The Apprentice's First Task - Sell Coffee!

In the Apprentice Sir Alan Sugar set a pretty easy first task. See how much you can make selling coffee in London from a fixed site and with a mobile van.

Andy Jackson was the girls project manager, team  Stealth. And Jadine Johnson was the project manager for the boys, the Eclipse team.

So how did they do?

Here's some thoughts on their first task.

Eclipse Team ("managed" by Jadine)

Tre Azam and Simon Ambrose drove their mobile coffee van to a pitch where people were already going to buy coffee at inflated prices and started selling well. The first hour they sold about 50 cups. Then Jadine pulled them back so that she could "manage" or talk/shout at them. Later when they went back with Jadine and Ifti in tow as extra salespeople they sold 30 cups in 20 minutes.

The things that they did badly:

• They assumed that the coffee they bought at a cash and carry was the right one - it wasn't! So they had to go and buy some more elsewhere
• Jadine pulled a team from a place they were selling (so lost time and profits and they couldn't get back to the same pitch again)
• Jadine split the winning pair on the mobile coffee selling team up
• Jadine didn't rally her troops at all, in fact she seemed to spend a fair amout of time shouting at them to be quiet and respect her as the manager
• Jadine kept going on about branding the coffee by shaking chocolate powder on the top in the shape of an eclipse, and:
• Then she realised that it would only work on cappuccino - because it's the only frothy one
• What's the point? No one needs to remember this coffee firm, plus it's just takes longer to get served

On the podcast, now up on the BBC web site Alan's right hand "man", Margaret said the team would have worked just as well if Jadine hadn't been there at all. In my opinion probably better because then she wouldn't have pulled people back from a winning pitch.

Jadine interrupted her team when they were with customers and she kept on going on about them showing her respect. And of course you can hear her shouting when she's coming back to manage them!

The one thing they did very well was to realise that they should only sell coffee - nothing else.  Thanks to Tre I think for pointing them down the right path there.

In summary Jadine the Unjust has got to go. She comes across as someone who would happily accept the praise but equally gladly shovel the derision onto others. Which I think is the reason she left a failing team at the fixed coffee stall to try and join a winning team with Tre - so she wouldn't get tarred with the same losing brush. And why she had a go at Tre - so she could brand him as obstructive. 

One more thing did you notice whether Jadine smiled during her project manager stint?

Stealth Team ("managed" by Andy)

Although the team was meant to be managed by Andy it patently was not.

As an example Sophie (The Human Calculator) decided to calculate the amount of coffee and milk required for their expected sales of 2,000 cups of coffee during the day. She came up with 200 litres of milk! Andy said make it 20. She then said we wont do anything without checking back with you... and then she went and bought 60 litres of milk. And when they arrived at the cash and carry the girls decided to buy biscuits too - without checking with Andy!

If Andy had bothered to worry about whether his team would lose he should have worked out exactly how much Sophie's mistakes cost the team so he could have focused the real blame on Sophie. Because in the follow-up program Sahar Hashemi the co-founder of the Coffee Republic chain said that she thought it was Andy's team's extra costs that pushed them into becoming the losers.

The Coffee Calculation

They were told that a good operator could manage 80-100 cups per hour.

They didn't ask how much milk was required for 100 cups.

Sophie worked out they had a 10 hour day.

She then assumed they'd be good operators and calculated they could do 100 cups per hour at each coffee location. Which is 1,000 cups per location.

With 2,000 estimated cups Sophie assumed the amount of milk required to be 0.1 litres. So the amount of milk you need is 200 litres. Sainsbury's price for milk is 0.49 the cost for 200 litres is £98.00. If they'd bought 20 litres as Andy asked for the cost would obviously have been £9.80 in fact they bought 65 litres which cost about £31.85.

Deviating From The Task

The team deviated from the task of selling coffee because they bought biscuits and tea. Which meant: 

• They'd paid for stock which they didn't need with the risk of having some of it left at the end
• Someone, and this amazes me, said if we have any biscuits left over we can always sell them at cost - that assumes people want to buy them!
• They'd assumed they'd sell about 400 biscuits (at 5p per biscuit that's another £20 costs)
• By not focusing on just selling coffee the team:
• took the sales pressure off people to buy coffee (high price) so they could simply buy a cheaper biscuit or cup of tea
• Ended up spending coffee selling time to get rid of cut-price biscuits and milk

Finally the nail in the coffin was that Gerri The Driver drove the mobile coffee unit to a market, where everyone is used to a bargain and where there were lots of greasy spoon cafes charging 90p for coffee compared to Stealth's £1.50. She sold practically nothing and kept trying to get hold of Andy to ask him what to so. For goodness sake woman! Use your iniative, either drop your prices or move somewhere else you believe will get you good sales! And text Andy to tell him if you can't actually talk to him on the phone.

