Monthly Archives: November 2014

0 Publicity, Sales, Marketing and Customer Service

.,,At a workshop yesterday morning, someone came up with comparative definitions of the terms publicity, sales, marketing and customer service.  I’ve covered all of these in various places but I thought it might be helpful to quickly review them.

Publicity

This is where my fictional company, Amphibiana Plus, tells the world about its first-rate garden frog ponds.  Advertising is a common example of publicity but it is not the only approach available.

Amphibiana Plus might spend £2000 on a newspaper ad. (I heard at the workshop, someone spent £30K on a radio ad sequence and had no idea whether they found additional customers).

But it is possible to earn publicity by other means at no charge.  The big advantage of advertising is you control the copy. Articles in newspapers, magazines, etc can be effective even when the copy is by a reporter or editor.  (Except for live radio or TV programmes.)  Seek stories about you or your business that publicise the business but are not about the business.

So, Amphibiana Plus might research the increase in  herons or other fauna as a result in the increased number of frogs where its installed ponds.

Sales

This is where Amphibiana Plus can say, “Buy one of our frog ponds”.  Obviously an advert could say this but not all adverts do this as they are often about promoting a brand.

The sales pitch  is often targeted at people who have already expressed an interest, eg they are on your email list or on the list of a joint venture partner whose list might be interested in frogs.  It can include special offers, guarantees, bonuses and all the other techniques that have been found promote a sale.

Marketing

Whilst I usually use “marketing” to mean everything to do with promoting businesses and making sales, in this narrower sense it is where a customer who wishes to make a purchase approaches Amphibiana Plus.

They will have heard the business installs the best frog ponds, perhaps from a satisfied customer, and they want a slice of the action.  Well designed marketing builds a followers’ community, who are keen about what the business has to offer.  Sometimes they will feel left out if they do not make a purchase.

So, does publicity lead to marketing or marketing to publicity?  Well, the best marketing is based on the needs of potential customers.  So, marketing might inform publicity (as potential customers make their needs known) and publicity inform marketing (as customers become aware of the brand).

Customer Service

Customer service is the route by which the business becomes aware of customer needs.  Once Amphibiana Plus has installed a frog pond, they might ask for a testimonial or discuss the pond with the customer.  The aim is not necessarily to make an upsell.  Finding out something of the customer’s experience over time can lead to new products and services.

It can also lead to testimonials and stories the business can display on its website and in its literature.  Whilst it might be possible to get some insights before they sell something, ie market research, it is always helpful to get feedback about how the product or service fares in real life.  It is interesting how few businesses do this; they appear, install something and then disappear as if they are not interested in their product or service once it’s delivered.

Good feedback can make all the difference.

4 Why Do Needs Assessments?

This short sequence will be an opportunity to share some ideas about needs assessments. Why are they necessary?  In the next two posts, I look at their content and how to deliver them.

So, what is a needs assessment? [January 2017: This is an old post and looks back to a period when I offered a needs assessment as part of a web design package.  I have since changed my approach considerably.] I am currently reviewing my assessment offer and will introduce some changes soon. The first thing I’ve noticed, returning to pages I wrote over a year ago, is I do not really define an assessment.

What is an Assessment?

Feedback I’ve received suggests the term “needs assessment” may help potential clients understand what is on offer. Normally a needs assessment compares the current situation with the ideal, identifies the difference and then identifies action steps. Action steps can be prioritised, costed and scheduled.

One complex issue is, are you assessing the needs of the organisation or its web presence? The word “needs” helps clarify the assessment is not primarily of the organisation so much as to assess what the organisation needs from its online presence.  It’s a rare organisation that does not need to improve.  The question is, how can the organisation be improved by its web presence?  You would think most organisations would pay for an assessment because they could see there is potential for improvement through their online presence.

How to do an Assessment

To do this properly the clients and the web consultant need a conversation about the organisation. It may emerge the organisation has many needs and not all of them can be met online. The assessment might help decide which needs can be met online. Clients are not always aware of what can and cannot be done online. Financial and time costs can help make the final decisions about the organisation’s web presence.

A small part of the work will be to review the organisation’s current web presence but the main emphasis will be on what the organisation offers its clients or customers and whether any or all of it can be promoted online.

