SFM Consulting Blog

Do you value your network?

2012-03-08T10:35:32Z

I’m an active, joined-up, networker so often get invitations to join people’s networks on LinkedIn. Quite frequently I haven’t met the person involved, or had an interesting on-line discussion with them so their name doesn’t ring any bells.

After a bit of detective work I find we are both members of the same LinkedIn group, yet their invitation is just one of the bog standard LinkedIn invitations and they haven’t bothered to say why they want me in their network.

If you can’t be bothered to say why you want to me to be part of your network you're not sending me a positive message about how you value and relate to your network.

Don’t judge a book by its cover

2012-02-22T08:59:11Z

I know a guy who is incredibly, incredibly bright - a first class honours degree and PhD from Cambridge sort of bright. He’s not like some very bright academics I’ve come across who aren’t on my planet - he’s great fun, easy to talk to, has a terrific sense of humour, is a great conversationist and someone I love to meet up with. He’s incredibly successful in business too, has all sorts of investments, written books, an amazing house and garden, terrific wife and two lovely daughters.

Recently he was going though the redundancy process. He’d described the people he worked with as highly stressed and mad as a box of frogs. My initial thought was that he would be glad to get out. His employers really demonstrated their madness by making him work his 6 months notice - partly because they couldn’t find a frog mad enough to hop into their box and replace him!

Not all successful people are prudent and have a life outside work. My friend is. Many people with very senior, demanding jobs don’t have absorbing interests outside work. He does. As I write this I'm beginning to think that if he was single he’d be a great catch!

A month or so before he was due to leave we delivered some training together. I was shocked at the sight of my friend. Rather than being de-mob happy or looking like the weight was soon to be lifted off his shoulders he looked crushed and depressed. I can hear you thinking, what’s his problem? No financial worries, great home life, lots of hobbies, great prospects - where's the problem?

I was reflecting on our day working together when it hit me. Inside he’s no different from the rest of us - he’s just a normal, vulnerable human being. He was reacting in the way most lesser mortals do and taking his redundancy personally. He’d have been happy to leave of his own accord to move onto pastures new but his employer decided to make cut backs, the decision was out of his hands, and it hurt.

Just because he’s ‘well insulated’ against the financial effects of redundancy, can almost certainly find work easily, and has lots of interests and a lovely family to fill his time we’d be wrong to judge a book by its cover.

3 things to do before a client meeting

2012-01-17T15:17:31Z

Most of us have so many meetings that it’s easy to slip into the habit of not preparing adequately in advance. As well as the common sense preparations about knowing where you are meeting, how to get there, arriving in plenty of time and taking all the relevant paperwork etc. Time with clients is precious so aim to get the most out of any meeting, and grow your credibility, by being well prepared.

Set aside time in the diary well in advance of the meeting to think, read minutes or notes from last meeting, draft an agenda and research any new ideas you have suggested previously or want to mention at the meeting
Send an agenda, agenda items and any papers for discussion in advance of the meeting allowing enough time for the client, and anyone else attending, to read and prepare for the meeting
Have a ‘pre-mortem’before the meeting, that is imagine everything that might go wrong in terms of the client not liking what you’ve presented, the client not agreeing to things you’d assumed would go ahead, obections about price etc. If there are two or more of you attending the meeting each come up with your own list of the objections you may face, explain your rationale for identifying them. Agree what are valid objections then together work out how you would overcome them should they arise. It’s an excellent way of challenging your own thinking and identifying any potential weaknesses.

Pre-mortems are really useful when working on large projects, tenders or pitches. See Harvard Business Review for more information.

Following up turned a lead to a win-win

2012-01-16T15:23:42Z

In my January newsletter I wrote about the benefits of driving opportunities forwards by using your diary and sending clients notes after meetings. Last Monday I was on the receiving end of a courtesy call from someone who was trying to get a particular road bike for me to test. He was just calling to say that he hadn’t forgotten me but was having trouble getting a test bike in my size. Fast forward to Friday and I was walking out of Cycleworks in Petersfield, pushing a new bike and grinning like a Cheshire cat. Here’s what happened.

