08 November 2011

Executive Pay Addiction

Smokers like to point to the calming effects of smoking, relaxing after long day with a drink and a drag - the satisfying puff after a lovely meal. But they also like to draw attention to the charging effect of smoking, how when driving long journey or fighting jet lag a smoke will help to generate some energy.


Until a friend of mine, a frequent ex smoker, drew my attention to how untenable this position is; I had not realised that my habit was not a useful habit with some risky side effects that will never catch up with me, but an addiction. Of course, with hindsight, it is ludicrous to think that an artificial stimulant can also work as some kind of calming influence. It’s just an addiction.

The first step in dealing with smoking addiction, for me, was to choose to fight it. Of course I had some great incentives, a new family and loving wife, but at the end of the day I had to choose to do it for myself. Part of that process of choosing to fight the addiction meant deconstructing the arguments for smoking. And the first one was, this drug does not solve anything, least of all the effects of stress or tiredness.

Those in our community that deny executive pay is excessive invoke ‘the global market.’ And why not, what could have a nicer ring to it than the market itself, and global one at that. After all, two-thirds of FTSE 100 companies are global operations, for whom the UK is a small part of their operation.  However, these same people also use the global market as the same reason why low wages are very low and high wages are disproportionately high. 

How can one overriding factor drive leaders of our largest organisations to have salaries 40, 50, 60 even 100 times higher than the lowest in their organisations, while simultaneously driving the gap between the two wider?

The same reason 10 million people smoke in the UK – addiction.

05 November 2011

Going Social


“New technology doesn’t change the way our brains work. Social networks are not new. For thousands of years, people have formed into groups, built strong and weal relationships, formed allegiances and spread rumour and gossip.” 




As technology evolves, so do the communication tools we can use, but our behaviour remains the same. Consider the introduction and the role today of the pager, fax machine, text messaging and email. 

We once lived happily without any of these tools, then they became essential, and now we live quite happily without the first two and the last two are in decline. But we are still communicating. 

Sharing ideas, opinions, good news and bad. Share tips and football transfer news, arranging meetings and seeking forgiveness for being late.
So what does it take to go social? Nothing. You’re doing it.

You are already doing all the things that constitute going social, all you need now are some new tools. Twitter, Linked In etc., pick them up and use them. And how do you learn how to use them? Just the same way you learned how to behave at a dinner party, football match, nightclub: You watch what everyone else is doing. You watch, you listen and when you have something to say, you say it.

What could be simpler? Even my Mum's doing it.

01 November 2011

Being Social

Social networks haven’t grown exponentially just because people enjoy the warm and fuzzy social interaction that leads them to think oh I can spend hours doing this. The fact is they bring their friends, family, colleagues and clients together because the information created in social networks is extremely important and valuable.

In a previous blogs, My wife is the Typical Facebook User, I argued that my wife’s killer App was the NCT Nappy Locator. This app allowed her access to valuable, time sensitive, location specific information on where to change our daughter’s nappy.  This incredibly powerful tool was available for free, in return for simply adding her views to the greater discussion.  And that’s ‘being social.’

If we don’t have access to the information held in social networks, we are less valuable as an information source in our own right. We collect information such as who knows whom, a politician’s comment on a news article alongside views of hundreds of readers just like us, a personal blog from someone that does the same job as us for a competitor, a personal blog by a client on something that is important to them, and we add to it. We add our own perspective that is informed by what we have collated and we decide how to use it.

Detractors of Trip Advisor (as seen on Channel 4 in the Uk the other night) argue that its system is faulty, mainly the part about letting everyone add their comments without more robust validation. But because we can see every review that person has posted (and maybe their Facebook profile if they allow us to); we can make our own mind up whether we value their opinion. Do they appear to moan about everything, or does this post appear to be a genuine gripe. We decide, not the hotel. And the insight is valuable, not just because of it’s independence of the vendor, but because we can add our own perspective and correct it if our experience differs. And that’s ‘being social.’

