Archives for category: Communication
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IMKO

September 9, 2016 //
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I’m all for brevity in chat conversation. It’s the one area where it’s OK to use jargon as a shortcut, and if you can abbreviate or use initials, then so much the better.

I’m all for humility too. We should all try to remain humble and avoid getting too big for our boots. Hubris and arrogance are at best an annoyance, and at worst, well, they’re pretty offensive.

When someone asks me my opinion on something, however, and it’s a subject I’ve got a lot of experience in, I’m sometimes loathe to write IMHO – in my humble opinion. I think we should be able to write IMKO – in my knowledgeable opinion.

I think you can still be knowledgeable with humility, you don’t have to lord your experience over people. After all, they’ve deferred to you for a view.

Positioning your opinion as humble, on the other hand, lessens its importance, making it feel less authoritative.

So I prefer to use IMO on its own when I’m asked my opinion on something I know something about. But I still like IMKO.

 

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Categories Communication, General

The Network Effect

September 5, 2016 //
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As a business term, the network effect is an interesting one, explaining that the more people are on a network, the more valuable the network is itself, due to strength in numbers and the critical mass to make it work.

This explains, I think, the value of webs like LinkedIn. If there were a few people in it, as opposed to a few million, it would service virtually no purpose other than that of a small, private, dwindling club..

The network effect means a slightly different thing to me. For me it symbolises the power of who you know over what you know. If you’re looking for a job, or a new contract, or a supplier of some kind, your network is your first point of call. ‘Who do you know who’s looking for or can provide ABC?’ If they can’t help you directly, they might know of someone in their network who can, or they can put out feelers into other networks, rippling out your original request in ever farther – though ever diluting – waves. Added to that, when you look for a new role or contract, knowing someone in the company, especially if they’re recommending you and they have a high perceived value in the company, gives you an almighty leg up on the competition.

It seems to me that my version of the network effect – who you know, not what you know – is still very much in effect, repetition intended. I think it hinges on comfort and trust. It takes some of the guesswork out of finding a new person, short-cuts the process and de-risks it. I guess that’s why so many companies in competitive industries, or industries where supply of quality staff is outpaced by demand, offer finders’ fees for employees who successfully refer in a new recruit.

It’s a smart policy to keep your network up to date. Your diligence will pay you back and you’ll benefit – perhaps many times over – from the network effect.

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Categories Communication, Customers

Three Years of Blogging

September 2, 2016 //
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Hello. Today marks three years of blogging at pauldilger.com. Exactly three years. To the day.

From humble beginnings on the second day of September 2013, to today’s humble ongoing efforts, I’ve been sharing my ‘musings on stuff I come into contact with’, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, come rain or shine, work day or holiday.

This is post number 471, after 157 weeks of 3 posts a week. 471 posts is a very large book. Can I say that I’ve written my first book? I don’t think so. It’s more a collection of thoughts, rather than something that is stitched together conceptually by a broad idea and physically by a spine and covers.

I started the blogging because I enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts, and also because I thought the discipline of having to post 3 times a week would be a good habit to acquire and would keep the creative juices flowing. I wasn’t sure how long I would last. After all, anyone can start something, but it takes a certain resolve to keep it going and see it through.

Through ’til when though? When do you finish something like this? Is there a natural end? Perhaps it’s when you’ve nothing more to say. But since my guiding strapline is musings on stuff I come into contact with, every passing day brings new insights and learnings that I think are worth sharing.

I will finish blogging at some point, I have to, although I’m not sure when and have no plans to finish soon. And, when I do, the end will most likely go largely unnoticed by the world, just as the start did when I published the first post and just as the middle does, from the stats I see on my posts.

That’s hardly the point though, is it?

Here’s to the next three years of blogging. Thanks for reading :-).

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Categories Communication, General

B2B Marketing Banana Skin No 4

August 15, 2016 //
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Having made my share of B2B marketing mistakes, I’m exploring some of the banana skins you should avoid in your own B2B marketing role.

B2B marketing banana skin no 4 to avoid is this: don’t get too bound up strategising when you also need to be executing.

It’s only natural that if you’re new to a role you want to take a step back, take stock and figure out where to go from here. This is a sensible approach, but it must be done in tandem with the ongoing running of your business.

