Whilst we’re going to be teaching various theoretical concepts, there is absolutely no substitute to having a real live expert giving their real life experiences, and we’re fortunate today to be talking to Claire Owen, founder and leader of the SG Group, the UK’s largest marketing recruitment agency

Claire is a woman of many talents – she set up Stopgap in 1993 after being made redundant, holds an HGV licence, used to supplement her grant  by delivering loo rolls and frozen turkeys and has keynoted at the IOD annual conference. More importantly, Claire is a multi- award winning leader and her company is award winning too, mainly because of her passion for leadership.

In the second part of this interview, Claire’s back with some practical examples of what she’s done to lead the SG Group into being the success it is today.

Related articles

• You are the boss now it is all your fault

We’ve all had experiences of where being a customer or a potential customer has not been a pleasant one. Faceless corporations are often guilty of not being able to provide the personalised touches customers crave in today’s fickle society.

The ones who get it right will win through. The Amazons, who know what you’ve bought and proactively recommend ’stuff you might like’… the First Direct’s (The UK’s first telephone banking service) whose call centre staff are positively encouraged to have personalities and to not be robots and the Virgin Atlantics who steal business from their competition by continuously innovating.

The ones who ignore these new rules will fail… they already are.

We wanted to get a CEO’s perspective on how customers should really be treated. Aaron McCormack is CEO of BT’s Conferencing and Collaboration businesses worldwide with revenues of over $500m, 40,000 customers and 1200 people.

Aaron has climbed the ranks of BT and has always put customers at the heart of his strategy and vision and we are fortunate today to get the second part of his from the top, when we focus on account management and how to make it world class.

We’ve all had experiences of where being a customer or a potential customer has not been a pleasant one. Faceless corporations are often guilty of not being able to provide the personalised touches customers crave in today’s fickle society.

The ones who get it right will win through. The Amazons, who know what you’ve bought and proactively recommend ’stuff you might like’… the First Direct’s (The UK’s first telephone banking service) whose call centre staff are positively encouraged to have personalities and to not be robots and the Virgin Atlantics who steal business from their competition by continuously innovating.

The ones who ignore these new rules will fail… they already are.

We wanted to get a CEO’s perspective on how customers should really be treated. Aaron McCormack is CEO of BT’s Conferencing and Collaboration businesses worldwide with revenues of over $500m, 40,000 customers and 1200 people.

Aaron has climbed the ranks of BT and has always put customers at the heart of his strategy and vision and we are fortunate today to get his view from the top.

The introduction will then appear below…

Advicelet benefits: Find out what your customers and prospects are really thinking. Stop second guessing them and change your processes accordingly.

Image via Wikipedia

In our second part of this revealing subject on getting the best market intelligence your sales and marketing teams could wish for, Chris Bowyer, Sales Director extraordinaire and win loss analysis expert (we can call him that because he’s done dozens of them as an independent) is back in the studio.

Today, Chris reveals some of his secrets to first of all securing a win or loss interview, and then goes on to explain the process he uses as an independent to get the most from the report and ensure that it does not get dusty on a shelf.

Whilst Chris speaks from an independent’s perspective, there is no question that this advice can be followed by someone from the selling organisation – although as we discuss – they do need to be independent of the sales process which has just gone on.

This is such a great example of how advice in The 8.45 Club can be absorbed and then acted on … today – so there’s our challenge to you… start the video and take action immediately.

Related articles

• Getting To No.
• The Purchasing Process: How To Engage Your Potential Customers
• A Better Selling Model
• Implications, Emotion In Marketing and Sales
• Five Fundamentals to Sales Super-Stardom in 2009

Advicelet benefits: Time savings, sanity savings, profile raising

Image by Scott Matthewman via Flickr

If in doubt, call a meeting – that’s right isn’t it? Some 25 million meetings take place in corporate America daily. Roughly half that time is wasted. According to a Microsoft survery in 2007, the average time a worker spends in meetings each week around the world ins 5.6 hours and 69% claim these meetings are unproductive.

How many hours do you spend a week attending meetings? Is there a better way – would a phone call suffice? Would a quick chat over coffee get the job done? It’s always worth considering.