And the price to access all of the information that we can add our own unique perspective too? Be social and engage in it.

29 October 2011

Doing Social



I was fortunate enough to catch up with the Martha Lane-Fox of pensions for coffee this week; the brilliant Mackenzie Nordal.  After swapping photos and stories of our babies, we reflected on how much the asset management industry has achieved in the two years since her and I first met and mallowstreet was launched.



Mackenzie and Co’s launch of mallowstreet coincided with my own efforts to convince colleagues that social media has a role in client engagement. So it made perfect sense for us to combine intellect to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

The challenges we faced then were, in no particular order, ‘this stuff is just for kids,’ ‘I don’t have time for it,’ ‘compliance will never let you do it,’ and my favourite, ‘it’s just a fad and will never catch on.’

The inertia was akin to convincing a small child to wade into the sea. Now while there are clearly children that take to it like the proverbial duck, most need a combination of coercion and encouragement. We took baby steps, establishing small beachheads that we share learning from. This built confidence in those that we showcased and the determination to overcome their fears in everyone else.

So here we are, 18 months on, and standing with the sea up to our middles. Confidently splashing our hands in the water with a random blog written according to our agenda and engaging with the occasional passing beach ball with a random forum post. We all have the correct kit now, updating our profiles and ensuring we log in just often enough to ensure nothing looks out of date for too long.

This is doing social. I don’t mean this harshly, as we have all come a long way to get to this point; but this is ticking all the boxes to satisfy the people that sit in the offices where the air is a little sweeter and the carpets a lot thicker, we are in social media. 
Doing social is not being social; that’s the next bunch of fun we’re going to have together.


08 September 2011

Economists should come with a health warning


People that know me well know I like to share my economic views.  Those that know me really well, know those views probably aren’t up to much.

The mainstream broadcast media and tabloids go to extraordinary lengths to explain why important economic situations are happening, and in certain print media opining who is to blame. However, they don’t assert some important health warnings.

Putting aside my opinion that the economics of the UK aren’t as bad as the media would have us think, I believe these health warnings are an important omission that should be articulated explicitly with every major market movement.

Firstly, all economists look at a situation through their own etymological lens. There is never a consensus on what will happen next; which means a fair few are right or wrong, some or all of the time. And like all investments, past performance is no indication of the future. You only have to look at the splits on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee for first hand evidence.

Secondly, the models used to generate the statistics that are moving markets that can contain spurious data, are open to manipulation, calculated differently by nations, given different levels of importance according the economist and are most importantly, definitely laggard indicators to what is really happening.

Media has an obligation for balance, which they deliver with varying degrees of success. While they succeed in covering these different views, they should also point out that the views of all economic experts and their data should be taken with a considerable pinch of salt.

03 September 2011

Play Nicely

I read the incredible story in Fortune this month about how a CEO of a global company that allegedly played favourites, second guessed decisions, micro managed, humiliated colleagues and was a workaholic that eventually brought the organisation to its needs.

I highly recommend the article as a lesson on how important team working skills are in every leader.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/pfizer-jeff-kindler-shakeup/


The kind of behaviours described in the article are what we would expect a new line manager or a junior operational team leader under immense pressure to exhibit; not in a team led by someone that has been in the executive team of successive public companies


All of my working experience has helped me to understand the importance of personal relationships in getting things done. In fact, I attribute most of my success in delivering projects and campaigns within large organisations to building consensus across different teams with often conflicting objectives. I call this approach “play nicely.”


Playing nicely means show respect and be transparent in your decision making as none of us get it right and deliver 100% all the time. There is no "perfect". If we judge ourselves against this benchmark we will never be happy. Equally, if we judge everyone else in this way, they will only ever disappoint us.


The kind of products that are offered by learning development teams that help people to become practitioners of all the competencies that help people to "play nicely” have been thin on the ground in most companies in these lean times. I’m sure there is lots of evidence based academic studies to support the case either way, but having read the Fortune story, and from own experience, this is one cost that should never be compromised on.