For many organisations the amount they could do online might be greater than they expect. What they actually do will depend on their priorities, capacity and resources. It may be possible to show them how they could do more than they might think.

But the focus needs to be on the organisation and not the technicalities of working online. This might surprise some clients and part of the skill is getting them to open up about their hopes and dreams for their organisation.

Non-Directive Consultancy

I’ve written elsewhere about non-directive consultancy and this can be helpful although there will be an expectation the web consultant will contribute expert consultancy skills as the work progresses. Getting the balance right between non-directive work and presenting the best online solution can be challenging.

But the non-directive element is important. Some clients may start their assessment with a clear idea about what they want. This may be to the degree that they don’t see the need for an assessment at all. Assessments are usually fairly expensive for this reason. Someone who has already made up their mind and wants someone to carry out their plan does not need an assessment. However, those who do opt for an assessment may still have a clear idea of what they want.

As the assessment progresses the client’s needs will become clearer, at least to the consultant. The skill is on helping the client to line up what they want with what they need and helping them make genuine decisions to meet their needs.

If the client does this they might recognise the help they had from the consultant but the progress in their thinking will be theirs.

An Example

For example, the consultant might suggest a video to help promote the organisation. The client may not be aware of how easy it is to put a video together or the types of video available to them. However, the final decision must be the client’s. They may have reservations about its appropriateness, finance or time demands. The next step is not to insist on the video but to pose the question, we still have the problem to which the video was one possible solution, what other solutions might there be?

Of course it’s even better to list all possible solutions and look at each in detail and then decide. In reality ideas don’t always arrive at once and the process of examining the first in detail might trigger new ideas.

So, next time I’ll show you my current assessment.

0 Paid Staff in Third Sector Organisations

Given the problems Third Sector organisations have making decisions, you might think appointing staff to do the work would make things easier. Perhaps the more successful voluntary sector organisations have worked out how to do it. Small community and voluntary groups can find staff a liability.

Apart from the legal responsibilities, there are two major reasons why staff do not always help the organisation develop.

Whose Vision is it?

First, people with a vision set up the organisation. They employ someone they didn’t know before (or maybe someone they think they know) and give them responsibility for running the organisation. The Trustees with the vision meet occasionally whilst one or more paid people are active every day.

For organisations providing a well-defined service to a definite client group, this may not be too much of a problem. However, in a developmental role there is significant danger of mission creep.

Staff can become adept at manipulation. They tell the Trustees what the clients want and the clients what the (unaccountable) Trustees insist upon.  Accountability to the Trustees becomes a fiction it’s in everyone’s interests to maintain.

Usually the upshot is stagnation because it is in the interests of the staff to continue with their established routines. The ring leader is not necessarily the manager; administrators are often able to control the organisation. Trustees become bogged down in endless reviews whilst staff ring-fence established practices. If the manager is highly skilled in a specialist area, they can be very happy to leave the running of the organisation to their administrator.

Trustees who are very part-time cannot look in-depth and are fearful of causing trouble by insisting upon change.

Third Sector Funding

The second reason is in the nature of third sector funding. Much of it is grant aided and so it is often scarce. This means the staff know their days are numbered.

Staff know they can’t raise the funds needed to keep going and so they give in. What’s the point in planning a future for an organisation that will soon run out of money?

Without a business mindset, they resist the changes which might bring in income because they involve risk. The problem though is not so much the risk as a perception that they are not in business. “I am here to use my specialist skills and not to run a business” is the underlying argument in many organisations.

Many good ideas fail because no-one is able to make the decisions needed for the organisation to thrive. I’m not saying it is always impossible. I know of several organisations that could have survived but they were unable to make the decisions they needed to make to survive.

Internet marketing may be a real possibility for some organisations. They have something many would value but don’t know how to sell it and they are unwilling to make the changes they need to sell it. It seems hard to see how by focusing on something lower on the list of priorities, you can generate the income you need to fund the higher, less profitable, priorities.

Whilst businesses can make similar mistakes, they are clearer about the need to generate income and usually have a simpler decision-making structure. But third sector organisations are not businesses and this is another way in which they struggle in the marketplace. I’ll go into this next Wednesday.

0 On the Funding of Community Services

I’m reviewing Third Sector worldviews and have already covered anti-capitalism and the inclusion agenda.