Andy, Andy...

Nice man. Remember you said "...I'm very ruthless?" No I don't think so. You so didn't protect your position. Because Gerri also didn't help your team. It's all very well hanging around bleating something like, "I've been trying to contact you..." when the solution is already right in front of her face. Gerri, you're next unless you change the way you work.

 And another thing,  calling everyone sweetheart is usually just an excuse because you can't be bothered to remember their names.

Was The Firing Deserved?

The answer is an unequivocal yes.

Neither project manager managed their teams successfully, in fact at all. But Andy on the losing team was always going to go because he didn't appear to have a strategy to deal with losing! Jadine might have gone if her team had lost but I'm pretty sure she would have blamed everyone else before herself.

Andy could have been more on top of what was going on. For a start he should have helped with the buying and then could have said "no" to the tea and biscuits.   He could have considered more about the mobile coffee bar location. And he could have rung Gerri to check on progress sooner and more often.

There are so many different ways to get to your customers:

• Adverts
• Blogs 
• Brochures
• Business Cards
• Catalogues
• Direct mail campaigns
• Email campaigns
• Presentations
• Press releases
• Radio
• Seminars
• Television
• Trade shows
• Web sites
• White papers
• Yellow pages

Every single way needs words to persuade your customer to purchase from you. Preferably now!

The best copywriters can create the most sales-effective written words for your business.

Many business owners and marketeting people write their own copy. And a lot of it is extremely well written.

And Very BORING!!

Copy is not just important.

No copy? Nobody buys.

If your copy don't work you're pouring your money down the nearest drain (blocked, or not).

I'm often asked to look at letters written by business owners or marketers. People who've attended great courses on copywriting and know in their gut that words sell. 

And I always find one, and usually more, of the following mistakes:

1) no headline - you're not hooking your prospect to read further
2) no offer - if you've nothing to offer your prospect why should they read further?
3) no idea - of their market, or the benefits it wants. Why would they be interested in general stuff. What's in it for them?
4) no strategy - a letter, a brochure is almost never part of a marketing strategy and so you get a mishmash of approaches

Now get your strategy right and you'll easily work out who your advert, your brochure, your business card and your blog and web site are for.  And, even better,  how they can combine to support one another.

For example:

• is your blog address on your business card?
• Does business card offer a white paper?
• Does your white paper offer a case study through the web site, or maybe another resource?
• Does your web site provide a link to your latest seminars?
• Do the presentation handouts in your seminars offer a list of resources that are available to customers?

Do you see where I'm headed with this?

Finding an offer and crafting an interesting and relevant headline is easier when your strategy is written down and not whirling around inside someone's head!

And yes I am also putting off the point when I need to finish off my article for "What's New in Marketing."

Fred Vogelstein who writes for Wired has posted about his initial glee about being mistakenly emailed a briefing document from Microsoft.

The briefing document was all about Fred and the story about Channel 9 and 10 that Microsoft wanted to convey to Wired through Fred.

Of course PR companies brief their interviewees. Otherwise the wrong message can escape, can't it?

Yet as Fred said it felt "downright peculiar" to read assessments of him and the sheer number of people involved in getting the story right to him.

You can read the full 13 page Microsoft briefing document to get a taste of how Microsoft's PR machine works.

From my own experience this may be not that rare. I once had an email sent to me that contained just two lines answering a straightforward question I'd asked. But below the answer the full email revealed that it had gone through several people's email in boxes and two executives had made long comments on internal company arguments relating to the question I'd asked. The person who sent the mail had not thought to delete stuff I shouldn't have seen.

And I've had other less contentious emails that were simply forwarded without editing.

This mistake is not limited to those of us who "do PR". It's just that PR by it's very nature is highly visible, both to the client and to the journalists. So if we make a mistake of this sort we must be prepared to be shot down in flames by both client and journalist.

About a week ago the council came and dug out a completely blocked storm grid a few yards up the road from our house. At the time Kay said, "well it wont be long before our drains block up because of all the sand from that drain."

Yesterday was that day!

So putting this blog onto the backburner and armed with just a toothbrush, ok a toilet/washbasin drain unblocker...I set off to do my unblocking duties.