18 July 2011

A tale of marketing without thinking.

Marketing activity without strategy is like intrusive surgery without a diagnosis. Strategy without insight is like a diagnosis without asking the patient what the symptoms are.

Picture the situation; your strategy team has identified a discrete European market that consumes your product in a way almost identical to your principal domestic market at a similar price point. Your sales division is investing in feet on the ground in the form of a sales person with dedicated pre and post sales support.

The total addressable market is 1,500 business clients. Prospects that match your target profile in terms of size and ability to influence is about a sixth of this. The customers that are most susceptible to the product to the product you have already had success with in this market is a fifth again. Therefore you have a target prospect list of around 50 clients to sell to over the next 12 to 18 months.

It goes without saying you won’t ignore sales opportunities outside this target list, but they will have to be qualified as winnable in order to justify spending scarce sales resource on them. The point of the target list is focus those limited resources firstly where you are most likely to win and secondly where you can and grow your business profitably over a defined time period.

Metrics and sales targets can be aligned to ensure every part of the business focuses on closing as much business as possible with this target market. The strategy team could even be more precise about those targets by researching average order value compared to the organisations average order value. Even a half decent B2B marketing team can turn a market entry strategy such as this into an effective campaign almost regardless of budget.

All sound, all rationale. So why the blog? Well a friend in a technology services business presented with just this scenario has been instructed by his Marketing Director to plan a €100k campaign featuring above the line for print and radio. Why? The local new sales guy says the brand is unknown and a massive brand awareness campaign is essential before he can do his work.

This approach is so counter to an intelligent led campaign I have been bursting to write about it. In fact I could write a book on why this is wrong, but to hone in on just one issue, it’s leadership.

Sales success comes from identifying your target market, developing a proposition that is better than your competitors and going after it. In order to do this harness every skill in your business sales, marketing, product, strategy etc., you must start with leadership. Leaders that can combine an ability to listen to those on the ground and knowledge of what good looks like.

Don’t ask a marker to sell, and don’t ask a sales person to see the whole picture, get all the skills in the business to collaborate, and certainly don’t ask him to plan a campaign.

12 July 2011

Retailers: We’re worried about our jobs, give us a warm feeling please

A few weeks ago, the current Mrs Ryan finally wore me down on yet another of agenda priorities. We started planning and procuring a replacement for the dark and dingy chip board panels that represent our kitchen.

As excited as I am about the prospect of having a nice new kitchen, like over half of full time employees in the UK, and an even higher percentage in financial services I would wager, I have concerns about my medium term job prospects. I have held back on all large purchases quite simply due to fear of redundancy.

So parting with my rainy day funds meant I needed a supplier that could assure me I was getting the best deal, could show me a durable product and above all would give me a warm feeling from their service.

So as soon as the credits began to roll on Saturday’s Glee rerun I reached for the phone to call the safest pair of hands of all, John Lewis Partnership. Sadly, there kitchen team were too busy to take my call, so the switchboard operator took my details and promised me a call that day. I am still waiting.

Next to Homebase, a large DIY retailer with a reputation for discounting. But they were too busy to even answer the phone, not once, but twice.

So to the market leader DIY retailer, B and Q, who according to the newspaper had a sale on. The guy answering the phone affirmed he could help us with our enquiry and there was no need for me to speak to a kitchen specialist. I thought we had hit gold. However, he wouldn’t arrange a site visit for measurements to be taken and a plan to be drawn up.

“Why would we do that when you haven’t been into the store to choose a style?” he quizzed.

“Why would I drive to your store to choose a style when you don’t even have my measurements?” I retorted.

“Well go online then.” He suggested. So I moved on.

And to Wickes. The builder’s pal and the first port of call for my seriously DIY capable family and friends. And what a surprise; the young lady that took the call new exactly what to do and what to ask. Within minutes she had booked and confirmed an appointment for a trained consultant to visit to measure up after the school run on Monday and a provisional visit the store to discuss the design.