Today I want to consider funding. How do you fund services for clients who cannot afford to pay for them?

State Provision

The most efficient funding is through the state. Basic social services should be provided directly by the state. Privatisation is absurd. How can organisations paying a dividend to shareholders possibly be more efficient? They do it by cutting wages and this disables local economies; as wages decline, spending power declines and localities suffer.

National and local governments plan and deploy resources according to need. This is a big advantage. There is no evidence this is less efficient than private sector organisations. The big advantage over privatised services is that government services are accountable to voters. By passing responsibility for services to private interests, they hand sovereignty over and allow voters say in delivery.

Third Sector Provision

However, no matter how effective state-run services are there will always be gaps in provision. This is where the third sector finds its role. They can champion the needs of disadvantaged groups not recognised by the state. There will always be neglected groups or new services to try.

How do we fund these services? The most common approach is through grants and until the recession and austerity, grants were big business. They still are although perhaps on a smaller scale.

Whilst there is evidence revenue funding for specific welfare projects can be effective, I do not believe grants are in any way effective at regeneration. I have seen many millions of pounds contributed to regeneration projects over the years, Burngreave New Deal is one example. Once the funding runs out the neighbourhood shows little or no improvement. Why is this?

Disadvantages of Grants

Business Perspectives

This game playing turns off entrepreneurs. They don’t perceive the third sector as a group of altruistic people but rather as a series of individual fiefdoms. Third sector leaders are too often involved in their work for the power and so do not need to prove they are actually able to get the job done.

Businesses are not immune to similar power games. The difference is that entrepreneurs refuse to play. They will simply walk away because they know how destructive they can be. There are always people out there who value collaboration. The priority is to find them and work with them. Sadly, they are rarely found in the third sector.

Social Enterprise

The question then is how do we support projects for clients who cannot afford the service? Social enterprise is one response to that question and positions itself as much in the private sector as the third sector. This raises some new issues.

Grants are a constant temptation and many social enterprises are able to get grants because they are social enterprises. In other words they are old-school community projects re-branded. The social enterprises that do manage to generate significant income through trade are often regarded with suspicion. What happens when the founder, who could have set up their own business, asks for a share of the profits? They encounter private sector entrepreneurs who have access to their own business funds but as a social enterprise find they are constrained by their founding ideals.

No approach is perfect and I’m not at this stage proposing solutions. The main thing is to be aware of the pitfalls and to seek innovative approaches that might just navigate new paths in this difficult area.

0 How to Build Sustainable Localised Economies

What would be the difference between a national localised economy and the current neo-liberal model?  We need to build sustainable localised economies.  A localised economy means neighbourhoods need huge investment in rebuilding what the neo-liberal consensus has destroyed.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the first wave of co-operatives found opposed interests between retail and worker co-operatives. Retail co-ops aim to maximise dividends for their members, who are also their customers. Worker co-ops aim to maximise the workers’ wages.

Whilst there is a place for worker co-ops, it is not necessary for all businesses to be co-operatives. Indeed, any structures that divert energy into complicated constitutions, boards of directors, etc are not a good idea.

The key is collaboration. Small businesses work together to build their local economy and links into the national localised economy. If you are a baker you have no need to compete with other businesses in your area or bakers in other areas. It may be possible to collaborate with other bakers in your area. It depends on how many bakers a given neighbourhood can sustain.  Increasing numbers of people ready to buy locally produced bread, might be an example of mutually beneficial collaboration.

The local economy becomes sustainable when money circulates within it. A pound coin spent in the morning might be spent several times that day. Think of it as one coin. A coin spent 10 times is  worth £10 in terms of the goods received in return for it. It continues to be an asset to whoever holds it. When I hand a coin over I tend to think of it as lost to me. But in fact it is only by handing it over that everyone else’s wealth increases. As their wealth increases so does mine. If I have something to sell, they are more likely to buy it from me.

Consider the Local Economic Trading Systems’ (LETS) experience. They use a local currency. The best participants are not those who accumulate the currency, or accumulate debt. The best customers are the ones who most often cross zero. Accumulation means the economy becomes stagnant.

