Trust in small businesses?

I can count on one hand the number of businesses I can rely on. Let me clarify what I mean — I want to be able to call them, speak to someone who actually knows what they’re doing, and get a straight answer, with some novel lateral thinking thrown in for good measure. As soon as you apply that kind of criteria to the broader swathe of businesses out there, you find yourself clearing the field of candidate businesses very, very quickly.

Arguably more importantly, how many businesses can you really, genuinely trust? And that’s the thing — trust is an invaluable quality you can neither beg, steal or borrow, or buy for that matter.

The biggest problem will small businesses is their lack of scale; they can’t service a huge number of clients. But what small businesses can do is provide an excellent personal service. It’s this attention to detail and the attention to the customer that makes dealing with small businesses so appealing to me. In fact, I often go out of my way to find the equivalent small business, who provides a service I require, even if they charge more.

A word or two about why small businesses are fantastic!

So what makes small businesses better than big businesses? Well, first of all, let’s define what I mean by big business — here I’m thinking about the likes of Orange, British Telecom, British Gas et cetera. Let’s look at what makes small business so good, by way of the words we all love to hear:

1. “Yeah, I can do that!” Knowing they really do know what they’re doing and not having to worry any longer is just priceless — from Lynne Foster of PoLR, an internet marketing agency based in Glasgow, Scotland.
2. “Oh, that sounds like the [insert name of broken gizmo here]. Yeah, I can sort that out for you.” You often deal with a decision maker; someone capable of handling your request in a meaningful way. They thrill you with their instant insight, and you know they know what they’re doing.
3. “Go on, call it a tenner”. You walk away with a smile on your face, they get cash in hand, everyone is happy. And you remember them all the more for your dealings with them.
4. “Well, if you pop in right now, we can fit you in!” The sheer convenience of ad hoc arrangements, without having to wait days or even weeks is just bliss, which means you can get on with your life.
5. “Yeah, I saw the problem earlier. I’m working on a fix right now.” Getting the right level of support can be a monumental challenge. Being able to speak to the very people dealing with the problems you encounter, and being reasonably certain they’re already fixing those problems fills you with a certain warmth.
6. “What’s your deadline?” Having some demonstration of their awareness and ability to plan is also a good indicator — from internet marketeer Nikki Pilkington.
7. “Sorry, I can’t do that, because…” Maybe they don’t have the time, or they simply don’t have the necessary skills. Either way, they’re being honest, which allows you time to move on and find someone else. You’d be surprised just how empowering say “no” can be.

And here’s some more thoughts from the world wide web:

“I need my suppliers to be honest and do what they say they’ll do. If they’re nice too, so much the better!” — Rob Griggs-Taylor.

“”Yes sir, you are right. I will get that done immediately, free of charge” Is my favourite response.” — Steve Williams, IT security expert.

Conclusion

As a small business owner, I’m passionate about my business, Octane, by default — if I’m not passionate, who the hell else will be? And so it goes that many similar small business owners make their businesses passionately personal and personable.

We don’t have the luxury of shrugging our shoulders as customer number 77,596 walks away in a huff because we didn’t give them the service they expected. Instead, we work damn hard for all our clients and customers because our reputation and, by natural extension, our livelihoods rely on this attention to detail.

So when you’re thinking of renewing a service contract, or buying something and you’re planning big, try thinking small for a change.

Of course, it wouldn’t do for everyone to be the same. At least that’s what my mother used to tell me. But then my mother didn’t run a business. As sage and sound as her advice often was, some things are an immutable prerequisite, like quality.

OK, let’s talk specifics — specifically, where a statute of limitations exists as a legitimate cut-off point for quality. Here I’m thinking of a time-limited warranty, like you get with physical goods, such as home electronics, food and vehicles.

In this kind of situation, you expect the guarantee of quality to fade over time, as the physical product ages, and is exposed to real world knocks, scuffs, tumbles and inexorable decay.

So that’s the physical time-limited quality issue out of the way. I’m sure we all agree on the legitimacy of warranties, yes? Now, I had an unusual conversation yesterday, one that forced me to think of the obvious in a way that, at least for me, is a constant I wouldn’t dream of tinkering with.

There’s no statute of limitations on quality

I was asked if, say, six weeks was a reasonable period of time, after which a client could no longer legitimately request fixes to software that myself, for example, had developed for them. As you can imagine, that threw me.

