January/February 2005

Greetings

In this issue of Geewiz News you'll find:

• Tsunami Thank You
• Christmas Relaxation Lessons
• Marketing Evaluation Idea
• Sales Planning Tip
• Interesting Book
• Sales & Marketing Institute of NZ
• Quick Checklist of 2005
• Start up Questions to ask yourself about your business
• New Additions to the Geewiz Website
• Seminars for February, March & April
• Welcome to New Geewiz Friends
• The Outlook for 2005

Tsunami Thank You

A great big thank you to all those readers of Geewiz News that will have contributed help to the terrible tsunami disaster, and spare a thought for the Malaysian and Thailand business readers of Geewiz News - all of us hope for your speedy recovery. 

Isn't it interesting, when such a disaster occurs, how people working together with people can actually make a significant difference?. It really is a lesson for 2005 that people do business with people -  people achieve change through working with people, so let's not have systems and processes that take away the people contact.

Christmas Relaxation Lessons

So now we've had either short or long breaks, and we're all feeling refreshed, recharged, and maybe those batteries are ready to run again, how about sparing a thought for your planning for 2005, and when are you going to plan for some regular breaks to make sure that you can perform in top condition all year, and not yet like I did at the end of 2004 - utterly exhausted! 

Here are some ideas for making sure that you plan some recharge time:

• Plan to take, and book out, one week per quarter for holiday time. Choose the week and mark it in your diary now.
• Perhaps instead of a week, decide to take a long weekend every month - be it a Friday weekend or a Monday weekend and book out in your diary to take one long weekend, and then make sure that that long weekend is going to be used for relaxation.
• Look at your peaks of business and make sure that just prior to the peak trading season or selling season or marketing demands, that you take some time out for yourself and also any staff that are working with you to make sure you are in top condition.
• If you are the owner of the business, when have you scheduled your staff holiday breaks to make sure that they are all having holiday breaks and then most of all, where have you scheduled your breaks?
• It's easy to plan one week breaks isn't it, but remember that one week is generally not long enough to actually recharge.  A two week break is far better every six months than one week stolen every now and again.
• How about scheduling your breaks with the school holidays if you've got school aged children?
  If you're in New Zealand or Australia you might as well enjoy February and March because that's when the hot weather of summer is going to occur, as we've all had such an awful wet Christmas, the wettest period in ten years. However, let's look on the opportunity side, that means that our customers are going to be in a great mood for February and March because the sun will be shining, the staff will be enjoying work, and you will get lots of things done.

Marketing Evaluation Idea

Most of you who are experienced in marketing will have heard of the product life cycle with its four stages of Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline.  I wonder how many of you have thought of using this concept to position your products and services according to where they are in the market place.

Take each of your main products and position them on a graph into the categories as to whether they are Introduction, Growth, Maturity or Decline, and then having completed all of your products and services have a look at your total company performance across the products that you sell. Have you got too many products heading towards the top end of Maturity and moving into Decline?  Have you got too many products in the Introduction so that you are spending scarce resources trying to introduce new products instead of moving products through the Growth phase to maximise your sales and profit opportunities, and also the Maturity phase where you are getting as much revenue as possible out of the target market segment?

Then make your decisions based of which products you are going to get rid of, or services your going to stop offering, because they are in the decline stage, and how many products you can afford to have in the Introduction and Growth stages given your company's resources, and plan yourself ahead for 2005.

Every time I do this with a marketing client it opens up incredible possibilities for fine tuning and restructuring of products or the brands or the services - I invite you to give it a go.

Sales Planning Tip

This is a practical, visual, enlightening project which I recently had a distribution client undertake. That is, I got them to get two wall maps and a whole pile of coloured pins, and position their customers according to A, B or C categories in the location around the country.  This visually gives you an idea of where your key customers are, shows you how much travelling time you're going to be spending getting towards important customers, and also highlights the geographic areas that you need to have good service in, regular calls in, effective call cycles, and most of all how to plan your sales force coverage according to your existing customer base and known customer potential.