If everyone has £100 and no-one ever spends anything then the economy is not sustainable. It is the transactions that keep it going. This is how economies crash. As more people accumulate debt or wealth, the economy will slow down. The economy works when people spend.

Trust

Many conservative economists talk of an invisible hand that keeps the economy going. They claim it has its own intelligence. This is of course nonsense. The thing that keeps the economy going is visible and it is trust. When people lose confidence because of fraud or maladministration, the market fails.

People are more likely to trust their local market. People get to know the businesses in their area. They make recommendations to friends and so businesses grow. Those businesses can employ more staff, which increases currency in circulation and so long as they keep trading they help to keep the economy going.

The big challenge is how to restart this traditional approach to the economy. The retail co-ops started at a time when people were desperate for change. We cannot ignore adverse economic conditions and the selfish practices of corporations and their political supporters. But we need to show how it is done from the bottom up, just like economies throughout history.

We know how to do it and we know the basic principles. The challenge is to learn the practicalities of building a local economy in the 21^st century.

2 Institutional Development

A friend asked me to answer some questions to help him write an essay for his MSc in Development Management, “Why should development managers attempt to bring about institutional development?”  It’s quite likely I haven’t got a clue about institutional development but my response is below and he seems happy with it.  He will combine my reply with others and consider them for  part of  his essay.

The reason I’m reproducing my reply here is because I think it is relevant to the thread I’m writing about the nature of third sector organisations.  Whilst in my answer I refer to large organisations, perhaps it equally applies to small organisations that become bureaucratic.  What happens when small young organisations become institutionalised?

The headings are his questions:

1. What is an institution?

An organisation that is designed to be sustainable.  This means its continuation is not dependent on its leaders in the sense that when they leave there are always people available to step into their shoes.  This implies a high degree of bureaucracy.  The continuation of the organisation takes precedence over staff and clients’ needs.  Check out HMRC’s telephone helpline service if you don’t know what I mean.

2.  What is institutional development?

The big headache in institutional development is changing organisational culture.  It will tend to be highly stable and difficult to change.  I worked for an institution that had a complete change in top management at the same time.  Six managers left (were slung out actually) and were replaced by four new managers with new job descriptions.  This made no difference whatsoever to the institution and the new managers soon behaved in similar ways to the old ones.

3. What is the purpose of institutional development?

This rather depends on what you want to achieve.  A business may need to respond to its markets and can lose its way if the market changes and the institution can’t change with it.  HMV is an example of a business that had difficulty adapting to downloadable music and videos.  HMRC on the other hand does not need to change the way it does things as we’ll always need taxes.

4.  What activities does ‘doing’ institutional development involve?

Banging your head against a brick wall!  You’re not going to see rapid change.  Effective actions might take a long time to take effect and if the long time is longer than the lifespan of the person leading the change, then the policy might change before the previous policy had an effect.  Any proposed change is likely to be resisted.  Superficial changes can go through because they don’t touch the culture of the institution.

5.  What management skills does institutional development require?

Listening – to staff and especially junior staff rather than managers.  Many junior staff are likely to have been around for a long time and they understand how things work.  Many will have been around longer and understand more than the managers.

Listening to customers or clients – complaints and complements can be helpful and where appropriate good complaints procedures can help.  But also in-depth interviews with typical customers or clients might help.

Patience – it will be slow work!

So, what do you think?  Can small young organisations become institutionalised?

0 Making Blog Posts Accessible

Last Thursday I made some observations about writing blog posts. I looked at the differences between using blog posts as a diary, library or noticeboard. Today, I suggest some simple methods for making blog posts accessible, to help your readers navigate your blog. There are more complex approaches but my concern here is to suggest solutions anyone can carry out.

Noticeboards

The noticeboard can be a little difficult where you have a lot of events and want them in date order. If you leave it to the default the posts will appear in order of the date you posted them and not in date order of the events.

A simple solution is to use a WordPress plug-in such as “Simple Custom Post Order”, which allows you to drag and drop posts in All Posts window.

If you have a lot of events you it may be worth looking at one of the Calendar plug-ins.  I hesitate to use them because with too few events it’s possible to have pages of calendars with no events.

Diaries and Libraries

There could be hundreds of permanent posts on your site and you need some way to help readers navigate them. I’m assuming you use categories and tags and I have written about the basics of using these.  However categories and tags alone are not enough.

