Networking Now

How often do you change your mind or create a new plan, due to the last plan not working quite as you thought it would? How long do you run with an idea before calling quits on it?

interested in your views

Most plans go the wall as soon as they hit the real world.

For this reason, bedding in is important. If its not working and delivering after bedding in, I stop dead and drop it.

what length of time is your bedding in process again interested to know other peoples views

DigitalStationery wrote:Most plans go the wall as soon as they hit the real world.

For this reason, bedding in is important. If its not working and delivering after bedding in, I stop dead and drop it.

Dead right. You've got to try - otherwise you'll never know, but don't flog dead horses.

A flip side is that you have to make sure you execute the bedding in phase and any appropriate trials properly to give things a fair shot at working out. But if for instance, you've made the WebWidget MK2 and tried your darndest to promote it, but people just aren't interested.. well.. then it's time to give up.

As to how long you should give things, for me at least that varies wildly depending upon the project/product, but we tend to assign time spans to the phases in the lifecycle - before they start. Then we only adjust these in extenuating circumstances. You have to be pretty ruthless (unfortunately) otherwise you can end up wasting an awful lot of time (and money).

i agree with most of the comments made, i find product implimentation very interesting, and its good to hear other views on how it should be done on a time basis. Do other small business owners agree or are there different views out there?

Pretty much agree with all the opinions here, if you are flogging a dead horse you need to realise that, as long as you are being honest to yourself, giving up is the right thing to do if it will never work, but to give up on something that has potential is just caving in.

Colonel Sanders never gave up!

In the collections/debt industry plans last about 30 seconds. I don't work on plans but more of a flow chart :)

70% of collections is pyscology (sp?) and it is all about finding the right way to push someones button. You get about 30 seconds to read someone over the phone as that is how long the first call usually lasts before someone becomes defensive or just says that they will pay even if they don't mean it. In that 30 seconds you need to decide what kind of person they are and then lead them down the flow chart to get payment.

I.e.
collector: "I notice that your payments have been taking longer and longer to arrive over the past 3 months, is there any reason this?"
customer: "erm, er. no no, all is good, we have your payment here ready to be sent"

** They are either lying or scared of the telephone.. a stutter and then a double no is a bad sign **

A collector would then lead them down the flow chart to get the truth, a bad collector will say "great, thanks" and then call off. Here is where the plan (flow chart) comes in.

collector: "that is great news, before I go, would you confirm the cheque number to me? so that I can look out for it when it comes into the office. Would you also confirm that it is going to be posted today?"
customer: "erm, I am not near the cheque book at the moment, it will be sent today or tomorrow".

** Yep, confirmed a the customer is lying and now you can call them on it.......................... and get to the reason why they have not paid **

The flow chart carries on until you either get the information you want regarding the payment or the customer opens up about not being able to pay at that particular time. You have to be flexible on every call.

I'm glad you mentioned flow chart.

Solid "Marketing" (I use the word marketing not in the promotional sense) is about process and route to market. This is also a flow chart, but I think of it as a set of processes and stages. Very similar. The key is the planning out of the process.

Tweaking is changing the process to make things fit. I like tweaking. The best thing about small business is everything is tweakable.

I think the flow chart analogy is exceptional.