Get cash for your opinion – has anybody tried this out?:

In essence the speakers were giving us some feedback and assessments of the World Cup and its impact on South Africa. At the moment, there is a lack of hard data so a lot of the feedback is still anecdotal but I thought there were some interesting things out of the presentations:

• Foreign tourists spent about R8bn by Grant Thornton assessments
• Tour group Tourvest said it handled 83000 people and 88000 room nights as well 9790 vehicle movements
• Regarded by Fifa, international media and observers as “one of the most successful World Cups ever”

I thought that was really cool and there were some really encouraging comments which I think should be stuck in the back of your mind:

Gillian Saunders:

• There are a lot of opportunities for mega sports and business events to be hosted in South Africa and every time we successfully pull one of these off it encourages other companies to host events here
• Pointing to the recent successes with the IPL cricket, there are an increasing number of companies coming to South Africa and setting up a presence here
• Opportunities not just for sports events but things like medical conferences
• Grant Thornton are going to be hosting its annual corporate conference in South Africa

Adrian Saville

• “There was a clear winner in this – South Africa”
• “Demonstrated that Afro-Pessimism is misplaced”
• “We have permanently improved the infrastructure in South Africa”
• The recent Adcorp survey shows that there are a number of skilled people coming back to South Africa to look for work. This should be seen as a positive as it reverses our skills drain and brings skills back into our economy which means we score on the innovation front

Colleen Magner

Colleen brought out a press release  from trade union Cosatu. I want you to read it because it is a very important quote if you consider who is saying it, I think it is well said:

“But it has been an even bigger psychological triumph for the country. It has instilled an unprecedented feeling of national pride and self-esteem. It has led to an explosion of patriotism that extended to the entire continent. This patriotism has been rubbed off on the young South Africans now and for many generations to come. It has brought us together as a nation as never before, except possibly for one day on 27 April 1994.”

Well said.

But perhaps the most telling quote for me came from Colleen herself when she said:

“We have this window where we are the golden child of the world…”

Before I sign off for tonight I want to perhaps leave you with a thought. Just 6% of economic activity in South Africa, is generated by entrepreneurs. That is an absolutely miniscule part of the economy and yet every single day we have seen an increasing number of entrants for our SME competition and we see bloggers signing up on Bundublog to try and promote their businesses.

Let’s get out there and support them and make a material change to the South African economy.

Until next time.

Out!

The guy who dropped me the message tells me that “pimp” is cool but “punk” is not so cool…

Hey feedback is feedback and I will take what comes but here’s the thinking behind the name.

Words and phrases linked with the word “punk” in slang context include:

- Aggressive
- Unconventional
- Bizarre
- Shocking
- distinguished by extremes of dress and socially defiant behavior
- A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group
- A type of rock ‘n’ roll with loud, energetic music and often harsh lyrics criticizing traditional society and culture.

Which I thought summed up entrepreneurs quite nicely – considering that this blog has used unconventional businesses like strip clubs to prove its point from time to time I think that can be called “unconventional”.

I also started looking for some quotes which I thought linked the words Punk and Entrepreneur so nicely. Here are a couple of them:

“If you looked different, people tried to intimidate you all the time. It was the same kind of crap you had to put up with as a hippie, when people started growing long hair. Only now it was the guys with the long hair yelling at you. You think they would have learned something. I had this extreme parrot red hair and I got hassled so much I carried a sign that said ‘FUCK YOU ASSHOLE.’ I got so tired of yelling it, I would just hold up the sign.” [Bobby Startup, Philadelphia punk DJ, "Philadelphia Weekly," Oct. 10, 2001] 

How many entrepreneurs have been intimidated because they went against the grain and tried something a little different?

“Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.” – Greil Marcus (b. 1945), U.S. rock journalist. “Punk and History,” Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture (eds. Russell Ferguson, et. al. (1990).

“At its best New Wave/punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they’ll be creative about it, and do something good besides.” – Lester Bangs – punk

My response to the person who e-mailed me:
Hi there

Thanks for your e-mail with your feedback. Sorry I am only getting back to you at 10pm on a Saturday night. Things have been a little crazy since we announced the launch of the competition.