If you present category pages in the usual blog format, you will find you have a series of posts in reverse order of publishing. The reader needs to find the beginning and then scroll backwards through the blog. Giving them the url for the first post in the sequence does not help them find the rest of the posts in the sequence.

There are several approaches and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Cornerstone Pages

One solution is the Cornerstone Page. You will find examples of these in the navigation on my site. A Cornerstone page lists the posts in a sequence in a coherent way.

It enables you to summarise the sequence. The reader can read the page to get an overall idea of what the sequence is about and follow the links to posts for more detail.

These pages can be used as landing pages and they can be search engine optimised. This way you can use them to draw traffic to your site and guide new visitors to what you have to offer on the topic they are searching.

Mindmaps

A mindmap is where you write your central topic heading in the centre of a page or screen and then add links as you break down the topic into its parts. This can be done using mindmap applications such as xmind.net. Mindmaps can show how the various posts link together. With xmind you can either turn your map into a pdf or use a xmind file, which can be opened by anyone with xmind. Xmind is a free application with a premium version. I’ve got a lot of use out of it without paying for the premium.

You can set it up so that the map includes links to blog posts. So, someone exploring your map can jump to a post for more information.

The main disadvantage is you need the software to open a mindmap. This may be something you give away to people who want to be on your email list.

Products

And of course you could convert your posts into products such as an ebook, a real book or a video course. If you are blogging to find out what you know, as the material accumulates you may be able to convert into a more accessible medium. Posts can be taken down but many people who value your work might be prepared to spend a little on a more accessible format.

1 Third Sector Organisations: Unable to Take Responsibility

In this exploration of the differences between third sector organisations and businesses I have considered the tendency of third sector organisations to become bureaucratic and legalistic. These in turn lead to a tendency for no-one to take responsibility for decision-making.

There are two main reasons for this, one is the general ethos of third sector organisations and the other is to do with their staffing arrangements and I’ll look in-depth at staffing next time.

In general a small voluntary group have a committee, Trustees’ meeting or board of directors.  Their ethos is shared responsibility and the committee is the vehicle through which its members act together.  So, small groups have to make collective decisions and so tend to build lack of trust in any one person into their structures.

A small business will have one or very few active decision makers.  Larger businesses and voluntary sector organisations may encounter similar problems and will develop strategies over time to mitigate them.

It is easy to say it is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. Generally this can be good advice. When you’re dealing with bureaucracy if you make a proposal a likely response is proliferation of decision-making steps.  The temptation to act and sort out the bureaucracy afterwards is attractive.  But is it advisable?

I suggested a radical change to a voluntary sector organisation facing a desperate shortage of cash. They needed to research this new direction’s feasibility. Their marketing and development committees are separate and apparently unable to communicate. If marketing is aware of demand, their development committee won’t necessarily be interested because they’re already developing stuff.  The development committee is interested in what they’re doing and not in selling it.  Their products are good but follow their members’ interests and not the demand from their market.

Subcommittees

Furthermore it is not clear whether these subcommittees can make decisions themselves or whether they need to go to the Trustees, who meet about once a quarter.

Meetings of all these groups are occasional and so it is difficult to get any traction or make progress. I’ve forgotten what we were talking about between meetings because they are so far apart. Most people are volunteers and don’t have the time to pay full attention to the matters in hand.

In this case it is not practical to act and ask forgiveness. My ideas are in the long grass and not because anyone opposes them. The organisation is not able to accommodate them. It is in desperate need of finance and yet unable to take the decisions necessary for its survival.

There is another reason asking forgiveness is not always a good idea. If someone in control is threatened they can act to close down discussion.  Where several very part-time people are involved in decision-making, one person can have a great deal of power.

Handling Offers

The principle, you would think, is simple but many organisations don’t know how to handle an offer. An offer requires a response; a yes or a no. I time limit my offers for my sanity. Generally a long silence means “no”. Even a silence accompanied by assurances they’re thinking about it means no. Personal attacks and accusations you’re trying to make money out of them also mean no. No will suffice. You don’t need to give a reason, just say no!

A small business may have similar constraints. But there is one big difference. An offer is ultimately about how much they want it and whether they can afford it. Also time is their most precious commodity and even if they don’t care about mine, they care about their own.