There were technical issues here — which I suppose we could consider as clauses — that needed addressing, as they were key players. Ultimately, they amount to an exercise in finger pointing, if I must be lazy about this. My reply was:

“If there’s a bug in your code and it’s your fault, don’t expect a client to observe a statute of limitations — they want a fix!”

And that’s only fair, and that’s where the technical clauses emerged — who made the most recent changes, to which files and when. However:

“If the client made any changes in or around the area of the fault, I’d make them aware of their liability.”

Which essentially highlights to the client the possibility that they will have to pay for those “fixes”, should any be required.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not laying any blame on the person who asked me this question. After all, each industry has its own customs and practices. To me though, common sense wins out every time, and customs and practices be damned.

So I guess what I’m saying is, software doesn’t come a warranty, and don’t expect a client to think otherwise.

Image credited to Flickr and Junichi Ishito.

I’ve been thinking about project management a lot recently (and doing a lot of project management, also), which you’ll probably have detected as you’ve skimmed through the headlines to my earlier articles. In some ways, this article is a continuation of the last, which you may want to read, to give you some background.

Be the voice of trust

As with almost every facet of business, trust is a mandatory quality and not some interchangeable attribute you can substitute, by being cheap or quick. So when someone comes to you for your services, it’s as much about people management as planning and pricing — people won’t buy from you until they’ve bought into you.

Being eager is great, but there’s always the danger you’re coming across too strong and a little too eager, bordering on insincere. After all, we’ve all witnessed the say-yes-to-anything sales man and woman at work, and clearly the experienced amongst us have these encounters drifting forward from the back of our minds.

And here’s where I go slightly off at a tangent, but it’ll all make sense, trust me. And I begin with a confession — I don’t pitch for work.

Octane doesn’t do the pitch thing!

The problem with pitching for work is that you’re sort of relying on one thing while skipping several others. In the first instance, you’re assuming the brief you’ve been giving is worth the pixels or paper it’s written on. And then latterly, you’re skipping the all-important initial meeting where you initiate a Q&A, to disentangle need from want.

So when that brief arrives, I’m usually to be found shaking my head, wondering just what the hell I’m supposed to make of the whole thing. Worst thing is, the emphasis is nearly always on cost, in that they equate cheap to be synonymous with being good. Well, we all know where that road leads to.

I’m guessing that, by now, you see where I’m going with this, right? Ask the right questions, and keep asking the right questions. If required, and as I’ve said before, don’t be afraid to ask the obvious questions.

What I’m really getting at is, I either do things right and in their correct order, or I just don’t want to do them at all. And since I’m eleven years into the big game, I have the option of indulging in that particular luxury of choice.

Project priorities

Certainly from my point of view, the various requests and briefs I receive are either a cursory examination of needs, or technically incomplete, which is to be expected as their authors are unlikely to as technically competent and literate as I am. Either way, none of this is a problem for me. But, it’s at this stage that the problems can surface.

Curb your enthusiasm

“Yeah, I can do that.” being the reaction of many, upon reading through a brief. “This is easy.” they add, enthusiastically, quickly diving into a lengthy and detailed document of how they’re going to transform the humble and basic needs of the prospective client into some all-singing, all-dancing cavalcade of features and bells and whistles.

Overload. That is the word most appropriate and often to be found on the lips and in the minds of the recipients this tome of a document sent back in reply to the author of the brief. Overwhelming. That’s another word, very similar to the first.

Needed now, Next time, Nice to have

Being objective is something that cannot be emphasized enough. What the prospective client may think is vitally important may well be of secondary or tertiary importance. So prioritizing those requirements is essential a function as just about anything else. In fact, getting things in the wrong order could be a project-ending event.

What I do is take those needs, break them down into what I see as their right order and then sort them again, this time by, well time. You see, any good project has a deadline. And since time is the final arbiter of all things, good or bad, by shuffling those needs around, based on which are Needed now, we can then sort the rest into those that are required Next time around, with the remainder being the ones that would be Nice to have at some later date.

Once you start thinking and then acting this way, everything then sort of looks better. Modular. Now there’s a good word, and appropriate, too.

Cooking up a feast of features

You’ve taken the needs of the prospective client and chopped, hacked, sliced and diced them into bite-sized chunks that are much more digestible by all, delivered to them in an appetizing assortment of textual delights!

