What is more, several New Facebook haters’ groups have emerged, such as “1,000 000 + to bring back old facebook” , “10,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK, CHANGE IT BACK!“, and “MILLIONS AGAINST FACEBOOK’s NEW LAYOUT & TERMS OF SERVICE”, having memberships of 436,635, 493,545, and 2,680,309 respectively.

Additionally, results from a Facebook app which allows users to vote on the new design show an increasing number of people opposed to the new design. According to Jason Lee Miller, 94% of almost a million votes turned out to be against the design.

Facebook had earlier reverted its terms of service due to opposition from its users, we’d just have to wait and see if this repeats itself. It’s also worth noting that a couple of people have reportedly deactivated their Facebook accounts because of the new design;

“I deactivated my account when they first redesigned Facebook, not only because I didn’t like the new layout but also because users hadn’t been asked their opinion before they made that layout which was definitely not user-friendly… It’s a shame, Facebook was rather cool.”

“I deactivated my facebook account, giving myself a well-needed break. Hopefully, when I activate it again in a month or so, they will have gotten their act together. Somehow, I doubt this will happen.”

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You most often hear people complain about how “business isn’t doing too well”, and how they “just aren’t making enough profit”, and how “things seem to be taking a turn for the worse”…… I’m sure we’ve all been there at one point or the other.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to be given an invitation to attend a Licensing Training and Business Productivity seminar organized by Protech Distribution Ghana, together with Microsoft, which was held today at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Kumasi.

During the seminar, I had the opportunity of meeting Victor Diali- Distribution Account Manager for Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, managing Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

Apart from being Distribution account manager for Microsoft, Mr. Diali is also a Business consultant and “Motivational Trainer”. My 3 hour interaction with arguably the most inspirational person I have met this year got me thinking about a whole lot of things relating to business and business productivity.

The major (or principal if you will) reason why anyone even ventures into business in the first place is to “make more money”, and acheive financial indepence.

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What is Money Anyway?

If you were asked, you would (like me) no doubt answer by stating one of the commonly known, “orthodox” definitions of money which go like;

• a medium of exchange issued by a government or other public authority in the form of coins of gold, silver, or other metal, or paper bills, used as the measure of the value of goods and service
• Assets and property considered in terms of monetary value; wealth
• An amount of cash or credit

BLA BLA BLA ………….

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Yeah, almost everyone would, but after those 3 hours with Victor, my entire perception of money changed. According to him;

“Money is the reward you receive for solving a problem”

In other words, people pay you to solve a problem.

I mean, let’s face it: no one actually pays you just because they like your face, your well pressed suit and matching tie, or anything else for that matter. People pay you simply because they feel you can help (or have helped) them do something they ordinarily couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have been able to do themselves- literally “solve a problem”.

That said, I assume it is therefore correct to say;,

“if you can solve complex problems, you have the opportunity of making more money”

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Let’s consider a Passenger Jet Pilot for example shall we.

With mordern crafts, the job of a pilot has has been simplified to; Take-Off and Landing. All the pilot has to do is;

1. Take Off
2. Put the Plane on Auto-Pilot once it reaches the right altitude
3. Land the plane

So you see. They don’t really do “much”, yet they are amongst the highest paid professionals in the world.

Why?

Simple. Their training enables them solve the complex problem of traversing long distances in a relatively short period.

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What Problem Does Your Business Help Solve?

In order to fully acheive your original business motive, you would need to “connect your products and services to the customer’s problem(s). This usually begins by first getting to know what your customer’s problem (need) is, and there is no better way to do this than to

Listen!!

Another interesting thing I learnt from my interaction with Victor Diali today is that contrary to popular believe, a good sales person is not one who knows how to talk, but one who “knows how to listen”

How would you feel, if you went to see a Doctor for instance, and as soon as you walked into his office, he immediately gives you a diagnosis without any form of examination? The next logical step would no doubt be to turn around, flee, and never return.You may even report the Doctor to the relevant authorities.

Same goes for your business.  Just as you would go to the Doctor, looking to solve a health problem, your customers come to you looking to solve a problem. Your customers need to know that your business can actually solve that problem, and the only way to know what your customers need is to actually listen to them.

After pondering over this all day I came to the understanding that listening in itself is more of a process than an action. That is to say that listening is continuous, and goes on for the entire length of your relationship with the customer.

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The Listening Process

In order to get the most out of your business, you have to effectively manage your listening process. To do this, you would however need to effectively manage your business contacts.

