Expectations are shifting like sand.  What once was acceptable, may no longer be.

The standard you do things by may not be the standard that your customer is expecting given all of the other things they can compare you to in life.  One click purchasing on Amazon, timed delivery slots from Tesco, paying by Paypal, free delivery, being heard on social media are all examples of how a customers expectations are changing.  They are the same customers, with the same money.

Last night I stayed in a hotel and I was thinking about the basics that I now expect before choosing to stay somewhere.  Location, wireless network, cost of parking, access to leisure facilities are just some of the add ons that come along with a comfortable room and bed.  The hotel industry has had to shift it’s proposition.

Last night, a perfectly comfortable hotel went into my black book of places never to go back to.  I had a brilliant nights sleep, bed was super comfortable, room very contemporary, all the mod cons.  However, I couldn’t connect to the wireless network, the car park for the hotel was a full five minutes walk away and fifteen minutes to drive due to a one-way system and my mobile phone had no signal, despite being in a major city centre.  My expectations weren’t met, despite having lovely accomodation (the key proposition) the wrap around elements (related to the key proposition) diluted the key proposition so significantly, I became a one-off customer, rather than a repeat customer.

It was a reminder to me, not to just think about your core business proposition but the associated things that wrap around it.  The add-ons, the after service, the details that make up a buying interaction.  Using the above example, what is the wireless network equivalent in your proposition?  It’s not your core but your customer may want more.  They may have greater expectations, so stay close, keep listening and keep refining.

Today I spoke at an event in Chester and galloped through a metaphorical buffet table of ideas, trends and insights to an audience of business hungry SME’s.  Just a small portion of the things I touched on were: -

Liquid Fear.  Fear is everywhere right now, at a structural and personal level. Don’t let it trigger fight or flight thinking in you or your innovation may suffer.

Averages.  Even though the economy is struggling to grow at a pace, if all you ever do is consider that “flat” is what everyone is doing to judge your performance – you’re wrong.  An average is made of superstars and under performers.  Be a shining star in the game of average.

CTRL+ALT+DEL – It’s an amazing time for the world and we’re in it, right here, right now as all this structural change takes place in the way we run our lives.  Someone set the reset button and it’s important we all update our software to run today’s programmes.

Plural Working.  People are much more open to earning income from multiple sources.  The concept of being wedded to one company is “so yesterday.”  This may have a big impact on staff working practice, location and cost.

Make your competition irrelevant.  Do things they can’t do.  Understand that if they are big, they make lack agility.  Introduce new initiatives to stay one step ahead of them.

Be authentic.  As a person, as a business.  Stay true to what you’re all about, don’t dilute, be yourself.

Have the courage of a lion.  Tough times require tough decisions.  Back yourself, call the big shots, be bold.

Counting it all up, I covered about fifty points in rapid succession today, covering everything from innovation, trends,  leadership and change.  It was enjoyable to cover a lot of different things, a little taster of a lot of things as opposed to a “big meal.”

It seemed to work.  What struck me most was how there is so much to talk about, so much change, so many new things, new challenges and we have to constantly stay up to date with all of these things, aswell as do the day job.

It’s all there for the taking.  Tough times see some of the business ideas launched, you have to look for the opportunity, put in some hard yards thinking and get implementing!

A tip for you.  Never discount in chunks divisble by five.

Think about it.  Most time you talk about discounts you go up in chunks of five per cent.  Five per cent, ten per cent, fifteen per cent – it’s just the way people tend to think.    If you knew the true impact that discounting has on your bottom line, you’d fight for every one per cent. When you take into account the fixed cost structures your business has, hanging onto an additional one per cent can have a transformational effect on your bottom line.

Here’s five tips for you when someone asks for a discount: -

1).  When someone asks for discount, ask for something back.  For example – faster payment, a referral letter or a top-up of the order which makes it more efficient to handle logistically.  Consider it a trade-off, you want something from me, so what are you offering in exchange?

2).  Distract discounting discussions by trying to remove something from your offer.  ” You want an additional five per cent, sure we can achieve that by replacing X with Y or removing X from the deal”.

3).  Probe, probe, probe your buyer.  If you have something that you know is a good fit for a specific reason for their requirement, hang on in there.  Keep re-questioning their key reason for the purchase, in particular re-capping what they want from a potential supplier – this could be your saving grace on defending your pricing position.

4) Discount in blocks of one per cent.  It gives a far greater impression that you’ve got your pricing in tune, from the start and that you need profits for the long term, to support the customer.

5)  Have things that are of low value to you, but perceived high value to the customer up your sleeve.  This again comes back to questioning.  It’s amazing what small things sometimes swing deals, because it is of perceived high value to the customer.  Perhaps it’s throwing something in for a consumer or a priority line into your customer support centre.  Remember, people are time and attention poor, what can you do to help.

