Clive Simpkins

Microsoft’s unique naturalist research techniques

Dunno 'bout you, but I can't (consciously) kill a spider. I'm forever taking a drinking glass and a sheet of paper to apply my rescue and relocation (R&R) technique. I put the glass carefully over the fella, making sure I don't squish any über skinny legs, and then very gently and incrementally slide the sheet of paper in under the glass until the emigrating arachnid is safely ensconced in the resulting capsule. We then blast off for a safe nook in the garden or against an outside structure if I intuit a penchant for urbanisation.

To the horror of those around me, I steadfastly refuse to allow an overnight cobweb to be vacuumed or feather dusted. So my study is progressively taking on the appearance of a Hollywood kiddies' scary movie set. I value the role these chaps play is nailing Braamfontein Spruit mozzies in summer and an odd assortment of midges and other noo-noos in winter.

The trigger for this posting is that one has, I am totally convinced, been sent by Bill Gates. OK, Steve Ballmer then. I now have a spider located underneath a shelf directly above the keyboard of my notebook computer docking station. He descends on an ultra slender thread to pause within centimetres of my tapping fingers. Now of course, you've heard of keystroke-logging spyware devices, but what a crafty mechanism when you have a seemingly real spider with a pair of mini binoculars, physically positioned above the victim's keyboard. He has a spider's eye view of exactly what I'm typing and what websites I'm surfing. Even if he is reading them upside down. But then maybe his binocs are those fancy prism jobs used by the US military. Who said it was only Dick Cheney who had Halliburton connections?

If you think I'm just being paranoid - the moment I focused my digital camera on him to take a pic for this posting, he scuttled to the back of the shelf and disappeared. Now if that isn't proof...

I now have one more stress in my day. What if, as is my wont, I thoughtlessly snap closed the lid of my notebook and rush off to a meeting – to arrive at said destination with a splatter surrounded by eight threads on my keyboard? A la a pressed flower book. Bill or Steve could at least have equipped the little guy with motion sensors that emit a beep when one gets too close to him.

What's the point of this posting? Please don't squash spiders. Not only is it unkind, disrespectful and cruel, but you're messing badly with Microsoft's qualitative research program on consumer patterns in Africa. Have a nice day now, y'all. ;-)

Posted by Clive Simpkins

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Re-invent yourself in a shrinking economy

Perhaps the wisest piece of business advice I've ever heard is this: 'You can't save your way out of a recession or cash-flow crunch. You have to sell your way out of it.' Many of us react instinctively or inappropriately to financial pressure or cooling market conditions. We move into contraction mode. That's different from sensible economic thinking mode.

Contraction mode is typically fear-driven and features back-to-the-wall type worrying 24x7. In that stressed and anxious state, your system produces a whole lot of Cortisol. Which may be great for damping down inflammation in your battered joints, but it has a disastrous effect on the brain. It shortens your short-term memory, will cause a loss of detail on some memory networks and will generally reduce your ability to be creative and find alternatives and solutions.

The first line of defence in a shrinking economy is to ensure that your wits are in tip-top condition. By that I mean that you're in a physically, emotionally and intellectually resourceful state. This is the time to pay particular attention to your work-rest ratio. Chronic sleep deprivation will seriously diminish your chances of creative thinking and hatching new concepts. Make sure that you're getting some protein with every meal. Too many simple carbs not only make you fat, but they slow you down mentally. Look at your routines and immediately see what you can do to switch them for more energising and stimulating ones.

Read something different. Consciously set out to meet some new people. Do what we in the Professional Speakers Association do. Get 5-8 likeminded people together in what is called a MasterMind Group. The intention being that you'll share problems, insights, or opportunities and you'll feel a whole lot less lonely in your battle to keep the wolf from the door.

Make a list of the things you currently do or offer. Then look at service or product 'extensions'. Example, you might presently offer your services to a particular market segment. Could you expand that? Could you tap into a brand new or more diverse market? Can you identify something in your service offering which people will still need to continue buying or using even when their own cash-flow is tight? Can you do some of what you do, differently? Re-package your offering? Give it a twist to create a value-add over and above what others offer with similar products or services?

Make a list of things you really enjoy doing. Both as work and play. Then ask yourself which of those you might possibly be able to convert into a revenue-generating process. Doing something that you really enjoy or feel passionate about brings its own wonderful energy supply. It stimulates the brain, reinvigorates and creates a whole new momentum.