What with entrepreneurs getting their entries in, venture capitalists and sponsors pledging their support and money, a TV producer phoning me up and asking me if we want to turn the concept into a TV show, a government department and a multi-national telecomms firm asking if they can partner with us for two international conferences they are putting together…. yip things have been quite busy.

Remind me again what it is that you did on Friday? Oh that’s right you took the time to compose an e-mail to tell me how “ill conceived” my concept was.

Do me a favour and go and crawl back into your hole or I’ll come drop-kick you into it.

Lot of love
Management

I saw a really nice campaign today which I think small business marketers should take note of.

You can find the competition details here on Chris’ iMod blog. In a nutshell people need to collect World Cup cups on certain blogs and  follow the Twitter feeds and Facebook page for Springleap for clues about where the various cups are.

Once you’ve found all 4 cups, you’ll need to follow a website link and predict who you think will win the World Cup by dropping an e-mail to the Springleap team. (Not sure if this is one step too much but let’s see how this competition plays out)

The blogs involved are Ideate, Fred Roed and iGeek.

What I thought was really innovative about this campaign though was the idea of using a group of bloggers to promote the competition. What a brilliant way for the bloggers to score by attracting traffic to their blogs (as people seek clues) and for Springleap to get their brand out there.

I hope both marketers and bloggers – both on Bundublog and in general – take note of how you can use blogs as part of a marketing strategy for relatively low-cost and for potentially powerful returns.

Would love feedback from the bloggers involved as to the how they benefited by being involved in this particular promotion.

What I thought was quite innovative about this particular campaign is the use of blogs which would typically be very low-cost advertising plans. All parties can score from a relationship of this nature.

As far as small businesses go, strip clubs have their work cut out for them when it comes to marketing tastefully or at least intelligently enough to appeal to certain audiences.

I had a bad experience at the Lollipop Lounge (Read bachelors evening) so I’ve always been wary about going back there, but a (female) colleague invited me to join their Facebook group and I’ve been very impressed with the way they have used social media to market themselves.

For those with short memories you will remember that Gigi (of Lollipop Lounge fame) was the recent winner of the local “celebrity” edition of Survivor. The club has (excuse the pun) milked this exposure for all its worth and have kept up a very active social media presence on Facebook.

For example their latest competition says that every month, you can win yourself and a friend free entrance to the Lollipop Lounge and a cubicle dance with the girl of your choice. All you have to do is go into the club and get a photo of yourself taken with Gigi in a super “sexy” pose and you could be a winner.

Clever campaign because:

A) It involves you having to go into the club in the first place – like the lotto – you have to be in it to win it
B) The Facebook group involves active participation – its not just a case of you signing up for the group because your mate sent you the link
C) You have to participate in the brand
D) Strip clubs can be intimidating places but a competition / campaign like this maybe pokes a bit of fun at the experience and makes it worth while

So in a nutshell – thumbs up to the team at Lollipop Lounge – think you guys are doing really well with this campaign – keep it up!

What?! The civilised first world country is being crippled by anarchy while the savages of Africa are holding a hugely entertaining and (so far) incident free World Cup…. surely that is not right?

For sure the two events are not directly comparable but who remembers just a few months back when all the scare-mongerers were talking up terrorist threats, stab-proof vests, machete wielding gangs, crazy alcoholic English football thugs and even a friggin earthquake which was going to cripple the country?

Who remembers how much fun the media had quoting those two economists who said South Africa wouldn’t really see much in the way of benefits to the economy and would ultimately regret having the World Cup here?

• Do we regret the fact that the French football side spent R6m on their hotel bill? I’m pretty sure the Knysna economy is not regretting it.
• Do we regret the fact that South Africans finally learnt to start using public transport systems like the bus, train or Gautrain?

My point is that once again we have punched above our weight and proven to the world we can deliver world class services. When problems have come up – e.g. the security guard strike or the Bavaria girl issue - we had solutions on hand.

It just proves once again what a damn good country we have.

Anyway – now that I have done my partriotic chest beating thing I do have one observation from this world cup and I think that it might have a lesson for small business in it.

I’ve been watching the whole public transport thing with quite a lot of curiousity. International tourists have come here and they have had no idea that most of us white, middle-class South Africans didn’t even know we had a bus or train service until this world cup rolled around.