In March, I’ll be attending one of those marketing director forums.  Business model goes like this.  Lay a load of good speakers on; invite a load of high level marketing Directors who’ll want to hear them speak, get suppliers to pay to attend and cover all the costs of the speakers and the attendees, in order to reach the high level decision makers.

Attendees (marketing directors) have to agree to have some meetings with suppliers to attend for free, in order that there is a win for all.  Organiser walks away with lots of happy people – hopefully.   

Now, said suppliers then have to lay out their wares to the attendees, pitching for the meeting time that they have available.  Said Marketing Directors are hugely busy people, inundated with new business calls and e-mails all day long.

What a golden opportunity to cut through.  Yet, many continue to get it so wrong, writing page after page of chest beating copy that means nothing.  We’ve won this, we’ve won that.  And?

Here’s what would grab my attention. 

“If you agree to a meeting with us, we will do a pre-audit or ideas session on any business problem you care to throw our way.   A current campaign that’s not working.   A new campaign that needs some thought.

We’ll come prepared with our thoughts on how we would do it differently.  Just agree to meet and we’ll get our best people on your problem.  Our ideas will do our talking, you judge whether we can cut it.”

Or

“Let us know of a forthcoming networking event where you may be present and we’ll arrange for our “enter title of senior agency person” here to be there, just to meet informally”

OK.  You have my attention.  An opportunity for a quick bit of benchmarking.  Said agency can make a real impact, get real with a real problem, guaranteed engagement from the Marketing Director.  It’s not that hard, loads of room for follow up or development if they do the business by producing some great answers.   B2B is all about grabbing time and attention, plus trust.

• To realise the value of ten years; ask a newly divorced couple.
• To realise the value of four years; ask a graduate.
• To realise the value of one year; ask a student who has failed a final exam.
• To realise the value of nine months; ask a mother who gave birth to a still born.
• To realise the value of one month; ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.
• To realise the value of one week; ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.
• To realise the value of one hour; ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.
• To realise the value of one minute; ask a person who has missed the train, bus or plane.
• To realise the value of one-second; ask a person who has survived an accident…
• To realise the value of one millisecond; ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics
• Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special. To realise the value of a friend; lose one.

Overheard this conversation in a cafe on Thursday.  Man A – “How’s the Christmas present shopping going?”  Man B – “I’m screwed.”  Man A – “Why?”  Man B – Because I’ve left it all to the last minute, thinking i’ll just get it on the web, and nobody can bloody deliver it to me.”

And there lies the problem of a bit of white powder.  Step forward retailers of the world, fill your shelves, staff your stores and prepare for the rush.  Most retailers will tell you that they’ve had a miserable run in to Christmas so far.  Snow has meant people have stayed indoors.  The planners of the world have already done their shopping on the web, had it delivered, despite the snow and the backlogs and are sitting pretty, all prepared.  The last minute.com-ers are panicing now.

It’s a stark reminder that the world does need multiple channels for us to buy our goods and services.  On-line or off-line, high street or local, this seasons snow drop has caused a big shift in where consumers have been spending their money.  And don’t the big box players know it.  Sales have started early, footfall counters have been quiet and there’s a lot of praying going on that the next couple of days is going to be superbusy with lastminute.com-ers buying any old gift set as long as it’s in a nice box (you’ll always be able to get Brut or Anais Anais if things get really bad).

Weather extremes rock retailers.  Sunny means BBQ’s and no shoppers, snow means stay indoors and no shoppers.  Rain is best, makes people miserable sitting indoors and they head straight for their local indoor shopping centre for a change of scenery.  It will be interesting to see the retail sales stats when they come out, clothes – as usual – will do well.  Electrials, mmm we’ll see. 

What will be interesting is when you open Santa’s stocking on Christmas day, you’ll quickly establish whether you’re nearest and dearest have been in a blind panic running round shops.   Tell tale signs are multi-tools or Top Gear annuals for the men or perfume gift sets/Trinny and Susanna book for the ladies.  Drop me a note if you get either

Should I be at Harvard?  In the car this morning, I got to thinking about the importance of this latest Wikileak exposure of all the diplomatic material and how this is a gamechanging moment in transparency.  Next thing I know, Harvard Business Review posts an article up on the same subject, like minds eh.

Now I don’t think for a minute I’m Harvard material, however my thought process was not about the specific contents of this leak, but more about the idea, that things that you thought were secret, being outed and exposed in a public forum.  I though there were some important leadership lesson there.

