Lance Wiggs

Assorted pictures from Mozambique

These are pretty small as internet is fickle from here – but hopefully they give an idea of life in Mozambique.

Inside a game park (without much game)

Moz

Moz
Moz Moz
Moz Moz Moz Moz Moz
I saw lots of these bags outside small settlements

Moz

Getting some help with a flat tire – great fun at dusk.

Moz

a secondary road
Moz

my home from home – the Southern Sun Maputo

Moz
The stairs at the hotel – far too familiar

Moz
game park agan

Moz
Map of Maputo – it’s a small town really

Moz

Plenty of free condoms available at work – and I am told that they disappear at an astonishing rate. Good to see in this high HIV area.

Moz
The toll booth on he way to and from work. The cost is 17.50 metacais – about $1 Moz

Some construction on a road South. There were a few of these in a row – stopping the road getting washed out in the rainy season I suppose. Moz
Construction signs are usually just the trees

Moz
Pretty lake further south.

Moz
The pasenger ferry across the harbour

Moz

Secondary road – the map says it is paved.
Moz
View from the car ferry as workers ad ballast to a new wharf. Ferry capacity was 12 cars.

Moz

Fastpitch: a look at the horse’s mouth

Despite the proverb, some gifts should be looked at – if only to determine their true value. The one I have in mind is the $15,000 of touted value in the grand prize for the Icehouse Fast pitch competition.

There are prizes for winners in four categories, and one overall winner. The categories are Best Funding Opportunity, Best Intellectual Property, Best Presentation and People’s Choice.

The category award winners get:

BNZ: Cash Prize $1000 plus BNZ bank account (final wording TBC)

Microsoft: 1 suite of Microsoft software package: Office professional, Vista Business and One Care (Value $1717) (final wording tbc – they no longer distribute One Care)

Gen-i: 1 Telecom T Stick (C597) Mobile Broadband USB Modem (Value $349) (final wording TBC)

NZTE: Escalator Investment Ready Consultation (Value $3000)

The ICEHOUSE: Opportunity to pitch to investors

NZ Business Magazine: 12 month subscription

Ideolog Magazine: 12 month subscription

The ICEHOUSE Certificate

The best funding opportunity prize winner also gets a “business consultation session” from Ernst and Young. Oh – and this list is pasted directly from the competition webpage – including the embarrassing “final wording TBC” comments.

The grand prize winner also receives:

The ICEHOUSE: 3 months residency at the ICEHOUSE’s leading incubator ICE Accelerator to develop your business dream (Value $10,500)

Microsoft: A Microsoft Small Business Server (final wording TBC)

So it seems the grand prize is worth over $15,000, and the total prize pool is over $45,000, whch makes the category prizes worth $7,500 each.

I disagree with those values.

Instead I calculate that the grand prize is worth $2,700, the total prize pool $12,000 (73% less) and the category prizes worth $2,327 each.

The real dollar value of the prizes comes from donations from BNZ and Microsoft – whom we should genuinely thank for their contributions.

Smaller value comes from Telecom – a data stick is valuable but also an invitation to spend money.

Consulting firm Ernst Young offers a business consulting session – but that’s something that you could have with me (come November) or anyone else for the price of a coffee. A single session really isn’t that useful either – real value comes from an on-going relationship, and that can get expensive with a big name firm.

The 2 magazine subscriptions are nice, but not worth a lot of money.

However the downright shonky value comes from including Escalator program and from the Icehouse’s prizes.

The Escalator program is actually free. It is a government funded and privately delivered program to match funders with SMEs. If you meet the criteria, as I assume the category winners of this competition easily would, then you pay nothing. In fact it appears from the escalator website that you cannot buy the services at all. Go check it out, and even apply.

The Icehouse itself provides three prizes – the opportunity to pitch to investors, an Icehouse certificate and, for the grand prize, 3 months in the Icehouse.

None of that is actually worth anything.

A certificate is obviously worthless and a Google search for “Icehouse certificate” yields exactly one (invalid) result.