Or… maybe we knew it existed but it ”just wasn’t for us”…? Now we gleefully jump on trains, taxis and busses into Soweto to go and cheer on international sports stars.

How much does that sound like a problem that many small businesses face? Good product – I am just not totally sure how to use it so I’ll stick in the back of my mind but not make the decision to buy right now…

There’s a saying which goes something like “tell me and I’ll say I’ve learnt, show me and I will actually do it” … public transport is exactly the same concept. You can tell us as much as possible about the routes and the fares but until I actually get walked through the process I am not going to actually do something about it.

I dunno – maybe stick that in the back of your mind when you are trying to design marketing concepts or trying to roll out new offerings for your SME. 

In the interim I am off to bed to dream happy dreams of either Germany or Chile winning the World Cup!

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This morning I received a phone call from “Keegan” representing a company called “Autocare” which I googled – you can find them at www.autocare.co.za

Anyway I have much sympathy for call-centre people because I have had to do the odd cold-calling and I am truly useless at it. But Keegan may have usurped even my pathetic skills - he didn’t wait for my answers – he simply carried on reading from the script trying to sell me something “that wasn’t a contract” but involved “a regular monthly payment”.

I couldn’t work out exactly what he was selling but it sounded like some car repair offering which I would pay for each month.

Eventually I said I was not interested but was curious to know where he got my cell number from. He said it was from a “legally acquired list”. When I asked where they “legally acquired” it from he said he did not have that information on hand.

“Oh ok – well have a nice day then Keegan and enjoy the soccer”

“Wait – Mr Ashton would it be possible for you to please give me the names and cellphone numbers of 5 people you think would be interested in this service?”

“Uh no”

You contrast that to the post we did below about Scott’s referral campaign for Brandhouse and you just see where people go so wrong in their marketing. It must have cost Autocare a fair whack of money to pull in a callcentre to do this campaign and based on this telephone call they have gone backwards for the money they have invested.

Yet ironically both companies are trying to get to the same point.

Dunno – didn’t leave a very good taste in my mouth.

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As I understand it the 3@1 store is supposed to be a small business support type offering?

On their website it says:

“Committed to Meeting the Communication Needs of Individuals and Businesses”

Anyway my bank said that they had not received a document from me and asked me to re-send. I was in the car at the time and thought I would go and knock it off my to-do list.

I popped into the 3@1 in Ferndale and asked them to fax it to the 086 number that they had given me. While the guy was sorting the fax machine out I popped into Spar and came back to pay – the cashier said it had cost me R123…

WTF?!

Where the hell did this fax get sent? The Arctic?

Apparently it is R8 for the first page and R5 something for the following pages. What a friggin rip off…

Humble piece of advice – rather don’t support the 3@1 business offering. They are not geared toward small business and they are certainly not pushing to support the sector or encourage return business.

So endeth this whinge….

Below is a copy of an e-mail that he sent to me earlier this week which I think highlights how effective a good referral campaign can be! Go check out his site and read some of the other success stories there:

Almost a Million Referrals in a Single Campaign!!!

In what must be, by far, the most successful viral campaign in South African history, Captain Morgan received 780,000 people in its database in less than two months.

“We started out with just 10,000 correct email addresses,” says Lizanne Bartlett, marketing manager for Brandhouse. “At its peak we received almost 40,000 new referrals a day!”

The campaign is very simple: win a weekend for you and three mates worth R50,000. The catch? To invite your three mates, you have to enter their names and email addresses. Those three mates then enter the competition and refer another three mates, and so the process continues.

“But there is more to that,” claims Scott Cundill, founder and CEO of MajesticWay.net, the company behind the technology and strategy of the campaign.

“Very few viral campaigns work as well as this. In fact, you are extremely lucky if you double the size of your database using only viral. We needed a few extra tricks up our sleeve!

Among these tricks were:

• Ensuring that the registration process was as quick and simple as possible – no fancy graphics or long downloads
• Notifying competition entrants when the mates they referred had accepted their invitation
• Ensuring that every email is highly personalised, very short and has links back to the referral page

However, Cundill admits that a good idea is always at the heart of a successful campaign. “We have to give full credit to Brandhouse for giving us a really good idea. It worked brilliantly.”