After about an hour I realised I needed something with more oomph. So I trekked around the DIY stores until I found a rod drain set. I bought the longest set of rods possible.

We've two drain access points on our sloping drive. One at the top and one at the bottom.

If I tell you that we fit 5 family sized cars on the drive you'll understand why we need two drain access holes. Otherwise the rods couldn't reach to the drain in the road.

So, anyway...

I spent 5 hours rodding the bottom drain. Eventually I cleared all the blockage, but the water level didn't drop.

So I suddenly thought, "I wonder if the top drain is blocked to the road drain?"

Of course it was, so I started rodding that. After about half an hour I realised it was blocked with silt - most likely from the drain that had been dug out. Worse I couldn't move any of it.

In the end I realised I needed to get council help, so I left it and went into the house.

As I entered Kay said, "your youngest daughter has spilt a gallon of paint all over your office and one of the PCs."

My jaw dropped.

A few weeks ago my youngest had brought in a 10 litre can of paint to stand on next to me to interrogate me when I'm coaching people.

And although Kay kept reminding me to take the paint out of the office I'd left it there...

I had visions of paint all over my lovely TFT monitor, the keyboard, the brand new Logitech optical wireless mouse, my brand new leather executive chair, my digital camera, my DV recorder and all the other boys toys I've accumulated.

When I got to the office it was mayhem. After I'd cleared up the few litres of paint slowly sinking into the carpet and removing the USB cables that had been liberally doused it didn't look too bad.

I've taken a picture and will get it loaded shortly and you can see what you think!

The Apprentice 2007 is getting closer. The BBC has just released information to The Apprentice web pages, including video auditions for each apprentice.

Also for those of us who know better we can try out our skills of assessing others with The Apprentice game.

And finally the BBC have got some nice video clips including the first boys project manager discussion...

Have a look and enjoy!

I'll make this short and sweet!

You've read my previous postings on The Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar. I dissect the tasks, peoples approaches and my thoughts on who should be fired and who should win.

In fact I'm so interested about the whole Apprentice experience that I've also watched the US version with Donald Trump and Martha Stewart. I didn't review those episodes but in future I intend to.

So rather than overload this blog with my thoughts on the UK and US The Apprentice show I've created a new Web 2.0 site called "The Apprentice - Fires You Up".

On the site I've got a poll where after each show you can vote for who you thought should have been fired.

I've also got a whole load of Apprentice related products, both US and UK, for the Apprentice fanatics .

The site searches for and displays Apprentice-related news and posts from other blogs so you can see what others are saying about The Apprentice.

So check it out at the Squidoo site: "The Apprentice - Fires You Up".

Jemima Kiss, writing in The Guardian's blog talks about ITV's away day to discover all about digital media.  During the away day Jemima noted that Ben Hammersley (who set up the Guardian blog):

"...caused a bit of a stink by saying that nobody gives a toss about brands - only the content. Consumers aren't going to ITV because they love ITV, they go to ITV because they want to see a particular programme or an actor"

It's interesting to see this. When I was in the IT industry we had a large number of hardware makers who made mainframe and mini computers.

If you were in computing in the 60's, 70's and 80's you'll remember DEC, Data General, Siemens, Sperry/Univac, IBM and Hewlett Packard as mini computer companies. A very famous book called "Soul of A New Machine" by Tracy Kidder even chronicles the attempt by Data General to create a minicomputer to beat DEC's champion - the VAX range.

Unfortunately some of the mini computer makers didn't see the writing on the wall for their products as PCs advanced in processing power. And now once famous brands are no longer making mainframe or mini computers. Look at DEC famous for their VAX hardware and Rainbow PCs, bought by Compaq who were then bought by Hewlett Packard. ICL? Britain's own well-known mainframe maker - absorbed by Fujitsu.

This just underlines the importance of delivering what people want. Because when these minicomputer manufacturers were rolling in the money PC seller Dell had not even started. They knew they had a well defined brand - people could find them easily. The world was their oyster.

And of course now Dell computers using microprocessor chips are actually emulating DEC VAX minicomputers for Walmart so the supermarket giant can continue to use the software they invested in with their original DEC hardware.

Maybe some people do choose BBC because we know "it's quality content". Equally many of the newer online generation are watching stuff through web sites. Some wont even know, or care, where what they're watching was first shown.

The danger here is that if media companies don't understand that consumers are now their own schedule controllers the media companies are going to go down the same road the mini computer makers did. That is they'll go bust or consolidate and move into other areas of business.

