Category: Business

[clearspring_widget title=”Animoto.com” wid=”46928cc51133af17″ pid=”4a814531c122b5ae” width=”432″ height=”240″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

Darwin wrote that it wasn’t necessarily the strongest who survive, but the most adaptable- this is as true today from my perspective in business as it was for Darwin when he originally wrote it.
It has never been particularly easy to find new customers who want your product or service. The process of finding and meeting new customers is in itself not difficult. Most companies using a traditional mix of marketing including cold calling and telesales. These traditional methods are growing less effective as it is so easy for people to find the products or service they require through a 5 minute search on the internet, or more readily through an established relationship.
Creating a loyal following through exploiting the web and creating a valuable relationship is the smart way to build a future pipeline. When these “followers” have a need for your services, you will be on hand, trust and value already established, to solve their problem. But you already knew this- right? So what stopped you doing something about it? Time, resource, etc etc. There is plenty of evidence to show that this is a sensible approach, so perhaps it’s time you took steps. Http://unhub.com/grahambunting

I wonder why it often seems that sales and marketing work in separate silos, and measure a disparate set of metrics (which appear to be aligned at surface level) – never before has it been more important for these two departments to align and (really) work together – it is not practical for each to work to an exclusive success measure. There is only one measure of success – profitable growth.

Yet despite what seems an obvious statement, there is still conflict rather than coordination at all levels and much finger pointing for the general lack of sales results. Sales claiming that there are not enough good quality sales leads arriving at their desks and marketing claiming that there are loads of leads and sales are unable to sell them. If this carries on unchecked then it’s clear that the disharmony will drive down business rather than develop it.

The answer should lie in alignment – aims, metrics, pay etc. Why would you have two such critical departments of the business working at any lesser level of congruence I wonder?

I have been watching the situation with Nortel with interest since they went bankrupt and wondering where the value sits for various suitors. I confess to a degree of surprise that the only news I have read about is Telecoms vendors showing interest. Why not Cisco or Microsoft for example? Is there not an opportunity to make an aggressive land grab and perhaps make significant inroads into the Telecoms market place where Avaya and other traditional voice vendors are currently dominant.
So back to the initial comment- where is the value when there is so much apparent duplication. I can’t however argue that $475million isn’t pretty good value for a significant global player like Nortel.

I am philosophically thinking about my life as a journey and how all of the various experiences are shaping me into who I am today, and what I will be tomorrow. Very rarely do we get the time and opportunity to do this naval gazing, and yet I have been fortunate in getting the chance. By the way, I think the phrase “it’s not what happens to us, but how we respond to it that matters” is a great example of the fact that we often have very little influence over “things” that happen to us in life, BUT, we absolutely can choose how we respond to them!

Back to my opening comment – through the opportunity of redundancy, I took the chance to review and evaluate my life’s journey, and think about “ME PLC” in many different ways – what I stand for and what’s important to me etc. This part of my journey has been both very important and enlightening in that I have learnt much more about me. In so doing, I have built value into my future work opportunities: Grafting onto my sales/leadership/team expertise, with 2 qualifications from INLPTA – a Coaching diploma and a Leadership diploma rich in Neuro Linguistic Programming language.

I also learnt that whilst I do have a strong independent streak, I also enjoy a working environment that enable rich people interaction and that enables me to take my experience and share with other people though mentoring and coaching and general interaction.

I am thinking much more now about the journey and hope that people reading this will take this as a catalyst for them to take more control.

Telecoms – everyone’s an expert

I have worked in telecoms most of my working life and I have seen much change on one hand and yet paradoxically very little on the other.

Telecom to most people appears to mean telephony – I.e. a device for speech for use at home, in the office or whilst mobile, and from this perspective, apart from changes in phone set designs and disparate approaches from vendors on the layouts and labelling conventions (some use simple text whilst others use icons that I can’t for the life of me work out – so what hope is there for the uninitiated) there has been very little change. Even the newer entrants from the data World have taken a fairly conventional approach, which is probably understandable.

There is much change talked about more at the large enterprise end of the commercial market place, and this is at an infrastructure (plumbing) level. IP or Internet Protocol to give it its full name is a different approach to transmission of the voice signals that for most of us means very little. After all, who made a fuss over marketing the fact that the “old world” was TDM or Time Division Multiplexing? So what! Does it really matter? Perhaps not, but then again perhaps it does – the answer lies in the “what does it mean to my business if I change/don’t change”. The impact could be very little; however, it could deliver significant additional capability for your organisation and cost savings too – especially if you can share traffic on inter-office links, and use other low cost network carriers for some traffic. There is no simple answer to the conundrum, it just needs careful consideration from your perspective for your business, and weighing up the pros and cons – because there could well be some, for example, if your data infrastructure is already creaking at the seams, it could well require an investment to update before adding voice as well. A lot of this will depend on your organisations approach to return on investment and how you measure the benefits etc. Just get some independent advice before jumping in.

This particular saying, whilst in certain circumstances may hold true does NOT always hold true.

Having been involved for many years (more than 22 years in fact gosh) in the telecommunications market, I have seen many changes and lots of exciting technology that really enhances the way businesses can service and support their customers, and enable people to work flexibly. All of this carries a burden of cost – after all the vendor pays to develop the clever software and hardware to support it, plus lots of testing to ensure the deliverables are truly reliable and resilient so as not to let you down. It is therefore no surprise that this all requires customers to make an investment from their hard won revenues.

Refreshing then to learn that competitive pressures and other factors are bringing down the cost of communicating and new technologies are enabling greater choice – all of which results in opportunities to reduce telecom expenses. Savings of 40%-50% are not uncommon especially for companies who have a number of locations, and a lot of land line to mobile calls.

Is your company wasting money to the tune of an additional 60% over and above what it could be? I would be surprised if you couldn’t save money and there is no burden of cost for new equipment – How compelling is that?

Ernst & Young,  Slaughter and May and Rolls Royce all benefited from a free no obligation consultation and now enjoy the regular lower costs that you could.

Listen to language – its very enlightening. You can hear the self-limiting beliefs that people have “become attached to” and really own. People will argue for their weaknesses and guard them like a highly prized possession. And yet these are actions that hold us back ultimately from where we desire to be and certainly from where we could be. For example, I recently heard some of the following statements which I’m certain you’ll recognise.

I can’t do that because…
Well that’s me…
He makes me so mad…
I can’t help worrying…

Can you see the patterns here? These comments are firmly in the effect area and they are often caused by our belief systems and experiences. One of the best examples of this I heard was during a recent meeting where we were discussing our children. My friend (name withheld to protect identity) started to describe a series of conversations he had had with his son whom was described as a trifle lazy. In fact he had said to his son frequently “you are so lazy”. During a later encounter he had asked his son WHY he wasn’t doing something, to which his son casually replied “it’s because I’m lazy dad”! Talk about give a dog a bad name. I think this is a good illustration of language and it’s impact.

Long before I became a coach, I held a belief about coaching and what it was, and now realise that I actually hadn’t ever given it much more than a passing consideration. I certainly never considered the value coaches bring to people. Now I realise from the basic premise of coaching (the individual already has all of the resources necessary to move themselves forward) how valuable it can be. Often people find themselves “stuck” somewhere, hanging on to less than useful limiting beliefs and unable to move forward to where they want to be. A good coach can help with this movement – drawing on your own resources and enabling greater self belief – leaving behind the unhelpful and limiting beliefs. Having been coached myself, I found many moments that were EUREKA moments of realisation.