Two years ago I bought a road bike on e-bay as I fancied cycling but didn’t want to spend £800 on an entry level ladies road bike. I hadn’t used it much until last April when a friend offered to take me out for a ride and give me some tips. He has cycled for years, competitively too, which gave me confidence as I’d fitted SPDs - those pedals you clip in and out of - and I was somewhat nervous. The plan was to ride for about an hour and a half, but it was a glorious day and it was fun so two and a half hours and 66km later I found myself back at home with aching legs but thinking about the next ride. In May I rode my first Sportive - an all womens 100km. I was hooked.

By November I’d realised that my bike was too small and I needed to buy something that fitted me properly so I went to see Simon (Manager and Director) at Cycleworks in Petersfield to see what test bikes he had. So as not to bore the non-cyclist readers he had a lovely red bike* which he proceeded to adjust so it fitted me perfectly.

Getting the bike geometry right for the rider is a science I knew nothing about until a few months ago. Forty five minutes with spirit levels, plumb lines and a gadget to measure the angle of my knee and the bike was set up precisely and ready to go. Simon had explained how important it is to get the bike set up right and that he wanted me to have the ‘ride of my life.’

I did - but being cautious, in love with a bike that was much more than I has planned to spend or my ability warranted, and only having ridden my e-bay bike I wanted to test something else. Simon led me in the direction of a racy white bike. It looked even more beautiful than the red bike .... and more expensive. Unfortunately it wasn’t my size but the right size was due in but probably not until the New Year. And that’s why he phoned me last Monday.

Since test riding the red bike I’d been thinking about new bikes and researching costs using the iPad my husband bought me for Christmas. I’d reached the conclusion that the red bike was the top of a particular range and its substantially cheaper sibling would suit me fine. I’d received an e-mail saying Cycleworks were offering 10% of everything and idle chatter had found me a buyer for my e-bay bike, so when Simon called last Monday I said I wanted to pick his brain about the red bike’s cheaper sibling as with 10% off, and a buyer for my bike, it was just within my price range. Now that I was being specific about price Simon mentioned that he’d got a bike in stock that was very similar to the test bike he was trying to get me, it was my size, in the right price range and when could I pop over for a test ride.

The fact Simon made the follow up call gave me the opportunity to get into a serious discussion about buying a bike during which he learned what I could afford to spend and by giving me the sale discount off a bike he’d already discounted was a win-win for both of us. So many businesses would have got a junior to make the call who may not have had the skill to turn what I was saying into testing a bike.

Although Simon had the measurements from the last test he spent more time making sure the bike was just right before I took it out for a short spin. When I walked back into the shop he didn't need to ask whether I wanted the bike - the look on my face said it all. On Saturday I cycled to Petersfield to meet up with other cyclists from the Tri Club. There was thick frost everywhere, no wind and bright sun. A perfect day in anyone’s book but made exceptional thanks to my new toy and comments from the boys about how much faster I was going. I know it will give me hours of pleasure, for years to come - with the added benefit of keeping me fit. I'm one very happy customer!

* For the cyclists

The bike I bought on e-bay was a Specialised Dolce
The red bike was a Specialised Roubaix Expert SL3
The bike I wanted to try for comparison was a Cervelo R3
The red bike's cheaper sibling was a Specialised Roubaix Competition
The bike I bought was a Cervelo RS with Shimano 105s and Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels

Tips to boost your productivity

2012-01-12T10:26:36Z

On 10th January I gave a 10 minute presentation, at the Chichester College Business Breakfast Club, on what gets in the way of working productively. Judging by the number of e-mails, texts and tweets I received the subject and presentation were spot on. The slide presentation is on Slideshare and the following are the key points from the presentation:

