:00:11. > :00:14.of 60,000. You might have the best product or
:00:14. > :00:18.service in the world, but if you do not sell it right, people are
:00:18. > :00:24.probably not going to buy it. This week I'll be asking my guests about
:00:24. > :00:29.marketing. This fine art about finding and keeping a customer. We
:00:29. > :00:34.would talk about being messy and if they disorderly approach can pay
:00:34. > :00:42.off. Each week, it little business leaders come to the studio at Fort
:00:42. > :00:52.The Bottom Line. Now, you can see the discussion as well as see it. -
:00:52. > :00:57.
:00:57. > :01:01.Let's meet my guests. We have Richard Harden, down there and CEO
:01:01. > :01:07.of Homeserve, an international emergency home repairs company.
:01:07. > :01:10.Remind us what of the services that you are offering two people? It is
:01:10. > :01:19.about home emergency repairs. Buying an annual membership and we
:01:19. > :01:24.cover things like plumbing trains, electrical wiring emergencies, walk
:01:24. > :01:28.boiler breakdowns etc. We have a very good competitor in the UK.
:01:28. > :01:31.Fortunately, most of the international markets we operate in,
:01:31. > :01:37.there is not a single competitor that we are competing against head
:01:37. > :01:41.to head. I notice in the countries that you have been to, there are
:01:41. > :01:46.not a lot of people who are reaching out to China and emerging
:01:46. > :01:51.markets, but he had been branching out into Spain and America. These
:01:51. > :01:56.are not booming economy is, how has it been? No, but they share the
:01:56. > :02:03.same consumer need. Homeowners find it difficult to find a tradesman
:02:03. > :02:06.when they have an emergency. We have been focusing on the bigger
:02:06. > :02:12.countries in Europe and the big opportunity, which is the American
:02:12. > :02:20.market. Mexican guest is Nick Wheeler, founder and chairman of
:02:20. > :02:29.Charles Tyrwhitt, a Czech company - - my second-guessed.Nick Nick
:02:29. > :02:36.Wheeler, but the company is named after you? It sounded better than
:02:36. > :02:44.Nick Wheeler shirt. He founded it after university? I found it in
:02:44. > :02:50.university, in 1986. It is mainly on mine, it started as a mail order,
:02:50. > :02:53.but it is mainly on mine. You're catering for men who wear smart
:02:54. > :02:58.shirts. It is mainly for men who want to feel good about what they
:02:58. > :03:06.wear. Their main product is surge - - shirts, or about half the company
:03:06. > :03:09.is Jets. We also sell suits and ties and other things. Are men more
:03:09. > :03:19.willing to buy things without trying them on than women, do you
:03:19. > :03:19.
:03:20. > :03:24.think? I think men as a whole hate shopping. I think, if you're going
:03:24. > :03:30.to sell to them online, you need to really focus on service. You want
:03:30. > :03:35.to make it very simple for them to send it back. It is banned red wine
:03:35. > :03:45.on it, we can send it back within three months. -- if they spill red
:03:45. > :03:46.
:03:46. > :03:53.wine on it. Quite often, men or women will use credit cards without
:03:53. > :04:01.them knowing. The man's name goes on the order, but from a search, we
:04:01. > :04:07.found a lot of those orders are actually coming from women. Charles
:04:07. > :04:14.Cohen, chief executive of the baby company -- gaming company, 'No
:04:14. > :04:19.Weigh Day'. We operate a number of mobile gaining brands. People can
:04:19. > :04:25.play slot machines, bingo, can see no tight games on their mobile
:04:25. > :04:32.phones. Typically they do it sitting on the sofa in front of the
:04:32. > :04:39.TV. Again there it is exciting times, from reading about him in
:04:39. > :04:44.the papers. It is slightly surreal at the moment. We have had an
:04:44. > :04:51.approach from another company, which is obviously in a preliminary
:04:51. > :04:54.stage. We may or may not make an offer. That is a high street
:04:54. > :05:04.bookmakers. But there is no announced that he would like to
:05:04. > :05:05.
:05:05. > :05:12.make? No. Were you affected by the blackberry crash Kinnock no, not
:05:12. > :05:20.that we have noticed. We have had less e-mail coming in, which is a
:05:20. > :05:24.delight. Most of our customers use iPhones. There are still lots of
:05:24. > :05:30.people who used phones, things would buttons on them, designed for
:05:30. > :05:39.making phone calls. An archaic concept. Lots of people do not want
:05:39. > :05:43.You might think it was a key to a successful company just to have a
:05:43. > :05:48.great product, but we know that is not enough. You have to be able to
:05:48. > :05:51.market and sell it in the right way. We have three guests to come from
:05:51. > :05:57.very different industries, but I wonder if we will find there are
:05:57. > :06:06.brawls or principles that they all signed up to. Richard, because you
:06:06. > :06:12.have quite a sophisticated... I myself have received letters from
:06:12. > :06:19.Homeserve. Howdy market to people? Direct marketing was the saviour of
:06:19. > :06:24.the business. We were set up in 1993 with a �100,000 investment.
