Blog Entries

The piss your customers off strategy

PeterCook — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:00:00 +0100

I flew to Bali using frequent flyer points a few weeks ago, which meant we were on a Jetstar flight. I think they have made a strategic decision to piss their customers off. Or at the very least to differentiate themselves on ticket price only, try to then squeeze every dollar they can out of their customers, and not care at all about how their customer's feel.
There was a lady across the aisle f [...]

Thought Leadership in Small Business

PeterCook — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I've recently spent a week in Sydney with Matt Church becoming an accredited Thought Leaders Mentor ... another string to add to my business coaching bow.

Consequently I've been thinking a lot about how thought leadership can help small business.

Thought leadership in a particular field means being an expert, but it's more than that. It's actually about [...]

Hidden assets in your business

PeterCook — Wed, 26 May 2010 00:00:00 +0100

You may recall my last blog about getting on the phone and making cold calls - with exceptional results.

Well, we actually held the seminar last week, which was also really the launch of our new business Pure Bookkeeping. The outcome we were looking for from the event was to sell licenses to the Pure Bookkeeping System at the reduced price for our launch of around $4k. We had 12 people along on the night. Of those 2 had already bought the system, 2 were partners and one w [...]

Cold calling ... for the first time in 10 years

PeterCook — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A couple of days ago I got on the phone and did some cold calling for the first time in 10 years (cold calling is ringing up someone out of the phone book that doesn't know you from a bar of soap). The last time I cold called was when I was just starting out as a business coach - and the results back then were nothing to write home about. In fact I think over six months of fairly consistent cold calling I didn't get a single client. Since then I've been in the fortunate position o [...]

The Power of the Sales Target

PeterCook — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Last month I met with a client 2 days before the end of the month, and he
was three sales short of his quarterly target of 30 sales. We could have
been satisfied with that, but instead we decided to keeping going full out
for the target until the end of the quarter.

We came up with the great "Get my business coach off my back" sale.

My client sent out an email to all his prospects who were trialling his
product and considering [...]

Moral of the story - don't underestimate how much your customers want and need (and will pay for!).

PeterCook — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We ran The Money Workshop on the weekend. We ask for feedback at the end of the workshop, including what we can improve. We had a few comments like "nothing comes to mind. that's a first!" and simply "all good," as well as "open window was too cold" and "bring an espresso machine." I think if we've got it [...]

The professor and the soccer hooligan

PeterCook — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I was listening to a podcast from RadioLab and heard about this fascinating study. They set up a challenging mini golf course. But before each of the subjects played, they were told "this is a test of your physical intelligence." The result - the white subjects on average played four strokes better over the course than the black subjects. Doesn't sound that surprising - golf clubs are often exclusive and expensive, maybe more whites play golf than blacks, maybe mini golf isn [...]

Getting the dirt from our customers

PeterCook — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0100

You may recall a blog I wrote back in October last year "What do your customers say about you ... even when you are not there?". I wrote about The Loyalty Zone - a company that surveys customers, not about customer satisfaction, but about customer loyalty. As CEO Craig Cherry says "a satisfied customer isn't enough - a satisfied customer probably won [...]

Lessons from Bali (and some hilarious signs)

PeterCook — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Our two month Bali adventure is over, so I thought I'd share some of our lessons.

You may recall we were on a 10 day holiday in Bali in May last year, and I was staring out to sea reflecting on my business. I realised that while the business had grown (the team was up to ten people), I was working harder than ever, feeling more stressed, and not really loving my business. As I watched the fishing boats sailing back into shore I thought I need more of this.

I the [...]

Its all about trust

PeterCook — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Trust in business is completely critical. In his book, Lovemarks, Kevin Roberts writes about trust and respect being the two precursors to a Lovemark. I agree - for someone to love your business, they must first trust and respect it.

It's interesting being in Bali, thinking about the cultural aspects of trust in business. In Australia the government basically trusts us to pay our tax. We may get audited, but its largely an honour system. And the vast majority of businesses [...]

Hard at work ... Bali style

PeterCook — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Our experiment to live and work in Bali is underway!

