Archives for category: General
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Groups of 3

August 27, 2018 //
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They say that three’s a crowd, but for me there’s something elegant, memorable and succinct about groups of 3.

I like the grouping of that particular number. We seem to be locked into the number 3 in a way that 1, 2 or a number greater than 3 can’t really get to. Maybe that’s why we feel so comfortable with TLAs, those handy ways of summarising a sometimes difficult concept in  3 easy letters. NGO, PVC, and of course TLA; each industry or milieu has a gazillion of them, serving as shorthand, occasionally inclusive but also sometimes excluding.

Business seems to be fond of the number 3 as well. Getting 3 quotes is always advisable, 3 key metrics is a good management starting point, and a good presentation slide starts with 3 bullet points. I know I’m easy with it, and many times in my writing, from this blog to reports and even books, I find myself grouping my phrases into 3’s. You can see an example in the first line of this post. Another example might be ‘let’s make sure we have a good session tomorrow, keeping it simple, focusing on the basics, and staying on track.’

So I shall continue my attachment to groups of 3. I like it, it works for me, and I think it resonates with my audience.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing

The French Man Bag

August 22, 2018 //
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I was in France on a family holiday recently and I was reminded how many men of all sizes in that great country use a man bag – really a glorified purse the size of a very thick smartphone – to keep their keys, cash, bits and bobs handy.

It reminded me of previous family holidays in France, a thousand years ago, when I was the child instead of the parent.

Back then my father – who was way ahead of his time in terms of progressiveness, equal rights and being comfortable in one’s own skin and sexuality – commented on the same thing.

I remember his words. “I’ve always thought the small handbag French men use to be an eminently sensible idea.” This was back in the macho, chauvinist 70’s when a heterosexual British male wouldn’t be seen dead carrying anything remotely resembling a purse or handbag.

I agree with him. And I think that smartphone cases that come with a couple of pockets to hold credit cards and cash are going that way too.

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Categories Customers, General

Futile Pronunciation

August 17, 2018 //
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One area that highlights the division between American English and English English, as opposed to other versions of English, is the different pronunciations and accentuations on words.

Take the words laboratory and controversy for example. Our US friends prefer to accent the first syllable and the English prefer to accent the second, and continue to do so, despite the huge influence of American English on our daily European lives.

One difference I can’t get my head around is munging the last syllable of words that end in ‘-ile’. I remember watching an eipsode of the 6 Million Dollar Man back in the mid-seventies and they talked about a dangerous ‘missle’. What the heck’s a missle? In English English we put the accent on the first syllable but still give the second syllable a bit of a dance as well.

Futile is another one. Or Fyewtle as the Americans would say. Now that’s a futile pronunciation if ever there was one.

There are plenty of laudable examples of American English changing the spelling of words for simplicity’s sake. I offer you color, realize, maneuver and celiac for that argument.

But futile, missile, versatile, agile? Why not change the spelling on those too?

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Categories Communication, General, Language

Irish Minutes

August 13, 2018 //
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Time, as I’m fond of boring you over the last nearly 5 years, is a most precious resource. Which is why we should, in my opinion, be really good at managing it. Yet we’re not, really, compared to other precious resources like money, water, temperature, sales, sales pipeline, marketing leads, fuel and so on, which we’re really good at measuring.

That’s because most have a monetary value easily attached to them. Time does as well, or should, but tends not to, unless you charge by the hour.

Some Irish folk have a fairly relaxed approach to measuring time, or at least estimating its duration. That’s why in our house we have a joke about Irish minutes and English minutes. I’m English and when I say I’ll be about 5 minutes, I’ll be about 5 minutes. When her ladyship and others say they’ll ‘just be 2 minutes’, or ‘I’ll be back in 15 minutes’, I ask if that’s Irish minutes or English minutes.

Then I know what’s going on. It’s like saying you’ll ‘just be 2 ticks‘. How you can ever be close to 2 seconds? Drives me mad.

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Categories Communication, General

Water

August 6, 2018 //
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Water is essential to life, human life anyway. We can’t live without it, much as we can’t live without oxygen. No oxygen and we’re done for in a minute or two. No water and we’ve got a few days of excruciating agony before we slip away.

We’re supposed to have at least 2 litres of the stuff per day, that’s 8 glasses. The more the better too. They say that if you’re 1% down on hydration you might be 25% down on performance.

Me, I can’t stand the stuff. It’s boring, I don’t find it particularly refreshing, unless I’ve had a salty meal or I’ve been exercising hard. I inherited this from my mother. She can’t stand water, so much so that she never bothered to learn how to swim. She’s not shy of the shower, she simply doesn’t like water.

When we were kids we didn’t have water with our meals. We drank milk. I hardly had water as a kid, and I did OK, except I’m on the short side, and I don’t think you can blame the lack of water for that.

About a decade ago, I paid for one of those full health check-ups with a private hospital. It was partly discounted by the company’s health insurance and I felt I should go in for a 50-thousand mile service. I remember scoring very well on the hearing test, nearly off the chart. The doctor said to me in the debrief that my hearing was very good. ‘Pardon?’, I said in reply. I know, I thought it was funny, a had-to-be-there moment.

The doctor didn’t laugh either, but what she did say was that I could take me 8 cups of water in any form I wanted: tea, coffee, cordial. I don’t think beer counted.

This was music to my ears, but I have since heard conflicting reports that it really should be ‘unpolluted’ water. I do track my water intake and it’s rarely 2 litres per day, and usually 50% of it is tea or coffee. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years.

On the odd day that I do make a concerted effort to up my water intake, I find that I need to use the bathroom almost every half an hour. That’s simply not practical when you’re in meetings, presentations or travelling.