OK, enough with the food theme, you get the idea. The point is, you’ve given dates their requirements by which you’ll deliver demonstrable evidence of your good work, packaging your ideas with their own, adding a quality of depth to a project, that allows them to structure their time and budgets accordingly. Keep in mind, the author of the brief might not be decision maker, so your reply may well be a sales letter to their immediate superior.

Packaging your project estimates

We’ve covered a lot of ground, here. So I think this calls for a break-down.

1. Think strategically, and long term.
2. Keep the technical talk to a minimum, or at least keep it simple.
3. Since this is a lead, you’re still very much selling your self and your services, so write accordingly.
4. Break everything down by their respective priorities, and sort those requirements into Needed now, Next time, Nice to have.
5. And finally, since there’s no small measure of consultancy being thrown into this, fold those activities into your estimates.

So there you go, a neat list of suggestions, to keep you on your toes and help warm up that lead. Of course, these things are dynamic, but I’m sure you’ll not go too far wrong if you keep these suggestions in mind or at least at hand.

I’ve seen eagerness get the better of judgement. I’ve seen people lunge straight into the work side of things and be content to worry about the details afterwards. I’m not one of those people.

The best laid plans…

A few years ago, I took a former client to County Court because they were simply unprepared to let me plan a project they way I’d recommended from the very beginning. And then when things went wrong, the client simply would not accept responsibility for their own failure and refused to pay.

Now, taking my own advice, I chose to invoice the client in stages, mitigating the losses I suffered. However, because of their incessant adding of new bells and whistles, the latter stage of this failed project ballooned and the whole thing simple couldn’t be maintained.

Building the right foundations

So what’s the solution? As usual, the solution is best served when we first describe the problem in simple terms. During the County Court proceedings, I needed to make the case against the client as simple, clear and unambiguous as possible. And I did that by way of an extremely simple analogy.

Imagine you’ve been contracted to build a house; a small abode, not too dissimilar to a bungalow. You dutifully ask the client all the right questions, to which you receive clear answers and the work commences with you laying the foundations for the house.

But then the client realizes the true value of the land and changes their mind — now they want a twelve story apartment block. But they also want all of this work doing for much the same price you originally agreed to for the bungalow. And worse still, on the same plot of land on top of the same foundations.

That was my predicament described in painful detail. Sat across from me in the County Court room, the now former client squirmed with growing discomfort while his colleague looked away impassively and shame faced.

Yes, I won the case, but I’d rather not have been there in the first place. As clearly as I’d explained to the client these issues from the very outset, they were unprepared to heed my articulate protestations concerning the perils we were destined to endure, as we would eventually face each other down across a very solid wooden table in some anonymous County Court room somewhere in Yorkshire.

So again, what’s the solution? There’s no way of over stating how important trust is in all of this. And trust is a two-way street. Also, trust your instincts. I didn’t. Why? Because while I was prepared to plan ahead, I was the eager fool. So matters weren’t helped by the fact that I was being lied to by the client, which my instincts had informed me of, but I continued working with the client regardless.

Trust isn’t absolutely essential, so long as both parties adhere to what’s been agreed. Yes, that’s some kind of trust, but not the right kind. As we all know, trust is a hard-earned quality of any relationship, and for some, it’s simply not a given they can be trusted.

Laying the foundations of a successful project

Sadly, there’s no magic trick to managing client expectations. But there are a number of things you can do help insulate yourself from the death of a project, or to work towards keeping a project alive when circumstances are at odds with you and your carefully laid plans:

