It all has started with Bring Your Own Device in order to work mainly with iPads. This has benefits for the company as the employees pay for their office tool and the company doesn’t need to invest. Still this BYOD has some security issues for the company.

Wondering if this ‘Bring Your Own’ could turn into an evolution for the employees:

BYOD – Bring Your Own Device
Your iPad, netbook, smart phone, … for using during work in order to work.

BYOO – Bring Your Own Office
Your own chair, desk, drawer, … to work at as you already have brought the computer and the telephone.

BYOW – Bring Your Own Work
Instead of your employer giving you work, you have to sell in order to have work – like most consultants and partners have been doing since many years.

BYOM – Bring Your Own Money
Just like partners of companies and associations you could be asked to fund the company in order to get or keep you employed. You fund in order to be able to use their brand name. To work under their umbrella. Similar to a franchise.

BYOS – Bring Your Own Social security
You pay your social security instead of the employer just like independent consultant, contractors already do. As you already sell and fund then you should pay also the social security instead of the company.

BYOR – Bring Your Own Retirement fund
That’s just one step beyond as the company nor the government will have a pension fund for you in the future. Hence you have to pay all social security and medical insurance yourself.

Will the future be like this ?

Management buzzwords and phrases that sound good or important but are often misused. Speakers use them often in order to avoid explaining exactly what they mean to say making the meetings boring as these words or phrases have become hollow.

In order to pass the time and keep you listening play this Bingo game. Just like any Bingo game check off any of these words you hear by the speaker.
When you get five blocks vertically or horizontally or diagonally then you have won. Just don’t shout out ‘Bingo’ as it will disturb and focus the attention on you.

More such buzz words or expressions can be found in The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary

Cut the crap during meetings, conference calls and sales trainings.

Long meetings are a waste of time for both the company and employees. However some people will just love these long meetings as then their time is going by without having to do anything. Still keeping meetings short will improve their effectiveness and ROI for companies. Meetings are expensive as several people are sitting in the same room without being immediately productive.

How to keep meetings short and effective ?

1. The agenda
When sending out the invitation include the agenda points as it allows the participants to be informed and prepared. Thus no wasting of time for someone going to look for information during the meeting.

2. The subject time
As people tend to continue discussions of a certain subject which might drag on for too long a time limitation can be set using a timer. As most mobiles are equipped with this function this time limit can easily be kept.
if the discussion hasn’t finished the discussion can be continued after the meeting or during a topic specific meeting.

3. The wanderers
Often during meetings the discussion wanders off to a different topic which is no longer the main subject. Some people have the skill or gift to keep on talking about the different topic. Using a sound on one of the smartphones present can be used as indicator for getting back to the topic s the participants just have to press on the touch scree.

4. The invitation
Many people bring their portable computer in order to continue to work during meetings or even their smart phones for checking their emails or Facebook. Due to this they are not actively participating in the meeting. If these people are not really required during the meeting as they don’t participate then they shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.

5. Finishing argument or pitch
Instead of allowing interruptions, people should be given time to finish their argument or pitches. This too will shorten the total meeting time.

6. Staying in the meeting
Some people do leave the meeting for a short instance. Even if this is for a restroom stop it shouldn’t be allowed as it disrupts the meeting and stalls the discussion.

What do you do in order to keep your meetings short and efficient

In our small company we use Skype – even with customers as it is very efficient and cost effective because it is free.

However each time the customer has a significant size, then Skype is forbidden by their management.

Companies argue with many reasons for not allowing to use Skype:
- Security issues: we never had any security issues with Skype
- P2P punches through the company’s firewall: not good but it works fine
- Encryption: Skype is not encrypted, but neither are the mobile phones most companies use
- Free service: there is nothing wrong using a free service with high service level (without a SLA)
- Skype eats up bandwidth because it is P2P: if many employees of a company would use Skype then this becomes a cost issue.
- No SOX compliance: so SOX rules the business world and makes it less profitable
- No central logging: do you need that for just commercial calls ?

As employees like to use Skype for many good reasons, several have found a work around by using Skype on their smart phones over the provider network. Then who fools who ? Using the mobile data network has even lesser control than using the fixed company Internet connection.

So do you use Skype for your business ?
Are you allowed to use Skype for business ?

The partner Event

Most larger and even mid-sized companies organize their yearly partner event. The problem is getting and convincing the partners to visit the event.
As typically these events last 2 days the participation will cost the partner at least $2000 to $3000 per person attending. This expense needs to be covered by the additional sales the partner can make by participation of the event.

Reasons for participation

People can have personal reasons for participation like seeking another job, but that is not beneficial for the company paying for the expenses. Thus in order to get people participating they need to sell the event to their Director or CxO.

Event Justification Toolkit

In order to make the internal sale successful the event organizing company should provide event approval documents, just like most Research groups do. They supply documents for justification of participation:
- A customizable letter to Director or CxO, which is a Word template with a cost/benefit analysis.
- A ROI Worksheet which is a Word template for convenient organized note-taking onsite during sessions, analyst briefings and face-to-face meetings.
- A customizable Customizable Trip Report which is a Word template to help you easily report your ROI from the conference.
- A post-event brief which is a Conference Summary Report highlighting what was new and notable, key takeaways, interactive polling results, and exhibit showcase highlights.

Selling internally

These event approval and justification documents help to sell the current participation of the event internally and create reports to be used as proof for the future events.

How successful by participation are your company partner events ?

No Competitors Company

If your management or CEO claims the company has no competitors then the company has a serious problem as:
- There is probably no market except if you have a monopoly.
- Your company is the first to market thus huge marketing costs creating market awareness

Only when there are competitors then there is a market for your products or solutions.