About 50% of the audience admitted to allowing their work to be interrupted by pop up messages on their screen, pings etc when e-mails, texts etc arrive.
Interruptions damage waste your most important commodity - time. Once used time has gone for ever.
Interruptions are a distraction and reduce your ability to focus your concentration and effort on the matter in hand leading to lower quality work that takes longer to produce
Many people use their diaries simply for appointments and sometimes to list reminders. Using your diary to schedule everything is a discipline and a disciplined approach to managing your time delivers results.
To start using your diary effectively do a brain dump of everything you need to do - not just tasks, but strategic priorities or the actions needed to achieve these priorities. Go through this list and highlight everything you need to do this week then separate in to two lists for the week - one for strategic and revenue-generating priorities and the other for everything else.
Schedule the strategic priorities into your diary first remembering that you can’t focus for more than 90 minutes at a time, effectively, then take a break. Make the most of the first 90 minutes of your working day - it’s when you’ll work most effectively (See ‘The way we’re working isn’t working’ by Tony Schwartz.)
In your breaks you need to do something different. If you’ve been sitting at your desk looking at Facebook or Twitter isn’t a break. Move around. Have a change of scene.
Remember - successful people like Richard Branson schedule time to look at an action e-mails - rather than looking at umpteen times a day, and also define one important or key task as the priority for the day.
Electronic diaries make using different colours for different types of task easy so you can see what is fixed and what can be moved around.
Like any new habit working this way takes a bit of time but once you start using your diary effectively you’ll:

achieve more priorities - providing you put everything in your diary and you don’t shy away from diarising the ones you don’t want to do
feel good about achieving more priorities .... and the business will benefit
be less likely to forget to do things as if you need to reschedule something you simply move it to another time
be better prepared for client meetings, phone calls etc because you’ve identified planning time in your diary
be in a better position to drive opportunities forwards and keep ideas on the agenda if you schedule time to write notes after all meetings
become more realistic about the time it takes to do something and hence better at estimating how long something takes - which is really important if time is money
find yourself working faster or more efficiently if you know you have an hour do to something - providing your interruptions are being kept to a minimum and you remember to take proper breaks
achieve things rather than getting to the end of the day and feeling a failure as you haven’t crossed anything off the to do list
discover if you really have more do to than time allows, thereby putting yourself in better position to evaluate what to delegate or outsource
have a better work-life balance
be happier!
It’s worth spending part of Friday afternoon planning your diary for the week ahead

If you work with other people the business will be more successful if everyone recognises that time is their most important commodity and knows how to manage it effectively.

Click here to go to the slides

Are the Care Quality Commission’s failings at Castlebeck just the tip of the iceberg?

2012-01-09T16:28:14Z

At the beginning of October Panorama revealed that over 150,000 social care workers are paid less than the minimum wage. The care industry employs over 2m people in the UK. It’s physically and mentally tough work, those receiving care are dependent on carers for many of their basic needs yet it’s poorly paid. Many are paid the minimum wage, many little more, and a significant number are paid less as their employers exploit loop holes.

In November the media announced that Dr Foster had published a report which revealed that the death rates in NHS hospitals in England are higher at the weekend. Their report showed a correlation between highest mortality rates and the fewest senior doctors available.

Last month concerns were voiced as to whether the Government should do more to monitor the finances of companies operating in the care home sector needs following the collapse of Southern Cross earlier this year.

The regulatory body in England - the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has developed a document - the Essential Standards of Quality and Safety - which is used to evaluate whether registered health and social care providers in England are compliant with section 20 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Standards against which providers are evaluated include:

staffing - there are sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, skilled and experienced persons, at all times, employed for carrying out the regulated activity
financial position - the service provider must take all reasonable steps to provide the regulated activity in such a manner as to ensure the financial viability of delivering the service as defined in their statement of purpose.

According to their website the CQC state that their job is ‘to check whether hospitals, care homes and care services are meeting government standards.’ Comparing these standards with the events reported in the press suggest that the CQC aren’t doing their job, and the failings at Castlebeck hospital in relation to mistreatment of residents have resulted in an investigation by officials at the Department of Health and NHS Management.

Whilst the regulated health and social care providers have exacting standards they are required to meet, how does the CQC demonstrate it meets standards required by a regulator? Previous healthcare regulators of the independent healthcare sector - the Healthcare Commission and National Care Standards Commission struggled with service standards and inconsistency between inspectors. Is Castlebeck just the tip of the iceberg and has anything be learned by the mistakes of the CQC’s predecessors?