John from our local store came to visit and over the past few weeks walked us through the precarious road f domestic compromise to select our new kitchen. But above all, he did what his competitors failed to do; give me a warm feeling.

07 June 2011

My wife is the typical Facebook user

Social media is about community, and not the platform. A social media platform or app accelerates a community coming together with a self interest based on mutual benefit.

Yet from my experience, everyone perceives this evolution towards forming online communities differently according to who they perceive to be the typical user of Facebook.

The current social media generation gap among my colleagues generally looks something like this:

• Those that conjure a picture of their teenage children tend to see Facebook as no more relevant to their daily lives as a Playstation.

• Those with older children (post or at university) while not appreciating that social media is becoming ubiquitous, at least see some value in sharing content such as updates and photos.

• Those with children under high school age are most likely to be already users of social media in their own personal, albeit passively.

• Those without children are probably the only people to actually have time to use it and cross multiple channels, probably including gaming and dating.

My typical Facebook user is my wife. Not just because women make up more active users than men, but because she is the best example of using social media to speak with and listen to her community that avidly checks in wherever we go.

The best example of this is using one of her iPhone nappy apps. (Nappies are diapers for my North American chums). When we recently had dinner with another family at the Pizza Express in Rochester, (again for my friends on the west side of the Atlantic, that’s Kent, not up state New York) I was so impressed with the baby changing facilities that she mandated me to post an entry for every other parent visiting the Medway towns and stranded for somewhere to change their baby.

This is community at its best. Sharing something that is good, not simply for our own benefit, but for the community to prosper. We all belong to different communities and therefore find different uses for the medium.

My communities include people I train with, friends I drink with, friends that live too far away to drink with, people I meet to talk about local politics, the people I speak to when I walk the dog (and a further subset that don’t just look at me strange and speak to me back).

It may seem to my colleagues that all this Facebook stuff is just for teenagers to gossip and parents to share photos, however, over the next ten years these tools will become central to how we live and do business, just as email and mobile telephones have.

Whether they are on Facebook or a iPhone apps, the typical social media user by 2020 will be however we percieve ourselves.

31 May 2011

Cheap social media makes marketers lazy

Just as I entered a meeting with a colleague and one of the founders of The Social Media Leadership Forum I happened up this article on the daily enews bulletin from Marketing Week.

Let me paraphrase the premise, junior marketers are over using social media because it is perceived as low cost and that finance managers care more about return on investment than cost and are by default encouraging this.
We kicked it around and although we had some sympathy for the sentiment, I don’t buy any of it.

So as the charge came from with our profession here is my response. The basis of successful marketing stands, and indeed underpins all successful campaigns. I.e. target messages of a well researched proposition at a target audience you understand and will perceive the value they can extract from your proposition - that it is greater than any alternative.

The channel we choose to use to deliver the messages is informed more by our knowledge of the customer not just the cost of delivering the message. Social, and digital media more generally, are just some of the possible channels. A practicing marketer that ignores all possible ways of effectively engaging their client is lazy full stop. Not just lazy because they are using social media at the expense of the alternatives/compliments.Just an aside to this, one of the largest growth areas for use of social media is a s a second screen to TV activity.

No longer do we have to wait until the next day to have a conversation beside the water cooler about what was on the box – we can share it with our network through Facebook and Twitter as it happens. Link this new trend of dual screens (the TV and your social media device) and we could see a major resurgence in big ticket above the line TV advertising. The pursuit of which is anything but lazy.

17 May 2011

Just because it's difficult, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it


A friend told me about an online industry community she had invested her firm's money and time in over the past year. She has worked hard to cajole her colleagues into producing blogs on their areas of expertise, take part in discussion threads and even post videos from conferences and C level executives.