From a marketing point of view you can see that ad spend through ITV must drop rapidly as broadband take up gets higher and higher. Any bets on when the first Internet-ready TV is produced? One that will allow you to schedule all your watching so that it doesn't conflict with other things in your life?

Look at Virgin Media in Britain their cable company is now giving consumers vast amounts of programmes they can watch when they want and as often as they want. Interestingly providing this means Virgin Media will learn the true watching habits of their consumers. Who will then be best placed to say what programmes will go down best with the consumers? Why, of course Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group!

If you have Virgin media you can see that whilst you can still access shows "on demand" via their BBC or Channel 4 identities you can also select them through comedy, drama, education groupings or simply from an A-Z listing.

So brands are red-herrings for companies now...

Something to think about isn't it? Brands can't protect your company from dying on the business battlefield if you don't deliver what your customers want.

The Apprentice 2007 kicks off in 7 days time, on the 28th March and at the same time transfers from BBC2 to BBC1.

Sir Alan had commented on the poorer quality of the Series 2 Apprentices. He believes series 3's candidates are a better calibre, although he notes that in the first task they make the same mistakes as the apprentices in series 2.

According to the BBC's news release the people to look out for are:

• Jadine Johnson
• Tre Azam
• Simon Ambrose

Personally I wished they hadn't highlighted anyone because now I'm thinking one of them is going to win. Remember you heard it here first!

The Daily Mail shows a group photo of the New Apprentices with Sir Alan Sugar and then shows individual pictures and a short thumbnail on each person. The full line up is as follows:

The tasks the 16 strong group face include the following:

• Sell British farm produce at a French farmers' market
• Design dog accessories
• Create a new brand of trainers
• Sell art photography at a gallery
• Produce and sell sweets at London Zoo
• Sell coffee on a busy high street

Plus there are two international tasks...

Sounds great!

The Apprentice: You're Fired show which interviews the latest fired candidate continues. The BBC Apprentice web pages will be back with previews, teasers and other bits to keep us keen.

But for goodness sake BBC let's have an interesting competition for the fans.

The only downside is that Jo Cameron (who the BBC sees as memorable) is going to comment on the tasks, the candidates and her own "recollections of the Boardroom" - YAWN. The BBC used Saira from series 1 to comment last year and again I wasn't impressed by her business acumen.

I'll also be commenting on the tasks and the contenders and what happens. And I'm willing to bet that Jo and I have completely different views.

Last year The Times had a good column on The Apprentice written by James Max. I don't know whether Max is writing a similar column this year as he's now pretty busy with his radio show and apparently an upcoming TV show too.

Just so you know I've posted my 2 pence worth on the Rich Jerk's new product on my Rich Jerk Watch blog.

Actually, to be fair the blog has turned into my thoughts on the various offerings that get released into the wild on the Internet from various gurus, uber-gurus and wannabes.

See what you think...

Interestingly company management has the ability to completely stifle their company's growth.

The Times has written a blog post that reveals how Sainsbury's was going down the tubes because of micromanagement.

The article introduces a book called Meaning Inc., written by Gurnek Bains. Bains tells the story of how Justin King (Sainsbury CEO) had the store managers in for a talk after he took over.

During the meeting he was impressed by their openness and willingness to ask questions. Then when they'd gone he noticed that one of them had "left" a sheet of paper. The sheet contained all the questions that had been asked during the meeting!

Senior management had scripted all the questions and the managers were so used to being micro-managed they'd gone along with the charade.

Needless to say things changed and Sainsbury's is now doing better.

There are so many stories like this that affect companies in large and small ways.

Let me give you a couple of examples from my own consultancy.

Case 1 - Large Industrial Giant

The team had been allocated to implement a project management process, project guide and associated software across multiple sites for the whole company. The team leader was so concerned to do a good job that he checked everything that the 4 man team created. That meant there was significant delays whilst he wrote up amendments or actually got round to reviewing work.

The result was at any one time most of the team members were twiddling their thumbs waiting to amend what they'd done. It also proved to be a problem with morale and the project petered out.

Case 2 - Group of Furniture Companies

There were 5 companies as part of the group and one financial controller to ensure that budgets were kept to. The controller also made sure that every single purchase order came through her office so she could personally vet each order and ring to make sure the item or items were really needed.

Whenever the controller was on holiday work slowed and in some cases orders of furniture couldn't be delivered on their scheduled delivery date because staff were unable to hire a van. In other cases orders for simple fixings such as rivets and screws were held up preventing the company building the furniture.