1. Once the client is happy with using your services, reply to them either by post or email with a confirmation of the brief (or at least what you both agreed on), with a copy of your terms & conditions, and ask them to reply to this correspondence, which will be your proof of receipt and a tacit acceptance of your terms & conditions. And in a court of law, this acknowledgement is as good as a binding agreement between yourself and the client.
2. In addition to agreeing on what your activities will be, the client has commitments, too — enshrine their commitments in the brief, also.
3. Once they have agreed on their commitments, don’t be afraid to chase the client down when they’re being tardy. Yes, this can be an annoyance for them, but it’s preferable to seeing the project languish, stall or possibly even fail.
4. Be thorough, objective and assume nothing — don’t be afraid to ask the obvious, as you’d be surprised just how many times the stark staring obvious gets over-looked!
5. On the subject of being thorough, keep complete and precise notes of everything, and I mean everything — every form of correspondence, every conversation and every decision or moment of indecision. What you know is vital, and can serve as an audit trail, should things go wrong. Also, in keeping such detailed records, you increase your value to the client, as they may then rely on your for such things.
6. Know who all of the stakeholders are in a project, and know what their roles are. As much as you can, limit the number of stakeholders who are charged with defining your work schedule. You do not want to commit to work that you may not be paid for.
7. More importantly, don’t be afraid to say “no”. Seriously, Saying “yes” is often synonymous with “I don’t know, but I’ll try”, and that’s as good as a lie.
8. Break the project into deliverable and demonstrable stages, invoicing at each stage.
9. If you foresee problems, explain them to the client as clearly and as early as possible.
10. Don’t allow yourself to be railroaded into doing something you know is either illegal or not in the best interests of the project.
11. If the client begins to make additions and / or amendments to the project, assess their potential for disruption and be prepared to move them to the end of whatever stage you’re working on, or even the end of the project. While the client may have you believe those additions and / or amendments are vital, be thorough, objective and assume nothing — and stick to the plan.

Sometimes, the needs of the project are far greater than the wants of the client. Articulating that to a client takes a deft touch that not all can summon up the words for. So clearly, perils remain.

That aside, armed as you now are with various ways of staving off project failure, the only thing you may lack is the guile, the gumption and the sheer guts to ask those obvious questions and to say “no” where and when appropriate.

Beyond that, you should now have the right idea about how to manage a project and all of its attendant delicacies and details. So good luck!

Do you have your own project tips, tricks and things to avoid? If so, why not share them in a comment.

Image credited to Flickr and Christopher Cotrell.

Personally, I don’t think it’s as simple as “or” but actually “versus”, because for the most part, they conflict with and exclude each other.

It’s a contentious subject, and it’s a subject I’ve been aware of more subconsciously than anything else. And thanks to an article on the Marketing Donut asking where the priority lies in customer acquisition or customer retention, I had a mind to comment:

“If you’re a small business just starting out, many will have no clients, or perhaps only a small selection, so their efforts absolutely must fall into the pursuit of new customers.

For the established businesses like Octane, new clients can be a diversion from the main focus, which is that of servicing the loyal band of clients I’ve had, in some cases, for over ten years.

For the very large businesses — and here I’m thinking of telecommunications and utilities giants — customer loyalty is almost an anathema; they simply cannot afford to dedicate time and resources to consumers or small businesses.

I never set out with the intention of being a big business, or of being a business that deals with big companies, because I know first hand where that can lead. And in the end, you’re not living a lifestyle, but chasing money, and that’s not for me.”

Just to clarify that last paragraph, while I don’t exclude large businesses as clients, I have to be wary of engaging with them, given my size relative to theirs. Also, when you deal with large businesses, you’re often not dealing with the decision makers, and that for me is almost a total waste of my time.

Why? Because for the most part, I need a very direct dialogue with the people I’m dealing with, something that not all appreciate or welcome. And then there are the questions I ask which are either outside the remit of or not immediately answerable by the people I may be dealing with.

Right now, entering into 2011, my priorities are firmly with three clients, all of which have invested heavily with Octane in so far as the projects I’m working on at the moment.

So when new work comes along, the conversion I have will be an honest one — I’ve prioritised my loyalty to those clients who’ve been loyal to me.

Image credited to Flickr and Christian V.

DirectGov is a portal-cum-directory for a whole slew of government services, initiatives and resources. What I see is a start, but there’s much, much more that can be done. Fortunately for us, Miss Fox appears to agree.

Hmm, still wondering what I’m talking about, I see. Before reading any further, you might want to have a squint at my primer on web applications, whereupon all will become clear!

By way of an abridged background, British-born Fox, founder of Last Minute, the leisure travel website, managed to retain her government advisory role, surviving the General Election defeat of the Labour Party who brought her to table in the first place. Contrast that with the departure of business “Tsar” Lord Sugar. But that’s politics, and Sugar is a Labour man, which probably explains everything.

