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Archive for the ‘free electricity’ Category

Before I became a company trainer, I asked why anyone would want to volunteer. After all the money’s not that great, it takes a good deal of time – surely this was going to be detrimental to my business?
The senior trainer looked at me with that sort of patient expression one reserves for the dimmest child in the class.
“Imagine,” he said, “that you were delivering a training every week. How good would you become?”
What a very good point.
And today I was delivering a business training in Milton Keynes and my co-trainer started talking about the way the economy was affecting small printing businesses – all the ink is oil-based… and look what’s happening to the price of oil.
Now there was no particular connection between that comment the man I phoned from the bar afterwards. He was jut a name on my list – someone who had looked at my business three years ago and I’d offered to keep in touch – and guess what, as soon as I said hello and told him who was calling it was as if the conversation had never been interrupted.
Of course, it may have been that he had no idea who I was and was just busking it, but he did a good job. Then it went on like this:
Me: “I thought I’d give you a ring and see how the budget was going to affect you.”
“I was just watching it – the VAT doesn’t look good.”
“Yes – and I was thinking: A lot of my business partners these days are printers. Tell me, would you be open to looking at opening up another profit centre in your business?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at it this way: If someone comes to you; they’re opening up a new business and want some business cards. You could say: ‘Have you thought of having an Freephone number. That would increase your advertising response by 40%. What do you think they would say?”
Two minutes later he was getting his head round the idea of being paid every time that customer paid their electricity bill – month after month…”
So now he’s looking at the website and we’re going to talk as I drive home.

I seem to collect old ladies. They tend to fret a lot – particularly Mrs K: Her husband used to deal with all the paperwork and it flummoxes her.

But the funny thing is that every time I go round there, grumbling to myself but feeling altogether terribly noble, something good happens.

Look at today: There was an electrician’s van in the drive opposite – with an electrician in the driving seat. He seemed to have called at an empty house and had nothing to do but wait – and listen to what I had to tell him, of course.

And then, as I started down Mrs K’s garden path, her neighbour came home. So I had to say: “Ah, you must be Mrs K’s neighbour. I need to come and talk to you. She’d a member of our discount club. You could save a lot of money too, you know.”

So we arranged that I would pop in and see him after I’d seen her. The only trouble was that I was in there for a full half an hour drinking tea and getting her payments reduced and then of course I had to show her how she could shrink her bills even more with our Cashback card … and then I had to give her a stack of cards to give to her friends and explain how she would get an extra discount when they joined. She became quite excited about it all.

And then, when I left I made to cross over to the neighbour’s front door. She pointed firmly down the path. “Oh no,” I explained. I was calling on the neighbour because he wanted to shrink his bills as well.

“You can’t do that!” she said. “He’s mine.”

And then – I can’t really believe this but I retorted: “I saw him first!”

Oh dear, oh dear. This could get very ugly.

But the neighbour is a builder and a property developer so I think he’ll become a distributor anyway – at least I hope so. I have a nasty feeling that Mrs K would be vicious in hand-to-hand combat.

What a terrible shock it is to make a new discovery about yourself. For instance the note on my desk from my wife simply said “Richard” and the name of the newsagent’s shop. So what was my immediate thought? “I haven’t paid the paper bill again.” So what do I do? I put it in the “to do” pile (which of course never gets done.)

Would I have been more keen to do something if the note had said: “This person called round to sign up as a distributor”.

Because that’s what the note meant.

The note also taught another valuable lesson:  The “no for now” rule.

Let’s wind back at least a year. Neither Richard nor I am quite sure how long it is since I went in to pay the paper bill (I do sometimes) and handed him a card saying something like “Have a look at this, it’s about money” – and a couple of days later, he rang and we sat down to look at the business and he didn’t join. “I haven’t got the time” was his excuse.

Of course I told him we we all had the same amount of time – him, me, Richard Branson and the man who lives in the cardboard box outside the shoe shop. Finding more time, I pontificated, was simply a matter of making better choices about how to spend the time we do have…

But he knew his own mind and in this business we’re only looking for volunteers.

As I say that was at least a year ago. Then suddenly here he is sitting in my room saying: “Now I’ve got masses of time. In fact I’m getting bored and I thought – now that’s something I could do.”

And he joined – and hardly was he out of the door, his fast-start pack under his arm to go back to work and ask if he could have a day off for his training than I picked up my messages and one said: “My neighbour Bob – I forget his surname – says I should call you about saving money on my energy bills.”

Now that is the kind of message I can understand…

Deep and crisp and even, the snow covered the public tennis courts. It must have been the only untouched bit of snow left in town after the children had had their week off school – and Jon stood at the net with huge piece of plywood nailed to a broom handle ready to start clearing it.

Jon is an entrepreneurial young man – a tennis coach who has built himself a brilliant little business by block-booking the courts and giving tennis lessons to dozens of children at a time. He has taught all of mine at one time or another and at the moment Hugo, aged seven, is his keenest pupil.

But there had been no tennis for a week and clearly Jon was set on changing all that.

I passed him as I walked the dog: “You’ve got your work cut out!” I said.

He grinned ruefully and we chatted for a few moments about the prospect of the courts re-freezing every night – and as always tends to happen, I assessed him as a p0ssible customer or distributor. In fact he had been one of the first people I offered the business when I started. The way I saw it, he had an endless source of prospects – think of all those parents…

But it hadn’t been for him.

And that got me thinking. Back in those days they taught us to drop an absurd question into the conversation – at least, I always thought it absurd. We were supposed to say – quite suddenly and a propos of nothing: “How much is your phone bill?”

The first time I did it I felt an idiot. Of course I stopped feeling and idiot when the person I asked became a customer and has paid me ever time anyone in his house has lifted the phone ever since…

But this time, no sooner, had I thought of it than I blurted it out: “By the way, do you ever shop at Sainsburys?”

“Sometimes,” he said – as if it was the most natural thing that anyone might ask.

“Well I reckon I could get you free electricity.”

“Really,” he said. “How’s that?”

“Well, do you remember my discount club? We can do that now. If you like, I could pop round and show you – takes about ten minutes.”

And so that’s what we agreed I would do.

I walked on, musing about how strange life can be – had we come full circle? Was I back to asking daft questions? But I had to admit there was something captivating about free electricity: Only on Friday I’d been in the doctor’s surgery having a check-up and the new business manual was on my knee (better reading, I reasoned than his old copies of the National Geographic). His eye fell on the piggy logo and I said: “You take our electricity don’t you? Tell me, would you like to get it for free?”

“Free?”

“Yes, not have to pay for it at all. With your lifestyle, I reckon I could get that for you.”

So now we have an appointment for the 27th.

So when, later in the afternoon the computer went “bong” and an email came in from the lady in the noodle bar, the phrase “quick as a flash” came to mind.

You’ll remember the lady in the noodle bar from last week. We have an appointment. But now she emailed saying she had looked at the website and, as she put it: ” I am sure that if one can introduce enough people to the cause, then it could be quite lucrative, but this is not for me.”

Quick as a flash, as I say, I rang her back and explained that she didn’t have to do that. But I could probably offer her free electricity … or at the very least, maybe a free phone bill?

How did that work, she wanted to know – nobody gets something for nothing…

“Well I can’t explain it over the phone but I promise you 200 members paid nothing at all for any of their services last month. I’m certain we can do something for you. All I ask is that you let me show you. It will take ten minutes – or maybe 15 if you make me a cup of tea…”

And our appointment is back on – and do you know what? The daft question doesn’t seem so daft any more…