Gordon Innocent

Stuck in the snow with time on my hands

2010-01-06T13:57:00Z

Hi all,

Just wanted to wish all my friends, colleagues and their families a healthy, happy and prosperous new year.

Also wanted to share a great text I got on new years day;

"After careful consideration of your performance as a friend in 2009, I have decided to extend your friendship for a further 12 months. Try not to mess it up!!!"

Take care all

Gordon

InfoComm - the show & why not get involved?

2009-06-23T16:15:00Z

Hi all,

Having just got back from Orlando and caught up (at last!), I am pleased to say that my trip was very worth while. However, I'm not sure that I will continue to make it an annual trip. My own reasons for going along in the past have been to see our suppliers, see the latest products, look for new suppliers and to get a feel for what our market will look like in the next few years. With the advent of ISE, I can get all of the above there without a long haul flight, the associated expenses and time away from the office. This year's show was much quieter than in previous years. The number of exhibitors and the size of their stands seemed smaller. Visitor numbers were obviously down too. I found myself wandering about in fairly people free isles.

How come my trip was worth while? Instead of staying in a hotel close to the convention centre, we stayed in a holiday apartment about 30 minutes drive away. That meant we didn't find ourselves in the bar immediately after each day. As a result we didn't do a great deal of networking (actually what's the point if you can't remember what you talked about or even who with by the following morning?). We did find ourselves with lots of time to plan our trips to the show, got plenty of sleep and got to the show on time each day without a hangover! We saw all our suppliers, had a good look around the show and found time to do some strategy thinking away from the office. That makes us sound boring? who cares.

What did we see at the show? Apart from LED projectors, some very clever edge blending software and some cool stuff from our own suppliers (mostly AMX and projectiondesign), there wasn't a great deal to write home about, sorry.

This year was my first as Chair of the InfoComm European Council. Before you ask, it's a group of European InfoComm members who get together twice a year to help InfoComm to become a lot less US centric. We talk about their education programs, work on industry standards and how we can get more involved to promote the industry itself. My key contribution to this years meeting was to ensure it wasn't death by PowerPoint and that it finished on time. Between now and ISE (the next council meeting) I hope to be able to help more people from more countries involved. If you aren't a member of InfoComm already, you really are missing out on some great opportunities for AV education and hearing what's going on in the industry.

Education for your staff - they run some great courses. The courses and tests are discounted by what's called 'Edubucks' which you get by being a member
Free access to all InfoComm shows worldwide (although I have never paid to get into one anyway)
Discounts on show floor space at their shows
Free market research publications
Does no harm to be seen to be a member of the key industry organisation
Regular emails (rather a lot actually) on what's going on - education, events, new products and general industry information
One of the emails is called InfoComm IQ and it lists all the latest products that the member manufacturers have just launched
The opportunity to network and influence at meetings such as the European Council and the Round Tables, where users, resellers, distributors and manufacturers get together

For more information, please visit

www.infocomm.org

Or, get in touch with me.

Take care all.

Gordon

Are we seeing the green shoots of recovery?

2009-05-06T09:49:00Z

I'm starting to feel better about what's going on, so I thought I'd share it with you.

2009 didn't start very well for us; January was to put it politely, dreadful. February was not bad and March was actually quite good. Bye the way, I'm not comparing them to last year - I don't want to give myself any reason to feel bad at the moment.

April arrived and started off OK. Easter being smack in the middle of the month didn't help much and the phones went quiet. Two weeks is a long time to hold your breath! The end of the month picked up a bit, overall it wasn't all that great (I'm still not comparing it to last year!).

If you filter out all the doom and gloom about job cuts, the noises out there seem to have actually been much more positive in the last couple of months or so. Mortgage applications and approvals were up in March, the pound perked up (it was only a bit, but it was up), the daffodils came out and more normal, day to day, news seems to be finding it's way into the headlines.

If May is OK then I think we can treat April as a glitch and all start to believe that we have gone beyond the bottom of the slope and are on the way back up. I can't see any reason for things to shoot back up as fast as they went down, so our climb out will certainly be gradual, but at least it will be going the right way.

Now all we have to do is make sure May is a good month!

Onwards and upwards.

Here's a joke

A man with a bald head and a wooden leg is invited to a Xmas fancy
Dress party. He doesn't know what to wear to hide his head and his
Wooden leg, so he writes to a fancy dress company to explain his
Problem.

A few days later he receives a parcel with a note:

Dear Sir,
Please find enclosed a Pirate's outfit. The spotted handkerchief will
Cover your bald head and with your wooden leg you will be just right
As a Pirate.

The man is offended that the outfit emphasizes his disability, so he
Writes a letter of complaint.

