Watch Tom and Seth Together On Stage

Came across a great video today. It’s two of my favourite business thinkers together on stage. Seth Godin and Tom Peters are in discussion about ‘Inside The Entrepreneurial Mind’ at the Inc 5000 2008 conference in Washington DC.

Easing Out Of A Problem

Just a quick ‘follow up’ to my blog article about easyJet last week. Joanne in The Customer Experience Team there has done a wonderful job in sorting out my problems. Prompt, personal and effective, she’s gone a long way to restoring my faith in easyJet.

I know things go wrong. It’s how we fix them that makes the impression on our customers. It’s the concept of ‘disappointment to devotion’. How equipped are your people to spot and deal with ‘disappointment’?

Don’t Chase 2 Monkeys!!

Heard a great presentation on Wednesday at the ISMM Successful Selling Conference in Birmingham by Neil Rackham, the author of the groundbreaking SPIN Selling system based on his research into successful sales techniques, and one of the world’s leading authorities on selling.

His key message was that in hard times and recession, the winners are those that focus on selling smarter not harder. In other words it’s NOT about simply stepping up business generating activity, it’s about focussing on the quality of the opportunity. Too many businesses panic, he said, and spread themselves too thinly. “If you chase 2 monkeys, both will escape” he explained.

In tough times, it’s also about making customers feel ‘safe’, and that includes your existing customers too.

He also suggested that the worst thing a business could do was to ‘defend’ existing business. It’s about treating all existing customers as ‘new’ customers and working on the principle of “attack is the best form of defence”.

The recommendations were not just a few random ideas, but are based on research into how businesses performed in the last recession, which he pointed out, many people in sales today did not experience.

What are you doing to adress your approach to winning business in these ‘harder times’?

‘Demonstrating’ Your Development

I’m facilitating a ‘strategic’ session with designers Purple Circle tomorrow. It involves the whole team in the business getting involved for the whole morning to generate and discuss business improvement ideas. A ‘temp’ is coming in to answer the telephones, and deal with any customer enquiries and queries.

I often recommend to clients when doing things like this that they notify their own customers that people will be ‘out of the loop’ for whatever time, and this is why. I recommend it because first of all, it’s courteous to customers, secondly, it keeps them informed of what’s happening, and importantly it

Un EasyJet!

I’ve had two emails from easyjet cancelling some flights I’d booked for a boy’s trip in November to Portugal -

Thinking in 3D Business Link Event – Ripon Spa Hotel, Ripon

Andy will be speaking in

Academy for Chief Executives

Andy has been asked to speak at the Group 33 meeting at the New Manor Park Hotel in the New Forest. Click here for more details.

The Painting and Decorating Association

Andy has been asked to