• Keep A Record- you would no doubt need to know who your customers are in order to “listen” to them

• Develop  A Relationship- Get to know your customer-base. Create and maintain good rapport with them. Simple tasks such as sending out a gift/greeting on a known anniversary could do a lot to help

• Management- you would need to manage every aspect of your customer’s relationship with you. You need to know as much as possible, how your products/services are helping the client in terms of business growth. If you do not have a “Client Account Manager”, you may need to consider recruiting one

• Support- arguably the most important. The customer is the customer, and should “be the customer”. You must as a matter of necessity provide as much support as required by the customer.Additionally, Most businesses and business owners take offense when a client complains about poor service. This definitely shouldn’t be the case. Allowing the customer to have a voice is one of  the most powerful marketing techniques, and is vital to the listening process.You should know how to effectively handle customer complaints

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A lot more actually goes into this process, but that would have to be in a future article (actually I’ve run out of things to say). Anyway, if you want your business to really succeed (and I assume you do), then it would make a lot of sense for you to “clearly” define what problem(s) your business really solves

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What! Postal letters? Yeah postal letters. You know;

• write your letter,
• insert it into an envelope,
• rush to the nearest post office,
• buy some postage stamps and drop the letter in a post box.

That kind.

I was glancing through this blog I recently fell in love with, when I came across a post titled;

“Send Postal Letters Anywhere in the World Through Internet – Email to Snail Mail”

A title like that would no doubt spark up interest so naturally, I read through the post and what I found left me astonished. Though (technically speaking)  it obviously isn’t possible to send Postal Letter through the Internet, there are a couple of online services which allow you do just that.

The postal service may not be as important as it used to with the advent of Email, but there are still a couple of reasons why you may want to use the service. This is particularly true with regards to our beloved “Mama Africa”. Let’s recount a couple shall we:

1. Some of your relatives live in remote villages where they don’t have computers let alone access to Internet.
2. Your grandparents know computers (or not) but they’ll probably feel more happy if you could send them emails and photographs in paper form that they can read in the lawn outside.
3. You are trying to reach someone who already gets a few hundred email messages per day. Your email may get lost in the clutter but if you take the snail mail approach, chances are high that he or she will at least read your message if not respond to it.

Whatever the case may be, should you need to send a Postal Letter, and would like to avoid the hassle, there are web based letter printing and dispatching services that “work more or less the same way”.

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You send then an email or upload the document as Word or PDF on to their servers, make the payment online and they’ll send the letter via regular postal mail to the specified physical address.

I have taken the liberty of compiling a list of some web based letter printing and dispatching service companies, according to the nature of their service;

Country-Specific

These companies provide their services to clients within a specific country;

• Via Post (for the UK)
• Pixel Letter (for the European Union)
• Snail Mail Me (for Canada), and
• India Post (for residents of India)

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Non Country-Specific

• Postal Methods
• Mail a Letter
• Postful
• EZGram
• L-Mail
• Click 2 Mail
• Email 2 Postal
• PC 2 Paper

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Early reports of this incredibly cheap laptop- fondly referred to as India’s “answer to American One Laptop per Child project” which set out to produce a computer for $100 (£68)- indicated that the laptop had initially been pegged at an amazing 500 rupees (just around $10), but according to the BBC;

“… this could be a mistranslation, because transcripts of the speech, in which it was unveiled, mentioned it costing $10 (£7) but this was later corrected to $100 (£70)”

Fine! Let’s assume it may have been a mistranslation, and that the actual price really is going to be just around a 100 USD, the question still remains;

Just how feasible is this, Really?

Though not much is know about the rudimentary laptop (which has been in the making for almost 3 years), it is believed that it would have on board memory of up to 2GB, as well as wireless capabilities.

The price of computer components makes it is even more difficult to envisage developing such a low cost laptop. It is a known fact that previous attempts at developing cheaper laptops intended for the developing world ended up exceeding the estimate budgets. Even the One Laptop Per Child’s XO machine, went well over the $100 mark, soaking up a surplus of around $88-

“… That high-profile venture led by the scientist Nicholas Negroponte ran into problems after several companies, including the chip manufacturer Intel, refused to cooperate”

Most experts have even referred to India’s plans for an even cheaper machine as “Unrealistic”. The Times Online reports that Analysts at the financial management company Merrill Lynch, estimated that “the Negroponte laptop screen alone cost about £20″, which leaves one wondering if the so-called $10 laptop will ever become a reality.

It is worth noting also, that Intel’s Convertible Classmate netbook which was released on the 12th of January 2009, hit the shelves for $549. Specs on the second-generation Classmate (aka the convertible) are as follows:

• Atom N270 (1.6GHz)
• Intel 945GSE chipset
• 8.9″ at 1024×600
• Up to 16GB of flash storage
• Water-resistant keyboard
• VGA port output

In the end, and just as the analysts at Merrill Lynch put it, maybe;

“India’s $10 price hopes appear to be nothing more than pure fantasy”.