An opportunity to pitch to investors is more than adequately provided from by the Escalator program – it’s their job. Meanwhile the FastPitch event itself is, well, an opportunity to pitch to investors. Idealog will be there and will no doubt be covering the event, so the word will get out as well. We should remember also that New Zealand is a small place, and you can easily get in front of investors if you drink enough coffee.

The stated value of the grand prize of a 3 month Icehouse residency is troubling. Why would anyone pay $10,500 to be at the Icehouse – or any incubator – for three months? (I’ve heard that the going rate for the Icehouse is over $2500 per desk per month.)

That’s a serious amount of money spent that would be better off invested into your business.

The successful Y-Combinator program invests US$10,000 or so into its companies, while giving them free coaching, providing free legal help with incorporation and entree into VC firms. In return they get 2-10% of the companies, and provide a 3 month “don’t call it a boot camp.” During the three months the companies work on their products, not on their pitches.

Is the Icehouse perhaps a reverse Y-Combinator – taking $10,000 away from companies rather than investing $10,000 in them? If the Icehouse truly believes their own publicity, then why not turn the equation around – and give start-ups $10-20,000 and free seats in the Icehouse in return for 2-10% of their equity?

I accept that incubators have a place – after all it is fun to work with like minded souls, and you can learn from the people there – but charging this sort of money is nothing short of extortion.

If you are starting a business then you need to think cheap, think cost effective and think smart. Work from home or short-term rent one of the empty offices around. Even better find someone that is willing to let you camp in their office for a month or two – you’d be surprised at how many spare desks there are, and if you are in Wellington in particular, then advice from people that have done it before is a walk to Mojo away.

So here it is – in summary form.

Overall I feel the prize package, as it stands, is worth lot less than advertised.

The entry page states that:

The total prize pool is valued at over $45,000 and is supported by ICEHOUSE founder The University of Auckland Business School and corporate partners BNZ, BCG, Ernst & Young, HP, Gen-i, Microsoft, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts and Telecom.

While it’s good to see Ernst Young and Telecom in the mix of prizes, I don’t see anything from the rest (though Gen-i is owned by Telecom). How about it?

That doesn’t mean to say you shouldn’t give it a go – you should. There is value here in three ways:
Creating your pitch. It’s hard to crystallise your business or idea into a short pitch, but it is a very healthy exercise. You need to be able to clearly articulate exactly what opportunity you are going after, why there is value there, how you are going to do to capture it in the face of competition and how you will execute quickly and well enough. And you need to do this in 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, one hour and so on. Your pitch should be the same, but the length and depth varies according to the audience and the forum.

Doing the Pitch: The FastPitch competition gives you time in front of people with knowledge and money. At the very least you should get some good questions that will help you refine your idea or business. You may even get an introduction to someone that can help you more formally with ongoing advice or money. Remeber that neither are free, but that you can pay with the best currency of all – equity.

Getting the word out: Idealog will be there, and I would hope there will be other coverage in the press. Use the pitch to generate a little publicity for your business, and see if you can attract your first customers, like minded people to work with you or even just a few followers on your twitter account. Use the experience to share your idea with as many people as possible, and run as hard and as straight as you can towards your first revenue.

If you win – then take the prizes on offer. Use the Icehouse as a base, if it makes sense, accept the consulting advice and so on.

However make sure you spend the time and advice on kickstarting your business – and not on the search for capital. Those with money are far more likely to invest in a company that has shown real traction over the three months, and if you do it right then they will hunt you down.

Note: I seem to be copping a bit of association with the word curmudgeon – and blog posts like this probably don’t help. Therefore I am offering free coffee, along with an hour or more of help, to all top ten finalists in this competition. You’ll be getting a lot of other help, but if you want that latte then do contact me. Just wait until November when I am back from Mozambique.

Contacting me

Contacting me is hard right now. I’m in Mozambique until November and telecommunications are not the best.