 

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Categories General

Spring Cleaning

August 1, 2018 //
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When I’m cleaning the house, I’m usually tempted to do a relatively good job, but not a deep clean, a pull-out-all-the-stops clean. Enough to make it look decent for a week or so.

But then, once in a blue moon I do a proper clean, a proper wipe, a proper dust or a proper vacuum, the kind that we used to call spring cleaning when something gets its annual out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new clean.

There’s no such thing of course. Spring cleaning is something we have to do all year around, or at least once a season, or once a quarter, as we’d say in the business.

Speaking of business, it’s the same thing. We do an annual purging of the CRM system, our email inbox, or our sales pipeline. We should do it all the time, and certainly once a quarter, so it doesn’t mount up into something seemingly unsurmountable. Tidy as you go, and clean as you go too.

The trouble is, it’s a constant struggle to maintain this discipline in the face of the other business – and cleaning – mantra. Just enough is often good enough, and good enough means simply better than the alternative.

Categories General, Marketing, Sales

War on Weeds

July 30, 2018 //
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Every month or so over the summer I declare a war on weeds at the front of our house. We have what you might call a low maintenance front area, with a lot of it paved for a car and the border is a mixture of pebbles over weed-block tarpaulin and plant areas.

The thing with weeding is that it’s a bit like sales and marketing. It’s all or nothing. You either do it properly or you don’t bother. You can do a half-cocked job and they’re back 2 weeks later. I thought they were growing up through two layers of tarpaulin, but, following a root and branch – see what I did there? – analysis of the blighters they appear to be growing between the pebbles and then pushing down through the weed-block with their sturdy little roots. They’re all over the edges of the borders, or perhaps I should say the borders of the borders, sneaking in between the concrete and the weed-block edge, and helped by the zealous over-watering of the overhead balcony plants by Mrs D. Getting at the roots is tricky.

I can almost see the weeds looking up at me when I turn up with my trowel and my brown bin, and saying. “Here he is again. We’re not going to go through this charade again, are we? You realise you’re just giving us a haircut, right? Give us a couple of days and we’re going to be looking even better.”

So I’m turning up the heat on my war on weeds. No more Mr Nice Guy. No more vinegar mix and organicy stuff that cosies up to the weeds. I’ve bought the real deal, armageddon in a bottle and spray. This stuff will kill everything in its path, only stopping and evaporating at the earth’s core.

I just need to wait for a dry spell, in the west of Ireland renowned for its lakes, rivers and soft days…

 

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Categories General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

The Cost of Parking

July 16, 2018 //
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The cost of parking is fast becoming onerous. Some would say it’s already reached that stage, and has done for a whille.

The other day I flew from Ireland to the UK, for €37 all in, including priority boarding and 2 cabin bags on the way back. The cost of parking, off site, with my car occupying 10 square metres of real estate in the middle of nowhere, ie Shannon long term? €42 for 7 days, booked in advance. Something’s not right there.

Quite recently while visiting in Bristol I went to the Cabot Circus shopping complex in the heart of the city to buy a sweatshirt for my daughter that wasn’t available anywhere else in the area. I was in and out of the multi-story in less than 30 minutes. The cost of parking? €3.

Do they not want you to park in town? Do they not want you to shop in their shops? Has real estate got to the stage where they need to cover their own high costs, or are they simply charging what the market will bear?

Parking has always been ludicrous in the city centres, but now, in off-site long-term parking where they have you over a barrel, it’s rapidly moving that way too.

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Categories Customers, General

Signing Cheques

July 11, 2018 //
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A few years ago in Ireland the banks made a concerted effort to discontinue the cheque book, that tried and trusted method of paying for something. I’m sure there’s a serious cost attached to producing and sending out cheque books. And for us as cheque writers, we need to allow a certain time for the snail mail to deliver our cheque, and for the cheque to be cashed, cleared and deposited in the account of the person or business named on the cheque.

I don’t know why the move to remove cheques failed. Perhaps it was because we’re not all digital or electronic, or we prefer not to be, through distrust or tradition. It could be that the first effort to eradicate their use was a dry run to soften us up for a serious retry in a few years time.

I pay for the vast majority of my debts electronically. There is, however, a certain pleasure I get from writing and signing cheques. It’s part traditional, part physical, and part control.

Signing cheques is a link back to the way banking has been done for a long time. I write so little these days that I take a perverse pleasure in completing a cheque. I also feel in control of the process. I usually fill in the date first, then the payee, then the amount, before applying a flourish of a signature. I might also scribble a reference on the back of the cheque too.

Signing cheques is still symbolic to me, symbolising solidity, reality and authority.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General

Focus

July 9, 2018 //
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The importance of focus is hard to overestimate. As salespeople and marketers, if we don’t focus we’re not successful. Better to do fewer things well. Better to win 4 out of 7 deals than win 3 out of 10, spreading yourself too thin and chasing bad deals that you shouldn’t be chasing. Focusing specifically on something means that you are actively choosing not to focus on other things.

Focus also relates to a post I wrote relatively recently on the power of positive thinking. If you think an eventuality is going to arise, if you can almost will it to arise, then you have more chance of seeing it arise. Visualising yourself hitting the treble twenty at darts, or hitting the outside corner of the service box, or winning that piece of business…

I recently read an article on the BBC website about the ‘quiet eye‘ and how it relates to the success of athletes, especially when the stakes and the pressure are highest. It has a lot to do with focus I think, both in a general sense and in a specific situation.

This ability to focus in the heat of battle is what defines and distinguishes the best athletes, the best sales people and the best marketers.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy
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