Management or the CEO can nuance this by claiming ‘Virtually No Competitors’. However what is ‘virtually’ as there are no virtual competitors: just real ones.

Competitors’ Benefit

There will always be competitors:
- with better or lesser products
- with solutions addressing more problems or less problems
- with products at higher or lower price levels

Having a decent number of competitors:
- Brings a healthy competition
- Creates market awareness
- Distributes different marketing communications for different segments
- Reaches out further
- Generates more interest (lead generation benefit)
- Will keep the company innovative

If your company would be the sole vendor then it has to create the awareness, distribute different marketing communications, will have problems for reaching far which will result in less leads and even much less sales as your marketing has a limited reach.

It is always good to know and have a high esteem for your competitors.
Don’t under estimate the benefit and advantage of having competitors.

Who are your competitors ?

Pile of technologies

Most technology start-up companies have a pile of technologies and solutions they have developed over the previous years by delivering projects for different customers.
Although there are parts of solutions that are being re-used, there are no real products defined.
As projects don’t scale and growth of any company is a requirement, products are required.
Hence the first challenge is to analyze the collection of solutions in order to understand the scope of the possible solutions.

Market needs instead of products

The next utmost important step is not trying to define products but to analyze the demands and needs of the market within the scope of solutions already developed. The markets that can be reached and addressed by the company. These needs and demands will define the solutions that should be proposed by products that the company can offer.

Avoiding technology projects challenge

One of the challenges for management and sales is to stay focus on the products and not to go into another challenging technology development. Too often the drive for the technology driven management is to take on new projects that extend the current products with new challenging technology implementations.
Avoiding to go the route to new technologies and new developments is all too often a return to the project company that it previously was. This would cripple the growth of the company almost instantly as projects don’t scale.

The pain and the risk

The price is the balance between the pain and the risk.
The pain for the buyer is the high cost of a solution which hurts the bottom line.
The risk is the the change of not getting a working solution.

In sales you need to know how much pain the potential customer can withstand for a certain risk he is willing to take. Due to this as the customer wants to avoid risk at any price the price can be high.

The probability and perception of risk

Typically the customer can choose between several solutions from different vendors and he will select the one with the best ratio pain/risk for him. Suppliers quoting a high price should also bring the least risk. After a Proof Of Concept (POC) the probability of level risk becomes more clear and allows the customer estimating the risk for each of the solution providers.

The perception of risk perceived by the potential customer will influence the price he is willing to pay. As such a supplier with a higher price can be retained over other suppliers offering a similar solution a lower price.

Vendor and customer both need to balance risk and pain

In the end it is a gamble for both the vendor as the customer:
- The vendor has to gamble on the highest price the customer wants to pay taking into account the competitors. He exposes to the risk of not winning the deal as competitors can offer a better pain/risk ratio. Hence offerings at a higher price can win as also offerings at a lower price.

- The customer needs to gamble on the price (pain) he wants to pay for exposure to a certain risk level.
May the best pain/risk ratio win.

Are your price quotes typically the lowest or the highest ?
Why ?

1. Prepaid

The best thing about Internet business is prepaid.
As a merchant you get the money before you supply the goods or the (web) service.
Most other businesses you need to wait at least 30 days after delivery to get paid (if you are lucky).
Prepaid decreases entrepreneurial risks significantly.
The main draw back is in case of physical goods as they can be returned which has a high burden.

2. Recurrent

The second best is recurrent payments for Internet services.
If you can mange to get an Internet business with a recurrent business model (subscription) then your business will grow almost exponentially.
In case the first subscription pays for the sales & marketing and set-up costs, then your margin will be high as each recurrent payment only needs to cover the operational costs.

3. Open 24 / 7

The third best is that your shop or service is available 24 hours seven days a week, allowing serving your potential customer whenever he feels the need for buying.

4. Geography without borders

As the web is worldwide, your Internet business can easily go worldwide if you invest in the localization (translation).

5. Small can be big

On the Internet a small company can portray an image of being big. It is not the physical size or the revenue but the presence on the Internet that creates the image of the size of the company. The more the company appears on top of the searches the more important it will look. The more a company or product is findable on the Internet, the perception of a big company is generated.

6. Sales & marketing costs

As both use digital communications the costs involved will be lower and can be better optimized as all efforts and investments can be measured.
The marketing will be all digital: SEO, Website, email marketing, visitors information,
The sales will be digital too using online forms and email.

7. Growth costs

If the revenue grows, the operational costs ill increase at a lower pace due to the scalability of the business model. Especially the workforce doesn’t need to be increased at the same pace as the growth of the revenue due to the fact many operation and procedures can be handled electronically and not need human intervention.

What is your experience with Internet business ?

Fifty Shades Of Grey: Master and Servant

Just like in the book ‘Fifty shades of grey’, businesses sign mutual non disclosure agreements but still there is always a master and a servant in any business relation.
One of the business partners will take the lead role and the other will follow and serve the master.
One will deliver the leads while the other will probably take the most benefit and have the larger margin.

Business complexity

If business grows over time both will stay excited about the business relation and add new parts to the business complicating the relation possibly more.
As people and thus the markets change over time, it’s a business’s responsibility to keep up with the fickle nature of humans. This adds to the complexity of business – especially if two companies are into a relation.

On the other hand if the business isn’t successful due to not fulfilling to the complex demand of the market, the sparked interest will soon disappear and all will be forgotten. No complexity – just no more interest.

Fifty shades of business can be as complex as ‘Fifty shades of grey’.

Domination’s the name of the game
In bed or in life
They’re both just the same
Except in one you’re fulfilled
At the end of the day