How To Start a Consultancy Company [Simply Business Video Interview]

The good folks at Simply Business recently did a video interview with me about Link Humans, myself and what it's like to start a new consulting company in the middle of a recession. I got this interview request through the LinkedIn group that Simply Business run. I like their approach to community buidling and use of social media, perhaps I'll interview them soon as well… Anyway, this is what they wrote:

"Employees make a business. Without the right people, any organisation will struggle to fulfil its potential. But finding those perfect candidates can be a difficult task. Recruitment is a notoriously difficult process – and one with which many businesses never truly get to grips. Technology has an increasingly important role to play in the recruitment process. Social media has rapidly become a vital tool in any recruiter’s arsenal – but many businesses are struggling to utilise it efficiently.

Link Humans arms recruiters and individuals with the knowledge they need to leverage social media effectively, in order to find either the perfect job or the perfect candidate. In this exclusive video, Link Humans’ Jorgen Sundberg tells Simply Business about the recruitment benefits of social media, and the realities of starting a recession-beating business." 

I welcome any feedback on this video, please let me know what you think in the comment section below!

Filed Under: Expert Interview, Monthly Tagged With: , ,

How Not To Make a Sales Call

 
I got a call last week from a woman that sounded like a potential client for Link Humans (my company). She introduced herself by saying her name and company and that she was recommended to speak to me by someone in a meeting she just had. Something didn't sit right with me so I only gave her small tid bits of information. She was asking whether we do work in the public sector and more importantly if we would be interested in doing so, as the spending budgets in this sector are in the billions of pounds. I explained that we are in no position to handle that much business but she persevered.

 

No research before a sales call?

 
The woman on the line then asked more about my company, what we do and our clients. She hadn't bothered to look at our website and she knew pretty much nothing about us, indicating she had done absolutely no research before a cold call  - this may save her time but she loses all credibility. She could easily have googled Link Humans and myself to get a gist of what is going on with a company. I always look people up on LinkedIn for instance before a call or meeting (although I never do cold calling to be fair).
 

Only in it for the quick sale

 
This woman I spoke to had no interest in meeting me, sending me a brochure or even an email. Her job was to close this sale on the phone there and then – classic sales stuff. The trouble is that it will never work in my mind. Business is all about building relationships, not short term wins (unless you are selling widgets on a street corner of course).
 

Knowing where the pushy boundaries are

 
Toward the end of this call I had completely lost any interest in listening to her spiel and simply said "thank you, I'm not interested". When I said this she countered with more questions like "why are you not interested in new clients with millions to spend?". I repeated my statement and she popped out one line after the other. By this time I had put her on speaker and others were listening in and giggling away, something she seemed oblivious of.
 
When a customer says they are not interested, and even repeats this I would recommend quitting for the day. The only way to continue the dialogue would be to ask to send an email or call back later – she did neither of these, only kept pushing with ultra-salesy questions. I sales you typically want to advance a relationship and get it closer to that sale, but you have to take the steps to get there. If you don't have a brochure or a PDF to email over, be a bit creative instead of just firing over more cheesy statements like "so you are telling me you want to walk away from solid new business"?
 

Word-of-mouth is the way forward

 
We will only work with companies and people we have met in person or at the very least have had a number of conversations over Skype. Link Humans typically gets clients through word-of-mouth and I prefer to have been recommended through a mutual contact. Yes, of course we get clients through social media, as it is what we do, but a surprising number of these have another connection to us as well. My point here is that cold calling companies, doing no research in advance and only looking to close an instant deal is simply not going to work.
 

How to deal with calls like these

 
When somebody sounds a bit too nice for comfort, just ask straight away: is this a sales call? When they confirm that it is (they have to), you can simply say you're not interested in anything and cut the call short. As long as you don't know the person is selling, you're wasting your precious time with a call that is leading nowhere. My gut feeling on this call was that it was a sales call but I failed to ask the question early on and wasted eight minutes of my time (and hers!). It turned into a bit of comedy instead and a blog post of course so I guess I shouldn't complain.
 

Conclusion

 
How do you deal with pushy phone sales people? Please share your tips!
 
Still looking for sales tips? How about Creating a Twitter Marketing Strategy instead.
Filed Under: Marketing, Monthly, Rant Tagged With: ,

Paywall, Payfence or Free Content: the New York Times-Are-a-Changing

 

Newspapers used to have one very simple business model: produce good journalism, print copies and sell them to people. Then along came the internet and suddenly these same newspapers started giving all their content away free. They were hoping to gain advertising revenue online but have failed to break even from their ventures. Here's a look at what some of the big papers in Britain are doing and comparing it to the New York Times' new paywall/payfence solution.
 

