Instant coffee is fast. Instant coffee offers the quick solution you need at that time. Instant coffee keeps you satisfied until you can get to the gourmet roast or Colombian dark coffee from your favourite bean.
As customers, we love full bean flavour but we don’t always need that – sometimes all we need to keep us happy is some instant coffee.
How’s your business at serving coffee?
There’s a question mark over “who owns social media” when it comes to business.
Some say PR should own social media, since they’ve been dealing with the public faces of companies since time began. Some say marketing, as social media is the new email marketing is the new direct marketing is the new cold call marketing (but all wrapped up in a fuzzy warm cloak). Some say customer service; some say legal; some say sales. And so on, etc, delete where applicable…
You know who owns social media? No-one. Not an individual department. Not a niche. Not a job description. No-one.
Plenty (all) departments and sectors (should) own a piece of it.
Customer service should own the people-to-people side of it. Sales should own the business development side of it. Creative should own the strategy side of it. Legal should own the “keeping the shit off the fan” side of it. Every employee (ideally) should own some piece of it and help tell the company story. That’s the beauty of social media – everyone can have an impact.
But one single department owning social media? Sorry, personally I think that’s asking for trouble, not to mention limiting the potential of what it can offer you. Give me cross-department collaboration (over one department not collaborating and making everyone else cross) any time.
How about you?
Children fear nothing. They may be scared of something, but it’s a different kind of fear.
They want to check out everything around them. They look at things differently from us. They see unique and new; we see “been there, done that”.
Children have that innocence that says everything has yet to be discovered. They don’t care about the safe, the boring – they want fresh and exciting. They see the world through the eyes of someone that doesn’t know the meaning of the words, “Too far” or “Some other time”.
Shouldn’t we all be like children? In life; in love; in business? Does our fear of real life stop us from overcoming everything that’s holding back our true success?
I think I’d like to be a child. How about you?
James Dyson looked at the vacuum cleaner and gave people a different way to do things – no bags. Simple.
EasyJet looked at international flights and gave people a different way to fly – no thrills affordability. Simple.
Sony looked at video games and gave people a different way to view gamers – cool mass appeal chic. Simple.
We don’t always have to build something brand new. We don’t always have to spend millions on research when the audience is already there. We don’t always have to create from scratch.
Sometimes just reinventing the wheel is more than enough.
There’s a fine line between offering pre-project consultancy advice and actually moving into billable hours. Some clients get this; some don’t. Some clients keep moving the goal posts; some are grateful for your advice and experience and will pay for it.
If you’re wondering how to define this line and where it’s safe to instill a cut-off point, take a look at this video and see how much of yourself and your clients you recognize. If you’re nodding your head too much at the client/customer point of view, it may be time to re-evaluate just how you define your business relationship.
Advice and helping set the stage is fine; but it doesn’t pay the bills. You were approached for a reason; don’t be afraid to stand up for that reason and set your stall out from the start. After all, if you’re being paid for your success, surely your client’s enjoying that success with you, no?