What does not work
Incoming and outgoing calls from my NZ number
Outgoing calls from my Mozambique number
Incoming and outgoing texts from any number
Skype calls

What sometimes works
Incoming phone calls to my local mozambique number (see contact me)
Outgoing emails

What works
Incoming email (though it is slow)
Twitter

Yes – this is tough for me. Thank goodness I have a kindle and can still get books.

Corruption kills tourism

I’m in Mozambique for seven weeks consulting to Mozal – the nine year old aluminium refinery that in 2000 helped signal to the world Mozambique’s successful return from the dark ages of the civil war.

It’s a beautiful country, but one that is firmly planted in the 3rd world – this is a very poor society.

With poor societies there is high motivation for corrupt officials, and sadly it seems the police on Mozambique’s roads are no exception.

The police in corrupt places are not there to help you – they are there to help themselves. Mozambique has no tourist police (a staggeringly good idea used in several countries) and so the regular police are free to extract as much money as they can from tourists and expatriates.

While the number of roadblocks and random stops has apparently fallen a lot over recent years, there are still far too many. Each time you are stopped the primary motivation of the police is to extort money from you, not to enforce the law. This means you need a well developed sense of patience and tolerance is required to drive any distance.

I’m driving a big ugly 4WD here, and it is a very different feeling than a motorcycle. Not only is it much slower in traffic and dirt roads, but it feels that I will be in a much worse situation when I am stopped. The motorcycle does attracts attention, but it is also easy to coast by checkpoints very easily. Meanwhile the policemen’s attention is easily diverted from extorting money to a conversation about the bike, my travels and so forth. A big ugly 4WD gives no such advantages, and I am not looking forward to being stopped.

My fellow consultant and I were taken aside by several expatriate colleagues on Friday and given a few handy hints about how to deal with the local police, should we be stopped.

It seems the local police divide into the “white shirts” and the “grey shirts.” The white shirts themselves are invariably well pressed – these are the traffic police and the ones I have seen seemed to take their job seriously. The grey shirts less so – they appear to be soldiers, and go around in utes with several men on the back. Apparently they chase you down and then surround your vehicle with AK47 toting men. They are a lot less reasonable to deal with – and it’s also hard to be rational when there are that many guns pointing at you.

The advice we received for both types of police centered around what to do and how much to pay. Stop and obey orders of course, and politely insist you did nothing wrong. Some recommended only handing over copies of your documents, while others said they have never had a problem handing over original passports, licenses and car papers. (I certainly used originals in all my motorcycle travels, but kept photocopies hidden on the bike as a last resort backup). Some said you should refuse to pay, unless you were clearly in the wrong, while others said a US$4-12 payment should see you on your way. All said that you should keep your speed down in the towns so the white shirts should not bother you – that’s good advice regardless as towns have plenty of people walking on the road.

So we were warned, and while I had a clear weekend my colleague did not. He was stopped just three minutes from the hotel, at 6:20am, at the beginning of a 7 hour journey. What’s worse, it was by the grey shirts.

His car was indeed surrounded by the AK47 toting men, and the boss alleged the running of a stop light (not true). Extortion demands started at US$50 – and after a lengthy discussion the payment extracted was a still unreasonable $12.

Corruption comes in many forms, and corrupt police are a sad indictment on a society. Worse yet it means stopping and thinking before every potential journey – do you really want to run the gauntlet to get to the supermarket, restaurant or elephant park? My colleague and I have both travelled in places like this before, but Mozambique is causing itself very real economic and social harm by allowing these activities to continue.

New Zealand is a very rare place – one of the few where I still trust the officials. We should feel good about that.

Vege porn – from the USA no less

I was amazed when I went to a vegetable store in Albany/Berkley, CA the other day. The vegetables were fresh and sufficiently deformed to convince me they were natural. But it was the range that got me – there were veges there that I’d never seen before, and plenty that I wanted to eat – though not the Brussels sprouts.

The short trip was the first time in years that the US food didn’t make me feel ill. It is probably something to do with being in California, and also I stayed clear of anything dubious.