Championing the web application, sort of

Anyway, Fox has reviewed the DirectGov collection of web-enabled services, offering several recommendations. That aside, what’s most interesting about this whole review, for me, isn’t the review itself, or even DirectGov for that matter. And the less said about the politics the better. No, what’s really interesting is that the whole idea of web-enabled services — henceforth referred to as web applications — have been pushed into the unblinking gaze of the public eye, and that of many a politician, too, I no wonder.

For a company like Octane, this is crucial, because this room to breath helps legitimize what I do for a living; which is designing and developing web applications.

At some point, the hope is that the conversation won’t start with the question: “So what is a web application anyway?” but with: “So I have all this data, fifteen members of staff divided across three different locations and I need them all to be able to manage that data. Can you do that?” Well of course I can! But right now, that conversation is some way off, and I have to scramble through that explanatory briar patch before I get to the aforementioned money question.

How does this raised awareness help you?

Good question. Firstly, at the governmental level at least, over the next few years, more and more of your transactions will be on-line. Everything from accounts being filed with Companies House, to VAT returns to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. I’m already doing this kind of thing, but there are many of you who aren’t. More crucially, your accountants probably aren’t, either.

Anyway, as time passes by, you now get the whole web thing. In time, you’ll understand the difference between a website and a web application. You’ll begin to realize there’s money to either be saved or made, and that has very direct impact on your business.

So the conversation then changes. More resources become available, more businesses like me enter the fray, and services emerge, allowing you to do things over the web that were unthinkable just three years ago, all without costing you too much money.

Your expectations are now higher because you appreciate what can be achieved, and what your business can achieve, via the web. You reap the rewards of your curiosity, just like Premier UK Venues did all those years ago when I built To Book for them.

How does a web application help save money?

Miss Fox recommended the Conservative-Democrat coalition party move a third of services onto the web:

“Shifting 30 per cent of government service delivery contacts to digital channels would deliver gross annual savings of more than £1.3bn, rising to £2.2bn if 50 per cent of contacts shifted to digital.”

So how does that work? Well, in different ways. Especially if you compare print to a web page:

“She contrasts the process of applying for a student loan, which ends with the printing out and signing of a 30-page document, with the simplicity of booking a flight.”

The fact is, print costs a lot of money. The cost is divided several ways. Firstly, there’s the initial production, which is unavoidable, irrespective of the media, then there’s the design phase, actual print and then finally delivery. Then there’s the re-prints, which becomes a constant cycle. Clearly there’s a huge argument for going paperless, which I’ve discussed previously, and is doable for some.

Work smart, go web-based, save money

Are there any other ways in which a web application help save money? To answer that, I must quote myself:

• Automating business processes saves you time
• Increased work capacity
• Reduced data errors, loss and duplication
• Work more efficiency
• More accurate data entry
• Save money over time (greater ROI)

In conclusion

Getting a big-up from a big industry name like Martha Lane Fox won’t happen often, so it’s up to people like me to make the most of these moments, when awareness is raised and people are just that more curious, or educated.

But these are curious times in which we live in, and right now, in spite of the hardships many are likely to endure, Octane is getting along nicely. All of which is rather prophetic really, given my earlier thoughts on how a web app’ can save a business money during a recession.

Aside from me whoring what I do to pay the bills, the core aspect of what I’m driving is that you can adopt the same perspective as myself — by striving for the precision of thought and vision to take a good long look at what you do and remove waste and refine what remains, wherever possible.

Don’t ever become complacent and believe that what you’re doing is the best you can do, there’s always room for improvement. Just ask Martha Lane Fox.

What inspired me to start a business?

The question posed by StartUp Donut prompted a reply from me, but I soon started to wander off-topic, meandering into the minutia of the why and the when. So I reigned in my thoughts and decided to put them all here, on Octane.

To answer the question, I just wanted to be the master of my own destiny. The thought of working for someone else simply wasn’t (and still isn’t) in the least appealing to me.

In the beginning…

Originally, the intention was to start up Octane with a couple of guys from college, but things just didn’t work out that way. I was, in many ways, forced into the decision by circumstances largely outside of my control.

At the time, I was working in Leeds, as a new media designer, which entailed designing and building interactive CDs, web design and elements of video and 3D production. The first 3 years were excellent, but then the last 6 months became utterly intolerable. I still don’t know what happened, but something had clearly changed in the guy I was working for. In the end, I had to go.