This may well be the case; however, let’s not be too hasty in judging, we just cannot forget the “100,000-rupee (£1,450) Tata Nano car and a no-frills mobile telephone that costs less than 800 rupees”.

Regarding the feasibility or otherwise of India’s $10 laptop, we would just have to wait and see. Reports have it that “Plans to cut the price to the bone appear to hinge on domestic technology that uses low levels of power.”

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Julian McIntyre tried to make it as an investment banker, but fell in love with Africa instead. He worked at Deutsche Bank in his early twenties and, in his words, quickly came to hate it, leaving at 25 when “I got my first bonus”.

The Briton, who had developed a great affection for Africa while travelling, hooked up with a friend, Peter Gbedemah, to set up a telecoms business, providing infrastructure to mobile-phone companies south of the Sahara.

Eight years later, Mr McIntyre’s company is now GTV, a pan-African pay-TV company. The telecoms business, Gateway Communications, was sold in the summer to Vodacom in South Africa for $700 million (£474.8 million). GTV is what is left – a pay-TV operator aimed at a continent where pay-TV has barely existed, a “test case for African business”, as Mr McIntyre, 33, puts it……….

=> A brief chronological account of the company, as published by Times Online.

The rise of GTV started a Pay-TV revolution in Africa, rekindling interest in Paid TV, as many an average person could now watch their favourite satellite TV programs at low costs. In June 2007 for instance, the company offered a one month’s FREE subscription to “all who join the GTV revolution” – enabling access to programming every day in July without paying a cent.

The GTV Pay-TV revolution enjoyed widespread support from the populace, as it provided “premium international programming not just to a few people but to literally thousands of people who have never before been able to access to pay-TV.”

This perhaps led to the suggestions that MultiChoice DSTV’s dominance on the continent had finally come to an end, more so when results from a study conducted by Balancing Act- a London-based consultancy and research firm, indicated that;

“consumer demand for GTV and its services has resulted in his company becoming Africa’s fastest growing pay-television service.”

The study also reported that GTV took “five out of every seven new subscribers” who chose satellite TV in Africa over the past nine months.

Sadly, this was not to be the case. The GTV revolution, was abruptly ended by a force which attained global enormousness in 2008- as it succumbed to the global economic crisis. The company became the most recent casualty of the global recession.

According to a Press Statement issued by Gateway Broadcast Services- the suppliers of the GTV service to subscribers across Africa;

“The current financial and global crisis has severely interrupted the company’s ability to secure further funding for the continued operation of the business.”

“Increased instability in global markets interrupted our ability to secure funding on an acceptable timescale and have left us no choice but to cease operations,”

“We realise the negative impact this has had on our loyal customers, creditors and staff, all of who have believed in GTV and the revolution in pay TV it had created. We have tried every possible step to keep the company going but we are all the unfortunate victims of the current global economic crisis.”

The collapse of the company will no doubt have devastating effects on Pay-TV viewers across the African continent, many of whom relished the new opportunity GTV presented them, in terms of International TV programmes, not to mention staff of the company-

Permanent employees lost their jobs instantly, not to mention the hundreds of dealers and business partners, thousands of subscribers and the tens of thousands of English Premiership viewers who will miss their favourite weekend sit-outs.

This is indeed an unfortunate end for a company whose Africa-wide GTV service had “an estimated 100,000 subscribers across Africa and has over the last two years invested a total of $200 million and created jobs and competition in 22 markets”.

Incase you don’t know what a sales copy is and you own a business (which I seriously doubt)- it is  that piece of text you find in advertisements, promotional brochures or other public relations outlets. Copywriting, which is the art of writing a sales copy has never been more crucial to a business. Tom Chandler writes;

“Good copywriting and marketing have never been
more important. Or more confusing.“

Probably the reason why most businesses hire professional Copywriters to draft these sales copies for them. So;

Who and What is a Copywriter?

Whenever you hear a radio commercial, or read words in the advertising section of a magazine, a copywriter is responsible. A copywriter creates the text for advertisements, promotional brochures or other public relations outlets. Advertising agencies routinely refer to a written script as copy, thus the name copywriter applies to those who create the scripts.

But what makes a Good Sales copy?

Several answers to this question may exist, but the most important (arguably) of them all would be Readability!! Readability here not just in the sense of the word, but also in terms of attractiveness. The sales copy must, as a matter of necessity, be able to capture and captivate the readers.

A few things you may want to note when writing your sales copy ;

• Keep it Attractive- can’t help but reiterate, your sales copy should, as a matter of importance, be engaging. It must possess qualities that captivate, if not thrill the reader. This holds true for the opening paragraph through to the last.