The market proves that there are some places can sell good food in the USA. The question is when the hell did the vast majority of the USA start finding lousy, fatty, high fructose syrup filled food acceptable?

Tuesday Three: 3 ways to improve your business

Cut out the middle man

Buy your computers and accessories directly – abandon resellers. It’s cheaper and a whole lot faster.
Stop external catering for meetings – buy the ingredients at the supermarket and arrange on plates.
Put your prices up to lousy customers that eat your time and resources – you’ll either make more money from them, or you’ll fire them and free up your time.

Let’s have one industry awards not two

So I’m disappointed with the “2009 New Zealand Internet Industry Awards”, given the poor wording of the entrepreneur of the year award.

It’s a new annual award organisation and created by the Liz Dengate Thrush Foundation. The purpose of the foundation is:

… to award funding grants for use in practical educational advancement of individuals in Internet entrepreneurship.

I have no idea how they turned that purpose into an awards evening.

They clearly have money – after all they managed to get Vint Cerf out to give the headline talk at the awards. He’s a very impressive and interesting guy, but I suspect not the best person to talk about Internet entrepreneurship for individuals in New Zealand. I also suspect that the other speaker, Minister of Internal Affairs Hon. Nathan Guy, was out of his field somewhat.

However there are plenty of other organisations and people doing great work in promoting and improving internet entrepreneurship in NZ. Why not support them?

Start with Webstock – an organisation that struggles to make money, but that has put NZ at the center of the map of internet coolness.

Let’s add Nat Torkington who, with O’Reilly media, bought FOO camp to Warkworth (the first ones out of the USA) and has managed to get a few lucky souls (including lucky me) over to the original FOO camp in Sebastapol, California. FOO is free – paid for by sponsors in NZ, and there are also several free unaffiliated BAA camps which do a great job of getting people together in common cause.

I could go on.

It now seems that we have two new award evenings, with the super cool and connected Webstockers launching the Onyas at about the same time. Actually they were originally scheduled for the same night as the NZ Internet Industry Awards, but the Webstockers graciously deferred their Onyas evening to the Webstock event next year (a smart move).

The Onyas promote themselves as the Web Industry awards – giving awards to those that create by building, designing, writing, coding and so forth. They focus on the website and content rather than the businesses behind them.

So why not combine these awards? The NZ Internet Industry Awards need a healthy dose of Webstock coolness and industry connectedness, while the Onyas could use some financial and political backing, and could easily add the existing NZIIA categories.

So I’d love for someone from the Liz Dengate Thrush foundation to get in touch with someone from Webstock. The goals of the two organisations are aligned, with both parties wanting to educate people and both parties wanting a thriving internet entrepreneur community in New Zealand. Let’s make that happen.

Finally, I have to say that the foundation’s website has done a poor job of telling us who Liz was, why the internet was important to her and what she really stood for. The “About Liz” page reads like excerpts from a c.v. and could be so much better. If you are listening- please re-write the page, and also make it linkable from a top tab rather than buried in the secondary tabs. And think about using the Foundation’s monies more like the MacArthur and Ford Foundations – supporting key organisations and people that are driving towards the goals you desire rather than by putting on your own new events.

Let’s appreciate our internet entrepreneurs

I read today in Stop Press that there are no Internet Entrepreneurs in New Zealand. To be fair the award criteria were pretty harsh:

Internet Entrepreneur of the Year – recognition for that rare breed who has put capital and reputation on the line and successfully contributed to New Zealand’s wealth.

That’s a standard, I would point out, that judges Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson didn’t really achieve themselves – as they didn’t really spend any significant capital (aside from everything they then owned) into their businesses, and they were too young to have had any industry reputation to throw away.

Which begs some questions – does putting everything you own into a company really count as “capital” when you are about 20 and don’t own that much? Does working hundreds of extra-curricular hours also equate to a capital investment? Does quitting your high paying job to work on a business that doesn’t make any money equate to plonking down capital?

