You might be blissfully unaware of the old favicon or you may be a fan like we are. We change ours every Month (because we can), and it’s fun. If you have a favorite we’d love to hear, answers on a postcard or one of the more modern methods.
The Good Fight is back and it’s always been a family favourite.
Last series the title sequence was everyday office equipment exploding into millions of slo-mo fragments and it seemed to work brilliantly with the chaotic nature of the struggles of this New York Law firm. This new season intro is a montage of animals, all integrating and almost as bizarre as the intermittent music/cartoon wanna-be ‘School House Rock’ skits, that I’m still thinking the jury is out on – well it is in our house?
If you’re a fan, I have no doubt it will be the catalyst for many a conversation so fair play to the producers, who could want anything more from an element of communication that many have the option to skip over and might never see.
AND, Good that knowing this, they still go through the ‘bother’ to bother. The program is as fanciful as it is frighteningly close to the truth and unusual that a US show is so ready to be brave and open a *portal to storytelling that boldly tackles ripped-from-the-headlines subjects like Melania impersonators, the pee tape and the death of Jeffrey Epstein in ways that few shows have dared.
Having many successful years under the show’s belt (The Good Wife was made by the same team), I suspect success makes you Brave and trouble and strife and worry about the World falling apart give the writers plenty to write about.
So what have we learned from all this? Be a fan, be brave, be bothered, be successful (or work with an established business like rtfacts that have 30 years of confidence), be prepared and remember, the woes of the world are often a world of opportunity for many people and their businesses. *LA Times
StartUP or UPstart?
The reason I ask is, we all have a preconceived idea of who we are as people and what we want the companies we run to look like. There are billions of ‘me too’ businesses out there, but rtfacts love to work with people that wouldn’t start a business without the total conviction that their competitors will be shocked, alarmed, dismayed, and frankly petrified by what’s going on!
StartUP sort of suggest you can’t hit the ground running. You’re going to be playing catch-up with all those well established and superior competitor businesses and to be thought of as a peer, you will have to follow the rules, walk the walk and talk the talk!
Focus all your efforts on selling a product or a service or an idea into your market.
By contrast the UPstart business has no rules, follows no rules and breaks all the rules!
Everyone else in the space is playing football and the UPstart simply won’t play the game!
‘They might be your rules but they don’t apply to me because I’m playing business’.
Focus all your efforts on the competition (THE ENEMY), with products and/or services, attitude and approach, change everything.
So, here’s the issue and the opportunity for both StartUP and Upstart:
The status quo must be contested and beaten into submission, or you simply become the new noise trying to get heard in an incredibly noisy universe.
A feature, however brilliant is not enough to cause long term shock, alarm, dismay or fear.
If the only difference between you and your peers is a better product, a slicker service, quicker logistics and cheaper prices, It will be copied, counter attacked or commoditised quicker than you can say boo to a goose, and it’s then a race to the bottom…
If you want to talk UPstart or StartUP? CLICK and register today
THE ELEVATOR PITCH!
You would think everyone had sussed this out by now but that’s simply not the case.
How would you sum up your business to a person standing next to you in the lift
In the time it takes to you to get to the top?
Let’s say 60 seconds maximum for argument’s sake, so we are not inundated with “What if it’s full of chattering people or, it’s only 1 floor at TK Max in MK, or the Burj Khalifa……?
What’s needed is your most persuasive, interesting and memorable attempt to relax your lift colleague
and get them enthused!
REMEMBER – It’s not your soapbox. The aim is to encourage a two-way conversation and to get that person to be interested enough to ask for more!
So in reality – 10 seconds would be much more appropriate.
It’s a great idea to write out your pitch and then cross out all the superfluous words that add nothing!
Get to the point.
There are plenty of references out there but it doesn’t write your pitch.
What it does is give you tips that will ensure your content is well structured and well thought through.
My favourite is WOW | HOW | NOW
WOW
Intrigue, puzzle, challenge.
What you say provokes a WTF reaction or a need for clarification and to want more. So for rtfacts i’d say:
‘I am a design ninja’
HOW
Answer and explain
‘We understand your business and your competitors,
We use this knowledge to gain advantage,
We produce killer creatives and win the design warfare battle’
NOW
give a real example and tell a story
That really would be telling, wouldn’t it.
If an elevator pitch is next on your list let’s talk?
My Least favourite is
Situation | Impact | Resolution
Situation – Talk about a pain your customer experiences (great, I’m warming to this convo already! N O T )
Impact – Explain how this pain negatively impacts their business (Fab, Ive met you in a lift and you’re telling me how to run my business!)