3 top tips for client meetings

2012-01-03T15:20:57Z

When we're busy we often don't allocate enough time to prepare for meetings with our clients or follow up after the meeting. Every meeting, or significant telephone conversation, presents an opportunity to sow seeds which may develop and grow the business with that particular client.

These three tips may help you make the most of these opportunities:

► Send a summary of what was discussed and agreed within 48 hours of the meeting. If you don’t already send minutes or action plans Minutes.io is a useful tool. A summary is useful ground work for future meeting agendas.

► Take time to reflect on the meeting and whether any additional information, or clarification, is needed to progress any work

► Plan the actions required by the client remembering to schedule time in your diary. As well as making sure actions don’t get overlooked, scheduling helps keep track of the time actually spent on each client/project

Profit or Cash - which is more important?

2011-12-19T14:54:07Z

‘Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity but cash is reality.’ This neat saying, known as the ‘Banker's Mantra,’ is everything a business needs to remember about financial control. 

Here’s why. I’ll start with profit - the sanity. The reason for being in business is to make money, and profit is the measure of a business’s ability to make money .... or loss if it isn’t doing well.

Nothing in this life is ‘free’ so the Inland Revenue tax your sanity which is why some businesses may want to keep their reported profits to a minimum. However for the the purpose of this short blog I’m only focusing on operating profit, that is the profit earned from a business’s core business operations. It’s also known as EBIT - earnings before interest and tax.

As I’m blogging about profit and cash I’ll only mention vanity in so much as it’s all the revenue a business generates from its operations. As it’s the largest number in the profit and loss account it’s what companies can boast about.

A business can’t focus on just profit and turnover alone because the process of generating revenue needs cash because

creating the products or services it sells
getting these to market
employing staff
office facilities, office overheads
purchasing assets such as computers

all need cash.

These costs occur in advance of the product being produced and sold so cash is an essential ingredient. It doesn’t matter where the cash comes from - whether it’s generated by the business or provided by investors or borrowed from the bank, but without cash a business cannot survive.

Some business owners and managers think that if they are in profit they should have cash and can’t understand when they don’t. It’s sometimes caused by them focusing on the P&L, which doesn’t show cash movement, rather than looking at the balance sheet and cash flow forecasts.

The reason that profit and cash aren’t the same thing is timing. There are two aspects to this. Firstly cash is needed to produce and sell a product or service, and secondly accounting conventions use the tax date of an invoice as the moment the profit is recorded, not the payment of the invoice. For the majority of businesses the cash received for payment of an invoice is not on the day it is raised. Consequently there needs to be a buffer of cash to carry on the business.

Taking this a stage further a company can be highly profitable on paper but because of the disparity between paying the cost of sales and overheads and receiving payment for invoices mean the company has no cash. If the cash outgoings are greater than the cash coming in the company may go into receivership. It’s called overtrading.

Profitability is a function of the company’s ability to maximise revenues from their cost base - namely their direct and indirect costs and assets. Having sufficient cash in the bank to continue the operations that generate profits is the proof of management’s ability to:

minimise the amount of cash tied up in stock
cost control
minimise the time it takes for invoices to be paid - the debtors
generate a greater margin than depositing the same money in the bank

So - to answer the question - 'profit or cash - which is more important?' - cash is the most important as the business cannot continue to carry on day to day operations in the current market without cash in the bank and you cannot rely on banks to provide an on-going overdraft facility.

However the end game for any business is both - as profits are the purpose of being in business and these can only be enjoyed by the business owners if there is sufficient cash to distribute the profits.

GPs can’t avoid the requirements of the Health & Social Care Act 2008

2011-11-23T17:35:46Z

Since April 2010 the provision of health and social care in England and Wales has been governed by the Health & Social Care Act 2008 - in other words it is, to all intents and purposes, already in effect, even although the appointed regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), has allowed NHS GP practices until April 2013 to formally register as providers. This delay doesn’t in any way absolve GP practices from their responsibilities under the Act.

