It is more than a little ironic that the initials of the company responsible for what is likely to be one of the greatest man-made natural disasters of this decade, is the same as the two that begin the phrase “be prepared” i.e. BP. They most certainly were not in this instance. As each day passes, the scale of the problem facing the company and those in the path of this disaster becomes clearer and clearer. The PR machine is in full operation, country leaders are calling each other to pacify fears, engineers are working frantically to come up with solutions. Unfortunately, nothing so far is fixing the problem at hand and it will be some considerable time before it is brought under control.
Now I’m no engineering expert or oil rig risk analyst but surely someone, somewhere has asked the question “what do we do if there is an under-sea blow-out caused by..” and the answers have already been considered.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the process of how you engage with your customers from acquisition, selling and then the on-going retention of their loyalty and hopefully repeat purchases.
Where does customer relationship management begin?
In order to gain a customer, you need to have a product or service that is needed/wanted and to achieve that you will have had to identify and understand that prior to launching your business. So in effect, your CRM has commenced before you have even one customer engaged.
I won a copy (thanks Andy Beal) of “The Referral Engine” by John Jantsch (which was nice) and it is a great read for anyone interested in growing their business through referrals. One section starts with the sentence “People don’t talk about boring companies..”. He’s right, they don’t!
This is a challenge that I have faced since setting up MyProjectTracker. For months, it was all about features and capabilities. The 15 second pitch included the words project management (and yes, I could see peoples eyes glaze over!). In other words spoken like an IT person selling to an IT person, not as a marketer or sales person to a business owner. (more…)
I read a post yesterday from the team at 37Signals and found the on-going commentary fascinating. The post concerned two approaches to a response being sent to a customer who was looking for a bigger discount.
The first reply was very direct and essentially said;
“sorry, but no can do over and above what we are already offering“.
The second was more flowery in approach and basically said;
“we’d love to have you as a customer and feel your company would benefit” along with a re-dressed version of what is being sold on the website. (more…)
Small business is very much the “David” against the “Goliath” of the market place. Small business says dynamic, prepared to go for it, entrepreneurial, willing to challenge the status quo! Small business is the foundation of most economies in the developed and developing world.
Those who have decided to establish their own businesses can feel very like David. They have confidence and ability but the challenge for success can be gargantuan.
This challenge is not easy and should not be considered as such. Most business concepts have already been thought of or implemented to greater/lesser extents. So the small or new business venture is in a highly challenging market – Goliath!
Yesterday, I had a very strong lesson in the power of the written word and the impact that it can have in determining the success/failure of a business proposition.
I was doing some work for a client on a tender response. During the engagement, numerous emails were going backwards and forwards to gain clarifications on certain aspects of the tender.
As can sometimes happen, the emails started to become a little less structured as both parties feel that they “know” the person at the other end simply through this communications channel. “Dear” becomes “Hello” which becomes “Hi”. Punctuation and the language used can become less constrained and it becomes, in effect, a casual written engagement.
During one of these email sessions I created a response to a question, re-read the message and sent it off. I received a most direct and unexpected reply questioning the motivation for the response that I had made and the seriousness under which the tender process was being taken.
To me, value proposition is simply the value a customer receives when buying a product and/or service. It applies to both new business and to servicing existing customers. A business has to create this value proposition for its customers and make sure that the value proposition is viable and sustainable.
How do we translate the concept into our pricing models and offerings? (more…)
Project management is about delivering your work in such a way that it delivers to the three turquoise boxes above to deliver to the one in the middle, the person who really matters in all this – your customer.
If you are not a parent, do not leave this little analogy on how project management and parenting have real elements of similarity- this is all still relevant to you.
Project management begins when a concept is to be taken from an idea into a reality.
Parenting begins in a similar way. Certainly for the first child, the parents have only a vague notion of what it will be like. Then they hear those famous words from the mid-wife or doctor saying “it’s a boy or it’s a girl or it’s triplets (ahem!)” and it brings them firmly into the world of parenting.
In business parlance, parenting would be a program of work to deliver a well-rounded individual out into the world. (more…)
Keeping up with trends and understanding your market environment is key for any business owner. The last thing that you want is to be letting down your customers or falling behind your competition because you are not current with changes or trends in your business arena.
As each day passes, the scale of the problem facing the company and those in the path of this disaster becomes clearer and clearer. The PR machine is in full operation, country leaders are calling each other to pacify fears, engineers are working frantically to come up with solutions. Unfortunately, nothing so far is fixing the problem at hand and it will be some considerable time before it is brought under control.