In hindsight (which is always 20-20 vision), I should have looked for employment elsewhere and built up my network. But I didn’t. I should have waited until I had someone who could partner with me to handle the sales and marketing. But I didn’t.

At the time, web design was very, very new. So I was striding straight into a completely new market, with all the perils and potential you’d expect. And even today, what I do is still widely unknown and new to many.

I also saw a lot of confusion on the part of businesses, business owners and marketing managers, who weren’t quite sure what the whole “web thing” meant. And inside that moment of perfect confusion, a circling swarm of web design agencies were visibly preying on the the confused and the bemused.

From the very beginning, I was determined to, firstly, do things my way, and secondly, to do things right by everyone I did business with, and to be as honest as necessity would allow, without harming my self in the process. That mentality and philosophy stood me in good stead, and I began to win the respect of not just clients, but of those other agencies who, over the coming years, would see me as a constant in an ever-changing industry.

So from 1999 to about 2004, I was more a fireman and a trauma councillor than a web designer — intervening in emergencies and then tending to the people burnt by one disaster or another. While that earned me a solid reputation and won me a substantial amount of referral work, selling directly was extremely difficult because I was guilty by association and constantly walking through dirty water.

The first 10 years really didn’t hit home until after the event, sometime in late June of 2009. Again, in hindsight, I ought to have done more to celebrate the occasion, but things were hard for everyone I knew and the moment just slipped by. But I did manage to scribble together a few thoughts on my time running Octane from 1999-2009:

“There have been trials. There have been tribulations. I’ve survived everything from the bursting of the Dot Com bubble to the current global economic downturn.

For any business to last ten years is a major milestone. But for a web design agency, I breath very rarefied air, shared by few others.”

A special kind of hell.

Running your own business is a trade-off between control and stability, and it’s a trade-off I’ve been a willing participant of since 1999.

I see so many businesses and business people fail for so many totally avoidable reasons, many of which are as a result of poor decision making, over-reaching self interest, an inability to say “no”, and a lack of vision and objectivity.

Conversely, a lack of success is not always the presence of those things, but an absence of good fortune and an array of friends and colleagues to assist wherever they feel able to. Those early decisions to go alone have proved to be instrumental in my relative confinement as an individual and not a team.

But the thought of giving in and working for someone else, to be beholden to their politics, and having to be a witness to all of those bad things is to me some kind of purgatory. I simply could not stand being a party to and being expected to be a participant in a failure of thought and deed, when I know for sure there are better and more viable ways.

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven” — Paradise Lost, John Milton

The future of Octane?

Right now, the future of Octane looks very bright! I’m presently working on a number of large projects, which I fully intend writing about in due course. Rather than tease, I can tell you about two in particular.

Qwiktax started out as a relatively modest bookkeeping web application, but has since grown into a more mature, feature-complete accounting package, designed to allow small businesses to manage not just their bookkeeping, but employee payroll, fixed assets and VAT, as well as view on-going trading results, loans and profit & loss accounts. So far, we’re making good progress, but there’s still much to do before it’s complete and ready for general release.

To Book is an existing web application that is to be re-designed and re-developed, taking it to version three. In simple terms, To Book is an accommodation management tool specific to the needs of one particular business. To Book 3 will be a generic system, which we can sell to just about anyone who wants to take control of their event management needs. To Book 3 will be, by far, the most ambitious project I’ll have undertaken so far, and I just can’t wait to get going. Right now, we’re moving through the various agreed stages of the project plan, having signed off the initial wireframe designs and flow diagrams, I’m now moving onto the actual design stage proper.

Here and now…

So, all in all, there’s much for me to look forward to and exciting times ahead. With winter just around the corner, and all of the attendant festivities in tow, there’ll be no let up for me, but that’s business!

Image credited to Flickr and Amythyst Lake.

StartUp Donut — What inspired you to start a business?

OK, first of all, sorry about the long absence; I’ve been very, very busy over the last several months. Right now, I’m working on several large projects (more about those some other time, perhaps) that are soaking up a good measure of my time. However, I was aware of the time between now and the last article, so here I am, with some thoughts of mine from the front line.