Resolution – How do you solve these pains – talking benefits here is your big ending. (Good luck, I already hate out lift journey!)
I’ve always hated the fear and worry style, but it’s an effective option for some.
If you can make it work this is my absolute favourite:
1. Start with something you expect to hear in a conversation: humor, a story, referring to recent news.
Choose something that highlights a problem your business can help customers solve.
2. Summarise the RESULTS you achieve for customers. It should be an emotional benefit, not a hard-headed business benefit.
3. Quantify your success. Now you add the proof of your benefit statement, using numbers if possible.
Clear? Well here’s a bit more to fuddle your muddle:
We’ve discussed the Elevator pitch and I found this excerpt on the web that was a good summary:
Elevator pitch. Often a short “best of” presentation that takes the best of your value proposition and combines it with the best of your positioning statement. But above all, it is crafted for your target audience.
Your elevator pitch can change for every person you present it to. OR NOT!
Value proposition. This is simply the value you bring to your customer or client. It’s the solution you’re providing to the problem your customer is experiencing or the way your product or service increases profits or saves money. Ask yourself how is your customer better off after having purchased your product or service. If it’s unclear to you how you improve the world for your customers, it will be even more unclear to your prospects.
Positioning statement. Unless you’re Thomas Edison, there’s a good chance that others are providing a similar if not same – product or service. Your positioning statement should define your place in the market. For example, both Wicks and Tesco sell hammers, yet they have different strengths that they use to appeal to their customers. They are positioned differently within the market for hammers.
You need to understand your competition and what niche you’ll occupy within the market for your product or service. If you can’t do that, you won’t know which customers to target, where to advertise, how to price your product, what level of support you need to provide.
It’s a lot to digest. I’m off for a cuppa but please support the effort by following the link and subscribing: Let’s Talk!
We can always DO IT cheaper, (and with a smile on our faces)!
but cheaper isn’t usually the best way to DO IT!
There are so many services this applies to, it’s tricky to think how best to make the point?
If we only talk about day to day products Toilet roll springs to mind?
The younger generation will probably be unaware, but those of us with a few years (and pounds/lbs) under our belts might remember school toilet roll?
Sure it was cheaper, but in terms of fit for purpose, I’m slippery sure it wasn’t!
I think it was best for tracing the lettering from gravestones on school trips!
Paint is another great example – I always use the brand name and not the shed product. After one room with shed magnolia and another with the Dog brand, it was pretty clear that half the price but double the quantity was a false economy. After taking twice as long to apply and with poorer coverage I realised paint was on the ‘don’t do it cheaper’ list!
Car seats are also on my ‘pay top dollar’ list for obvious reasons.
So what was the question and what is the answer?
Can you do it cheaper?
Yes, we can and we won’t show you the door, but we may show you the horse picture even if it’s not a matter of life and death.
Get in touch for exceptionally fair prices and a can-do attitude to everything we do or at least follow the link and subscribe: Let’s talk!
And what can the biggest strongest companies do to help?
In a Crisis some people take advantage and in business it’s often the same.
Let’s hope Corvid19 brings the best out of big business.
A lot of SME’s will say they have always had to ‘rob Peter to pay Pay Paul’.
It’s a sad fact that some large businesses have been allowed to dictate payment terms and this has become a common and huge problem for the SME. ‘rtfacts payment terms are 30 days or less please’ but if you win a big new customer and their terms are 60/90 days, what would you do?
We have been fortunate to have a lot of great clients that pay on, or before due time which really helps. One lovely customer, Memorials of Distinction, paid an invoice in 30 seconds, a record that will never be beaten I’m sure, unless our invoice lands more perfectly than it did that day, as he was on the bank website just as it pinged in!
30 day payments or less should work for everyone, but we’ve worked with some giants – Nameless as I’d rather not get sued, that aren’t such great payers! Lovely people to work with, and great high profile work, but the payment side is really poor.
Prompt payment from the likes of them would transform good little businesses into great little businesses.
To be fair BT pioneered this practice back as far as 1993 and it was them that really put rtfacts on the map. Their money allowed us to prosper and grow and become a great little business.
So what’s the actual problem?
If the work we’ve done is outsourced, like print, photography, illustration, copywriting, or web development, those suppliers want paying monthly and we want to pay them, that’s how great relationships are built, (and its how we all feed our kids), so we are sometimes forced to use the money paid promptly by other clients, to fund the projects weve worked on for slower payers. Any discrepancy quickly becomes a cash flow crisis which has to be managed. Borrowing money since the crash is a heart in the mouth process and today, an impossibility!