It is remarkable therefore that delaying the registration by 12 months from April 2012 has seen a number of GP practices bury their heads in the sand and put off preparing for registration. The penny hasn’t dropped that registration with the CQC doesn’t mark the point at which they have to comply with the legislation - they should have been doing it since it came into force in April 2010.

The Act applies to all providers of health and social care in England and Wales and its purpose in it’s simplest terms is to provide one set of standards that applies to all providers of health and social care thereby enabling the end user to compare services from NHS and independent providers and to ensure they receive a consistent standard of care.

Like any Act of Parliament once it receives Royal Assent anyone to whom it applies has to abide by the legislation, even although they are not required to register until April 2013. As an example, some people think the Official Secrets Act applies to those who are required to sign it. But in fact it applies to everyone, whether you have signed it or not, in the same way that we are all required by the Road Traffic Act of 1988 to wear seat belts, even although we have not signed that Act.

In the same way Health & Social Care Act, NHS GP practices have been required to provide services in line with the requirements of the Health & Social Care Act 2008 since its introduction in April 2010.

A big ‘thank you’ to Will Donald at Amex

2011-11-22T15:28:31Z

Last Thursday we took the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen - looking forward to a weekend in Honfleur to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Shortly after we joined the A13 motorway our car lost power and refused to accelerate leaving us no alternative but to pull over on the hard shoulder.

A call to the RAC revealed we didn't have European cover and they couldn't help. Nor could the AA or our insurers and the local Land Rover dealer in Caen weren't licenced to recover vehicles from the motoway. Our relaxing weekend looked doomed until we spoke to Will Donald at Amex. He got everything back on track and here's the thank you my husband sent Raymond Joabar, CEO of Amex. Sorry that it has come out a bit small.

When was the last time you had exceptional customer service ....... and took the time to find out the name of the CEO to write and thank them?

If the answer is credibility - what is the question?

2011-11-22T15:09:57Z

One of the LinkedIn features I particularly enjoy is the well-considered, thought-provoking questions and answers about subjects in which I have an interest - both in Groups and Answers. The different viewpoints have expanded my horizons, knowledge and interests. My perception of many contributors - most of whom I’ve never met - has been enhanced by their on-line contributions and I feel I’ve benefited from them sharing their knowledge and experiences.

There’s a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience I know I can tap into through LinkedIn if I need an opinion or expert knowledge, but I'm cautious how I use it. Why? Because there are people in some of the Groups I follow who are happy to post trivial, or poorly constructed, questions without realising the damage it does to their credibility. I’m wondering if they've heard that asking questions on LinkedIn raises their profile so ask anything rather than stopping to think whether their question is more appropriate for Google?

Recently I received a recommendation request from someone I had met, only briefly, at a networking event. Despite being from someone working in marketing the request was full of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and mis-use of capitals. I politely turned it down saying my reputation is at stake when I make a recommendation and my policy is not to make recommendations without first hand experience. The sender understood so I then decided to take a risk and give them some feedback about their e-mail for the simple reason I'm a giver and I was likely to come across them again at a networking event. I read and re-read what I wrote quite a few times before I pressed send as I didn’t want my feedback misinterpreted by the recipient. The effort paid off as the recipient responded immediately expressing considerable thanks for the feedback particularly as I’d bothered to take the time to do it just after 6pm on Friday evening. They now understand a bit more about me and I know they’ve spent time reading my profile.

LinkedIn can be a very powerful tool, and whether you work for yourself or within a company you will have skills, knowledge, expertise you may wish to share. It takes time to climb on top of the metaphorical pedestal, but a stupid question, or ill-considered answer, can send you plummeting to the floor. Understandably some companies get jumpy about their staff being active on LinkedIn, but investing in decent guidelines (rules are there to break) and training about the brand will deliver great benefits all round.

In short, LinkedIn builds trust, relationships and credibility and can be a valuable part of your marketing mix, but like everything worthwhile it takes time and effort to get results. On the other hand destroying your credibility takes just seconds.

Employer branding - did it start BC?

2011-09-29T10:29:13Z

Yesterday, after listening to Alistair McIntosh, Organisation Developement Manager for the British Library present at the CIPD seminar 'Employer branding when resources are tight' it came to me that the principals of employer branding have been around for an awful long time. They just weren't recognised as such.