A question of taking the lead

Over the last week or so, I’ve been working on a lead that came through the Octane website from a freight company in London. They want a system to manage consignments and customer payments that their staff can use both here and abroad, where their customers’ consignments are being shipped to. After having sent something like 25 emails to them, we were finally edging closer to something resembling what they wanted, as a brief, and here’s what they had to say:

“Thanks for your input. Really appreciated. I must say you are the second person that we would consider if we do go ahead with the system development. I really like the way you broken down things and you are also detailed and have so many question which I think is the only way to understand what we really want. Others have come up with estimates without asking a fraction of the questions which you have asked.”

You see, I can’t do my job properly (or perhaps at all) if I don’t know enough about the things I’m working on. Also, there are times when what the client thinks they want isn’t really what they need, or more importantly, what their customers need. And then there’s the unintentional omissions, the lack of technical clout on their part, the legal implications, and finally, the gotchas.

Being like Colombo

Not everyone appreciates the endless barrage of questions. I suppose some people find being asked questions like some kind of pestering, or that you’re questioning their abilities in some way, as if they haven’t or can’t articulate their needs properly.

Let’s face it, who doesn’t think Lieutenant Colombo a laughable irritation with his trademark “Err, excuse me, sir. Just one last question…” he asks, head bowed, with an upturned hand to his head, waving his cigar aloft as he scratches a furrow in his brow with a stubby thumb. But you know what? Colombo always figured things out in the end.

He would often ask obvious questions. Now, they are the most irritating questions, but sometimes, you need to make absolutely sure you understand things, or woe betide the fool who goes to work on X when the project required Y.

One lead in particular kept insisting that what she wanted was simple because she’d seen a friend doing the same thing, whatever that meant. Once I’d managed to disentangle what she needed from what she thought she wanted, the whole complexion of the project changed dramatically. Rather than something simple, what was asking for would have been a £3,000-5,000 project, while not earth shattering, is still much more than she’d anticipated. I replied with an email containing a huge list of questions I’d managed to lift from difference sources, to save time, and I never heard from her again!

Fire away!

I freely admit that I’m not the diplomat I imagine myself to be, and so a machine gun style assault of questions might not have been the best tactic, in that one instance.

The problem for yourself is knowing how far to go, and how much effort to pour into that earliest of phases, when they could just take your questions, your initial thoughts and vanish into the night. I’m in a similar position, whereby the aforementioned lead could easily take the draft brief and schedule for the web application project I’ve supplied them with a move onto someone else.

I’m able to mitigate against some of these problems by giving them only the most superficial explanation of what I have in, leaving out key details which would allow them to take my ideas make them happen. So for them to get at my ideas, they need me to follow them through. However, if you’re just selling red, green and blue widgets, you have to find other ways of keeping that lead warm.

So, what am I asking you to do? Why ask questions, of course! Honestly, don’t be afraid to look silly asking those obvious questions, because that one moment of silliness might look like a good deal more appealing than seeing a project stall or even fail, all for the want of being obvious.

Image credited to Flickr and Eleaf.

The rules that apply to the Ford’s and Apple’s of this world also apply to your local plumber, joiner and electrician. Recently, I wrote about the 10 personal branding habits of the professionals, which has been a very successful article, one that clearly resonates with a lot of businesses around the world. However, it’s not the rules that separate the large businesses from the smaller ones, but the words, phrases and terminology; big businesses are much more likely to have university educated marketeers who’re up on all the current business parlance. As for the small business? It’s all buzz words and jargon to them.

The cult of personality marketing

Over on Marketing Donut, a growing business services and advice web magazine, a title caught my eye — “I’m a small business – why do I need a brand?” It’s a good question. It’s also a very good article, too!

For the most part, talking about brand with small businesses is just confusing and stirs up more questions than it answers. However, the advice offered here in the above article is precisely the kind I offer to my clients, which makes the whole thing much more understandable to the plumbers, joiners and electricians of this world.

Oftentimes, the client will reply by saying: “Oh, so this is like a brand name, yeah?” So I find it’s better to let them make that connection, rather than me try and place it there. At that point, brand isn’t this big thing, but something they can not only get a fix on and pursue as a function of their own marketing, succeeding by the sheer weight of their own personality.

It’s easy to think of marketing, or any kind of promotional activity, as being external to you and your business, as if there’s no physical connection between the two. But that’s what brand is essentially all about; bridging the perception of your business with the business itself. In reality, you become the very essence of your marketing.

