Isocube Blog

I have to confess it was almost funny, watching a dispute between two organisations recently.  I suppose you can only see the funny side if you are not actually involved. I have  removed names to protect the guilty. 

Company A wanted Company B to compensate them for a loss.  Company A had no legal basis for a claim but asked anyway; and Company B thought it an entirely reasonable request, from a moral standpoint.  And so the negotiation starts.  Company A went in with some hard negotiation using some poor justification, probably because there wasn’t any real legal case.  Company B objected to the poor justification, but, not the request for compensation.  Company A was so focused on the hard bargaining that they didn’t really look at the response from Company B and just kept on negotiating hard, so much so that they didn’t even notice that there was no objection from Company B.  They were bargaining on the expectation of an objection, not a real objection.

Eventually, mistaking Company B’s objection regarding the justification for an objection to the amount, and in their aggressive approach to the issue, they lowered the amount.  Company B had already written the cheque for the first amount requested; so they tore it up and gave Company A the lesser requested amount now requested.

Without even stopping to think, Company A themselves drove down the amount. 

I guess this lesson is one we can learn from, whenever we’re dealing in business.  A common negotiating situation is during a sale. In short, listen to and undertsand to the customers objections, and don’t automatically think that you’ll overcome these by slashing you price.  

If you don’t make mistakes, you wont pay for them!

During a weekend away recently, I was taking to an old mate of mine about life, business, and all that.  Now Nick is big in banking, and often runs internal courses and seminars. Being somewhat of an old hand at having to keep groups of people interested in a in a subject over the space of several hours, we got talking about Ice Breakers, and mid session wake-up activities.  Whilst exchanging funny stories, and experiences, he came up with something he had used as an audience warm-up, well it got me stumped for a while.  Goes like this.

Draw a circle on plain sheet of paper.  OK

Now number round the outside to form the face of a clock. 

OK, this was my drawing:

Now, we’ve all seen the watch and clock faces with roman numerals.  YES

On the inside of the circle, reproduce the numbers using roman numerals, so it looks like an old fashion clock face.  OK, and this was my finished drawing.

Can you see the mistake? 

It took me a good half an hour to work it out.  Something to do with Louis XIV, or Jupiter, apparently!  

Recently I compiled a list essential sales & marketing tips to help businesses survive a downturn in the economy.

The eleventh tip goes like this:

Double check your brochures, website content, and datasheets.  You know, the things you haven’t looked at for 10 months. Check your marketing messages are up-to-date.

Well, I should have read my own advice. A few weeks ago I was invited to talk with a prospect on how we could redesign and rebuild their website, add an online catalogue, and help promote it using the latest SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques. 

A piece of cake! We’ve got 5 similar projects currently going live.  I was able to show them examples of other sites we had previously developed, talked to them about how they could use Web 2.0, how they could get the best results in search engines, about usability guidelines, how they could use other techniques to drive traffic to there site, and most importantly how they could convert visitors in to valuable sales leads. 

We even, as we usually do, produced some mock ups and examples of how their site could look. I thought I had left nothing to chance, no stone unturned. 

I’ve just found out, we didn’t get the business! Why? Because some pages of information on our own website didn’t correspond to the messages and advice I was giving them.

Now I could be forgiven. Techniques, standards and trends change so quickly.  We have to be up-to-date with the very latest, which of course we are.  However, rather like the master builder whose own house is in need of repair, I had not kept an eye on the pages of our Isocube website to make sure they were current (having preached to the prospect the perils of do just this).

So, a slapped wrist for me, and a big thank you to Joanna, who didn’t use our services, but was very honest about why, and in doing so reminded me that ignoring tip number eleven can seriously loose you business.  I am of course back to doing what every company who wants a successful web presence should do – Keeping content Fresh, Up-to-date and Relevant.

Our 12 Sales and Marketing Tips to help your business survive a downturn in the economy are available for download here.

A Quick Joke

At the end of a long week two salesmen go to a bar for a drink.

The first salesman asks “How’s your week been?”

“Fantastic, I’ve had some really good appointments” says the second salesman.

The first salesmen replies “No I haven’t sold anything either.”

Delegation is essential for success in business

Why? The most common reason for wanting to master the art of delegation is to free up more of your own time to do more work. You know that it has become critical when you find yourself trying to get to your desk without anyone seeing you, because if anyone sees you, everyone will have a question or want a decision. Eventually, you can no longer answer the questions or make the decisions; it’s just too much; and you get to do your work when everyone has gone home and you are just too tired to be good at what you do.

So that’s a good reason? Yes, a very good reason. Do you do it? No, of course not. After all, it’s up to you if you want to suffer, it doesn’t hurt anyone else??? Or does it?

Frankly, yes it does, it hurts your staff and your customers!!!!

I friend of mine was at the bottom of the downward spiral. Total inability to delegate. One day, she woke up and realized that she wasn’t doing any of the proactive part of her job, because all time was consumed with the reactive and supportive part of the role. What a terrible thing to realize “I’m not doing a very good job”.

So, she called her Team together and did a deal. The deal was that she would not answer and question or give any decision to anyone unless they accompanied the question with a suggested answer. Her part of the deal was that she would then spend as much time as required talking about why she thought the suggested answer was good; or why it was not so good, and she would give those thoughts in every possible details and to every member of the Team so that when they faced the same or similar situation, they would have a good idea of a possible solution. The Team were actively encouraged to mentor each other; and role play questions and solutions.

The results were not ‘slow but sure’, they were rapid and outstanding. The benefits were way beyond her having time to do the proactive part of her role:?

The Team:

1. Learned, in detail, the reasoning behind a decision, rather than just having a decision. This enabled them to not only understand it and make decision themselves on similar issues, but to ensure that they could explain these decisions intelligently to the customer.
2. Feel motivated and valued.
3. Help their colleagues and feel good about that.
4. Answer the customer immediately, instead of being in a long line of people with questions.
5. Learn to make considered decisions.
6. Have more time with the customer.

But the best was yet to come. After three months, questions were at a minimum; and mostly dealt with in weekly meetings; and by debate not dictate. She had time now to talk to customers; and guess what they said? One example: “While we’re talking I would just like to say that our relationship with John has improved so much I can hardly believe it. I get answers immediately, I don’t have to wait for him to ‘get back to me’, he can explain his reasoning and he seems so much more confident and enthusiastic; he really is helping us in our business. It’s a real pleasure having him as our Account Manager. What’s happened?”

If you cannot learn to delegate for your own benefit, then do it for your staff and your customers.

At the end of the three months, my friend took her first lunch break and ate sitting down.