In spite of this effort, she just couldn’t seem to get her business behind the channel. In particular, her firm consistently failed to input to the topics the community were most engaged about as effectively as her competitors.

Despite the success of her company’s competitors had shown in increased engagement and sales, despite the investment already made and the apparent opportunity the growing community presented; A committee of recently appointed managers cancelled the initiative's budget, because changing the way her organisation operated was seen to be 'just too hard.'

I learned early in my career as a marketing manager at one of the largest organisations in the world that just because something was hard to do, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. This wasn’t the mantra of the business, but my line manager. A man in his late thirties that had risen rapidly to run a pan European US$200 million turnover division and was perceived by his peers to have the alchemist's touch. How had he done this, he changed the businesses he ran to be responsive to whatever clients valued. Even if that meant finding new ways of working.

So often in marketing we look to external solutions to achieve our commercial objectives. A different place to advertise, a new event, a bigger or better web site to push our products and services. When in fact, we should simply address the hardest challenge of them all first; Create an effective business that engages in and responds to what our communities are really interested in.

5 things to tell your colleagues that still don’t get social media

1/ It’s active, even if you’re not
Even if you or your business is not actively listening or engaging with your customers in social media, your business, product, industry, advocates, detractors are being talked about. My own firm is talked about with mainly positive and neutral sentiment hundreds of times a month on Twitter alone. Our products and industry is mentioned hundreds of times an hour.

2/ Social media is principally an online representation of what happens in the real world
In the real world we share news, photos of our children, birthday wishes and invitations, just as at work we invite clients to events, talk about products and share results. I appreciate that not everyone we work with has friends or anything interesting to say. For those that do, social media has proven itself as the easiest and most immediate way to share.

3/ What we do online stays online
I am not convinced privacy is dead, but the super injunction nonsense of the past few weeks illustrates that it is probably on its last legs. So be careful, by all means. Contrary to point 2, don’t do everything online that you would do offline, it sticks.


A large part of the success of Linked In is due to its online representation of our CVs (Resumes). Now it is a universal truth, not widely discussed, that everyone’s CVs contain a little fiction. Don’t fall into this trap, social media allows everything to be checked and verified.

4/ If you don’t engage in social media, your competitors will
Social media is by no means ubiquitous, certainly not in the developed world. But it will be. Orkut, a Facebook me too in Brazil has 84% penetration and continues to grow. Similarly renren and 51 in China, Vkontakte in Russia and Bharatstudent in India all have following on a scale that would dwarf the populations of some small European states.

Social media will become a default communications tool for most people under the age of 40 by the time the football World Cup reaches Russia in 2018, especially in the fastest growing economies with the youngest demographics such as the BRIC nations. Corporate websites will become increasingly obsolete as communities interested in a topic or product come together online, with or without your business.

Successful businesses are finding the communities that are interested in their solutions, and listen to the conversation before engaging.

5/ The big numbers aren’t the true story
Facebook is predicted to have a billion users by the end of 2012, and social media will reach 90% penetration of all internet users in 2013. By the summer of 2012, half of all mobile phone users in Europe will use smart phones. In the UK, nearly 26 million adults have Facebook accounts. Of all UK Facebook users, 50% are over 36.

However, the power of social media is isn’t in its scale alone, it is in the quality everyone’s connections. People for time in memorial have asked people they trust before making a purchase, and social media has accelerated this. Amazon understands it, and the travel industry is coming to grips with it through Trip Advisor. Havas Media’s research in 2010 found 62% of UK shoppers consult online communities before buying and 34% have looked at an online review at least once before making a purchase.

Which takes us nicely back to point 1. Social media is active, even if you are not.

09 May 2011

Get off my business case


Continuation of my look below the surface on B2B social media…


Let’s kick off with some controversy ;-).


I am a ‘value based’ marketer. In fact, it was reading Peter Doyle’s book of the same title when I was studying my Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing that I decided that I needed to go further and get an MBA so that I could one day influence a whole organisation to the concept. (Even Kotler said the book could spark Mareting revolution).