You would think third sector organisations would be better off if they employ staff to carry forward the work of the organisation and enable the Trustees to take a more strategic view. But staff can make matters worse. I’ll explain why next time.

2 How the Inclusion Agenda Became Self-Defeating

Last Tuesday I covered anti-capitalism for the first of my discussions of third sector worldviews and today I turn to inclusion.

I appreciate people sharpening their quills because they read this post as an attack on inclusion. I am not opposed to inclusion, indeed a marketplace is by definition inclusive. How could it be otherwise? My problem is with how inclusion has developed over the years.

Nothing Propinques

A friend, a development worker, years ago found a chapter heading in Ian Fleming’s “Diamonds are Forever”, it reads “Nothing Propinques like Propinquity”.

We were puzzled by his constant repetition of this phrase and persuaded him to spell out his meaning.

If your concern is about poverty, then the thing the poor have in common is their poverty. Granted more women than men are poor, more black people than white are poor, more disabled people than able-bodied are poor (and you can keep going) but the point is ultimately if someone is poor they are poor whatever their sex, race, etc.

The only way to tackle poverty is by addressing its roots and yes those roots may include discrimination but discrimination is one means of dividing the poor from one another, undermining solidarity and mutuality.

Inclusion and Class

Inclusion never addresses class. We never discuss how we’re going to include the ruling classes in our communities. Why? They concentrate power in fewer hands and they will do anything to hold onto their power.  We know inequalities in wealth are the cause of disadvantage.  Racism is one of many ways the ruling class uses to divide and disempower communities. The focus needs to be on the roots of poverty in the economic system and not on the many ways in which it is possible to stoke the fires of prejudice.

There have been many attempts over the years to name disadvantaged groups and empower them by helping them set up a group that represents their interests. This plays into the hands of corporations and politicians because it drives wedges between disadvantaged groups.  Strong democratic community organisations are the best resistance to divide and rule.  The challenge is how to make these effective.

I recognise the good some of these specialist groups can do for their people. But the issues around for example accountability are profound. If you set up an ethnic economic development project, to whom should it be accountable?

I prefer generic organisations providing specialist services in neighbourhoods. The users can be members and so make sure the generic service is accountable. This would embody mutuality within the organisation, each specialist service supporting the others.

That leaves the question: how to fund community activity and I shall return to this next Tuesday.

5 National Localised Economy

Last Monday I wrote about altruism as a value in the local economy and explained how on a day-to-day basis self-interest is more effective.  Sustainability is another value essential to a national localised economy.

We live in times when financial institutions, based on greed and false values such as competition, are highly unstable. Nothing was learned from the 2008 crash and it seems we’re heading for another crash which will be worse because our governments spent reserves fire-fighting the last crash.

Monetarism and neo-liberalism are seductive ideologies; our politicians no longer question them. In the UK all three main parties subscribe to them and so does UKIP, the UK Independence Party, the great pretender to their throne. UKIP claims to be pro-sovereignty. But what is sovereignty for if legislatures are unable to regulate the economy?

The UK government has lost sovereignty but not to Europe. It has been lost it to privatisation. People lose faith in MPs because they have sold their powers to the private sector. Leaving Europe will cut the UK off from others who believe regulation is the heartbeat of democracy.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a value at the heart of the local economy but not where corporations extract finance from the economy; not where these large financial institutions suffer from boom and bust.

Small businesses fail. Of course they do and so they should. Successful businesses identify a gap in a market and may do very well out of filling that gap. But opportunities move on. An experienced entrepreneur will know when to move onto the next thing.

The UK retail co-operative movement was enormous and yet it was mostly local initiatives. They created larger organisations, such as the Co-operative Wholesale Society, to supply their shops with goods to sell. Their perspective was “Think Global, Act Local” and that is still a good perspective. The idea that an economy can be run from the top down has always proved to be highly dubious.

It might be better to think of a national economy as a localised economy; an economy where money circulates and does not accumulate in offshore accounts. The big supermarkets copied the co-ops but missed the local point. They might open corner shops in neighbourhoods, but as part of a corporate plan, driven by competition and not having genuine roots in a neighbourhood.

So, in what ways are local economies sustainable?