Meanwhile the second part of the award title is even harder – “contributed to New Zealand’s Wealth” means that Rod Drury, whose Xero has yet to achieve profitability, is out for now, and most likely the founders of Pocketsmith are out as well.

So I really struggle with that wording – the award seems to require that you go out on a limb with your reputation and spend lots of money on a start-up. I actually do not recommend either of these as necessary to succeed – rather you should avoid dumping your money or reputation until you know you are on to a sure thing.

The lack of candidates shouldn’t be an indictment on the state of New Zealand internet entrepreneurs. There are plenty of entrepreneurs out there – I’ve met many of them and read about them in magazines like Idealog. There are some who have identified a niche, designed and built a website in their own time and are making revenues. There are others that spent far too much on websites and ideas of dubious value, but are learning from the experience and looking for the tweak or new idea that will count. Plenty of people are developing websites and applications in their spare time, and let’s not forget that a NZ Government owned utility launched a world first – an online electricity marketplace. None of these would qualify for the award, but many deserve recognition.

And that’s just it – I’d rather we give recognition early, before a entrepreneur has succeeded, rather than when everyone knows all about them after they are successful. Let’s find them and give them the publicity they require as well as deserve early in their journey.

So let’s reward those that try, those that are willing to start something, those that inspire and support others to start, those that succeed and even those that fail – so long as they do it well.

Tuesday Three: 3 ways to improve your business

Where everybody gets a bargain.

Buy stationary from the Warehouse – and throw away those addictive catalogues.
Put a donation box in the kitchen and ask staff to pay $1 per drink from the fridge. You are providing drinks right?
Go Lean – it’s really tough and takes years to do well, but Lean manufacturing is continuous improvement from the ground up. Hire someone and get them to start small with one group of employees, and then slow extend group by group, reacting to demand.

The 31 reasons that inflight wifi is not making money

From the WSJ we hear that sales for inflight wifi have been disappointing. It seems that when you give it away the usage is pretty high, but things change when there is a price:

“.. in tests and now in regular service, usage drops off considerably when travelers must pay for the service. Alaska Airlines even tested charging just $1. The result: a lot fewer laptops, BlackBerrys and iPhones signed on.”

That Alaska Airlines experience made raised my suspicions that there is more going on here than price.

“There’s a very substantial decline in passenger usage the minute you start charging for the service,” said Michael Planey, a consultant specializing in in-flight passenger technologies. “It really begins to invalidate the model on which this service is being built for the next 10 years.”

It seems that airlines and providers are petrified that the norm will end up being to offer Wifi for free to all customers, and the early results are not good. Is wifi in the sky doomed for all of us?

A little bit later we hear that:

Most U.S. airlines with Wi-Fi are using a service called Gogo from Aircell LLC, which built a network of cellular towers across the country.

Now everyone that flys can afford to pay $1, so clearly there is more at stake here. So let’s have a look at the GoGo sign up form – this is the other ‘cost’ people pay. Below is the form you use to sign up prior to departing – if you are organised enough. I imagine the form you get when you are signing up en route is very similar – and I will test this soon.

It’s hard to know where to start, but this is a usability disaster. There are so many boxes to fill out, and GoGo just wants so much.

Title – why do they need my title?
Name – why do you need a name? – unless this is the credit card name, in which case it’s only one field, not two.
I’ve never seen two reminder questions on the same form before. Even one is one too many.
I struggle to understand why we would ever have to type our email address or password twice these days – but this form wants us to retype both of them
The terms of use agreement tick box is way on the other side of the page from the next buttons. It’s easy to miss – as I did.
The right hand side address information is optional – but it doesn’t seem to be visually. Why would you even need my address and, heaven forbid, phone number?
There are 20 fields on the page, where basically the only things required are the email address and password.

I’ve helpfully marked the form up – Red is for boxes that are not required, Green is for the ones that are. Click on the picture for a zoomed in look.