If you are new to the approach, I recommend you look into how it can work for you. In the meantime, value based marketing is based on delivering shareholder value (in the form of return on investment/equity) based on delivering greater value to your customers (according to what they are prepared to pay) relative to your competition. There are countless examples of business that have consistently achieved this, First Direct Bank, Apple, Volkswagen and Starbucks.


So by extension, the concept goes that every marketing activity should be measured and reported in terms of shareholder value. Now as I said, I am a value based marketer, I think linking the sum of all marketing activity to shareholders returns is absolutely the right way to go. It drives the correct behaviours in the marketing function and delivers the right outcomes for the businesses ultimate owners.


However, I have had more than my fair share of exposure to management accounting at under grad, through my MBA, and from some very real experience at Honeywell. I draw the line at the minutiae of job costing including every single overhead. Firstly, because the calculation enters the realm of diminishing returns, secondly, because I don’t think the calculation adds any insight to the marketing led management decisions, and thirdly because it’s a faff.


So where’s the controversy? Well, having established I am not going to, and nor would advocate you should, measure the value of every single marketing activity, I recommend you don’t get drawn on applying some different set of metrics to social media. Yes it’s new, yes it may need an additional FTE to monitor pages or shepherd content, but that’s a marketing exec, not an administrator. A marketing exec should be adding value to every administrative task, and aligning those tasks to shareholder value (through adding value to clients).


We can’t realistically track any sale to a single brochure, single exhibition stand or video blog on our web site. It’s not even just down to the tender document we responded to. It is the sum of all these activities integrated to tell a single story that offers greater value to the client, relative to the cost of purchase and what our competitors offer.


I discussed this at the Finextra conference with another delegate from a Bank, they told me they did measure the value f every single activity, whether that be a stand at an event for thousands or an intimate event for a handful of clients, but they couldn’t tell me how they linked a sale to a specific marketing interaction, or be precise about how may pounds of revenue were returned for every pond of marketing expenditure. But they did have 3 people dedicated to generating spurious metrics that strangely enough, they always exceeded.


If you disagree, I would like to hear from you. As a committed value based marketer, I remain open to resolving this. But in the meantime, the case for B2B social media remains as and increasingly essential tool to support business developers broaden and deepen their relationships to sell more, whatever you produce. And how to measure how successful you are that? I think they call that dividends, or in other words, shareholder value…

01 May 2011

The Modern Brand Britain.


Friday 29th April was the peak of my patriotism to date. I didn’t think it would go beyond the high it experienced while I was living in the States when England won the ashes, the whole country was celebrating the bicentenary of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar and CNN’s lead story one weekend was Routemaster buses leaving the streets of London.

Not only were 2 billion people around the world sharing the Royal Wedding experience through their TV sets, but anti monarchist parties took place across the UK. My closest friend attended one in Brighton, and some 2,000 people attended a party in London’s Red Lion Square. How many states and communities around the globe can point to such a degree of tolerance where the majority of people share in the personal delight of the Windsor family wedding, while simultaneously having celebrations of an eventual downfall of the British Monarchy. We even tolerated small Muslim protests around the UK who chose to burn the Union Flag and effigies of the happy couple.

The brand values of Britain we should be most proud of and promote to every corner of the globe were all on show. Not just the pageantry first choreographed for Queen Victoria, the use of old British brand icons like a 1960’s Aston Martin for the escape from the main wedding party, or the limos ferrying guests built by Rolls Royce when the company wasn’t owned by a German manufacturer whose brand is associated with building Hitler’s dream of automotive manufacturing. Britain’s brand is of a people coming together to celebrate as one, regardless of whether they agree with the premise of the celebration.

The UK is a nation that wears its diversity for everyone to see, that mocks our differences but understands inherently; it is these differences that make us special.