There are always times however, when it is absolutely necessary to have a meeting whether it’s to get a decision made or to review a business case etc. Today is all about how to run those meetings effectively and how to guarantee that time won’t be wasted.

Want to know how to run a successful meeting? Then read on…

Business improvement category: SMART LEADERSHIP

Advicelet benefit: Learning how to really listen in situations where you may normally tune out or have the burning desire to interrupt can be the difference between success and failure in a task.

Image via Wikipedia

Listening, is without doubt one of the most important skills in business to master. It sounds so trivial when you read the title of today’s advicelet, however today – we’d really like to challenge you and ask you to listen to yourself in your next business conversation and analyse whether you’ve really listened or just heard.

With hundreds of things going on in your life, deadlines looming, pressures from all angles, skimming conversations – listening with half of one ear is a really easy trap to fall into. Hopefully you’ve not developed the terrible practice of sitting in a meeting with a laptop, doing your email – those that do clearly do not listen. On the flip side, even if you are giving your undivided attention to a conversation – are you still listening – are you really following the 25 pointers in the section below?

As ever with today’s advicelet – it will take you no longer than 10 minutes to read it and this advice can all be used from 9.00 this morning – we challenge you to REALLY think about the next conversation you have.

Related articles

• Even a Chatterbox like Me Listens…
• Top 10 Conversation Hacks [Lifehacker Top 10]
• Keep Listening

Business improvement category: SMART LEADERSHIP

Advicelet benefit: Understanding how you can create a following and lead that following helps you to become an expert and thought leader in your niche. Followers eventually convert into customers.

Not everyone can be a leader in business, there do need to be followers, however have you considered that you maybe a leader without realising it? Do you find yourself always arranging nights out for groups of friends? Do you write a blog with lots of readers? Do you run a local sports team?

We all have a basic need to connect with other human beings. Making friends, connecting with others, sharing experiences, keeping up with popular culture, and keeping up with current trends and developments in your community all are ways and reasons for connecting with other people.

Businesses can create connections and groups too. A business can dominate a niche and other businesses follow its lead – they learn from it, they respect it.

Today’s advicelet is inspired by Seth Godin’s recent book, Tribes. Godin defines a tribe as a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea that inspires their passion. He argues that human beings have a need to belong,

“to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like-minded people. We are drawn to leaders and to their ideas, and we can’t resist the rush of belonging and the thrill of the new,”.

To illustrate the point, he challenged readers of his blog to provide answers to questions arising from the book and collated them into an e-book which is available below.

In addition, there’s a free podcast of the entire book also available below too.

There is no better example of ‘Tribes’ in action than Barrack Obama’s recent ascendency to the White House, yet this tribal nature has clearly been going on for 000’s of years – and social media wasn’t around then!

So – some weekend reading and listening for you – it’s inspiring stuff and will hopefully inspire you to realise your leadership potential in business or indeed in your social life too.

Business improvement category: SMART CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT

Advicelet benefit: Getting a basic understanding of how even the most basic customer relationship management system can benefit your company and increase sales is essential training for anyone in business.

Customer relationship management as a concept is generally understood now by most knowledge workers in both large and small business. Whilst the term is understood, it still feels like a bit of a black art – a potentially complex database set up for minimal gains… If Tesco and Walmart have one and can mine customer data to send them pertinent deals through the post – then surely it’s not the thing smaller businesses can take advantage of?

Well – we’re here today to dispel that myth. CRM systems have moved on from the early elitest days. Of course, some are more complex than others – but at the end of the day – businesses who don’t have some kind of customer management system – makeshift or otherwise are missing a trick.

In today’s advicelet, we’re fortunate to have CRM expert with us in the studio. George Bliss, from IncreaseCRM here in the UK has been in the CRM business for 6 years and has 200+ implementations under his belt now – so he really understands this stuff. Today we’re going to explore the benefits of actually implementing a CRM system. In separate advicelets  – we’ll look at the practicalities of selecting and implementing such a system.

Related articles

• Microsoft offers pay-as-you-go CRM
• CRM Webinar
• How Microsoft plans to make its mark in CRM
• Success with Customer Relationship Management
• Doing less with more in 2009