The Times

 
My favorite newspaper The Times (of London) recently stopped giving out free news and introduced a paywall. A paywall means you can't access any content without paying either a daily, weekly or monthly subscription online. As a result, they have lost the bulk of their traffic to the site but have gained 'tens of thousands' of paywall subscribers. They have yet to report whether they are doing well enough with this paywall, I think it's a long term plan and the order has come straight from the top of News Corporation, i.e. Rupert Murdoch.
 

The Financial Times

 
The FT have led by an encouraging example. Their payfence was set up a few years ago. I believe you are allowed to look at five articles per month for free and then stump up a fee if you want to keep reading. Their digital revenue has gone up by 50% since 2006 and they now have more than 200,000 online subscriptions. Their revenue model is currently 55% from subscriptions and 45% from advertising. We need to bear in mind that this publication is all about business, meaning companies can easily justify forking out for their employees to read the FT online.
 

The New York Times

 
My second favorite newspaper The New York Times announced their new payfence last week, it's a hybrid model where you will have to pay for reading more than 20 articles online. Any more than that and it's up to the reader to pay for a subscription. The Gray Lady is hoping this will be a good compromise between giving free content and locking everything down.
 
 
One very interesting feature of the New York Times model is that they allow you to read an unlimited number of articles as long as you click on links from social media, meaning a tweet, a Facebook update or a blog link. This is obviously designed to ensure the newspaper stays a part of the online conversation among influencers and normal folks. We'll have to give the NYT at least six months to evaluate their new approach, I shall keep a close eye on their progress and report back.
 

The Guardian

 
Another London newspaper is The Guardian who have a different model, they give all their content away like it's 1999. By doing this the paper has amassed a huge audience which they are trying to monetize with advertising revenue. The results thus far are not encouraging, the Guardian is leeking money and their online edition is leading the down the abyss. I would think there will come a time where they have to draw a line in the sand and do something radical. This could be to either sack half of their journalists or it could be to introduce a paywall of some sort, the Guardian's business model online isn't viable as it stands today.
 

The other free options

 
There are plenty of other newspapers online that give out free content just like the Guardian, seek and you shall find them. Beyond newspapers you can always use Google News which aggregates stories from all online sources, obviously with the exclusion of The Times and other paywall publications.
 
Then there are the bloggers, most of whom are more than happy to give out free content for a bit of recognition in return. The Huffington Post is a news blog that relies on free contributions by fairly well known people such as Deepak Chopra. Because they don't have to pay any journalists they are able to stay free and just charge advertisers instead of readers.
 
Finally, there is always the good old Beeb online – BBC News is a good site with plenty of newspaper-like content. This site is Rupert Murdoch's pet hate, he says it distorts competition because it's free. What he fails to realize is that British people pay for it via the TV license.
 

My experience

 
I used to read the Times online but I'm not ready to pay for it, although I do get the paper delivered on weekends. Instead I read news on other sites like the BBC, Google News and wherever I get recommended to read something via Twitter or LinkedIn. 20 articles for free on the New York Times is more than enough per month I think – especially since most web users have the attention span of a gnat (well I know I do!).
 
Do you pay for news online? Please let me know what you think of it!
Filed Under: Marketing, Monthly, Press Tagged With: , , ,

How To Reach PayPal Customer Service: Twitter

I've used PayPal for years and think it's a great service. Earlier this month PayPal asked me to change passwords, not exactly sure why but what should have been a simple password change turned into a week’s grief. I did exactly what they asked, put in a new hard-to-crack password, a few security questions and hit submit. This simply didn’t work, I got error code after error code. After having entered my mother’s maiden name and my primary school about 14 times I gave up.

Customer services?

The natural step was to have a chat with customer services. I know that it’s a pain to get through to them so I sent a little email, knowing full well that it would most likely receive an automated response. A week passed and I heard nothing back from them. During this time of no access to my PayPal account and I started thinking about alternative payment methods (when will those Facebook Credits kick in?).

Captain Twitter to the rescue

Then it suddenly dawned on me, I’ll try sending a little tweet and see what happens. A quick search on Twitter rendered two accounts of interest: @PayPayl and @AskPayPal. I tweeted both of them as per below and then had a cup of tea or something.

Next thing I know they have picked up on it, asking me to DM (direct message) the email address the PayPal account is registered against as per below.

I do this and about five minutes later I get an email and a tweet saying that normal service has been restored on my account. I checked this and yes indeed, good old PayPal was working like clockwork again.

I thanked them first in private and then did the obligatory public thank you tweet…

Twitter as customer service

There is no doubt that Twitter is a fantastic tool for customer service. The question is rather why is this the case? Customer services is certainly nothing new, some companies are great at it and other are not so great. On Twitter they all seem to be doing really well.

