The future of Magazines.....and Newsagents

With the green movement being all pervasive. Is the Newsagency dead? If we stop using paper for glossy magazines how else will we get our fix? One way might be via the Internet through sites like Zinio.

Have a look and you will see magazines you can buy at the newsagent today. the first thing you will notice is the price is substantially less. Click on the "Try It!" near a magazine and you will get a download of the covers, contents and a few pages. Roll your mouse over the top right hand corner and you will see a cool way of turning the pages, just like the real thing.

So if this is the way magazines are going how will the corner newsagent survive?

Selling Lottery tickets and stationary items is one way as well as the upbiqutous Birthday and Xmas cards. One thing is for sure in 10 years time a newsagent will look a lot different to what it does today. Maybe you will walk in and dock your iPod like device, in the special News dispenser, to get the daily newspaper to carry to work on the train. Of course you will buy an instant lottery ticket, hoping to win, so you can afford the fuel for the trip back home from the station that night.

theBizWiz

www.boulterassociates.com.au
www.informgroup.com.au

Really Good Sales Websites

Lets face it, without Sales your business is dead. You can have a great product, you can have the best quality services but without customers and actual sales you have nothing.

Here are some good resources for you:

• Sales Gravy is a wealth of resources. It has pointers to other sites and aggregates things such as Podcasts, Blogs, Videos. It has a Community section where you can sign up and chat with others, look for jobs and find others to work with. There is even a shop where you can buy books and download free books. (If you are in that market, unashamedly, check out our Business Book store)


• SalesRoundup Podcast is great podcast for anybody into complex sales. It is delivered by Joe and Mike who have been is Sales forever. If you dont listen to Podcasts while on the road, in the car or the plane, then do yourself a favour.


• Plain old Google. Google Alerts are a great way to track information on a suspect in your sales funnel. Just set an alert on a persons name or a company and each day you will receive an email of what has been mentioned on the Internet that day about them.


• If you want more intelligence about what is happening in your marketplace use LinkedIn. By following the Questions tab of your LinkedIn account and setting a RSS feed into something like Google Reader, you can get a pulse of what are some of the issues happening


• Lastly is the book I have referred to before. The World's Best Sales Tips by Ciaran McGuigan

If you are in Sales what resources do you use?

the BizWiz

http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/

http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Worlds Best Sales Tips #3

More Sales Tips from a really good book. "The World's Best Sales Tips by Ciaran McGuigan is a quick toolkit for improving your sales techniques.

Ciaran talks about "Exploding your opportunities" on page 4. What he is referring to is using the contacts of existing customers as a base for future Suspects. All SMEs suffer from not enough sales funnel. We struggle looking for lists and other ways to get more contacts to approach.

This method involves looking at each of your customers in turn. Think about the suppliers and customers that this customer has. Try and write down six names associated with each customer.

This way you can quickly go from 6 customers to 6 customers and 36 suspects to contact.

Be sure to make sure you have permission from your customers to contact these new contacts. Also it is great to get a written referral from your customer on how you have helped them. Think about how your products and services can assist each of the new contacts and draft a letter to each introducing yourself and enclosing the referral from your existing customer.

Another twist on this is to look at the suppliers to your existing customer. They usually like to keep their customers happy so if your customer says that he would like to refer you to them, they will naturally have to at least take your call or see you.

Powerful?

the BizWiz
http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/
http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Qantas: How to destroy customer loyalty

Qantas enjoys a higher than normal loyalty rate compared to other airlines.

Why is this?

Well, personally, I am proud to be Australian. After too many years travelling I know this is the best place to live.Qantas, through clever marketing over many years is an Aussie Icon. The Flying Kangaroo has strong brand presence, globally.

With no major accidents on record, this speaks strong and is clearly a differentiator. When hurtling through the air with 400 other people and tonnes of Jet-A1 I don't want to be thinking about maintenance standards.

I have been prepared to change schedules, deal with connections and pay a premium at times to not wonder about the maintenance schedules.

So whats been going wrong?

Well, for a number of years there has been a steady decline in the Spirit of Australia, there was a time when Qantas staff made all the difference. It was the smile. It was the pragmatism. It was going that extra mile. It was feeling like you were in Australia even before you arrived home.