With over 1.5 million emails being sent out, each from The Captain and proudly displaying the Captain Morgan Black Label bottle, one has to admit that the brand exposure and interaction is intense. And with 278,000 people actually entering the competition, the brand is sitting on the perfect platform from which they can launch any number of future initiatives.

And it gets better. Most of these people have returned a second time to complete a survey of all the other Brandhouse drinks they enjoy. This data, coupled with information such as gender, location, age and preferred activity, will be used for tactical marketing campaigns across other brands in the stable.

Majestic very seldom works with large brands because they tend to be too conservative. However, Cundill has nothing but admiration for the freedom that was given to him. “I have to admit that the Captain Morgan team at Brandhouse is unlike any other corporation we have worked with. They are progressive and a pleasure to deal with.”

Small businesses can take heart from this knowledge. Not having an email marketing strategy is dangerous in this day and age and this success story proves that anyone can grow a large database very quickly.

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I had a long chat with Tracy Pepper from Girlsport this week and she re-inforced for me that enthusiasm trumps pretty much everything else when she is recruiting. Sure a bit of technical knowledge is important (in her case soccer coaching), but people respond better to enthusiastic co-workers rather than unenthusiastic robots.

I thought maybe as a starting point for this discussion I would make some observations about mistakes I have made when recruiting and we take it from there:

Sales: Pay peanuts get monkeys
One thing I’m guilty of (and have seen other SME’s do) is go into this idea of paying a youngster R3-R4k a month plus commission and bundle that up as your sales force. There is no customer relationship management (CRM) systems in place or customer database for them to start off, there is not enough marketing going out to justify their existence and quite simply the people that end up being hired have not got a real clue about selling.

The business owner gets grumpy after three months of “non-performance” and the rep sits their wondering what they are supposed to do.

Some thoughts:

1. You as the business owner are the best seller of the business. You understand why your product or service important. Don’t depend on a “hired gun” to share that enthusiasm.

2. If you don’t have any sales tools in place like support marketing, databases etc. the inexperienced rep is on a hiding to nothing.

3. Look for somebody with good telesales experience – at least get the initial doors opened and get in front of prospective clients.

4. Experience goes a bloody long way – rather pay a few bucks more for somebody who has actually got a few stripes on their shoulders for selling than somebody who is coming in to their first job.

Systems beat people
We all live in hope that we will find that rare addition to our team who adds real value. When you do find them – keep them!

However for the majority of the people who will come through your business it is a passing phase for them. They can jump up and down and swear blind that they have bought into the “vision” or the “future” of the company but experience has made me cynical.

Which brings me to my second point and that is that systems beat people. Good systems will eliminate a lot of dead wood.

In the first point I said that a sales force is pointless without having a database to work with or potential customers to contact. If you’re hiring administration staff then they have to be contributing to the system. If they walk out the door tomorrow are you left with anything? Do you have a contact database? Is your tax up-to-date? Do you have something that is transferable?

Judge the people you hire by what they are contributing to the system as opposed to their bubbly personalities. Try and account for “bubbly personality” in the goodwill of your business accounts.

Manage, account, score
I got a really good piece of advice this week and as simplistic as it sounds it is 100% correct… the advice is simple “People really are that useless”.

It might sound disparaging but it was not said in that tone. We were discussing an employee of her business who simply had no concept of prioritising things and understanding why things certain things are more important than other things.

Her solution had been to give him a list each day prioritising items and identifying when they had to be done. The productivity had gone up and there was no more missed expectations on either side.

Micro-managing goes against every fibre of my concept of small business, but that’s probably why I am such a useless recruiter. If people know what to expect, they can tick off the items on the list. You know what is important in the bigger picture. If they are procrastinating with lesser items then you can’t complain when the end of the month rolls around and you’re scratching your head wondering why there is no money in the bank but a fabulous supply of coffee in the staff canteen….

Conclusion
Enthusiasm is a critical point of hiring good staff. However nobody else is going to buy into the “bigger picture” of your business in the same way that you do. Staff are there to add value, not to be eye-candy, or to fob work that you don’t have the appetite for.

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