Can you do something in collaboration with others? Even if they're theoretically, or in actuality, your 'competition'? Today that process of combining or pooling resources to offer a service or product to a client (which you can't offer on your own) is known as 'co-opetition'. i.e. co-operating with the competition. I and some associates have done several such things over the years. Yes, it takes a bit more emotional intelligence and patience than doing it solo – but it can also open up a whole new market sector or opportunity for you.

Maybe use such a tough financial period to offer your existing client base a special price, or a preferentially-structured retainer on your services? What you're looking for is revenue continuity. The great thing about retainers is that they stabilise the cash-flow. The peaks and the valleys are more easily weathered when the base costs of running your business are covered by retainers. You can afford to give clients preferred rates on those retainers. They're helping to reduce your stress levels and ensuring the continuity and sustainability of your business. Indeed, the clients become what we all talk about – business partners – even if they don't know it.

The bottom line? When the going gets tough, the tough get creative and resourceful. Spread your tentacles, de-stress, play, exercise, eat'n drink right and embrace the 'threat' as an opportunity and challenge to re-invent yourself and your offering. That puts a whole new spin on the angst!

 

 

My fave beverage's pricing angle sticks in my craw

UPDATE 18th June '08 - see end of post

You are looking at the packaging of the most divine latte known to tastebuds. I've been buying the Chilla brand for several years. I gave it a break for a bit and then last week bought two new packets, pleasantly surprised to see that it still retails at about R 42 a bag.

I've never done (until today) the math on how many lattes one gets out of the packet, but even with my truly excessive and over-generous portions of the powder, you'd get out 8 at least, really full-bodied, to daah-for as the Kugels would say, drinks.

Working out at roughly R 5 an extremely satisfying beverage, that's still only half the price of a halfway-decent decaf cappuccino. So, good value in any terms.

I've always joked that the Chilla manufacturers have included an addictive substance in the formulation, because once tried, it will take intensive therapy to wean you from it.

Here's my reason for this posting though: being the tres observant individual that I am, the first thing I noticed when cutting open the foil bag at home, was that it's lost weight. Perceptibly so. I flipped the package over and saw 250 grams as the given weight on the rear. But even my Alzheimer's-befogged memory recalled 300 grams, previously. Howzat for brilliant recall? At a subliminal level too.

I looked closely and noticed that a little 250 gram sticker very neatly covered the original, printed-on-pack 300 gram legend. And that made me feel uncomfortable. If every manufacturer or importer appeared to maintain the same price, but surreptitiously removed (in this case 50 grams) of the contents in order not to 'up the price', that would herald an unacceptable marketing trend.

I called the Chilla Beverage company and spoke to their very helpful Kevin Lipschitz. Kevin assured me that there was no intention or attempt by Chillas to be dishonest, but he understood that the manner in which the price retention had been handled, could be construed as unacceptable.

This is a premium product. It's never going to be aimed at (or be affordable to) the mass market. So why not use more inventive marketing? A flash on the pack, reading 'still less than half the price of a coffee-shop cappucino' or something like that? But give me the choice. To buy or not to buy. In my marketing and advertising-trained mind, the way this was handled has potential to do damage to a marvellous brand. Guys - go revisit your future pricing strategy and how you implement it, is my suggestion.

And hey, I'll continue drinking Chillas. I'll just keep checking to see if the pack heads for anorexia! ;-)

Update 18th June '08: Hmm. Pack hasn't gone anorexic. Price remains the same, but the overlay 250 gram sticker is gone and the 300 grams of content is visible again. So why did I pay the same R 42 odd for the 250 gram pack? Not an OK explanation in my opinion.... anyone from Chilla Beverage Company care to comment?

Madonna Muscles - icky, icky, icky

As Tweety (of Sylvester partnership fame) might have said, 'Oh doodness me!" Just look at the Material Girl's forearms. Almost no subcutaneous fat left, so every knotted blood vessel is visible. Along with some muscular bumps and lunar craters. Eeyew!

Paradoxically, the face has retained the sub-cut fat, keeping her lookin' purty young for a 50-something.

Not sure that those forearms mightn't do better in long sleeves.

Madonna, maybe time to start growing older, gracefully?

How to kill a brand - courtesy of Sony and Rectron

I've been a dedicated Sony customer for years. Video cameras for the work I do, digital voice recorder, stills digital camera and notebook computers. But, in Malcolm Gladwell's terms, I've finally reached the tipping point on appalling Sony backup and service and my next notebook computer will not be a Sony - even if they offered to give it to me.
When Incredible Connection were still handling the Sony notebook range, I had to get their management (who were great) involved to finally extract a docking station from Sony. Gavin Ho at Sony was the contact person at that time.

