The Christmas present
If the Christmas experience is a cake made up of three pieces, past, present and future, I wonder where you spend most of your time and energy?
The businessman said to me, “Well Tim, what do you do when the phone stops ringing? I can remember,” he went on, “twenty years ago, we didn’t need to advertise, we didn’t even have a brochure. Customers just rang us, based on our reputation of course. After all, we are a third generation family business.” He added.
Christmas doesn’t give us much choice, reminiscences, memories and anecdotes, family influences, whoever we are with, push us all back down past tracks, for a while at least. And if we weren’t in the present for at least some of the time, then the Christmas meal could quickly become a thing of the past.
It doesn’t take long for this temporary pause in our life to move on through. Our everyday consciousness kicks back in so readily, that’s assuming that it ever left us.
The present is important and maybe the Christmas present of just forgetting about the future for a few days was a present indeed. But now, if we are in business, we need to be preoccupied with the future, with what is coming down the line.Labels: a proactive mindset for a business model, dealing with the future, time frames
The business lunch with no food
It is important that we get much closer to customers than ever before, so that in a fast changing world we can try to respond to their needs.
I am driving to Winchester on Tuesday where I had arranged to meet a special client for lunch. At Swindon an accident has stopped the traffic. I ask my PA to ring Jane and they agree we will meet half an hour later than planned at the Black Boy pub. The yellow petrol light is flickering but I must get there for the new time of 1230.
Can’t believe that I may even miss this new deadline so I put on a cd to deflect my thoughts. It goes into the slot OK but the screen does not tilt back to vertical. That means I’ve lost my Satnav.
Sometime later my PA uses her Google map to talk me to the pub for 1225. I ask to see the menu but am told the pub does not do lunch on Tuesdays. I am waiting outside in the rain and Jane appears at 1230 precisely. She smiles, waves and parks. I tell her the news. Now Jane is a very attractive female and is clearly not used to being messed around by idiots.
We agree that I’ll follow her into town and eat there because she has another meeting at 1330. But now my petrol light is full on and she drives fast, round two full car parks where we must have been just a blur to the good folk of Winchester. Eventually we find a multi storey. Jane parks up by the entrance and I carry on up, round and round. It’s a Pay and Display. No coins, so I race back down, round and round to find Jane clicking her high heels impatiently by the entrance. She has no more coins so I jog back up and just lock the car.
I’m sweating now but Jane nonchalantly sweeps us into an adjacent hostelry. It’s 1310, we’ve got 20 minutes. We order two lamb burgers and at 1320 there is no sign of any staff. I find a waitress smoking outside and plead for faster service.
At 1325, the fire alarm goes. Everyone gets up and makes for the exit. I remember my credit card is behind the bar. I say to Jane, “You wait outside I’ll just get my cr....... but Jane is looking at her watch. Our time is up.
And so we shake hands. I’m finding it impossible to know what to say. So Jane says, ”Goodbye and thank you.” Then she is gone.Labels: delighting customers, high content discussions, meeting changing needs of customers, timely meetings
The misfit
It is amazing how many people are playing the role of Managing Director, yet they are both unqualified to do the job and very unhappy in trying.
I met a chap recently. He has turned fifty yet he looks sixty. He was telling me about the stresses and strains of the job. He didn’t really enjoy chairing the Operational Management Meeting each month. “It always overruns,” he complained. He couldn’t get his head around the marketing strategy – somehow it just didn’t make sense to him. And as for the people management stuff– “just don’t even go there” he pleaded.
No, the only bit of the job that really appealed, the only thing that helped him out of bed each morning, was getting out and doing the job, face to face with customers. Just as he had done all through his professional training and development for over thirty years.
And when it’s like that, when it really isn’t going to get any better, and the tears have been shed, I put people like this out of their misery.
I sack them.
Labels: business growth