But even this sounds contrived and lofty, when for the most part a smile, a disarming joke, a professional approach to work and a little honesty are all hallmarks of someone who’s likely to do well from word-of-mouth marketing. And at that point, their brand begins to grow and grow.

Out there, all over the country, thousands of plumbers, car mechanics, joiners, painters, decorators and electricians have thriving local trades, all of which are directly attributable to them marketing themselves through their personalities.

The brand performance curve

I’ve found is that smaller businesses often feel a greater benefit from an improved brand image than larger more established businesses, with the plumber being a good example; you really wouldn’t expect your local plumber to have professionally designed and printed business cards, would you?

So that one thing makes a statement which implies someone who is established and professional enough to put their name to their service. Immediately, the perception of that business is lifted high above their competitors. But for the larger more established businesses, the effort required for differentiation is measurably more difficult. Why? Because it is expected that larger businesses have business cards, compliment slips, headed paper and envelopes, pretty girls answering telephone calls in plush office receptions, account handlers wearing crisp suits and wide smiles —here, differentiation demands extraordinary people making extraordinary effort because these businesses have ridden their brand performance up and over the curve and are now coasting along the plateau.

Do you still care about your brand?

You should. But I wouldn’t get too hung up about it, either. Many business people recognize their deficiencies, so if you can see where you’re going wrong, you’re already on the road to a remedy. That said, knowing that little changes can lead to better things for your small business, perhaps you ought to think big!

Putting the social into social media marketing

So there I was last night, working my way through the Answers forum on LinkedIn and up came the question: How are you generating leads using social media? To which I replied:

“Essentially, it’s all about what the offer is and how it fits your target audience. So many people get sucked into the Facebook-Twitter thing, thinking they just need to get a ton of friends / followers and then post links to their stuff. Wrong.

The same rules apply to social media as in real life — you build relationships around common interests, and this takes time and a degree of sincerity.

I recently published an ebook about WordPress for businesses. That being my proposition, my network of friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter did the rest. But that would not have happened had I not assisted in helping them promote their own content.”

So the leads come as a result a number of factors:

1. the trust in you by those in your network
2. the quality of your network (those with the same approach as you)
3. the value of your offer to those in your network

And at its core, that’s life, and social media is not so special that anyone could make a case for its sudden departure from those simple rules. Yes, there’s more to this than a simple 1-2-3 guide to life, social media and everything in between, but that’s as good a place to start as any.

Twitter’s take on trust

This morning, my curated news source that is Twitter unearthed an interesting headline that caught my eye. By the looks of things, Twitter are readying new business features:

“After close to five months of beta testing, Twitter is preparing to launch a suite of business features tied to a central Twitter Business Center.”

So, it looks like Twitter are finally getting their act together and offering some of the features we’ve grown accustom to with CoTweet and HootSuite. But in amongst the brief overview of this proposed new direction by Twitter was mention of something that’s almost throw-away, but could have far reaching and profound consequences for businesses on Twitter:

“Other new capabilities include customization of business profile pages, verified account badges for corporations and organizations (not just people)…”

A verified account on Twitter is a much sought after prize. Why? Because it’s an indicator of trust in you as an individual and a brand by Twitter. That might not be the reason for a verified account (it’s typically used by famous people to show it’s them and not someone masquerading as them), but the value is there for all to see.

Reputation, recognition and Ra Ra skirts

For businesses, the criteria would need to be different. Yes, there’s still going to be people trying to pass themselves off as the Sony’s and the PayPal’s of this world, but for the legitimate businesses like Octane, this really is all about trust and the enormous value that brings along. However, it does all depend on what criteria they choose to use. As I pointed out in a LinkedIn Answers topic last night:

“Getting a profile verified is like knitting fog — almost impossible. Sorry, that’s not entirely correct. If you’re an almost unknown yet gorgeous US female presenter on some bizarre cable channel aimed at guys, then yes, you’re guaranteed.”

A brand new social media metric

Done right and Twitter could have a brand new metric on their hands — up there with Google’s PageRank, the much maligned but still much used Alexa rank and the very real possibility of a PeopleRank, should Facebook get their way — one used by others as an indictor of trust and to help determine the value of a business.

Recommended and related reading

• Earning trust in business
• How to use LinkedIn to promote your business
• Questionable Antics on LinkedIn’s Q&A?
• 10 personal branding habits of the professionals