A little background ... a six months ago we came for a holiday to Bali for 10 days. I did some reflecting on my business, and realised that while we had grown, had a beautiful office and a growing team that peaked at 10 people, I wasn't loving the business any more. I was working harder to pay everyone, more stressed and had lost my mojo. I was staring out to sea thinking I could get used to this, when I thought 'wh [...]

Steak vs Sizzle

PeterCook — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I was at a workshop last weekend - Passion, Power and Purpose. It was a three day bootcamp that Trish had won a ticket to, and kindly offered it to me.

It was run by an organisation called Beyond Success. The workshop had a ticket price of about $3k, although most of the 80 people in the room had paid $25k for a one year program.

I was fairly disappointed in the workshop. I didn't leave with any great increase in my passion, power or purpose. I think it [...]

On My Soapbox

PeterCook — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

My last blog was about customer service - how to delight your customers. This week I'm getting on my soap box about a couple of simple things that waste my time and leave me feeling anything but delighted.

The first is a line I see more and more at the bottom of email signatures:

"Please consider the environment before printing this email."

I don't know anyone who prints emails to read them. Some documents maybe, but a five line email? An [...]

What do your customers say about you ... when you are not there?

PeterCook — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Craig Cherry is in the business of answering this question. He runs a business called The Loyalty Zone and came and spoke about customer service at a Love Your Business seminar a couple of nights ago.

Most people I talk to say that word of mouth is their most important form of marketing - me included. However most of us don't know what our customers really think, feel and most importantly say about us.

Craig shared with us how exactly how to find out what [...]

Pete, why do you work so much?

PeterCook — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Every second week I have the pleasure of hanging out with my two nephews, Jarrah and Sam, and doing pretty much whatever they want to do. Jarrah is four and Sam is coming up to two.

Last Sunday we were sitting in a cafe sipping our babycinos and my cup-of-cino (Jarrah normally orders, and he thinks a cappuccino is a cup-of-cino, and I think that's too cool to correct), when Jarrah asked me an interesting question.

"Pete, why do you work so much? Why do you work [...]

Leadership, Footy Clubs and Business

PeterCook — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I was part of a very interesting conversation about leadership last week facilitated by Sean Richardson. Sean is the high performance coach and sports psychologist at the St Kilda Football club. He proposed that great leadership strikes a balance between support and challenge.

I think it’s a great model. I remember a team I was leading many years ago when I was working as a business consultant with Accenture. It was a software development team, and there were two guys in particul [...]

Do core values really mean anything?

PeterCook — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A key leadership distinction in the Love Your Business Method is creating your core values; and it's one of the first things that I work on with my coaching clients.

However it sometimes seems like a futile exercise - we create a great set of core values and then ... nothing happens. They aren't discussed, they aren't displayed, they don't seem to make any difference.

I have to somewhat sheepishly admit, looking around our office walls I can't see our core va [...]

Is your business model dumb?

PeterCook — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I'm about to meet with a friend to talk about his business. After having a look at his website and doing the sums, my conclusion is his business model won't work. His business is selling a service that people pay for on a hourly basis, and it isn't a recurring service (i.e. people need it once or twice and they are done). And his pricing is too low, and the service too hard to sell to be viable in my not-so-humble opinion. It could be an interesting conversation.

I'm hy [...]

How personal is too personal?

PeterCook — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A few weeks ago I made the weekly email I send out a bit more personal. I changed the title from "Thought for the week" to "The Word from Pete". I added the salutation at the start of the email so it now says "Hi Jane" at the top of the email. And I changed the signature from "The team at Love Your Business" to my name.

Three pretty simple changes that have led to some startling results, some interesting feedback and one very funny story.

[...]

Seven Steps to Selling Out Your Event

PeterCook — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Last week we ran the first ever Love Your Money Workshop - and it sold out. It was pretty amazing for the first one we'd ever done, especially given we only came up with the idea six and a half weeks earlier.

It was the first time I've ever had an event sell out, and at times we've struggled to get numbers to other LYB workshops, so it got me thinking. What was it that had this event sell out? Here's what I came up with.

Make a bold promise. We promised that the workshop woul [...]