I remembered learning a quote from the Bible at school 'If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1).'

Many companies, regardless of their size, still think branding is just a marketing activity. To their customers or clients they 'speak in the tongues of men and angels' but what the staff hear from their employer is something very different. It's not surprising that their staff don't feel loved as what they are hearing is the sound of 'a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.' Furthermore it's not surprising that the staff struggle to speak in the tongues of men and angels.

Is that what you mean?

2011-09-05T16:28:17Z

If you inadvertently say something upsetting, or unkind, to someone’s face you can usually see in their expression, and in their eyes, that you’ve got it wrong. Because you’re there you’ve seen what you’ve done and you’ve the chance to eat humble pie and put things right.

In today’s world of instant electronic communication where speed is everything short, rushed messages are becoming the norm. As messages get shorter and shorter the scope for misinterpretation can grow. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty poor electronic communications. Some have been irritating, some have been rude, some have upset me. If they’re from people I know I’m usually too nice to say anything - I just think they’re busy or having a bad day. Others have been poorly constructed, use bad grammar, use capitals incorrectly and have spelling mistakes. Last week I received a number of e-mails, and an attachment relating to a specific project, from an organisation that formed earlier this year and spent a fortune on their corporate identity. Amazingly none of the e-mails had a sign off saying the name of the organisation or the contact details for the sender, never mind a logo or consistent use of colour and typeface. The attachment didn’t even have a title, reference to the project to which it referred or a date. Unbelievable!

I wonder how many people read what they are about to send before they send it, think how it looks and consider whether the words they have used could mean something other than what they want to say. What do you do and what horrors have you experienced?

Getting Started with Social Media

2011-08-09T09:09:27Z

There are lots of courses around on social media, you may even have been on one, but you find you’re still struggling to get started with blogging, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You may be procrastinating because you don’t feel comfortable getting started so during August I’m offering one to one sessions in and around the Chichester/Haslemere area for £75 + VAT.*

If you don’t want to find that your marketing plans are still on the back burner when the business world gets back to normal after the holiday lull contact me to book a session or for further details about the training I can offer.

* Contact me for details of group sessions

Making a Difference

2011-08-05T09:12:16Z

If you work for yourself you might not be doing much client work during August if your clients are away and they used their holiday as a deadline by which to complete various projects. Whilst it’s a great time to review your strategy, put marketing in place for September, catch up on jobs you haven’t had time to do, plan and research forthcoming projects etc spending long days at your desk may mean your productivity slides.

Whilst I’m usually organised, motivated and very productive, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of large chunks of August at my desk doing stuff on my business, rather than interspersing it with client business. Like many people I work better under a bit of pressure so if I’ve got three days to do something rather than five the pressure focuses me and I can really motor.

When I was setting up SFM Consulting I was a regular volunteer ranger with the South Downs Joint Committee, so the other day I donned my volunteers uniform and met the volunteer rangers, now part of the South Downs National Park Authority, on Chapel Common to battle with the ragwort.

Pulling ragwort is hard work but that never hurt anyone - certainly not me. The sun was shining, the banter was fantastic and I was taught to scythe which is a great alternative to pulling .... apart from raking up the cut plants afterwards which is really, really boring.

Unusually I’d been feeling really low thanks to a big disappointment on the work front but some physical work, some laughs with my mates, sunshine, delicious home made cake at coffee time, and time to think while I worked put my World back on its axis. Most importantly we did something I really get a buzz from - we made a difference - both visually and from a conservation perspective.

The following day I saw three Council workers clearing a small verge. One had a strimmer, one was having difficulty manoeuvering a ride-on mower which was far too large for the area and the third appeared to be watching the other two. We have some massive problems in this country with unemployment and obesity. It struck me that one man (or woman) with a scythe could have done the job these three were doing. It would have been more cost effective, greener and provided some exercise for the person doing it. Whilst it won’t resolve unemployment, obesity or significantly reduce a Council’s carbon footprint, it’s an option I hope the Council have considered.