I believe (according to one Incredible Connection salesperson) that they no longer stock Sony notebooks because of the absence of professional support and back up on the service front. Sony made the fatal mistake of outsourcing their repairs and support to Rectron. I'm so ticked off with Rectron's consistent and appalling service failures that I refer to them among friends, as 'Rectum'. They've become a poor, standard joke among my IT fraternity.

I had to contact their MD, Mark Lu, last year to resolve a cooling-fan vibration which the techies at Rectron said was not malfunctioning. The fact that my notebook computer made a noise like a coffee-mill on my desk but (Murphy's) not on the desk at Rectron, was the sticking point.

They finally opened it up in front of me and acknowledged that the fan was out of kilter. This was after I'd paid for a new hard-drive (their original mal-diagnosis of the problem) and gone through the horrendous schlep of re-loading software and the weeks of reconfiguring that come with that little exercise.

This time, I simply wanted to go to another 1GB of RAM. Phone call after phone call, two visits when I was told they had stock, but didn't. Today I made what is definitely my final contact ever with Rectron or Sony. Only to be told that my ten phone calls and two visits were in vain and that I had to have the job done by a re-seller - not by them, which I was assured by their Sony techie, Mario, would be the case.

Rectron's frankly like a headless chicken. When you know that you can't get professional support on a product, you have only one choice. Ride off into the sunset. IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad X Series, here I come in a few months time. Sony have beautiful products, but when it comes to marketing, distributing and backing them up in South Africa, they haven't a clue. If you want to retain your sanity, don't buy a Sony notebook computer and land up dealing with Rectron. Bye bye Sony.

Poorly-timed Eskom ad

Yeah, yeah, I guess the Eskom ad schedule was drawn up a long time before the power-cuts were so shambolically handled. But this is a delicious irony, isn't it?

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Dettol and Protex get their bugs muddled up

Was in my pharmacy yesterday and noticed some pretty impressive POS (point of sale) material for Reckitt Benckiser's Dettol anti-bacterial handwash. [Can't find it replicated on the web - hence the solo packshot]. The irritating aspect is that the visual perpetuated a marketing myth by showing a pic of a little kid and his dog - and horror of horrors - his hands were close to the dog's mouth! Implication: Canine mouths are teeming with bugs. Wrong, Dettol! You lose credibility by claiming to know about bugs when you clearly don't know that a dog's saliva is bacterio-static. Doesn't mean their mouths are clean, but even we humans don't have the bacterio-static advantage.

The same mythology was used in a marketing campaign for the Colgate group's [don't even try searching their deeply dysfunctional local and US websites] Protex antibacterial soaps. [Yeah I know this isn't the SA packaging - but you try find the local one on the web!] They also show the much-maligned mutt with 'thingys' floating around its chops - the implication being that the dog's mouth is the filthiest thing in the house. Try mom's unwashed hands. Or the nurses in your friendly Gandhi Memorial Hospital who were too lazy to wash hands between paediatric patients and were implicated in the deaths via Klebsiella bacteria, of umpteen babies as a result.

It really is time that obviously ill-informed brand managers and their illiterate and socially-untutored ad agency so-called 'creatives' (God help us) did some eclectic and extensive reading and stopped lapsing into stereotypes and canards when they're looking for a creative positioning.

Just by the by, the excesssive use of all of these anti-bacterial washes and surface sprays have awful long-term implications, particularly for children. Immune systems used to be able to cope. Now they will be taught that they don't have to. Stoopid, counter-evolutionary move. Plain soap, plenty bubbles, does the best possible job. The top epidemiologists around the world state that. The rest is a lot of marketing hooey - and bloody badly executed at that.

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If you're interested in spirituality, go visit the Swami Shivapadananda Blog.

Posted by Clive Simpkins

Developing short-term insurance-sector Client Relationships

This article of mine was published in RISKsa of April 2007. Here's the text version.

What can you do to maintain close relationships with your clients?

When your business involves being phoned or e-mailed by clients with changes to their short-term insurance requirements, it’s difficult to maintain close links with them. For the duration of a policy you might not physically get to see them. So what then is the ‘loyalty factor’ between them and your business and why should they stay with you?