And let’s not underestimate the power of our brand. Quite deliberately I have followed the build up to the Royal Wedding through the foreign media. My family were among the 25% of Britons that followed the event live using a medium other than the BBC, through CNN in fact. We were all struck by how this little overcrowded island just off the north coast of Europe, with its own currency and transient climate, has held the headlines of newspapers, magazines and news channels across the world. Al Jazeera, France 24, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox, Russia Today all had special programmes on the satellite feed I had access too. Nearly all of them invested US $200k in a special studio over looking Buckingham Palace, flying in high profile anchors.

We have a brand that it is almost unique to us, not just based on the tradition of monarchy and social order; but of diversity and harmony. A brand the world values and indeed needs. A brand that we can still command interest in.

That’s why I was proud to be British on the day of the Royal Wedding in London on 29th April 2011, and would fight to retain the monarch
y.

27 April 2011

Below the surface of B2B social media


I thought it might be useful if I scratched the surface on the recent social media events I have attended, and demonstrate I was listening.

Before I start, let me be clear, I not am going to cover consumer activity. 

Social media is evolving too quickly for me to summarise everything in a single blog, and there are many people closer to the evolution of consumer trends that have a better handle on its direction of travel. 

So for now, B2B is what I do, and on the whole, all I have done, and I guess, God willing, is what I will always do.

Clear objectives
Nothing-new there then. Well really, is there? Every management, sales, operations, project management, tactical or strategic marketing book, every book that tells you how to change your life, get fit, loose weight, find a life partner, plan a holiday starts with some cliché like “if you don’t know where your heading, then how will you know if you’ve arrived there?”

Setting clear objectives was a common theme at all the events, as if the audience needed help with that little gem. But having said that, it wasn’t until I had actually passed my driving test and become comfortable with having car as a teenager I could really appreciate what I could achieve with my new freedom, and I think the same applied with any potentially disruptive technology. I think just getting a corporate Facebook of the ground is challenge enough, without complication it further by setting corporate objectives that you have no idea how to test their reasonableness.

When we launched the www.planningportal.gov.uk to English and Welsh local authorities in 2002, we established a tiered level of engagement into the contracts. We didn’t expect everyone to start integrating back office systems such as document and workflow systems from day one. We recognised that our users, while informed professionals, such as architects, surveyors or planners, they had to get comfortable with the new way of working and experience it from themselves before they would fully adopt it. 

Taking this gradual approach has helped to create the most sustainable ecommerce site operated by the UK Government that has processed over 1 million planning applications since we launched it.

I call this approach test and learn; you may have heard it before. Instead of worrying about all that getting there business, it’s based on, let’s just get under way. As the Chinese say, “even a journey of ten thousand miles starts with a single step.” Or as Google say it 'launch early and iterate.'

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again
Social media’s role in business development, whether that is sales, service or marketing is augment what we already do. 

The very best of business developers build contacts, join networks to find opportunities, use their network to source referrals, they keep in touch with contacts, share knowledge, listen to what’s going on, develop insight and update everyone on what’s new. Tell me Linked In, Twitter, Facebook and countless industry specific applications can't add to that to that process.

Every successful business developer maintains the records of their contacts and uses this data to network with new people and source referrals. They don’t have to use Linked In for this, but it helps to have a massive online managed rollardex with potentially every professional contact you’ll need being there. But more valuable still, all of their contacts are in the same place.

All very logical, but not so social. 
The oldest adage in sales still holds true, people buy from people, and that’s where Twitter comes in. Combining the utilitarian nature of Linked In with the engaging nature of Twitter and we start to have a system. Yes, Twitter is fantastic for sharing your despair at what Joey has just said on The Only Way is Essex (#TOWIE) or telling everyone you had to have a bathroom break on the M4 for the third time, but this is how we signal our personality. 

The minutiae of our lives, our jobs, our past times are we talk about most in shaping our relationships, especially those relationships that count. It is also a platform for sharing important milestones like guess who has bought a shed load of stuff from us or look at our shiny new thing.