Try and talk to your bank – be prepared for a very lonnnngggg wait and a very negative answer if you ever get through.
If SME businesses get into trouble and Corvid19 isn’t helping, paying supplier/partners on time becomes even more impossible and then the failure writing is on the wall. SO, we need to get back to proper business models that work for us all and not just the big boys holding all the cash.
The supermarkets have a terrible reputation for paying bottom dollar and paying very slowly. (We don’t work with any, so this isn’t personal experience), Big cash rich businesses need to lead the way. If the big companies with all the money, get the money moving down the food chain quickly, cash flow is improved and more businesses can weather the odd financial blip.
It’s a big ask. I’d put money on the fact that every FD in the land is telling their financial teams to ‘hold on to our money’, BUT that will kill the myriad of SME’s that have supported them and contributed to their success over the years, so its pretty short sighted and tough to hear if you’re on the recieving end.
And its not just the big boys that are to blame! SME’s are our own worst enemy, chasing the money and pushing costs to rock bottom, in an attempt to beat the opposition into submission, hopefully before we all go bust! We must not commoditise professional services, be confident in our ability to change businesses for the better and be prepared to talk to the big companies and ask for prompt payments. It’s amazing how well they respond and this has worked for rtfacts.
I’m really grateful we have such a great bunch of clients in this difficult time, THANK YOU ALL. AND In the spirit of supporting each other, please follow this link and subscribe: Let’s Talk?
We can print and apply just about any material, any shape, any size and apply it to any substrate. It’s a big statement for large format graphics.
But our heads are as big as our abilities – Put us to the test.
Let’s Talk and why not sign up?
Memorials of Distinction take as much pride in the printing of their product brochure as they do with EVERY memorial stone they manufacture.
With natural stone, perfection is often a challenge, but it’s what they aim for every time and rtfacts applies the same ethos to every print project, however large or small.
This week we have printed 4000, 60 page A4 landscape brochures for memorials of distinction, Of course they needed to pass on press, so that’s a coordination process in itself. We also did 2000 A6 postcards, 100 data sheets and 50 A4, 4 page case studies.
The cost for each project was chalk and cheese, but the care and attention to detail was exactly the same, as were the internationally recognised eco credentials.
How many experts does a print job take? Give us a call about your project and we will tell you and explain the rtfacts way of managing print.
01442 266 590 option 2 or 07831 7000 81or why not subscribe – Let’s talk!
OH YES – PRINTING IS VERY NOISY!
For as long as I can remember, clients have continued to suprise us after events where they have been fed, watered, entertained and generally wow’d, by multiple forms of media by saying:
“Those promotional pens went down an absolute storm you know? “
It’s as frustrating as it’s fantastic!
The WebCam Cover should take over this top billing, as in every dimension they are a far better reflection of your business and say so much more.
The pen that was so well recieved, often lives in a pot never to be seen again or is ‘borrowed’ by someone, usually when you put it down for a second, who has no interest in you, your company or what you do!
The Cam Cover sits pride of place, front and centre on your clients laptop or desktop and covers the video camera with the name of your business 24/7/365. The ones we are promoting can be printed 100% and come in a credit card sized pack with your message on the front and itting instructions on the reverse. (Both sides are a blank space so you can say what you like).
I honestly think they are better than sliced bread and last much much longer. Get in touch today and your company Web Cam Cover could be on your clients computer in three weeks or less! Simple.
design@rtfacts.co.uk or call 01442 266 590 and talk to Rog or Em or join our community?
rtfacts exists to provide a 100% outsourced marketing service for small to medium sized businesses in the private and public sector. Chip shop to blue chip says it all.
We help you avoid the expense – and often limited return on investment – of an in-house marketing resource.
Turn us ON like a tap when you need us and OFF when you don’t!
When rtfacts acts as your Marketing Department, at a fraction of the cost of in house, and with zero HR responsibility, you get access to our experience working in multiple sectors and 26 years hands on providing strategic solutions and services for businesses across the public and private sector.
Don’t pay us to learn on your time.
One of our team will be your Marketing Director and will always remain media and execution neutral, either accessing
resources within our company or outside if it’s better, harder, faster, cheaper.
We will happily work with any existing or recommended third parties.
With ‘owner’s eyes’ when strategically driving your company, we will align both marketing, business and sales experience to deliver the goals we set and agree together.
We can promise a 100% focus on results from the beginning with an eye on the vision and message.
Our commitment to producing fresh, relevant and customised content across your channels is probably the most important factor in your marketing success.
Making a good decision is as easy as picking up the phone – 01442 266 590
and if you’re not ready to talk just yet register your interest here: HERE?