That has gone.

Qantas staff are no longer proud to be Qantas.

This is clearly management's fault. Bringing efficiencies and driving out cost from a business are important. But it is easy to do that: design a spreadsheet and execute. Doing this while keeping the culture & the company spirit alive is hard.

Don't worry Qantas you are not alone. MBAs pore over case study after case study on this topic.

I don't profess to know the answers. But, I do know the symptoms. this is not about off-shoring the maintenance. Proper quality control and audits (which should be happening regardless of location) should ensure the maintenance standards. CASA's recent review has uncovered a number of shortcomings in process and control.

Another symptom is service during the flight. I think that the same number of staff are on board. They are there for our safety not just to get us meals. It used to be easy to get a drink or other items and now it is a case of having to tackle the person. They have mastered the art of seeing through your signal. Maybe that is part of our health management on the flight. My liver thanks you Qantas !

But more importantly it is the feel from the staff that is coming out. I would guess that the staff are not happy and their fears and feelings come out in body language. In every organisation some people could be unhappy, but an epidemic across staff means there has to be an influence from management.

All airlines have technical difficulties but there has been an "unlucky run for Qantas" according to CASA.

What does that mean?

400 people all incurring extra cost and aggro in changing bookings etc. Qantas is more than happy to charge penalties when we change our plans but what about the costs we incur in lost hotel bookings, re booking non Qantas flights & lost holiday days.

For me it has been two international flights in 3 months that have been cancelled. I cannot afford for it to happen again. Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines are next for me !

Qantas has not lost me forever but they have lost my loyalty and my word of mouth advertising.

the BizWiz
http://www.boulterassociates.com.au/
http://www.informgroup.com.au/

Generating Business by LinkedIn

It has been a busy week. I set out one week ago to increase my network on LinkedIn. At that time I had about 140+ connections and thought I was reasonably connected. A few weeks earlier I had been at a Conference where Stan Relihan spoke. He is Australia's most LinkedIn person with some 16,000+ connections. You can also see him noted on TopLinkedIn where others around the world are listed.

From this I felt a need to see where this would take me. Using Business Cards and my existing Outlook, I was able to generate another 100+ connections and I was past my original goal of 250+. Then I discovered there are groups which I joined and was able to find more people connected to me via our common connections to Associations, past companies etc.

Now I was on a role.....500+ was in my grasp. Why did I want 500+? Well when you look at Stan's profile you will see he has 500+ connections. I wanted that same tag. Compared to my profile, you will see I have a unique number noted .

Another thing I noticed along the journey was that some people did not want to Link. They would mark my Invitation as "Dont know him". This is a bad. If you get five of these you get blocked from directly linking and have to know the person's email address to Link.

Why do people do this? the reason you join something like Linked In is to build your connections and business network. Every connection is valuable . I had somebody even say they were "limiting their network at this time". That is an interesting concept. I would suggest FaceBook or MySpace is about that. You have a limited number of people you wish to be with.

So how is this helping Business?

Well one of my connections, Luke Harvey-Palmer, blogged this on Buzz Blog. He outlined 40 things you must do in LinkedIn to improve your Personal Brand.

What has been my experience? Well today at 470+ LinkedIn has noticed me. I have little box that was not there before. It says my profile has been viewed by 12 people in the last 4 days and I have been in search results 31 times in the last 3 days. Two weeks ago that was not happening.

What else? Well I have been contacted by Recruiters seeing if I know anybody for roles. I have been contacted by Recruiters wondering if I am interested in a role. That doesnt happen often. I have been contacted by people wondering if we can do business together. I have been contacted by people to see "what I am up to" and lastly I have had people contacting me to sell me a service.

The traffic to my website and to my InForm consulting website has quadrupled in the last two weeks. All the good SEO tips work.

As Luke would say I feel a "Buzz". All in all, this is good. Your Personal Brand is important. Any possible way you can raise your profile, legally, is a good thing.

Let me tell you how it is going in one months time. Just a blip?

What about your experience? Have you tried LinkedIn?

theBizWiz
www.boulterassociates.com.au
www.informgroup.com.au