Category: employees

Love & brands

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

In order to be in love we need to feel loved. Often we mistake love for other intense emotions such as lust, obsession and even fear.

So if we were to translate this to business parlance it might read like this:

If we want people to love our brand or company, we simply have to make our audience ‘feel loved’.

So then the next questions we should be asking are:

–          Will they love this product?

–          Will they love our value equation?

–          Will they love our guarantee?

–          Will they love our designs?

–          Will love our ‘contact us’ policy or phone staff?

In fact, let’s just start every audience related question with the words ‘Will they love….”

If we do this and focus on being more than good, more than liked and only accept moving towards stuff people will love. Then one day, they may just love our brand.

Business relationships & startups

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Entrepreneurs must build all types of relationships.

  • Relationships with our suppliers and the value chain
  • Relationships with our buyers & resellers
  • Relationships with our staff and business partners / investors
  • Relationships with our audience & evangelists

In fact, when we are small have little or no revenue, the only thing we can do is have conversations and build relationships. These will lead to action and revenue. While having dinner with a colleague the other night, John Colbert of Corporate Edge training he gave me his view on relationships.

He said:

There are two important factors in relationships – frequency & proximity.

How frequently are we engaging the other person? Where frequency, is any type of conversation, communication or interaction.

And what is our proximity to this person? Where proximity pertains to the physical closeness and real world interactions we have together. Do we meet in person? Are we getting to know each other without the use of technology? Simply meeting in the same location?

The more of the above two things we have the stronger our relationships come. If we for a moment think of who we have strong relationships with, we’ll see we have both Frequency and Proximity.


The reality is humans want to deal with people they like, trust and know. This is what relationships build.

So if one of our important business relationships (those listed above) is flagging, maybe we should have more frequent interactions, get closer or do both.

How to ‘Pitch’ workshop

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Below is an elevator pitch ‘workshop’ I gave for the ‘Agents of change‘ entrepreneurs club of  Melbourne University. The video below is the one of 6 x 10 minute videos. The first (the one below) includes an ‘example’ pitch I did for rentoid – then has ‘alot’ of questions and answers. The last of the videos, workshop 6 – all of which are here has some ideas on great pitcing practice.

It’s kind of long, but the largely due to the discussion afterwards!

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=oREzd_UWfI8]

Long ‘to do’ list

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Quite possibly the most whined about thing in business. The never ending to do list.  We hear it from both corporate cubicle dwellers and entrepreneurs alike.

So before any of us choose to complain about all the things we have to get done we might consider the antithesis for a moment – An empty to do list.

Firstly, it’d mean we have no business ‘upside’. That we’ve run out of ideas on how to move forward. Or worse it’d mean we didn’t have any goals.  By definition we would not be engaged in, or have action plans which will improve ourselves or our business. This is the worst possible scenario I can imagine.

In fact the longer the list – the happier we should be. It should be the most exciting time in business and startup land. A time when we can be prolific and achieve the most. The long list ensures we can win because we have so many ideas to test and options we can take. The trick is not to obsess with all the stuff we aren’t getting done, but promoting the game winning activities to the top of the list and implementing as quickly as possible.

In the end it’s what gets done which matters, the projects we finish. Not how many new and groovy ideas we have waiting.

Brand Manners

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.

In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:

Does your brand have good manners?

That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.

In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’

–          Listen to others
–          Have patience
–          Wait your turn to talk
–          Never interrupt
–          Ask for permission
–          Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
–          Be honest, truthful and pure
–          Be punctual
–          Be tidy
–          Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
–          Keep out of bad company
–          Be kind to those around you
–          Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
–          Don’t cheat
–          Be polite at all times

Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy – a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.

You can download the PDF here: goodmanners

And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.

Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.

What do investors invest in?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

While dropping into Startup Camp in Melbourne last week I started chatting with Jonathon from Melbourne Angel Investors. I asked him just one question:

What is more important in their investments, the team or the concept / product?

His reply was a simple one and here it is:

We’d invest in an A Grade team with a B Grade product, but we wouldn’t invest in an A Grade product with a B Grade team.

Startup blog agrees. Though I did here that he was pretty ‘anti-tech’ as far as their investments go…

But the first piece of advice is worth adhearing  to. Above all things build an A Grade team, be an A Grade entrepreneur.

And so again we hear that the people in your startup are way more important than the secret sauce. It is without irony that A Grade teams more often than not find A Grade ideas too.

Qantas gets it wrong with Effiency

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

These 3 photos where taken at Melbourne airport on a Friday night.

This is of a quick check (self check in terminal)of which there are 22.

This is of the the bag check in staff of which there were 3 working. (They have spaces for 22 employees)

And the this photo is of the ensuing crowd and chaos.

(the crowd goes around the corner it’s at least 100 deep)

I asked the staff member if she’d like some help tonight – she seemed flustered with how busy she was. She said “of course, but it’s ‘cheaper’ this way”. Then I asked if she thought “quick check” was quicker. She said “definitely not”.

So here’s the thing – Qantas make money out of the quick check. The save on overheads. On the balance sheet it makes sense. But what is the ‘real cost’ of doing it?

What it does is, is actually diminish what they actually provide at a differentiated level. It reduces their product from “service” to “travel”. They further commodify themselves against their low cost airline competitors. They make us ask why we are actually flying qantas and paying a premium…

– Is it the food service? – Not likely, given the food is most often a gourmet cookie & juice.

– Is it the service in the air? – Not likely, given their staff are less polite than budget airlines.

– Is it the airplanes? – Not likely, given all domestic players use the exact same aircraft.

– Is the the baggage allowance? – Not likely, given the allownaces are the same 20kg’s to tohers.

– Is it the terminal ambience? – Not likey, given it’s shared with jetstar.

– Is it their safety record? – Not likey given recent scares & that no major aircraft has ever crashed in Australia.

– Is it the inflight entertainment? – Maybe, but it’s a stetch these days given we all have mobile entertainment devices in our pocket.

– Is it the Frequent Flyer points?  Maybe, but it’s marginal at best.

– Is it the Qantas Club? yes – if you are preapred to pay the $775 per annum.

And it can’t be their ground service, given the example above on a Friday night.

Qantas need to ask themselves some hard questions about what they actually offer – as a long time loyal customer, it’s waining quickly. Their point of difference is in a massive state of decline.

Here’s what Qantas ought do if they want to avoid further decline:

  1. Offer Hot meals & drinks every flight. Not just at dinner time. If we are travelling we didn’t have time for dinner or lunch, regardless of when our flight was. We are just as hungry on 7pm flights as we are on 6pm flights. It’s not the food which costs the airline, it’s serving it up. So, if you are going to serve it. Make it worth the effort.
  2. Make the ground experience comfortable and convenient. A few more staff members on the cehckout is a nice start.
  3. Provide free wifi to anyone with a boarding pass.
  4. Have a ‘no tricks’ Frequent Flyer program where any seat on any flight is available, and not for ‘extra points’ – we’ve already paid a premium for our tickets – remember Mr Qantas?
  5. Have separate terminals for your Budget Airline (Jetstar) and your Premium Airline (Qantas).
  6. Sing out loud in your advertising about how different the Qantas experience is. Make us feel special.
  7. Charge the price needed to make it profitable. You’ll be surpirsed how many of us will be preapred to pay for it.

It’s about time Qantas started to focus on it’s customers and forgot about it’s competitors. Eventually we all morph into what we focus.

I’m sure Qantas will tell us this isn’t possible – but tell that to the person who pays twice the price for a Mac book pro versus a Toshiba with the same configurations.

Startups out there: “Beat your competitors – don’t be them!”