Ricky's Online Business Blog

Deadly Sins of Service Provider

Ricky — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:01:43 +0000

Philip Kotler has his book called Ten Deadly Marketing Sins. Well, I venture to come up with at least six deadly sins as a service provider.

Indifferent - If I don’t care what customers say or need and go my own way.

Unresponsive - If I don’t respond to customers, or take my own sweet time to respond.

Outdated - If I am still offering something that is as good as those in the 90’s!

Self-centered - If I still possess that production-oriented mindset that I don’t think from customer’s viewpoint but my own.

Never learn - If I simply never learn from mistakes and make them again and again.

Never involve customers - If I never consult or at least inform customers early on important changes that could impact on them.

Customers can be very good teachers. A customer complaint, if handled well, can turn out to be an opportunity. When a customer cares enough to complain (instead of just quietly walks away), he or she is giving us a chance to rectify the situation to serve him or her even better.

Customers have taught me this in a number of tough cases. Thankfully some complaining customers turned out to be very loyal customers until now!

Let’s serve our customers well and not to sin on any of these

Learning About Self-Discipline

Ricky — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:12:58 +0000

Brian Tracy quotes Elbert Hubbard’s definition of self-discipline as, “The ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” He said self-discipline, self-mastery and self-control are the basic building blocks of character and high performance.

Successful people are disciplined people. They are in control of themselves, in particular:

Successful people master their moods - They do things they should do even when they don’t feel like doing it.

Successful people watch their words - They control their tongue so as not to say anything wrong.

Successful people restrain their reactions - They are proactive in choosing their response to situations.

Successful people stick to their schedule - They control their time or their time will be controlled by others!

Successful people manage their money - They spend what they should and live below their means.

Successful people maintain their health - What’s the point to win all the world only to lose our body?

I confess there are many areas for me to improve. Let’s strive together for success!

Blue Ocean Strategy For Personal Finance

Ricky — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:56:29 +0000

The blue ocean strategy is more than just a fad. It’s influencing how businesses made their strategic planning for years to come. Its various strategic tools and models, such as the four actions framework, are extremely useful to create blue ocean strategy business.

The blue ocean strategy is not only applicable to businesses, but in other contexts as well, though we can’t apply everything directly in those settings. In particular, the four actions framework is useful in planning our own personal life.

Whether we like it or not, everyone of us is a Me Inc., and we are the CEO of our own life. We do have a mission to complete on this earth in this life. And to achieve this, we have been bestowed with resources such as time and money.

The four actions framework can be used to differentiate ourselves (or our business) from others yet at a lower cost. It asks four main questions - what to Eliminate, what to Reduce, what to Raise and what to Create (ERRC)? Let’s take an example how I might want to plan my expenses:

Eliminate - In recent years, I have developed a habit of eating out in expensive restaurants with others, that now I patronize these places even when eating alone! I don’t have to spend so much when eating by myself. I need to cut this expense completely!

Reduce - I need to reduce buying seemingly useful but actually unnecessary items such as books and magazines. I don’t have so much time to read all of them!

Raise - I should spend more on high-leverage expenses which give good returns in long term. For example, taking classes to educate myself in business, finance and technology can go a long way toward success in life.

Create - I may want to consider some investment instruments such as shares, which as a risk-averse person I never tried. Of course, getting educated first in these is essential to avoid losses.

I find it helpful to that many things in business and life can be applied through this ERRC model. Is there anything you want to get ERRC’d too?

Some Family Insights

Ricky — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:40:33 +0000

We just came back from mother’s day celebration at Neway. My parents have developed an interest in singing in past few years. For the first time we as a family went for karaoke. You can see my sister singing below beside my parents.

We have had a good time together. My mother sang a few old songs that she likes. I also got to sing a few songs. My mother who never heard me sing in person must have been pleasantly surprised that I can sing!

Our gathering reminds me of some lessons that I have been taught before. But first a disclaimer. By sharing these lessons, I’m in no way suggesting there is any serious problem with my family or parents. I’m referring to all families in general. So don’t get me wrong!

As one Chinese saying goes, there is problem in every family (家家有本难念的经). No family is in exempted from problem and in total peace. But as a member in our own family, instead of complaining and fighting, we can choose to be proactive. We can be a peacemaker, a change agent, a source of inspiration, a model family member and a “salt and light” in the family.