The result was a significant impact on morale and also a major problem for customers who didn't receive orders when they'd been scheduled.

What Lessons Can We Learn

Ask yourself are you micro-managing? If you are decide how you need to change.

Look at your business, talk to your people. Are there processes that stop them performing to the best of their ability?

Often people wont volunteer information to their boss about things that affect them. The reason is that they often think, with good reason, that it's career limiting. 

The one thing that any company needs is a regular business MOT where an outside set of eyes can look at what's happening to people, processes and principles and comment and recommend changes.

For example in the furniture group I suggested using call-offs for fastenings so that you could create an order at the beginning of the year of the total you expect to use and simply request more of the item as you needed it. I also suggested that they should give department heads budgets and that they needed to justify their spend at regular meetings.

Whilst not rocket science it points to Michael Gerber's mantra about working in the business and not on it - no matter what the business owner thought!

Who Can Help?

There are many, many people who are happy to interfere with someone else's business. That said there are certain groups of people I suggest you use and they include the following:

• Successful entrepreneurs
• Forward thinking accountants (not ones that think only about the bottom line)
• Business growth consultants

Whoever you pick you need to trust them, you need to believe they'll give you the inside information as to your business health.

That means you must pay them, otherwise it just becomes a favour and they have no incentive to get it right. Also to do a business MOT properly you need them for at least 2 days on site for a small company, 1 week for a medium and 2 weeks for a large company. Anything less and they will miss stuff, maybe even the most important factor!

And if you find out you are micromanaging?  Get Help Now!

The final part of Sir Alan Sugar's "The Apprentice" was shown on the BBC for Red Nose Day today.

We'd reached the point where the losing team had to return to the boardroom to go through why things had gone so badly wrong.

After all they were raising money for charity and the boys team had not raised even half as much as the girl's team.

Danny Baker got a slight "grilling" over the fact that they weren't charging enough for the food they were selling. The girls had been charging enormous amounts - £1,000 for a sausage roll for instance.

The boys tried to play the creativity card. Which rather reminded me of how design agencies point to awards as justification for the amount of money a client has spent with them - rather than more profitable sales!

In the end the boys team decided to have Piers Morgan, Alasadair Campbell and Danny Baker back in for Sir Alan to decide who to fire.

It was clear that Danny who'd admitted his mistake over the food pricing was small beer in the mistakes category.

Whereas in my opinion Campbell had made a complete pigs ear of the whole task. He said that when Morgan had suggested that he could get lots of banking millionaires to turn up he'd thought he could leave it to him to get the money!

I'm sorry but someone who was at the centre of government who can say that worries me immensely.

Even if Piers Morgan had managed to sell the tickets to millionaires Alsadair Campbell should also have been dredging his own address book to get the countless other millionaires he knows to fork over the cash.

Campbell tried to lay the blame at Morgan's door by saying that he'd promised the millionaires but didn't deliver.

Equally, Morgan pointed out that Campbell couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery and didn't even know how to handle a stapler.

In the end Morgan kept on bleating on about how he'd got 80% of the money they raised, and remember this is roughly a third of that raised by the girls.

So Morgan was fired. Wrongly in my opinion he had worked his socks off - even if he was a major irritant to Campbell. Campbell by contrast didn't seem to actually do anything and yet wasn't fired.

All good clean fun for the Comic Relief charity. So well done to all the teams, Alan Sugar and his "two right hand men."

Next time BBC use the phone vote system so that the great British public can have a say on the who should go and who should stay.

I've found this fabulous way of getting files onto sites and blogs so people can see or hear what I'm trying to show them.

As an experiment I've added a file of Peter Thompson of The Achiever's Edge fame interviewing the co-creator of NLP - Dr Richard Bandler. This is one of the many bonuses you get when you sign up with the Achiever's Edge monthly programme to get you up the ladder of success!

If you look to the right the file is in the sidebar.

For this post only I've included it here too...

This first part of a Red Nose edition of my favourite business show "The Apprentice" with Sir Alan Sugar was a lot of fun.

For those who aren't UK residents Red Nose day was started when a group of comics got together and decided to do some funny things to raise money for charities. Rather like Live Aid and was dubbed Comic Relief. And Red Nose day is where everyone gets to wear Red Noses and the BBC provides the stage for comics and celebs to urge people to give money by entertaining them.

It's now snowballed into a big event which has a number of other events feeding money into it. The Apprentice is one of those.