All of that information, and GoGo still does not have a payment method from the person registering. After entering dummy data I wasn’t surprised by this stage to see another big form – and one asking for my address again.

It’s just too much. GoGo has provided me with 33 reasons to get frustrated and stop – that’s 31 fields and two buttons.

This is worse when you consider that many people signing up will be doing so on an iPhone or other mobile device. Filling in 31 fields on an iPhone is just too hard, and when you combine it with actual dollar cost it easy to see that the total cost exceeds the perceived value.

How to fix this

Gogo appears to have multiple aims for the login process – and so collect far too much data along the way. They need to focus on making it as simple as possible to take customers money – and that is it. Every extra field is another impediment to signing up, and I would expect to see dramatic changes in signups if things were made easy.

Here’s how:

Remove the front sign-up page entirely – it is not required
Add email address and password to the credit card page. Make it the new front page*
Add a paypal payment option to that page – that way you don’t even need my billing address

and that’s it. To keep improving Gogo can:

Conduct A/B tests, watch the click streams, track results and tweak constantly.
Add in sales phrases/pitches during the process and test response rates.
Lower the prices

*it will need a bit of a redesign – but just move things around for now.

What do you think?

Tuesday Three: 3 ways to improve your business

Beers work too

Give bonuses in kind, not cash. A weekend trip for two to Rotovegas for $300 feels like a lot more than $300 in cash.
Insource your legal work by hiring a young, smart lawyer who is 3 years out from law school. They tend to be good at other stuff too
Ask your staff for improvement ideas, work with them to prioritise and then ask or assign owners to make the ideas happen.

Sky TV’s easy credit

Sky’s results came out this week – and while subscriber numbers grew the financial results were at the low end of expectations. I feel that their product is disappointing – with too much rugby translating into a general loss of passion for the game, and with an increasing awareness that in tough times paying money to Sky is not really necessary.

Meanwhile only 17% (14,500) of the mySky HDi subscribers have paid $10 a month for access to the HD channels – so clearly the HD channel proposition is not very strong.

Despite this, and somewhat surprisingly during a recession, Sky’s churn rate decreased from 14.9 to 14% for the year.

Or maybe that’s not surprising. My Sky bill is on some sort of manual paper process and as I completely fail at this sort of thing I’ve been receiving a series of calls from Sky credit people. The calls go something like

“Hi it’s so and so from Sky – we’d just like to remind you that your bill is overdue”

“Uhh – thanks”

and that’s it. No – “pay it now or we will disconnect” or “would you like to pay it now using your credit card” or even “when are you going to pay it?“. They just call, tell me I am late and then go away. This went on for some months (I’ve since paid the bills)

It’s like Sky have decided not to churn anybody – especially those with a mySky box.

They do show in their annual report that bad debt went up from $3.3m to $5.2m, but it seems that their definition of bad debt is pretty lax. A note to their annual report states:

A provision for impairment of trade receivables is established when there is objective evidence that the Group will not be able to collect all amounts due according to the original terms of the receivables.

That means if I’m not asked the question “when can you pay?” then no “objective evidence” of my ability to pay is collected – and Sky doesn’t have to write down my debt. Of course I’m just a single data point, but there is some evidence from the accounts. Does this easy credit translate into the higher receivables (up $6m) and lower cash (down $4m)? If so it means higher profits as less debt is written off.

On the other hand are Sky being very smart here – recognising that times could be tough for their clients, and thinking in the long term? By being soft on credit now Sky customers will more likely keep their system through the tough times and get back on track when times are good. That’s clever thinking.

The death of rugby

So Wellington wins the Ranfurly shield match against Auckland. Just. With a drop goal making the difference.

Meanwhile the All Blacks win the deciding Bledisloe cup game against Australia. Just. With a lucky penalty awarded after a missed drop goal.

Then All Black coach Henry calls out Wellington coach Jamie Joesph for not allowing the resting All Blacks to pay for the province last week.