Bad things can happen in our family. Our parents or siblings can mistreat us. But instead of choosing to quarrel and hate, we can choose to love and forgive. They may treat us badly. They may misunderstand us. But we don’t have to counter evil with evil. There is no end to it. The vicious circle can die down and come to an end if we can choose to respond with love.

In some cases, our parents may not be perfect. They may do things that are not right. But we can see many examples of sons becoming like fathers, and daughters becoming like mothers, passing on the wrongdoings to the next generation. However, we don’t have to be a “transition” to pass down whatever is wrong. Instead, we can choose to become a “transformation” that starting from our generation, there will be no more such a thing.

Easier said than done? Of course it is. But we are not totally powerless. We can still start small. We can make our baby steps. When we step out, do something right and achieve something small, our sphere of influence gets bigger and we will have more and more control over the situation as time goes. We can help change the situation.

These lessons have inspired me. Hope you have been benefited too. Happy mother’s day!

Selling To Industrial Customers

Ricky — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:21:27 +0000

Consider this case study. You own a company in Malaysia selling a kind of machine to factories and industrial customers. Most of your customers are within the country. But recently more and more buyers are from overseas such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These buyers are middlemen who buy on behalf of their customers in respective countries. They come to know you through word of mouth.

Now, what can a web site do for you, especially to help expand your reach to overseas? The normal answer would include:

Establish presence online - Many customers do research on the Internet to make purchase decision.
Increase your exposure - Have another channel to reach your customers. What if some buyers don’t get to know you by word of mouth?
Give good first impression - They look at your web site and form an impression before even contacting you.
Show your products online - They can look at photos online so that you don’t always need to email them.
Contact you online - Now they can have another channel to contact you instantly - email, instant messaging or even SMS.
Eliminate intermediaries - The end user customers can deal with you directly without the middlemen.
Give technical support - Save costs supporting and servicing your customers by doing it online.

Now these are the common reasons why you should have a web site. But the Internet can potentially do much more wonder than we can imagine. It can be a strategic tool to change your business model, rewrite the rules in the competition, give you unfair advantages over your competitors and even lead you to a blue ocean.

Furthermore, the Internet is not only a new medium, but also a revolutionary one. Its benefits lie in its interactivity, community building and “word of mouse”, among others. It is different from other mediums such as print and TV. You will under utilize the benefits of the Internet if you merely apply the old model to a new environment.

Imagine your customers can design the product they need online using Flash. Imagine your customers help to build a knowledge base online through Web 2.0 technologies so that they can support themselves. Imagine you use a blog to build and maintain your brand online. Just imagine…

Blog For MM2H

Ricky — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:08:54 +0000

Recently I missed a partnership offer to promote Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) by using a web site. The MM2H program was initiated by Malaysian government to attract foreigners who want to come and live here for extended period. As I understand, there are nearly 200 licensed agents, through whom only the customers can submit their application.

The competition among travel agencies and tour operators is already very intense. Do a search on Google and you can see the online marketplace is crowded too. It may not help much to do another conventional web site or portal to compete with many other sites. It will be just another me-too web site.

But blogging is different. If someone in the field can dedicate some of his or her time to blog about the country, MM2H, travelling and investment opportunities and other related topics in Malaysia, I’m sure it can generate a lot of traffic, especially when blog is very much under utilized by MM2H companies at the moment.

Blogging builds up personal or company credential. It can bring in genuine visitors who are interested in Malaysia and MM2H. It is not only a new way of promoting MM2H, but also an instant one, especially when any new blog post is updated by Google search engine almost instantly!

But blogging is a new phenomena not readily accepted especially by companies. Some may ask why rock the boat while their conventional channels are working fine? Furthermore, blogging takes time and committment from the blogger. The blogger needs to blog regularly and consistently to be effective.

If you are involved in MM2H business and would like to explore blogging for MM2H, please drop me an email at ricky@rickysoo.com.

Turning Committee Into Community

Ricky — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:56:05 +0000

Recently I served in the organizing committee of a grand annual sports event held on Labour Day in Matsushita Sports Complex, Shah Alam. We received compliments that the sports event has been held more smoothly and systematically. However, we didn’t expect much less crowd turned up this year compared to last year.

