Tag: Business

Goodbye old school

Posted on by philipdodson

Goodbye old school – by Philip Dodson

old school

The old system has run it’s course now, education, politics and business.

I am 46 and have grown up in a world where most of the values and ways of doing things were drawn from the 1800s. From a time of empires, industrialisation, capitalism, socialism, communism and so on.

The world is now entering a new age – a digital age and an entrepreneurial revolution. But even more so, it’s entering uncharted territory, 7 billion of us, dwindling resources and global issues, that need a global approach. A totally disengaged and disillusioned young – who can’t relate to the old world.

We are at a fork in the path – many will want to selfishly lead us onwards back to the old school nirvana.

The old system is stifling the creative thought, supressing the changes we need and strangling radical new ways of doing things.

Party politics no longer engages with people, as we have heard it all before, very little fresh thinking, corruption, people on all sides who are not experiencing the world as most are.

Mainly policies that are there to ensure re-election in 4-5 years time, rather than the right policies. One lot promises one thing for their followers, the others in their dogma disagree with it all and then come to power and change it. Often regardless of whether or not it works.

None of this is a political statement – it applies to all of them. The system no longer works. We need business leaders, community leaders and others to take over and work on policies together – ditch left, right centre and whatever else – bring in common sense.

Then turning to education – this is kicked around like a political ‘football’ with little real thought to the end product. Children are growing up with smart phones and tablet PC’s, yet we send them to school and sit them down to read text books. The system is largely preparing children for a world that doesn’t and will not exist by the time they leave. Is it not that 20% of the jobs today didn’t exist 5 years ago?

Just think of the technological changes that are happening, think about the entrepreneurial revolution – the fact that within 10 years self-employment will be the norm in the developed world.

We need to get entrepreneurial leaders involved more and more in education. There are already some great examples of this happening . However it is still scratching the surface.

Then the system of doing business is still very old school – however within commerce, there is a different order, here customers make the choices. Old school ‘HMV’s’ didn’t adapt and they failed.

In business some of the old ways of sales, marketing, running business, employee relations, working environments and so on, have been ditched by forward thinking organisations, as they have seen that they have failed. Just look at the rise globally of co-working and collaborative businesses.

The old system of greed and win at all costs, which blossomed in the 1980s, has to a greater or lesser extent created a great deal of the global issues we face. It for me it symbolised the last death throws of the old system, which came to an end in 2008.

With self-employment likely to dominate the next decade and beyond, there is a chance that the new ways of collaboration, sharing and helping others to succeed could well be the catalyst for massive global change in society in general.

We stand at the fork and it’s time to say ‘goodbye old school’ and start to bring back a society not driven by short-term greed, but one driven by helping others, sharing, re-creating communities and one that realises that prosperity is about people not materials.

Focus on your customers – it’s free

Posted on by philipdodson

Focus on your customers, it’s free – by Philip Dodson

Happy customers

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Jay Conrad Levenson and his Guerrilla Marketing. Well there has never been a more apt time than now to adopt his teachings and apply it to your business.

We are living through the digital revolution, the rise of the self-employed, which will be the green shoots of economic recovery for the developed world economies.

However, with all these fledgling start-ups, often being established by young or relatively inexperienced entrepreneurs from ex-corporate backgrounds, there is a danger that if they are not resourceful they will fail.

Jay Conrad Levenson described marketing ‘as every interaction your business has with the outside world’. Essentially marketing is the most important thing in your business.

If you are prepared to be a ‘guerrilla’ marketer and not get caught up in the costly traditional marketing approach, then it won’t cost your start-up business a small fortune that you simply don’t have.

So marketing is about your website, your business card, your pitch, your Tweets, your Facebook page, your newsletter, how you answer the phone, your email address, your invoice, and so on.

However, one of the biggest aspects that people overlook is their existing customer, even if it is just a few when you start out or possibly just one.

Traditional marketing is all about sales, often sales at all costs, ticking a box when it’s done and then onto the next prospect.

Guerrilla marketers realise that it’s not sales, it’s profit that matters and there is a great deal of cost involved in getting the sale, so why not focus on keeping the ones you have got happy.  Statistically 60% plus of all customers are lost after the initial transaction due to apathy after the sale and poor follow up.

Delivering great service and following up with your existing clients costs very little. Not only will great service cost you very little to deliver, but, neither does good follow-up. That can be via newsletters, surveys, regular phone calls, offers, updates, events, face-to-face meetings, just by giving and not taking all the time and so on.

Keeping customers means lower cost repeat business and more importantly will lead to testimonials, word-of-mouth and referrals. A considerably less expensive form of marketing and likely to have significantly higher conversion ratios.

So before any spending on getting new customers, think first about making the ones you do have big advocates of you – get them to love what you do for them and finding new ones will get 100 times easier.