salespeople want to make money, sure. But the surveys suggest that money is not the prime motivator for working. Feeling like you are making a difference, security and team-work are often quoted as being more important.