• Keep It Short- despite what most people may think, length matters. Not everyone enjoys reading (as a matter of fact most people don’t), as such it would be wise to make your sales copy as “straight-to-the-point” as possible.
  
  
• Formatting and Placement- also very important. It is worth noting that 6 out of 10 average readers would only read the first one or two paragraphs and scan through the rest of your sales copy. It is therefore extremely important to pay attention to placement- endeavor to have the most important aspects of your draft as close to the beginning of the copy as possible. It is also a good idea to use bold fonts, and quotation marks where necessary, so as to emphasize an important word, sentence or paragraph. Coloured text are “pleasing” to the eyes, and are encouraged.  Be careful however, that your copy doesn’t end up looking like the face of a clown.

• Keep It Original- try to be as original as possible. Think twice before deciding to “borrow” content from someone else’s copy without their permission. Copy writing requires an enormous amount of talent and creativity, needless to say are intellectual property. Apart from just losing credibility in the eyes of your reader, you can quickly find yourself in an unwanted legal tussle. If you must borrow, you should endeavor to give the author some acknowledgment.

• Mind your language- last, but by no means least, it is advisable to watch your language. In the beginning, it may seem like a good idea to use your copy to show your grammatical proficiency, but you may end up having achieved nothing in the end, if your sales copy is more confusing than it is explanatory. It is thus advisable to use “common”, everyday terms which would have “real” meaning to the reader.

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Finally, as a parting gift, bear in mind that;

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“Marketing is not just about advertising – it’s also about
education and building customer relationships.”

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According to the Baseline magazine;

… Many of the hottest roles and skills address issues specific to survival, such as productivity, efficiency and process improvement. Most relevant are those experts who can use technology to help drive profit ….. quoting David Foote- chief research officer for Foote Partners.

This, no doubt, is in line with the increasing interest in the adaptation and use of Social Media for market development, not to mention the increase in the deployment and use of Web 2.0 applications, Web/Video conferencing, and Telepresence systems.

Below is an excerpt from a chart in a report by ‘David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007’, representing trends in Web 2.0 usage;

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Though the current job market is brutal, it is quite evident that some IT specializations remain in high demand. According to Foote, Executives are interested in keeping their customers, getting new customers, making acquisitions and anything to keep the revenue channel going.

Here is a list of “hot” IT jobs for 2009 à la The Baseline Mag;

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Brace Yourself ……..

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• Business intelligence Experts
  BI experts can help organizations “In a lot of decisions having to do with how the customer base is changing, market differentiation, pricing and services.” Foote says

• Resiliency Services Professionals
  while many larger enterprises may be slimming down, some of their already mature business continuity practices, resiliency services are big in the mid-market. Many of these jobs will be through outsource services firms.

• Vendor Procurement Specialists
  “It’s pretty clear that in this next year, companies are going to be renegotiating contracts like crazy,” Foote says. A savvy vendor procurement specialist is critical to getting the upper hand in these negotiations.

• Outsourcing and Vendor Managers
  Slightly different than a procurement specialist, vendor and outsourcing managers are project management specialists who act as liaisons and enforce SLAs once the ink dries on the contract.

• Enterprise Architects
  Forrester Research voted this one as “Very Hot” last August in an internal survery of analysts. Since the economy tanked, the role’s importance has grown as IT is called to automate and streamline processes and infrastructure.

• ITIL Managers
  Governance and standardization are keys to getting automation efforts off the ground in an orderly fashion, and companies will be paying a premium for ITIL and business process experts in 2009.

• Virtualization Gurus
  HR gurus with the job site Dice.com are reporting that even though IT job listings went down 12 percent last year, virtualization postings went up 37 percent.

• Security Architects
  IT security is staffing up, and some of the highest demand is for architects who can understand the complexities of various IT ecosystems and emerging risks from technology like virtualization.

• AJAX Developers
  Businesses will continue to leverage Web 2.o technology to differentiate themselves, so it’s clear that AJAX and XML skills remain in high demand.

• Storage Directors
  Another hot role per Forrester, this one is critical as organizations hope to coordinate for better storage utilization rates, slimming down on hardware purchase costs in the process.

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The Mobile industry is not left out! According to a report titled “Mobile Internet 2010,”- there are more than 4 billion wireless subscribers globally and many of these will be using their handset as the main Internet terminal.

In order for that potential to be achieved however, the report said carriers need to boost their networks, and handsets makers need to do a better job of incorporating Web services into a phone’s user interface.

It goes without saying that Mobile application developers would also be in huge demand this year.We just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

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