anecdotes, stories and insights on what ireckon!
Well this month I had to come back from my holiday camping at the beach for the Qld Leaders monthly meeting. Always a shame to interrupt a good holiday but unfortunately there wasn’t a day without an interruption, so was a break if not a holiday.
Being committed to the 12 month process, there was no option of not going.
So last week was my second hit of Queensland Leaders. As discussed by previous participants, you definitely get more each time from it.
This week we had presentations from a whole raft of people, but including ABN Amro Morgans (Philip Lee), McMahon Clarke Legal (Langton Clarke) and BBS (Amanda Newbery). Sometimes it is hard in short sessions to gather all your thoughts together, but these 3 were all very relevant to me / ireckon at this time and it had my mind spinning a little.
Particularly useful was a checklist provided by Langton Clarke which covered about 100 questions, to check how investment ready you are. As ireckon has grown so quickly over the last few years, I often look back at the trail left behind by the growth whirlwind wondering if all is in order.
Those familiar with the historic fairy tale of the 3 little pigs will recall that 3 pigs set out in the world to make their way and fortunes. Each of the pigs chooses materials to make their house from. 1 chose straw, 1 chose sticks and 1 bricks.
The first 2 are able to finish their houses quickly and set about doing other things, while the 3rd pig takes a lot longer to build his brick house. As time goes by the wolf appears looking to feed on the pigs and one by one attacks the houses with some famous lines “Little pig little pig let me in” and “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down”.
The first 2 pigs meet a horrible end when the wolf is able to blow their houses down and swallow them up. The 3rd pig’s house being built on solid foundations and in a very strong / solid way is able to easily repel the wolf’s efforts to blow it down.
The wolf then tries to outsmart the pig to get him out of the house but the pig uses its head to outsmart the wolf and in the original versions ends up killing the wolf in a boiling pot of water (a trap).
Okay so you are wondering where this is going?
Systems are important for business. In previous posts I have mentioned that as we have grown we have tried to find ways to improve our systems constantly so that we can continue to maintain the service levels we aim to.
Any business owner knows this can be hard.
As your business changes sometimes you don’t change enough to see it at the same time, and have to keep stepping back to check what is and isn’t working.
Recently I was lucky to be provided some feedback by one of our customers that highlighted where the system had broken down for her, and that was worth gold!
Today I experienced it (I see it lots) at another business.
So here is something which is hard for all service businesses. Losing a customer, or customers who want to cancel their subscriptions. Remember that customers who choose to go elsewhere, or just have no need for your service anymore are not necessarily lost forever.
We recently chose to use a Search Tool called Keyword Spy to do some strategic reviewing of a campaign. We subscribed for a couple of months, which was great, and got great value out of it.
But in good systematised cost control, my Chief of Search (yes that is his title), came and said we can cancel that sub for now because it isn’t needed at present. We regularly do this as we use possibly 50+ tools to keep up with a whole bunch of areas to do with Search Optimisation and Marketing, so hibernating the ones we aren’t using at present is part of the beauty of Software (or tools) as a Service (SaaS).
That is when the problem started.