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.

I had an e-mail from an industry contact today.  In it, he shared with me Ten Top Tips that he prepared for a staff presentation in 2002.  I thought it made really good reading and he’s agreed for me to share it with you.

I’m often asked about my reading habits.  Which books I rate particularly.  Having a quick delve into the extensive library of business books I’ve got, here’s the books that I rated, kept and re-read: -

Will Schutz – The Human Element.  One of the best books I’ve ever read about self-awareness.  Got recommended to it by business psychologist Steven Sylvester whom I worked with a few years back.  Really allows you to more fully understand why you behave as you do and what interventions you can make.  Quite focussed on the workplace, which is why I liked it so much.  I readt this book on holiday every year without fail to remind me of my failures!

Seth Godin – Meatball Sundae.  We all know that Seth is the daddy when it comes to social media, strategic thinking and common sense marketing  Got sent this by a prospective digital supplier a couple of years back.  I read it on holiday in 2008.  I came back from that holiday and got started on re-inventing our digital strategy at work, I also decided that I would get into it myself.  My blog was born soon after.  He writes some great stuff, this is a good book to start your Seth journey with.

Good to Great – Jim Collins.  I read this book when we looked at implementing the EFQM model at work.  Recommended by one of the delivery consultants.  If you want to know what makes the difference between leaders and businesses that makes it big vs. others in their same field, this book examines those differences.  Nearly all the Top CEO’s have read this book and have based some element of their business delivery on it’s content.  The content of this is more for large businesses, however, I think everyone could benefit from reading it.

Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne – I really liked this book, it talks about strategy in much simpler terms than Good to Great.  One thing that always stuck with me when I read it was the principle about “making the competition irrelevant.”  Whatever your business size, you can take the basic framework of Blue Ocean strategy and apply it to your own business.   There’s lots of bits in there that can be good basic hygiene factors of your business strategy.

Nuts – Kevin Freiberg.  The story of Southwest Airlines crazy recipe for success.  Southwest were the pioneers of the low cost airline in the USA.  They forged the way for businesses like Easyjet and Ryanair to start.  This book will show you how customer passion can differentiate you in the market.  What’s interesting about it is that it is not a book of theory, but actual action, makes it more meaningful.

These are just five of the – literally hundreds – of books I’ve read. All my professional development I’ve done myself over the years, simply by reading regularly.  Over the years, reading has become harder because we’re all so busy.  However, you must reserve the time to do it.  Social media is bitesized, everything is short, because attention spans are short and you never tend to delve into things too deeply, books allow you to do that.  I do all my book reading before bed or on holiday, when I’m not distracted by a buzzing Blackberry or other attention sapping device.

Do you have any books that you would recommend to others?  If so, please leave a comment with the details and short description of “why?” if you are able to run to it.

Chatting with someone on the phone earlier today about the rough day they were having, prompted me to write this blog. We’ve all had them. The day from hell where you had a difficult meeting, phone conversation or interaction. What’s worse is if you knew it was coming and had a few days to think about it. So, in no particular order, here are my tips to get through them: -

1. Don’t worry about it too much (if you know in advance). Invariably things never turn out as you imagine them and are often nowhere near as bad. If you let ” the voices” take over, you’ll just create stress for yourself.
2. Break the day down if you know you have different meetings on different subjects. Treat each one as its own challenge (cyclists use this to get up big hills, just keep aiming for small landmarks and eventually you’ll get up). Approach each event separately.
3. Put yourself in the other persons shoes if it’s a meeting or difficult conversation. It can really help you with your approach.
4. Get on with whatever you need to do as soon as possible. Don’t procrastinate or leave things. If something needs to be tackled, do it, it stops you worrying about it.
5. Make some notes. You have to learn from difficult experiences, so understand what you could have done better for next time around.
6. Apologise early if it’s down to you. No one likes anyone who tries to shirk blame or pass the buck, be big enough to admit it if it’s on your watch.
7. Put the day in context. It might be difficult, but how does it compare to having a terminal illness? You’d know what worry is then.
8. Take a break. It’s important to stay focussed and your head clear. Make sure you eat, stretch your legs and get some fresh air and a chance to just absorb everything.
9. Prepare. Don’t go into a difficult situation without knowing the background. Read up, put a bit of prep time in and you’ll feel more confident.
10. Remember that tomorrow is another day. Shakespeare once said “This, too, shall pass.” A great sentiment to end on.

It’s good to manage e-mail, not let e-mail manage you. Returning from a time zone +9hrs means that during the time you’re in meetings etc, hardly any e-mails come in, so you really focus on the job in hand and aren’t distracted by the constant flow of inbound messages. The e-mail starts to get busy again from around 5pm in the afternoon (Japan time), when it’s the evening and you’re out having your dinner. So, I ended up clearing e-mails first thing in the morning and it reminded me of an important lesson relating to how regularly to read your mails. That is, rather than have your e-mail constantly on, instead to only log in a couple of times a day instead and batch clear your inbox. It makes it much less interruptive. I used to do this, but I’ve got out of the habit. I’m going to do it again as of next week as I’ve a lot of big picture thinking to do over the coming weeks and I want to keep my mind clear. Why not try it yourself? It’s a bit of a leap of faith in the early days, however – in time – it’s a much better way of feeling in control.