A week passes and he receives another parcel and note:

Dear Sir,
Sorry about the previous parcel. Please find enclosed a monk's habit.
The long robe will cover your wooden leg and with your bald head you
Will really look the part.

The man is really incandescent with rage now, because the company has
Gone from emphasizing his wooden leg to drawing attention to his bald
Head. So he writes a really strong letter of complaint.

A few days later he gets a very small parcel from the company with the
Accompanying letter:

Dear Sir,
Please find enclosed a tin of Golden Syrup.
We suggest you pour the tin of Golden Syrup over your bald head, stick
Your wooden leg up your 'xxxx' and go as a toffee apple.

Digital Signage marks a departure for av

2009-04-28T06:36:00Z

I thought Digital Signage was just a fancy name for just another application for av. There's me thinking it won't be long before we create all sorts of fancy new names like Board Rooms, Training Rooms and Reception Areas etc! After a few more beers, I realised it is just a new vertical market within av after all - screens on walls with signal distribution and some good old content.

Screens on walls are what we are known for. Signal distribution too. Having said that, signal distribution is a little more complicated with Digital Signage. Greater distances are involved, so the quality of the signal distribution gear and cabling is even more important. But it's still not rocket science for us is it?

Content is the departure. We never tried to get involved in selling PowerPoint to create the presentations (at least we haven't anyway), so why are we now feeling obliged to providing the software for content creation of Digital Signage? I know that there is an opportunity for recurring revenue with the licenses and even the creation itself could offer a nice little earner.

But, we specialise in av don't we?

Is there anyone out there?

2009-04-22T11:48:00Z

Easter is over, back to normal business and phone traffic, thank goodness. I was wondering what to write about next and then started to ask myself if anyone is actually reading this stuff? If they are, what do they think? It's a bit like most of our marketing, we write it the best we can, send it out and then hope it will generate some results. It's hard to tell whether it's working because the sales force don't say much and who knows if the phone is ringing more than usual? But, we do it anyway because we know we should.

So, back to my question; is anyone out there? If so, please can you tell me whether you thought the previous blogs were appropriate or not? And, is there anything in particular you would like to read about? If there isn't, I will get on with writing the next one anyway.

What's going on out there?

2009-04-01T10:23:00Z

We are certainly in interesting times. Right now, there are more significant influences on our businesses than there have ever been and they aren't all positive. Having said that, every cloud is supposed to have a silver lining, it's just hard to recognise it for what it is sometimes.

Commodification. That's an interesting word we have been hearing more of recently. It is meant to mean that more and more of the products we have been selling in the past are fast becoming commodities. As such, it's not just projectors & flat screen monitors that are now being sold off the page and on the web. It's no use us digging our heels in saying "that's our domain" and ploughing on regardless trying to sell what we have always sold. We will just find ourselves sitting in our ivory tower with very little business left to shout about. Unless.... finding a niche, be it product or by vertical market sector.

The internet. Gone are the days of users using the local yellow pages to find us. In those days, it was quite hard for them to find out much about the products we sold and our competition too. Now of course anyone can find out all about the products for themselves. They can also find a long list of people prepared to provide them too. All this in minutes and out of hours. If we can't be found on the web and justify whey they should call us, they won't.

2nd generation/more savvy users. They know what they want and the options for where to get it. Here's where the bun fight starts. If we don't want to get into a Dutch auction, it's back to good old proper selling. That is, if we can remember how to, or ever knew in the first place? Too many people in our industry have never been invested in and actually had any proper sales training.

AV kit working on IT networks. How many of us could hold our own in a conversation with an IT manager, unless it was about football? They don't like people messing about with their networks, especially if they know we don't know what we are talking about. Oh dear! I can see a need for some training here.

IT resellers selling AV. There's nothing to stop them. Anyone can sell a projector, a flat screen monitor and an electronic white board, can't they? That's where really knowing AV rather than just what's flavour of the month, comes in handy. If we really do know our stuff about how and where to site the display and speakers to best suit the audience, then we will win hands down every time. Here's another reason to get niche and avoid the bun fight. The IT market is used to working on low margins for the hardware.

The pound. The UK appears to be one of the worst off in this recession. As a result, the pound has dropped like a stone compared to the US dollar and the Euro. Anyone importing product has to put their prices up. Sadly the exchange rate market doesn't give us any warning, so most of the recent price increases will have come with very little or no notice at all. It's the same for all of us, so it shouldn't mean we lose business as a result. It's worth taking a look at how long your quotes are valid for though.

The economy. Aagh! Sadly we are in a recession. Not much we can do about that. Here's where you could take a very negative view: getting hold of money is much harder than it used to be. People who have it won't spend it and people who don't have it, can't get it. However, if that were true, no-one would be buying any av kit would they? That obviously isn't the case, because we are still getting business. The cake is still there, it just got smaller. The task now is just to get a bigger slice.