I try not to comment on rugby, but:

There is too much rugby. We can’t watch it all so it’s just a matter of choosing what you care about – and the answer seems to be less and less. I watched the end of the Wellington-Auckland match on TV and that was it. I feel it is sad that a classic Ranfurly shield match between Auckland and Wellington is diminished by their key players being on All Black duty, and sadder that the All Blacks are playing nothing games against the same teams too many times. Bring back the long tours with mid week matches.
Wellington was right to exclude the all Blacks last week. Wellington would most likely not have won against Auckland if their team had been disrupted by the entry of the All Blacks in the previous week. The game was very tight and hinged in the end of the team staying the course, and the confidence boosting decision from the previous week would have helped enormously
Drop goals win matches. I have no idea why New Zealand crowds often boo drop goal attempts, but they are simply the easiest way to get points in a tense match. You even get the ball back if you miss. The Springboks know this and use the kick well at all levels, and we will never get good at them until it appears as a valid option here – and at all levels.

Winning the World cup

I blame the Super Rugby format for the World Cup debacles of the All Blacks. The emphasis seems to be on scoring tries at the expense of winning at all costs.

That format has meant the All Blacks are wonderful in high scoring matches but punch well beneath their ability in tense affairs – such as every game in the knockout stages of a World Cup. In those knockout stages every team throws everything they have into the game – and when the All Blacks are on the other side of the field the intensity lifts even further. Kick the ball away at your peril.

The All Blacks have to play a different kind of rugby, with the emphasis on denial of opportunities to the opposition and poaching chances to score where they can. It actually seems we can play that kind of rugby, as Stuff notes:

“Wellington retained the shield with a gripping 16-15 win in the capital, a result which owed everything to their willingness to graft for every metre gained.

Auckland looked the more promising with ball in hand but Wellington were better at the basics after leading 8-3 at halftime in a tight contest.”

That could have been All Blacks – France.

A pointless brutal kick fest in the second out of three games against Australia is poor training for the real deal.

Tuesday Three: 3 ways to improve your business

Go green

Turn the computers and lights off each night as you leave. Alternatively ask the security guards to do so when they do the rounds. If you have cleaners then ask then to swithcb the lights off after they are done.
Go hybrid – and lose the thirsty clunky Commodore company cars and invest in hybrid cars. Not only are they find to drive, they send a very positive message about your company’s commitment to the future. Hybrid’s are expensive, but for high miles in cities there is plenty to save – just ask customers of Green Cabs.
Recycle everything – from envelopes and paper to broken products. Measure the amount of waste you are generating (number of bags/week, tonnes per month etc.) and set a tough target to reduce it to. Then set another target.

A great experience – at Experience BMW

Occasionally I get great customer service experiences – and so it is each time with Experience BMW in Auckland. At BMW stores there is no hard pressure to buy – the stores let the bikes sell themselves, and like Apple I seem to have a addiction weakness for their products. Both compamies make it easy.

The other week I wanted to go on a motorbike trip, but as it was going to be two-up I needed a bit more luggage than my Givi top case. I have a couple of old aluminium side cases rolling around from South America days, but they are designed to fit onto my old BMW F650 – a bike which is now sold.

Here they are getting a clean in Salta by the pension proprietress after a dusty run from Chile. Note the lack of a chain guard – which are notoriously useless on these bikes, and the lack of which didn’t affect anything when eventually I did throw a chain.

However fitting those boxy side cases to my current bike – a BMW R1200GSA was going to be problematic – in particular as one side of the BMW racks is sharply curved around the exhaust.

I went into the local BMW shop to see whether they had any BMW boxes – and to have a giggle at the prices. Actually it’s the former BMW franchise, though they still do BMW service and supply parts. The bloke in parts searched online and found the side cases for the bike – but one side was $1200 and in Auckland and the other side was $1800 and was going to have to be shipped from Germany.

Welcome to BMW pricing. Giggle factor 9.

Given that it was Thursday, and I really wanted the boxes for the weekend (or bust), shipping from Germany (let alone the price) wasn’t going to work. I also pondered why BMW’s warehouse in Auckland apparently had several left hand cases and no right hand ones.