Think about it for a minute.  What if every e-mail and internal communication you wrote or produced for the last five years were exposed on the internet.  Anything in your cupboard that you might feel embarrassed about?  Any phone calls you need to make to smooth over any cracks with people you might have been a little two faced with?  Anything you would have considered “top secret?”

That’s a worrying thought, however you have – in the last few days – seen evidence of how this could happen on a grand scale.  Transparency rules.  There’s the first lesson, be consistent with others and be prepared to back your opinions in public.

One of the Guardian journalists made a good point on Radio 4 when she said that a disclosure of this size, takes an incredible amount of analysis by experts.  Things need to be given context.  There’s only so much a database and algorithms can do.  At some point, an expert needs to make sense of it.  There’s the second lesson.  Computers can’t rule everything, human analysis is vital, opinion matters.

The third lesson is about the overwhelming amount of data that has been posted.  So much, it’s a fog.  The media partners involved have had to digest, sort and filter it all, to get to the key stories.  The money moment.  Information overload is a factor in everyone’s lives nowadays .  The key word is “filtering” and if you don’t filter out the things that really matter when communicating to others, then you will simply be noise.“

Big leaks like the recent Wikileak will become more commonplace.  If it can happen to the US government, it can happen to anyone.  Being consistent, transparent and honest internally reduces your risk of something happening externally.  Granted, politics is a completely different stage, however, the lessons are there to be learned.

Please put your phone, your Blackberry, your i-Pad, your laptop into this bag.  We’ll give it you back in 24 hours, now off you go…..

Is your heart racing at the prospect of not being able to be connected to the matrix or are you relishing a break from tech?  It kind of happened to me over the last couple of days, when my Blackberry decided to give up unexpectedly.  This meant no work e-mail on the move and no phone calls or texts, out or in.  To top it off couldn’t get my laptop to connect to the hotel network either.  I was in a digital ghetto.

It felt strange.  Walking along the street with nothing to read, no one to call and no buzzing or red lights flashing at me.  It also made me realise just how many people walk down the street with their eyes fixed on a screen as they go about their day.  Random walking I call it as you invariably have to sidestep them.

First thing I did this morning?  Out of the hotel, straight to Starbucks, log on, sync up and plug back in.   And breathe……  It’s amazing that in the last five years or so how life has changed.  It’s a far cry from my calling back to the office for my messages from a phone box (that was only in 1995),  just as carphones started taking off.  Look how far (or not) we’ve all come.

Good or bad, It’s where we are.  I guess the lesson here is about whether you are a slave to the network or a master of it. Most would probably say we’re slaves to it now, it certainly feels like that.  I think doing without the e-mail was doable, being without a mobile phone was by far the more uncomfortable of the sensations.

Think forward twenty years.  What’s the world going to look like then?   Superfast networks, augmented reality, real time everthing.  Hyperspeed awaits.  Access will be like Oxygen to Generation Y and Z, being plugged in will be the default state to keep up.   Information will be even more bite size, Twitter 2 will probably come out with a 70 character limit and every second of downtime will be squeezed, optimised and maximised. 

So, whose for chucking all those things in the bag for a couple of days and going cold turkey with your tech?  Go on, I dare you….

Digital messaging is the equivalent of a phone-call or voicemail message nowadays.   People are on chasing within minutes or hours if they don’t have an instant response to their SMS or e-mail, expecting your action to be synchronised as the moment they pressed send.  Twitter changed the rules completely as it created a brand new time expectation of “instantaneousness”, an army of smartphone enabled social media evangelists enjoying the new digital fast lane of being completely up to the second with news, learning and opportunity.

This again changes the game in terms of customer expectations when it comes to service.  I previously blogged about a concept called “I-Win” which is an acronym for “I want it now”, perfectly capturing the essence of the new time sensitive buyer.  For those brands that are not totally consumed by their customer experience, they will turn from “hot” to “cold” in an instant as buyers brand switch in transactional marketplaces.

I had personal experience of this during the last few days.  Unbelievably, a major consumer brand – Garmin - with a Twitter account and an e-mail contact form could only deal with me by telephone.  Why?  Because their Twitter account was for broadcasting only, not listening, the only advice they could give was to phone the customer support centre.  Their customer support section was in their words “too busy” to deal with the backlog of e-mails, just keeping up with the phone traffic (I’d e-mailed them twice, with no response).  For me, that’s not progress, they are doing what suits them, preferring to transmit, than receive, a social media own goal.

One thing is for sure, the world is spinning faster.  Those businesses that can keep up and stay relevant will emerge as the forerunners of the market, those asynchoronous businesses will need to rely heavily on their product technology to be good enough at the front end, for customers to put up with anything less at the back end.