Credit insurance. Who cares about that? We all should! As a result of the financial institutions messing things up, they are now being much more careful about who they lend money to and who they will insure. That presents us all with a potential problem. Whether we are a manufacturer, distributor, reseller/dealer or user, we all buy from our vendors. Most vendors, insure their debtors (we do). That means most of us are given an 'insured limit' by someone. The credit limits we are set are based on these insured limits. These insured limits are under constant review. If the underwriters see something about our business that they don't like so much, that limit gets smaller or sometimes taken away altogether. That makes it harder for us to do business with each other. Avoid submitting an annual return that doesn't look good and not going to court will ensure changes aren't triggered.

A joke. Always like to end on a smile:

Door to door salesman comes knocking on Little Billy's door.

Little Billy answers the door.

The salesman is agog when he sees the 11 year old at the door wearing
stockings, suspenders and a basque, chomping on a big cigar with a
large brandy in his hand.

The salesman asks, "Is your mummy in?"

Little Billy says, "Does it look like it ?"

How to stay strong in the recession

2009-03-12T09:49:00Z

From our perspective

2008 was flat year on year until August arrived. At that point our sales took a nose dive and have pretty much stayed that way until February. Things seem to have started to pick up since then. March is beginning to look even better. It's hard to know for sure whether we are a good barometer. However, as most of our business has a quite short term sales cycle, I think we will be seeing changes in the market almost as they happen. I would like to think that some of the things we have put in place recently have helped us to avoid an even worse slide, but it is hard to know for sure just what impact they have had.

What have we been doing to stay strong?

Since August we have been hungry to read anything we can get on how to stay strong in this recession. Books, articles, magazines, web sites, you name it. Most of it was irrelevant to us or waffle, but there were some gems of common sense that struck me and we have done our best to apply them to our business;

"Be pro-active. Don't batten down the hatches and hope to ride it out".

"Communicate, communicate, communicate". When times are tough it is easy to slip into uncertainty, confusion and fear. Constantly keeping our colleagues informed of our situation and what we are doing to help ourselves by email, walking about and monthly 'state of the nation' company meetings has been key to maintaining morale and avoiding this. People don't like surprises. Proactively keeping our bank informed of our situation and plans, they don't like surprises either.

"There is nothing better in life than a life or death struggle to get your priorities straight". Enough said.

"Company strategy must be flexible to take advantage of shifting markets". No one likes change, just because it's change. However, we have been monitoring what's going on out there and changing our approach accordingly. Our colleagues have all been involved during the planning and as a result, have bought into every change we have made.

"Develop your existing customer base". Finding new customers is hard enough in any climate. It's much easier and faster to sell new products and services to existing customers. Then keeping them by providing the best possible customer service.

"Go and visit your customers to find out what you are doing that is right, what is wrong and then fix it". Our senior management team got our from behind their desks and went to see a random selection of our customers. We are also giving our customers every opportunity to give us their feedback - to bridge any gaps between what we are promising and what we actually deliver. As a result, we have made numerous changes.

"You can't expect your sales team to be both great farmers and hunters". We were. Not any more. We have identified those who are naturally suited to one or the other role and restructured our sales team last November accordingly.

"Develop sales in markets that do have money". We have been getting much more involved in Digital Signage and 3D.

"Cash is king". It's always important, but in this climate where overdrafts are being reduced or removed rather than increased, it's critical. So, staying on top of our debtors, reducing our expenses budget and turning dusty cardboard boxes into cash has been our goal. We even looked at invoice discounting. We discounted that idea the minute we realised it wasn't at all appropriate in a declining market.

"If statistics are delayed, you have no way of guiding the ship other than looking at your wake". We used to just monitor sales revenue and wait for quarterly management accounts. Not any more. We have prioritised getting the information we need to run the business and are now able to produce reports for our now monthly board meetings where we can see exactly where we are and make decisions much faster.

"Hit the competition where they aint. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if they are undefended". I won't go into detail here because I don't want to point out to our competitors, where they aint.

"Goals are useless unless they are so clear that everyone understands them and can do something about them every day". Brilliant when applied.

I hope that some of those points struck you as they did me.

Gordon

An intro

2009-03-11T17:01:00Z

When I told my wife (Karen) that I had been invited to write a blog on av interactive, her response was; "anyone who reads or contributes towards a blog has too much time on their hands (especially in this climate)". I would agree if they were all full of gripes and gossip. So, obviously my blogs will not contain any of that. I aim to provoke topical discussions that actually contain something that is worth taking the time out to find, read and contribute towards. If I offer opinions, they will be based on a combination of fact and my personal experience in this industry which goes back to 1983 and running a niche, technical, distribution company since 1991. So, here goes.......