Protean

Entrepreneurs and Innovation

Magus Business (www.magus-uk.co.uk) invited Protean to attend their Dorset area launch event last night in Bournemouth. They're a business group designed specifically for SME owner-managers to provide them a platform from which to share experiences and ideas within the context of improving and strengthening their businesses. Magus delivers an environment consciously and decidedly different from the typical sit-and-listen business improvement class and fills a real void for entrepreneurs trying to strengthen and grow their businesses.

The guest speaker at their launch event was a serial entrepreneur, global executive and business psychologist by the name of Dr Dave Richards.  Currently transplanted from North America, Richards is also a senior lecturer at The Business School, Bournemouth University and he offered some interesting opinions about the critical importance of innovation for the survival of (any) business and the changing faces of entrepreneurism past, present and future.

While there was arguably little new or particularly original about the concept that a business can either innovate or die, I especially liked his premise that significant innovation in the future will occur less in traditional, cloistered, lab-like environments and more in widely open, unusually different collaborative situations. How to create, nurture and sustain innovative environments has long been a favorite topic of mine and I’ve always best liked the concept of “controlled chaos.”  Richards’ focus upon entirely new forms of collaboration being the key to successfully innovating/competing/surviving in the future was both compelling and readily raised informed and animated discussion among the 70 or so business leaders in attendance on a variety of topics.

Including the impact of ever heightened communications…and a generation of future entrepreneurs (and their employees) raised on open architectures and social media.

Kudos and good luck to Magus. 
  

Recession woes? Stop selling...products...

The concept is hardly new but it’s nonetheless more pertinent than ever.  And regardless of how many times resource or solution selling is taught, re-taught, discussed and presented…the first words out of our sales people’s mouths is still inevitably about products.

We spoke last month to 5 engineering and purchasing VPs about the changing roles of their vendors in the context of maturing technologies and a highly stressed global economy.  The conversations repeatedly returned to similar pleas:  “Be someone that I can call on as a resource.  Understand my business and my customers.”  Too many sales people still called or visited with only the most superficial knowledge of their prospect’s company.  Or with out of date information.

It became clear in these conversations that in spite of the increased difficulty that the economic cycle has arguably brought to the task of developing customer-vendor relationships, solid pre-sale relations are nonetheless significant to their purchasing decisions.  One suggested that to him, "It’s a leading indicator of what a vendor’s post sale value will be to me.” 

Box-to-box selling virtually always accelerates the downward spiral of prices.  That’s a reality in most every situation but increasingly the case in maturing technology markets.  And today’s technology buyers know there are multiple sources for most products and how and where to find them.   Long selling cycles and multiple contact points complicate B2B marketing.  Marketing is not a department, it is integral to the sales process.   Your business needs its message to be available at the correct time and in the correct format.  If you're like the average company too often that's not the case. But most of all, the message and those materials need to relevant.  Relevant to them…not to us.

NEW 2009; a tale of two glasses…

With the dust now firmly settled on National Electronics Week 2009, what kind of impression has it left behind? Well, against the odds governing the current economic climate, the UK electronics exhibition certainly generated plenty of interest and some high quality leads. But as always, the success of the show depends on your outlook. So, are you a glass half full or glass half empty kind of person?

It seems most people are glass half fulls. Certainly, this philosophy was evident at the show which saw visitors attending with the sole aim of purchasing equipment and exhibitors re-booking for 2010. It also ties in with a wider industry trend, with IC Insights’ forthcoming Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report suggesting that 2009 will indeed be a “tale of two halves”.

For you glass half empties, the first half of the year was characterised by seasonal weakness for electronic system sales and the global recession at its worst. And for the half fulls? The second half is expected to usher in strong seasonal strength for electronic system sales and positive worldwide GDP growth. So, NEW 2009 was pretty much sandwiched somewhere in between the two.

In reality, this means there was no tidal wave of visitors at NEW. It also means that there was a good quantity of serious enquiries from people who had come to the show with the direct intention of purchasing. All in all, the majority were happy, with glowing reports coming from the likes of Adaptsys, Almit, EcoPac Power, Juki, O’Dell Rework Solutions, Quantum CAD and VSMT to name but a few.

NEW 2009 proved the power of the industry working together. Those who chose to support the show played an important part in its success. In turn, the success of shows like NEW will benefit us all. If they fail, then the whole industry is poorer. NEW also proved that the glass half full companies will always be the most successful. With one eye on the resurgence, it was these companies who invested in marketing at the event, and it was these companies who truly made the most of an opportunity. And in all cases, it paid off with more visitor traffic, leads and even, sales.

NEW is back in 2010 when hopefully, we’ll all be drinking from the same glass. Cheers!