Price and convenience become important ‘dislocation factors’ when there’s a depersonalisation of service. If there’s nothing other than the cost of doing business with you and the convenience or inconvenience of doing so, then the potential for the client being wooed away or opting for seemingly greener pastures is high. The cost to your business of this happening is even higher. Because it’s then into a repetitive prospecting, landing, consolidating and servicing new clients cycle. This is way more disruptive than extending the service offering to existing clients and maybe getting them to insure other aspects of their homes or businesses. There’s a ‘familiarity factor’ – however distant, with existing clients.

It’s all too easy, when we’re caught in the day to day running of a small business to focus on urgent but maybe long-term not so important stuff. It’s not rocket science to decide what’s of greater medium to long term strategic value to your business than just replying in detail to that e-mail today. Maybe reply, saying something like, ‘I’m going to put together a brief proposal for you and get it through as soon as possible.’ You’ve acknowledged the mail, you’ve reassured the client that it hasn’t got lost in cyberspace and that you’re giving thought to their need. That frees you up to do something genuinely important.

Learning to differentiate between what’s important and what’s totally mundane takes thought. You have to pre-plan. I gave some advice to a one-person business owner who was battling to get some momentum in his practice. I said to him, ‘Before you go to sleep at night, ask yourself this question: “What am I going to do tomorrow to market my services?”’ If you don’t have at least one idea you don’t go to sleep. Because, if as and when your business hits a slump – which it most certainly will – you’re going to have many sleepless nights! And in your stressed-out state you’re not going to come up with many creative, business-building ideas. So do it by choice – now.

Although we can give very good advice to others on aspects of marketing or growing their business, somehow, when you try to strategise for yourself, the brain gets enveloped in a fog of non-productivity. So here’s a little tip: I think through the scenario I’m facing. Then – as if I’m advising a client or friend – I explore possible solutions. Because you’ve introduced a degree of dispassion and objectivity to your process, you’ll find that the ideas and potential solutions flow much more easily.

A great way of coming up with ideas is to bounce thoughts off peers, friends and family. People don’t have to be in your business to come up with interesting ideas for it. There’s a history supporting the fact that great ideas for industry sectors most commonly come from outside of those sectors. They’ve come from people with little ‘understanding’ of the sectors. The huge plus of the ‘little understanding’ is that they haven’t bought into the ‘impossibility’, the ‘improbability’, the ‘lack of resources’, the ‘lack of infrastructure’ or the ‘poor timing’ of the ideas for your sector. Often, our stereotyped blinkers have us discarding thoughts before they’re even half-formed, because we have preconceived notions of what will or won’t work. So, explore outside of your turf. Talk to others. Read widely and eclectically outside of your field. You should ideally be reading publications that have a ‘tech’ sector or a sector dealing with innovation. Both Financial Mail in South Africa and TIME magazine are quick and useful reads if you're looking to broaden your creative business thinking skills.
 

You don’t have to spend a fortune on building closer client relationships. Maybe consider an e-newsletter (an opt-in one) with some genuinely interesting snippets about things that will be close to their heart. Like simplifying their insurance processes. Saving money. Reducing risk. Maybe get a small number of them together two or three times a year. Get one of them (or someone else) to talk for 20 minutes on a topic of interest. Pitch it as a combined networking/educational evening. It doesn’t have to last for hours. You can actually put a one and half hour limit on it. Maybe even take a private room in a hotel and do a working breakfast with the same concept. It’s going to be a tax deductible exercise for your business. And you’ll be adding a relationship value that will be worth hundreds of times more than it actually costs you.

So, tonight, before you go to sleep, ask yourself, ‘What am I going to do tomorrow to market and further develop my business?’ I pray that the gods of creativity will give you an early night!

Technorati Tags: Short+Term+Insurance Client+service Relationship+Marketing Marketing

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‘Re-evolutionising’ your business

I mulled a potential topic for this article on a flight from Jo’burg to Cape Town. No inspiration. In Cape Town I addressed a group of pharmacists – both ‘chain’ and private – who are all affected by mad Manto’s legislation. That got me thinking about the insurance brokerage business. Which is also under siege from a number of quarters and which will also require what I call a ‘re-evolution’. Both the revolution part and the re-evolving part.

Here are some thoughts: The more highly ‘specialised’ you are, the greater the hazards for you when macro, micro or market ‘environmental’ conditions change. You can easily join the ‘endangered species’ list if you’re not proactive. When there’s a ‘seismic shift’ in conditions, we need to move into creative solutions focussed mode. If we bury our heads in the sand and hope the situation will ‘go away’, diminished options will be available when we do finally decide to act.

