On Internet Business

Royal Wedding: Good for business?

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Online Retail

Yes, or no. Depending on your viewpoint and who you listen to. While some see it as a good thing, others fear that the double bank holiday weekends, back to back, will cause long term damage to small businesses. There’s a lot of secrecy about the cost of the wedding, but there’s also some concern about law and order costs. Those who are expecting to do well include retailers – but holiday companies are wondering if the spike in holidaymakers ‘escaping the wedding’ will mean that people have swapped a summer break for an extravagant weekend, with consequent losses over the summer to come.

Plus points
Visit London anticipates 600,000 extra visitors over the wedding period

Estimates on the extra expenditure on celebratory food and drink range from £230m to £360m.

1am licences will probably increase pub sales massively

Sales of collectibles could be up to £200m – yes, £200 million pounds is likely to be spent on plates, coins and jigsaws. And around a quarter of that will go to online retailers.

Minus points

Westminster City Council reckons street cleaning will cost £30,000 to £40,000 more than it usually does.

Those 1am licences are likely to add a large burden to the law and order budget as drunks cause damage to themselves and their surroundings. Add that to the security costs for the wedding, reckoned to be around £15m and the UK is facing a hefty bill for keeping the peace at home.

Loss of productivity from the bank holiday given to workers is calculated to be around £2.9bn. Small and medium sized businesses are being worst hit, with some saying that the two bank holidays in a working week could top them into the red.

There will be a loss in high street retailing on the day itself – calculated to be up to two-thirds of the usual Friday spend.

Prince William courtesy of Rob the Moment

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Recession, Business and Thinking

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Leadership

The deep recession that has been choking growth in many countries has been both swift and unpredictable in nature. Is there any way of planning for the unplannable? Yes, says Harvard Business Review, amongst others.

There’s plenty of uncertainty around, but the challenges aren’t so much about predictability as about thinking. If businesses get into the habit of being reactive and fighting fires, they lose the priceless asset of strategic assessment of the business world and their place in it.

As an example, when businesses experience a blip in good times, they often just accommodate it – a loss in performance or sales could just be viewed as something to ‘get over’. But when recession has taken a business to its leanest, there’s rarely any padding to accommodate a blip, and that can tip an enterprise, especially an SME into panic reactions.

When demand changes

Recession can cause a drop in demand, as the retail sales index has demonstrated this week. Panic thinking could blind a business to its opportunities, such as the chance to acquire smaller rivals who are struggling even more or the scope offered by looking at alternative markets into which to expand.

Price plunges

Dizzying price drops have been a feature of the current recession, as have soaring price escalations, especially around petroleum based products and raw materials.  Businesses need to make time to observe their purchasing costs, the downtime between purchase and resale and whether it can be reduced, and areas of inefficiency in processing product or service which could be improved. It’s said that Dell computers had to halve its prices in the USA after 9/11 but still managed to make a little profit … time spent ensuring that competition in price is backed by strong processes can make a small profit into the margin of safety that saves a business.

Employee Focus

Companies need to take care of their employees in crisis times, because stress can damage individuals and bottom lines. Loyalty doesn’t just pay dividends, it can be valuable when you have to shed staff, as those who’ve been treated well are less likely to take hostile positions or organise protests. But the focus needs to be carefully balanced – too little attention can lead to an organisation losing its top talent and retaining the more mundane members of the workforce, while too much attention creates division and empire building. While strategy focuses on employees, the employees themselves should be focused on clients, otherwise a business becomes navel-gazing not outward-looking.

Chess courtesy of muffet

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Why is sales such a dirty word in the UK?

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Leadership

A recent thread in the IoD forum raised the question of ‘sales’ which is often a word that causes British businesses to shuffle their feet. Why is ‘sales’ a dirty word in the UK, when it’s not in other parts of the world, and what can we do to address the problem?

First, the historical perspective – the UK has not always been bad at selling its goods, or itself. The empire builders of the Victorian era had many faults but self-doubt was rarely one of them, and the UK in the Swinging Sixties, from London to Liverpool was an exporter of fashion, music and luxury goods as well as a powerhouse of technological innovation – so what’s changed?

What are the problems we experience?

A whole range of issues were raised during the discussion:

1.    ‘traditional British reserve’
2.    the fact the UK education system does not recognise sales as a skill set, teach it or support it with academic training or research
3.    the negative way that people in the UK respond to the word ‘sales,
4.    the low value given to sales training and problem solving selling which results in poor sales people giving inappropriate ‘hard sells’
5.    UK salespeople being one-dimensional and difficult to deal with, also that they are rewarded in the short term and differently to their colleagues so it’s in their interest to ‘sell and run’ to make targets because somebody else in the company has to deal with any shortfall in expectations or performance in the long term.
6.    The problem is seen by some as an urban myth – they find no problem generating leads and sales and think it’s just a story told by bad salespeople to excuse their performance

What can be done to correct these problems?

The solutions were commonsensical and innovative at the same time – it seems that many businesses are clear about what needs to happen, but government and academe aren’t necessarily listening.

•    More focus on lifetime relationships and solving problems, not hard sell and run
•    Teach salespeople to map the decision-making process so that the customer gets the right information in the right order at the right time to allow them to develop trust. It’s not the same process of every customer at every time and understanding it helps serve customer interests and business profits.
•    Look at other cultures – in America, if you have a good business proposition you don’t hesitate to reach out to new clients or new partners and you’ll generally be given a hearing if it seems you are offering something of value. By contrast many British businesses seem to rely on familiarity and loyalty rather than expansion.
•    Find ways to get sales on the UK curriculum at all levels, as a career, as a research topic and as a philosophy in business schools.

Happy/unhappy salesman courtesy of petesimon

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