Do companies invest heavily in customer service on Twitter (and other social platforms) because they think it’s a useful too OR could it be that they see it as a damage limitation exercise? When you are in the phone queue to a company you get frustrated but there is nowhere to vent this in public. When you are on Twitter, your friends and indeed the whole world can see what is going on. It feels a bit like a name and shame exercise to use Twitter but you can't deny that it works.

I don’t know what their set up is down at PayPal but I expect they have a Gatorade-type battle station monitoring the social web and dive in to help wherever possible. This team operates in the borderlines of PR, communications, customer service and technology. I would imagine it's almost like the SAS or Delta Force, nobody really knows what they do and whom they report to – but they are certainly effective.

Will it last?

If you do have any problems with a company, do tweet or write on their Facebook Page wall. They have to reply fairly swiftly or they could suffer brand damage. At the moment Twitter seems to be a direct line to outstanding service, I wonder how long this will last. When everyone starts tweeting about their grievances I think we’ll find that service will slow down or at least evolve somehow. I can't imagine companies serving millions of people everyday on Twitter but I have been wrong before…

Have you ever used Twitter for customer service? 

More Twitter ideas for your company at Why You Should Use Twitter for Your Business.

Filed Under: Monthly, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

3 Great Ways to Take a Social Media Time-Out

 

 
I listened to an interesting speech by Marko Saric at the Social Media London meetup last night. Marko is a famous blogger (he runs HowToMakeMyBlog.com) and the Social Media Manager for Party Gaming, as well as an avid Metallica fan. Either of those three sides to him would be enough to fill a long speech.
 
Marko had other plans. He didn't talk about the best WordPress plugins, Lars Ulrich's facial hair or how to engage with customers on a Facebook page; he talked about something more personal and relevant to him. Being inspired by a blog post, he has recently undertaken a two week digital black out.
 
He went to a Buddhist retreat in rural England where he wasn't allowed to connect to the Internet in any way, not allowed to use a mobile phone, watch television or even read anything. It was apparently all about meditation and doing lots of thinking I would assume. He has come back a rejuvenated man with a sparkle in his eye and a healthy drink of apple juice in his hand (no ice).
 
Going to a retreat like this for a couple of weeks may seem a bit extreme for most of us. In Marko's case you can see where he is coming from as social media is not only his hobby and passion, it's his work as well. He gave us a few takeways that were food for thought and I thought I would share the three that really struck a chord with me. Here are three of Marko's tips for reducing digital stress:
 

1. Rid yourself of distractions

 
First of all he said throw out your TV – it's just a big waste of time. If you think about anyone really successful around you, do they watch much television? Didn't think so. If anything, there are on TV. Second, turn off Twitter, Facebook, email alerts and all other distractions you might have on your laptop screen or iPhone. If you work in an office you might want a quiet space to fully focus on your task at hand. It's way better to single-task and do something properly than to dip in and out of things. 
 
Anyone that does regular blogging will know the power of switching off distractions, whatever they may be. I am in fact I am writing this with Dark Room – a piece of software than blocks out anything else whilst you're creating.
 

2. Stop listening to experts

 
Stop reading blogs written by gurus, ninjas and evangelists. Same thing goes for listening to podcasts, watching YouTube clips and reading Twitter streams. By spending your time consuming you never get around to creating which is the real ticket to success. Even whilst talking Marko said 'stop listening to me, go out and do something instead'. 
 
Marko has recently downsized his own RSS feeds; fair play as he was subscribing to no less than 200 blogs! I personally subscribe to about 20 RSS feeds and it's hard to keep up, especially with blogs that publish several times per day. Some industry blogs run exactly the same story on the same day and only the wording is slightly different, there is no need to read the same thing three times in a day so downsize it to one blog per topic.
 

3. Take complete time-outs

 
Just like Marko did for two weeks, we can all take a digital time-out. You don't have to go anywhere, staying at home works as well but requires a tad more discipline as all your temptations are there in from of you. Begin with unplugging your computer for an hour or so. Start small and work your way up to perhaps a whole Sunday or a full weekend per month. 
 
Marko says it recharges your batteries and gets you more focused on what it is you really want to achieve as opposed to getting bogged down with details. I do a day or two completely offline and off any other media every now and then, it does feel great but it's also hard to begin with as the withdrawal symptoms kick in.
 

Your turn to test this out

 
I think these pieces of advice are great and want to thank Marko for his speech and inspiration, I will definitely test his ideas and hope you will as well. Will be reporting back on my progress here on the blog of course.
 
Do you agree with these tips and do you practice them?
 
Read more about Marko in this interview and check out his post Digital Downtime and the Art of Blogging.
Filed Under: Blogging, Monthly, Social Media Tagged With: ,
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