Category Archives: Helpful Hints

August 20, 2008 · 7:39 am

There are bad deals

“Tell me about the last bad deal you didn’t make,” I asked.  My friend looked back at me blankly.  “Well”, I said, “you’ve just spent the last 15 minutes telling me about a few bad ones you did make.  What about the ones you didn’t make?”  That’s pretty much when he decided we’d chatted enough about business and the conversation turned back to golf.

Awhile back, Seth Godin, whom I admire, wrote a piece on making bad deals.  His article was more directed at the deals made between individuals as they start new ventures, but I’ve taken some of what he had to say to heart as I look at any business deal.

Not all deals are worth doing.  One has to know the point at which NOT making a deal is a better option and overcoming the very human desire to make something happen, to get something, to WIN!  But in so doing, you LOSE.  Get rid of those deals – set them free!  Very much like the Buddha I am, I know.  But the Buddha’s teaching is not so much of divesting one’s material possessions, but of not being overly crazy with our desires.  Sometimes the desire for a deal outweighs its true value.  The ones where the value of what you’re offering is disproportionately less than what you’re receiving are the ones I mean.  The ones where someone will take your product (grudgingly, it seems) and almost want you to pay them or demand you give up any chance of making back your investment in supporting them, the client.

So what’s the last bad deal you didn’t do?

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August 18, 2008 · 7:57 am

Feedback

One of the virtues of the interactive web is the amazing amount of feedback it generates.  I’m not talking about the Jimi Hendrix-style, blow your ears off stuff.  I mean the back and forth of conversation that is so critical to any business.  It’s inconceivable to me that a business would shut itself off to that information flow but many do.  Think about trying to reach a human at many of the companies with which you do business.  Websites such as this would not have to exist if it weren’t for the wall-building in which many companies engages.

Part of why I cook and play golf is the feedback.  If something tastes right, you know it, although what is right to me may not be right to my consumers (the other folks at the table).  Hopefully you get that feedback too (they’re not bashful around here about shredding the cook).  The lesson from golf isn’t that one gets feedback on how good or bad the last swing was – that’s pretty obvious based on where the ball goes.  The point is that one has to pay attention to it or you’re going to lose a number of balls.

Hey!  That may be the business point too!  If you don’t want to lose your balls, you need to listen to feedback and react.  Is you company paying attention?  Are you actively soliciting consumer opinions or are you making those email links hard to find?  Does a person answer your phone or is it an endless phone loop to nowhere?

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August 13, 2008 · 11:22 am

Getting What You Paid For

There is an article this morning in the Wall Street Journal entitled Big Sponsors Are Upset Over Visibility at Olympics.  Basically, a number of the official sponsors have spent millions of dollars on building corporate experiences at the Olympic Green.  These experiences are designed to have the folks walking around Beijing interact with the company in some way.  In prior Olympics, the foot traffic to the Green has been massive and the partners were expecting 200,000+ visitors a day.  One problem: the Chinese, always security conscious, have limited visits to the Green to those holding event tickets, thereby making the traffic actually showing up at these very expensive pavilions about 20% of what the partners were expecting.  Doh!

I’ve always believed that contracts were less important that relationships.  That said, how is it possible that this issue wasn’t discussed and documented, either with the Chinese or the partners?  Who thought it was a good idea to rely on prior practice (“Gee, we’ve always given people unfettered access”) in a country where things are not always what they seem and a government that is going to do things its own way, period?

It’s one thing when the IOC tells the press that there will be no censorship of the internet by the Chinese and there is – the press isn’t paying the bills.  It’s quite another when the folks who ARE paying the bills get screwed.  My favorite quote:

“Here in Beijing, there have been a few who have requested that more people be admitted into what are known as the ‘Olympic common areas’ and the organizing committee has been working to find appropriate means of doing this, which we welcome,” said IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies.

I know from working with a few other international organizations that this is the polite way to say “buzz off” so maybe the relationship thing isn’t working either (obviously there isn’t anything in a contract).  The games are over soon – every day counts to amortize the investment.  Lost sales aren’t coming back.  Maybe the sponsors aren’t either!

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