Anyway, I learned something important that, relationship is equally, if not more, important that the results we strive to achieve, be it in business, office or social work. Through working together in the committee, we not only worked together to achieve our organizational goal, but we also developed friendship and relationship.

As I heard from a speaker before, we can know how many seeds there are in an apple. But we do not know how many apples can come out of one seed. Our relationship with others is like the seed. We may do great things together for now. But without a good relationship, we may not be able to do great things together many times. It is no use that we do great things now but our relationship with colleagues deteriorates as a result of working together.

When I was younger, I tended to go for results no matter what, even at the expense of relationship with others. When working for one company, I remember being a busybody to always give suggestions to reform the business process of the company, to the extent of hurting relationship with others especially my boss. As a result, I lost out in office politics and was nearly fired from the job.

Good relationship is vital in our life. Let’s turn a committee into a community. Let’s turn our office into a fellowship of humans who love and care for one another. Of course, oftentimes we need to start from ourselves first.

Web Site For Unit Trust Business

Ricky — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:35:02 +0000

The Enquiry

I’m currently venturing into unit trust business and would like to seek your advise on the following:

i) I would like to have my own unit trust business website, that promotes the business, benefits etc how do I go about doing this?

ii) How can I promote my website to the public?

Please advise, thanks.

My Two Cents

First of all, it maybe well to check out with your company whether you can promote unit trust on Internet or not. I’m not sure about unit trust. But I have heard other kinds of financial products where it is against the company’s policy for agents to have a web site on their products.

Your web site can be static one, interactive one or Web 2.0 one (recommended). There are many ways of promoting on Internet and I can’t claim to be expert on this. Much can be left for later discussion. The most effective ones being:

- Search engine marketing
- Permission based email marketing
- Word of mouth viral marketing
- Web 2.0 style web site (community inputs)
- Using blog

If you are looking for a quick easy start, I suggest you start a blog. You don’t have to touch on unit trust directly. You can talk about yourself, your lifestyle, your religion, your hobby or any of your expert topic to build your reputation. But let them know you are doing unit trust.

When you develop reputation and friendships, people are likely to buy from you when there is a need. After all, many businesses nowadays, yours included, depend much on relationship marketing.

Blue Ocean Strategy By Spritzer & StemLife

Ricky — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:04:18 +0000

I have been benefited by a talk on blue ocean strategy held recently. It is one thing to read the book. But it’s another to listen to real life stories as two practitioners from Spritzer and StemLife shared how they apply blue ocean strategy in their respective companies.

While I should not divulge much details on their strategies, suffice to say that they are both market leaders in their own market space. They have strategies in place to create new markets and make their competitors irrelevant.

What I like about them is that they painstakingly and devotedly shared their knowledge and experience in strategizing for the benefits of the business community. Hopefully more and more Malaysian companies will discover our own blue ocean strategy and bring our country to new heights!

I heard they are not paid for their speeches. However, it is still good PR and CSR service for their companies as they educated us on the technical aspects of their products - mineral water of Spritzer and cord blood stem cells of StemLife. I have learned something new

Web Development For Sports Event

Ricky — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:00:05 +0000

Recently I was given the privilege to develop a web site for a sports carnival event in which I am an organizing committee member. It is a yearly event where teams compete in various sports, carnival stalls to provide food, games and fun, and many other goodies. I had to burn my midnight oil to finish it in just a few days!

Here is a technical summary of the web site:

It is a combination of blog and web application.
The blog allows for online collaboration by several authors.
The web application allows online registration for sport teams and carnival stalls.
SMS is used to send automated acknowledgment and reminders to members.
There is a hidden panel for administrator to glean information and retrieve summary.
The whole web site was developed using WordPress, PHP and MySQL.

Among other things experienced include:

This is the first time where registration for the sports event is done by means of Internet only.
A blog site is different from a conventional hierarchical web site, not only technically and but in concept as well. A blog requires us to think differently on how a web site works and how to use it.
Blog is superb for online collaboration by many authors at the same time. This is moving from the old kind of working where one designer does all the updates.
Blog is almost instantly indexed and updated in Google!

Next year the web site is going to be reused. In addition, we are going to have online payment as well!