Along the way of achieving this wall map, it forces you to look at customer revenue results, and also identify any customers that are high in revenue but also high in servicing costs either by their method of operation or the distances you have to travel. You very quickly see where your best customers are located, and you can do a comparison with your best sales people as to whether they have the existing potential in their geographic area or whether they are wasting their time.

My last client that I got to do this exercise now has a very clear view of where he should base his next distribution location, where he should restructure his sales force, and best of all he had the rest of the management team and the sales and the customer service people coming and looking at the map and realising where the potential for improvement was.  All it requires is a couple of very large maps, a bit of wall space, and some different coloured pins.

Interesting Book

"The 8th Habit" Stephen Covey's new book following up on the five years' old "7 Habits" is a great read, and really focuses on supporting my messages of people doing business with people, people handling change, coaching people's potential, and setting standards that everybody understands.  Some really good messages in this book, if you get a chance go and buy yourself a copy and read it.  It will certainly motivate you to managing your company and your staff far better, and most of all it will re-enforce some commonsense basics and provide some new ideas.  The CD supplied in the copy that I've bought has some one and two minute DVD movies, and will prove great for showing at your sales meetings, your staff meetings, or even at customer presentations.

Talking about books, coming up in 2005 will be a new reprint of my book "Practical Marketing in New Zealand" and the launch of "Selling Opportunities" which will be a book on sales, and an updated reprint of "Marketing and the Law", and if that wasn't enough to keep you busy I've also scheduled to record another double CD set of sales and marketing tips.

Sales and Marketing Institute of NZ

I guess many of you will know that I am President of this professional institute, and I have agreed to take it on for another year (2005), and I really do encourage you to participate in the events in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch. It's a great organisation for managers and CEOs to attend a once a month leadership event, for marketing managers and marketing people to attend the marketing strategy lunches, and for sales people and sales managers to attend the sales management breakfasts. You can check out more on this organisation on www.salesmarketing.org.nz.

In March of 2005, the institute will be announcing details of the first New Zealand Sales and Marketing Awards, which will be focused on recognising its sales people, sales managers, marketing managers who create fabulous results for their clients and customers.

I encourage you to recognise yourself, and your top performers, by encouraging them to enter, or for your own organisation to enter.

Quick Checklist of 2005 Start up Questions to ask yourself about your business

• What's your current customer acquisition cost?
• How much time do your sales reps spend face to face?
• How successful is your quotes and winning tenders ratio?
• How many of your A category customers increased their business during last year?
• How many D category customers should you be terminating relationships with this year?
• How much information is contained within your database, eg. cellphone numbers, email addresses, text capable cellphone indicators of your key customers?
• What do the measurement results show for your last advertising or promotional campaign in numbers of additional sales generated, customers gained, or brand awareness?
• What is your budget planning process and how much of your budget ownership is taken by your sales or customer service or marketing team as being their responsibility to achieve?
• What has your customer complaint register shown that you need to improve on?
• How responsive is your direct marketing campaign?
• When was the last time every member of your sales or customer service or marketing team checked your own company's website, and/or checked your main other suppliers' websites?
• What budget have you set yourself for the month of September 2005 when the general election may be held?
• How many client referrals did you receive during last year?
• What marketing objectives would you like to achieve per quarter for each quarter of 2005?

New Additions to the Geewiz Website

Up on the website are the full details of the 2005 seminar schedule for public seminars in New Zealand, and it shows all the details of where seminars will be held in the main cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch plus also Whangarei, Dargaville, Kerikeri, Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga, Taupo, New Plymouth, Wanganui, Napier, Nelson, Blenheim, Greymouth, Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill, and if I have missed out any cities contact me for a personalised presentation!  In addition I will be presenting overseas during 2005 in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Vietnam at this stage before I get any other further bookings.

You can book seminars online, or of course at any one of my public seminar partners - Chambers of Commerce or EMA in the relevant locations.  Here is the schedule for the first three months and if you go onto the website you can see the full twelve months.

I am available for in-company conference speaking, seminars, workshops and adding to the skills of your team and look forward to working with you and the members your sales and marketing and customer service teams.

Seminars for February, March & April