Proactivity, optimism, entrepreneurism and a ‘never-say-die’ spirit of resilience is needed to cope with rapid change – particularly as we grow older. On my business stationery I use the Cantonese symbol for ‘Change’ or ‘Crisis’. Like many Chinese pictograms, it encompasses two meanings. Look at the symbol. The top part on its own, means danger. The lower part on its own, means hidden opportunity. So change or crisis embodies two elements: either we can focus on the danger and what may go wrong or we can direct our energies into the hidden opportunity.

Marketing as we know it effectively started with Harvard Business School Professor Theodore (Ted) Levitt’s iconoclastic thesis, ‘Marketing Myopia’. You’ll recall that he wrote of the folk who used to manufacture leather whips to motivate the horses that pulled buggies – the favoured means of transport at that point, in the absence of cars. They made a good living. But what they didn’t do was pay attention to steam engines, the locomotive and cars and the threat they posed to a low-tech industry like leather whip manufacture. Levitt cautioned against ‘myopia’ or short-sightedness. We can’t wait for an industry to turn. We have to think proactively, ‘What would I do if….xyz changed or happened.’

There’s a new term in marketing usage at the moment. It refers to the individual who turns an industry sector on its head as a ‘Disruptive Innovator’. In the medical field in South Africa, Dr. Jackie Shevel of Netcare fame (or notoriety, depending on your viewpoint!) and Adrian Gore of Discovery Health – ditto comment. These are people, who, love ’em or hate ’em, turned existing but moribund industries into brand new incarnations and money-making machines.

The endangered business model
Years ago I was a GM at the renowned John Orr’s department store on Eloff Street, in Jo’burg. The family owners refused to acknowledge the emerging demand for ‘boutique’ speciality stores and hung on to the bitter end with an outdated business model. They wouldn’t hear or respond to market forces. Those magnificent stores are no more. Beware! Y

You need to know what the market wants to find in your brokerage – whether you’re a really big player in the sector – or the one-person operation. There are good opportunities for both large and small in the brokerage business in South Africa. But only if your business model, market segmentation and service mix is fluid, responsive, innovative and ‘alive’ to market needs, expectations and demands. The service differentiator Clients (of the discerning kind) will be prepared to pay a price premium for quality advice, care and service. Personalisation is the professional differentiator in our sometimes cold, de-personalised and hi-tech business world. Capitalise on it.

So what practical things can you do?
1) Maintain the personal, warm touch. Don’t allow impersonal service to creep in.
2) Organise and become part of, a ‘Master-Mind’ brain-storming, networking and market intelligence group in a spirit of ‘co-opetition’.
3) Other brokers and broker groups are not necessarily your enemies. They’re your opportunity for differentiation and maybe even collaboration!
4) Think of the food pyramid. You need lots of the ‘essentials’ and less of the ‘nice but unnecessary’. Now do something similar when planning your service-offering mix!
5) If your core competency doesn’t include marketing, PR or other essential business survival skills, then get help! Stick to your knitting if you choose, but ensure that your business delivers what the market wants.
6) Are you targeting both existing and emerging market segments with your offering? Revisit who you think your target audience is and work at understanding them.
7) Understand generational theory. Go read ‘Getting them to give a Damn’ by Eric Chester. If you’re not factoring young people into your business equation, you’re inviting trouble.
8) All business models that aren’t renewing adapting and evolving are headed for extinction. Remember Dinosaurs and the Dodo!
9) You can’t shrink or ‘save’ your way out of a cash crunch. ‘Sell’ your way out of it. Whether small or large – think service offering and value-adding diversification!
10) Being ‘Knowledge-Partners’ with other industry players can provide useful ‘clout’ and synergies.
11) Ask for feedback - from all stakeholders.
12) Read voraciously – outside of your discipline – to keep in touch with where the world’s going. Otherwise you’ll be left behind. Finally – remember this quotation: ‘My interest lies in the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.’ John F. Kettering – American inventor and engineer.

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Technorati Tags: Specialization Insurance+Brokers macro+environment micro+environment Seismic+shift Proactivity Entrepreneurism Cantonese+pictogram Crisis Change Theodore+Levitt Marketing+Myopia Disruptive+Innovator Personalization Co+opetition

Relationship Marketing 2007

I wrote this article as an exclusive for Risk SA Magazine - a journal targeted at the short -term insurance market. Since it's now appeared in the January 2007 edition of Risk SA, here it is for sharing.

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