Before you read another word, I am not going to sell you a damn thing. I’m just curious, that’s all. No: bemused is the right word.
I was talking the other day to a friend who sells a way of finding business prospects on the Internet. I know it works because we tested it.
I have written about it before, so I won’t bore you. However he reckons that for every prospect you now get you could get nine more. All you have to do is spend a little time – I mean minutes – copying and pasting to get it working for you.
So that’s a potential 900% more prospects if you can spare a few minutes. And if you don’t have enough prospects to chase you’ll go broke. But you know what? Most of the people who’ve asked for a free trial can’t be arsed to do it.
People go broke because they’re just too damned idle. We had a client not long ago – a well-known firm in financial trouble. We proved that we could transform their business. They just had to give us two pieces of simple information.
It took them two months to supply the first – and so long to supply the second that we gave up and had to sue them to get money they owed.
So now you know why firms go broke. Sheer unmitigated sloth. As the slogan says, “Just do it”.
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I was talking to friend earlier about “teams”. Many firms sign messages from “the team”. I’m all in favour of team spirit if you’re playing soccer. Good teams have it; bad ones don’t.
But I don’t want to talk to a team if I have a problem. I want to talk to a person. And as my friend said, in business having a team all too often means this: if it’s the team’s problem it’s not mine. They abdicate responsibility.
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Among other things I am busy writing a brief memoir of my experiences with David Ogilvy. The more I write, the more I realise what an extraordinary person he was. Such was the power of his personality that I think I can recall just about every conversation I ever had with him.
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Tomorrow on Friday 13th I shall be making a special offer. Just for that day. God knows we all need a little luck.