In one of my first management roles I was hired to effect a change in strategy. I introduced a strategic review of the business, sucking in the sales force as well as the marketing team, to make sure we had done our homework, were properly aligned and were putting down the right roots to grow our new strategy.

A month later, what did we have to show for our efforts? Well, a month of no sales because the business has turned in on itself and was not actively marketing and selling. We had become preoccupied on strategy and had forgotten to keep executing.

If you don’t keep the ‘old’ stuff going at the same time as you figure out the new stuff, you won’t be able to effect the right transition. Today’s sales provide the ammunition with which to change your approach and execute tomorrow’s plan. If you delay too long, you might not have a business left when you look up from behind the parapet.

Nothing happens if someone doesn’t sell something, so keep selling even while you change direction.

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Categories Communication, Customers

Clear Language

July 29, 2016 //
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Clear language is so, so important, both in the written and spoken word. We have to make ourselves understood of course, so the easier we make it for our audience, the better it is for both parties.

I travel quite a bit on trains in the south of England. The train companies announce the service, the places where it calls, and for the busy commuters how many carriages there are. More carriages, more comfortable travel, at least in theory.

‘This train is formed of 8 carriages.’ Why oh why do they phrase it that way? They’re using the spoken word. When have you ever uttered ‘something is formed of 8 somethings’ in conversation? You would never say that. You would say ‘this train’s got 8 carriages.’

I’ve gone on about the unnecessary use of the passive voice before.  What’s wrong with saying ‘This train has 8 carriages?’

Clear language shouldn’t be difficult. It should be easy. We make it difficult, and in so doing make it difficult for everyone.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Language

Off Your Desk

July 25, 2016 //
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There’s something rewarding about getting something off your desk, and onto someone else’s. There’s a palpable sense of completion, even if it’s a first draft or a small milestone in a large project. It’s an even better feeling if it’s the end of a project. You got it done!

These days, it’s not that it’s off your desk or in your out-tray. It’s usually in your sent items, not weighing down your inbox or your task list. For now it’s someone’s else’s problem. Someone else has to complete the next stage in the process.

And feeling that sense of completion is OK too. It’s often your internal customer or boss who’s requested something from you, and here you are, delivering it to them, for them to review and kick it back to you for the next stage.

After I’ve prioritised my work for the week and for each day, I allocate a certain number of hours or part-days to each job, depending on how involved it is. This allows me to hit my own deadlines and keep to realistic targets. This also means that if I’m on time with a job I can get it off my desk at the end of a morning, the end of a day, or before a break and the start of the next job.

When it’s off your desk, it’s a demarcation point, a chance to take a breather and re-set for the next piece of work. And when it’s off your desk, it’s on someone else’s :-). Speaking of which, I must click Schedule and get this post off my desk…

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Categories Communication, General, Marketing

All Good Things

July 20, 2016 //
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All good things must come to an end, or so the saying goes. The implication being that they wouldn’t be good things otherwise.

This is usually my standard retort when my daughter is complaining about the limits on her screen time, the last day of a holiday, or the time she has to come back from a friend’s house.

Sometimes this is a hard argument for me to make, as it would take a long time for an extended holiday to become boring and not like a holiday, I think. To a child, the idea that all good things need to have an end-point is a hard one to grasp.

When this conversation was last revisited in our house, I offered my standard objection-handling response, to which my daughter replied, ‘Yeah, if they didn’t come to an end, they’d be great things.’

Which got me thinking: why should all good things have to come to an end? Furthermore, why do we even have that mindset, namely that if one thing is good then another thing we don’t enjoy as much can’t be good as well?

Shouldn’t we strive to make good things everlasting, for our customers, friends, family, so that they might at least last longer? Shouldn’t we strive to make the less good things good as well, by working harder to make them enjoyable and goal-oriented?

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Categories Communication, General

Moving People

July 18, 2016 //
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I was at a music concert the other day. Popular music. It was the main act of the gig and featured a band who were not stellar or globally known but have a few hits under the belt that you would recognise.

I couldn’t name any of their songs while we were driving to the gig, but when they came on you knew them, and could sing along. There were 2 or 3 thousand at the gig, most of whom, I would guess, were fans.