Not to worry – it turns out that the workshop over the road was full of smart people that could make me a bracket for the old boxes. That would be a much cheaper option.

Sadly they were wildly busy, and unable to fabricate the rack for some time. That’s good news for their business, but still left me without luggage for the trip to the South Island.

I was left with one option – Auckland’s Experience BMW. I’d originally purchased my motorcycle from them and so I made a quick phone call to them to see whether they had any in there store.

They didn’t, but the parts guy searched online, and found that there were actually several of each in the Auckland warehouse. The price was $1200 apiece. He also thought that price was pretty outrageous, and sadly told me that I would also need to get locks for the boxes at a couple of hundred bucks. However for me the killer factor was whether we could get the boxes to Wellington in time – if he could not I wasn’t really interested. It was getting late on Thursday afternoon (I really am a demanding customer) but he said that he could make it happen. He offered to go to the BMW warehouse himself, bring the boxes and locks back, get the locks put on to the boxes and then ship them to me in Wellington. This wasn’t after pushing – I asked and he just said ‘no problem – here is what I will do’. He also, after I asked nicely, dropped the price and threw in the shipping as well.

It was all too easy – so we had a deal.

The next day I was a bit concerned that the boxes were not going to arrive – but nearing 3pm I checked the door – and lo and behold:

They had arrived – and everything inside was already set up.
Don’t they look pretty, in a practical Teutonic way?

The easily clicked on to the bike.

and of course they worked perfectly.

They are a very high quality bit of kit – though I didn’t test out whether the speed recommendation is correct or not. I think I can safely say that they are adequate for my needs. (The one on the left)

It’s a boring story really – I had a requirement, Experience BMW met it, made everything easy for me and so we had a deal.

When I purchased my motorcycle from them a few years back it was a very similar situation.

It was a Wednesday afternoon before a long weekend, a deal was struck on the phone conditional on them getting the bike to me the next day. Experience BMW hauled the bike out of customs, clicked everything together in the workshop, got it registered and warranted and had it ready for me to ride out of Auckland on the Thursday afternoon. Magic.

But why did I buy the bike from them and not from the local dealer? There were three reasons.

The first was that they were the only ones with a decent website and contact us form – which I used to ask whether the bike was coming in while I was travelling in Europe and thinking of upgrading. The lesson? Make sure your website is easy to use and customers can easily contact you. Reply when they do (we had an email exchange)

The second was that they could supply in a hurry – turns out they had placed me on the waiting list – and I got the first one on the road in the country (allegedly – a colleague also contends he had the first one). The lesson? Don’t make customers wait.

The third reason was the main one. When my F650GS arrived from South America a couple of years before this Experience BMW, which had just opened, lent me a chain guard to ensure that it passed its first warrant of fitness. That act of kindness (let’s call it customer service) to a BMW customer, but not their customer, eventually earned them over $35,000 in business. The lesson? Never miss an opportunity to deliver great customer service – no matter who it is.

The chain guard was a great BMW customer service moment, but frankly was one that by then I almost expected from BMW. After motorcycling in so many countries I was used to be treated almost like royalty when I turned up, dusty, battered and in desperate need of a service at a BMW dealer. Not for me the “appointment next week”, but space was usually cleared almost immediately in the workshop and mechanics put other bikes on hold to do a pit stop for the traveller. Other customers would gather around and enjoy the moment – they were quite happy to have their bikes on hold while they caught up with the latest crazy loon and laughed at his battered machine.

I have similar stories about buying bikes from BMW motorcycle shops in Durban, Perth, London (x2) and in Maryland, USA. I doubt that the company knows how much money I have spent on their machines over the years, they have managed to take over, probably, 80% of the money I have ever spent on vehicles.

BMW motorcycles feels like a global company, and are delivering a consistent brand experience across the world. That means when it comes time to buy the decision is easy.

How does your company compare?