Almost immediately we were shown poor Rupert Everett, Hollywood movie star. He felt completely unable to function with a camera in his face and he just didn't turn up for the task. So Sir Alan drafted in Tim, a previous Apprentice winner, to bolster up the men's team.

The team's task was for each to run an event with 4 fair rides or shows in each one. The fair was to be by ticket and the team who got the most for Comic Relief wins.

The boys team consisting of Alasdair Campbell, Piers Morgan, Ross Kemp, Rupert Everett and Danny Baker was led by either by Piers Morgan or spin doctor Alasdair Campbell. I didn't catch the moment the team leader was decided. And during the task it certainly wasn't clear who led.

And Morgan never seemed to neglect an opportunity to mention the cash for honours scandal or anything else that could niggle Campbell.

That said the boys won the initial skirmish when they negotiated the fair ground items they wanted for their fair. The girls got their main one (the dodgems) but were left with other rides that seemed uninviting.

They also seemed to have a little more creativity at the event - they got a society photographer to take photos of people, they also had Campbell in the stocks so people could pay to pelt him with water filled sponges. So top marks for creativity.

The girls team was made up of Cheryl Cole, Jo Brand, Maureen Lipman, Trinny Woodall and Karren Brady and Brady was universally nominated as the team leader. It seemed the best course as out of all of them she had experience running events, after all she is the MD of Birmingham City.

The girls had the edge over the boys because they started off very quickly selling tickets for as high a price as they could. My opinion of fashion guru Trinny Woodall soared when she went round to one of her wealthy friends and almost without prompting the friend donated £150,000 to Comic Relief. Nice one Trinny. Trinny also got another friend (a famous chef) to send round one of his chef's to size up and buy the food they needed for their event.

The girls event lacked a little sparkle as only the dodgems were being used. But they managed to get their celebs to stump up over £500,000 for attending, going on the rides and eating the food they'd prepared.

When the teams returned to the boardroom the girls has thrashed the boys. The boys having made just over £200,000 lost the task and tomorrow they face Sir Alan to find out who gets fired.

In my opinion Alasdair Campbell should be fired as he didn't appear to have any real plan once they had the fairground rides. Hmm. Does that sound familiar!? He seemed to let Piers Morgan do what he liked and they started selling tickets too late. Anyway tune into tomorrow and we'll see...

There are danger signs in any business that act as a warning for you, the owner, or directors to do something about it.

Big Customers, Big Risk

I mean do you have one or two large customers who take most of your output? Whether it's products or services.

And that's the danger. You're so close to your business you don't see that having one or two customers who take everything you do is risky.

What if one stops buying from you? You'll need to quickly replace them with another big customer or several small ones. Almost impossible to do at short notice.

Extended Credit, Kills Business

If your business doesn't follow-up creditors religiously your aged debt can become quite large. In fact so large that it results in negative cashflow. If your business is unique or can be made unique you won't have to offer credit. If you have to offer extended credit you're financing other businesses and have a much higher exposure to bad debts. Which require chasing, letters, visiting and occasionally court appearances. Sounds like a waste of time? Believe me it is and removes your focus from your business.

Working Long Hours, Money Stays The Same

Do you find you're working long hours to accommodate rush orders? Do you find those orders are the ones that actually make the least profit?

Too many rush orders leaves you with the possibility of burning out yourself or your employees. Then where's your business plan?

Dedicated Staff But Losing Customers

Interesting conundrum.

Some of your staff appear to be working their socks off but the customers order sizes have dropped, or you're losing customers.

Think seriously about whether those staff are using your time and materials to provide products to your customers and get paid with money to line their pockets not yours.

Even if you sack those staff getting customers back will be hard. Maybe you'll want to get better customers!

How To Skate Easily Over Thin Ice

The answer is easy learn about all the the different risks that your business faces. Then set-up what I've called your Worry Wallchart.

Using your Worry Wallchart list everything that could remotely go wrong with the business.

Now work out Pain-free Processes for each Worry. So later if you hit the thin ice of that Worry you already know what Pain-free process to use to skate round it, over it or even to paddle through it!

A lot of the Worrys I've listed here can be alleviated by marketing. And that brings me to the biggest worry: "no time to 'do' marketing to get qualified leads to feed the sales pipeline or to keep an ear to the ground with your current customers."

Stop skating on thin ice, or one day it'll be so thin you and your business will disappear under the surface and never be seen again. Go out and do regular marketing.