Like a lot of bands, they had a new album coming out and so played a lot of new stuff. Whenever they played one of their big songs, however, the reaction of the audience was immediate and immense, visceral really.

It got me thinking, saddo that I am, about B2B marketing. This connection, this way of moving people, this level of engagement in a band/brand is something that B2B marketers can only dream about. After all, when you hear your favourite song come on, from your favourite band, the song that evokes a great holiday or time in your life, a song that you named your first child after, it inspires a feeling that you’re unlikely to see replicated when you come into work on the Monday and fire up the software that you couldn’t do your job without.

Both things, work and play, are interactions on a 1:1 basis, and even though B2B is selling to a business not a consumer, you’re still selling to an individual, or more likely a collection of individuals, each with a degree of influence and power, but individuals nonetheless, with their own set of likes, dislikes, preferences, reasons for deciding one way or the other.

Perhaps it’s wrong of us as B2B marketers to even think about trying to emulate the kind of engagement that brands strive for with people when they’re out of business, away from work.

Then again, perhaps moving people as consumers and moving people in work is not so different after all.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Strategy

Missed Opportunities

July 11, 2016 //
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Nothing rankles more and is harder to dismiss than a missed opportunity, I find. More than that, to have had the chance to do something, and to have passed it up, is hard to take.

Years and years ago, I was attending the British Open golf event (is there any better value sporting event than the first 2 days of the Open, over 12 hours of sport where you can get out for a walk, see some amazing shots, savour the atmosphere and get close enough to see what the guys are thinking and feeling?) as a spectator and wandering amongst the masses when my mate pointed out someone famous to me that has just walked past us. ‘Look’, he said, ‘there’s Ian Baker-Finch.’ I turned round to look behind me, as I walked, at this legend who had won the event a few years before, and bumped into a bloke who was much larger than me, but who, for some reason, came off from the contretemps in a worse state, one of those kind of knee-to-knee bump situations where one person can be unscathed and another in a bit of pain.

As it turned out, the chap I had bumped into was none other than fellow fan Ieuan Evans, who was a British Lion at the time and arguably much more famous than Mr Baker-Finch. I apologised and that was that.

Years later, I was invited to a corporate hospitality event by a mate of mine who was himself a guest of a logistics company. The event was the Ireland-Wales 6 Nations rugby clash in Dublin. One of the pundits who was booked to provide pre-show analysis and mingle among the guests was Mr Evans. I met him briefly, and was working up to telling him my golfing anecdote when our little enclave was joined by the event host, Keith Wood, himself no slouch on the rugger field. Mr Wood is a very charismatic individual, pronounced the group he had joined a follically challenged one – which was true, me and Mr Evans included, and proceeded to lead the conversation. During this, Ieuan left our group and went to mingle elsewhere. I didn’t get another chance to catch up with him.

Missed opportunities. To have failed to take the chance is far worse than to have taken it and failed.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Stansted-Standsted

July 8, 2016 //
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I had the misfortune of flying to London Stansted a while ago. It’s not my normal choice of airport; in fact, I hadn’t flown to it in a long time.

It looks a little bit tired. I flew in on a spectacularly normal Saturday, and landed on time, in fact a little early. For some reason we landed about a county away from the terminal, so we got a bus into the complex, passed through non-existent passport control and into the baggage area.

Where we waited, along with hundreds of other passengers, for our flight to be shown. The baggage area is organised in a way that from some positions you can only see a small fraction of all the baggage belts. The signs for each belt are too small, and the belts themselves are configured in a way that makes it hard to find your belt. I know, 1 should be next to 2, and so on, but not here, at last as far as I could see.

There wasn’t a member of staff anywhere to be seen on the concourse, who we could ask to chase our bags. I went to the Ryanair service desk after 25 minutes, who peddled the line that they’d only just been told of the problem. Really? Do I look like I came in on the last flight?

All you could do was stand around, so stand we did. We finally got our bags after a 45 minute wait. Unacceptable.

Come on Ryanair, you can do better, you practically own Stansted.  It’s all very well claiming the most punctual, on-time service and ringing your precious trumpet when we land on time or early, but if your punters have to wait an hour landing to get their bags and exit the building, it’s not really on time, now is it?

I suppose I shouldn’t have decided to bring enough stuff for a checked-in bag…

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Categories Communication, Customers, General
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