:06:24. > :06:29.The business lost money every month. It was set up as a plumbing service
:06:29. > :06:33.and we really couldn't find the breakthrough. Out of desperation,
:06:33. > :06:42.when the business was up to losing �50,000 a month, we thought, maybe
:06:42. > :06:46.we can offer a punning membership and send out a Brearley and
:06:46. > :06:51.natural-looking leaflet. It was a cartoon, with water pouring out of
:06:51. > :06:56.a water supply into somebody's garden. For �40, you could join up
:06:56. > :07:00.to the service. It was branded under the original water company
:07:00. > :07:06.and it was a final throw of the dice as to whether the business was
:07:06. > :07:12.going to make it or fail. 38 people from the 1,000 leaflets we send out
:07:12. > :07:19.signed up. 3.8% pay cub. Generally, if you can get 1% take up from
:07:19. > :07:22.direct mail, it is pretty good. So, the rest is almost history. It was
:07:22. > :07:28.the direct marketing from thinking the business is struggling, I got
:07:28. > :07:34.on my office desk and raised my arm and said yes, we have made it. We
:07:34. > :07:39.know that 100,000 then got an identical 3.8% pay Cup. Nick, you
:07:39. > :07:45.had mail order originally. How did your marketing process - digit do a
:07:45. > :07:51.lot of direct marketing? To start with, I was at university and had
:07:51. > :08:01.to do a lot of lectures. -- go to. All I could do was send out
:08:01. > :08:04.leaflets. For �99, I had 5,000 A5 leaflets printed. I had a friend in
:08:04. > :08:10.the army, he gave me a list of officers, which I assume is highly
:08:10. > :08:14.illegal now. I send out a leaflet and a letter to each of them. At
:08:14. > :08:19.the time, there was not a huge amount of direct mail. Now there is
:08:19. > :08:23.masses, but I think the same principle applied. You need to make
:08:23. > :08:27.it stand out. I insisted on personally signing the letter. It
:08:27. > :08:33.was quirky and tried to be funny in my rather sort of strange, weird
:08:33. > :08:38.sense of humour. We got a fantastic response. You have to be different
:08:38. > :08:41.and you have to stand out from everybody else. How did get around
:08:42. > :08:49.- I suspect that it would all have this problem, people getting so
:08:49. > :08:55.much through their door - how are you not just annoying people?
:08:55. > :09:01.read every direct-marketing book, because I knew nothing about it
:09:01. > :09:05.when Homeserve first started. I actually like to rip up the direct
:09:05. > :09:09.marketing rule book, because it said, set your audience up in the
:09:09. > :09:16.frame of mind so for the product of her that you are making, when the
:09:16. > :09:20.envelope lands on their door. We designed a monkey wrench on a
:09:20. > :09:24.yellow envelope and said, what better way to announce plumbing
:09:24. > :09:29.insurance to customers. It was a complete and utter disaster. The
:09:29. > :09:32.lowest take-up rate we have ever had. We found what really people
:09:32. > :09:38.wanted was the reassurance that knowing the service was recommended
:09:38. > :09:42.by their local water company. That it is a boring letter that looks
:09:42. > :09:46.more like customer-service. It is explaining a homeowner's
:09:47. > :09:51.responsibility for things like their wires and their pipes. That
:09:51. > :09:55.was the stuff that worked. Charles, presumably making your
:09:55. > :10:00.gaming sound boring is not the way to get people to take up your
:10:00. > :10:06.product? We had the added complexity that we are regulated.
:10:06. > :10:12.There are quite complicated rules about how, when, where you
:10:13. > :10:19.advertise gambling. We tried lots of different things. Most of them
:10:19. > :10:25.did not work. If something doesn't work, it did not keep flogging it
:10:25. > :10:31.to death. Try something different. Eventually, we have worked out how
:10:31. > :10:37.to recruit customers through TV. TV is, potentially, people are quite
:10:37. > :10:42.scared of it as a advertising medium. It seems that it will be
:10:42. > :10:45.incredibly expensive. In fact, it doesn't have to be. These days.
:10:45. > :10:49.really, there are hundreds of channels. Lots of different ways of
:10:49. > :10:55.getting to an audience. We have been doing that and it works really
:10:55. > :11:00.well. How have you made TV work? We have tried it on three occasions in
:11:00. > :11:03.small, regional tests. We have not make it work for us. We also tried
:11:03. > :11:11.that and realised the reason it didn't work because it was too
:11:11. > :11:15.small. We took a deep breath earlier this year and put quite a
:11:15. > :11:19.reasonable six-figure sum into a campaign for the first time going
:11:19. > :11:25.on the main channels. The digital channels. It was brilliant and
:11:25. > :11:30.worked straightaway. The same approach they did not work on the
:11:30. > :11:35.regional channels, did work on the bigger ones. Irony of the finding
:11:35. > :11:44.that the new media, the things that we talk about - biro marketing or
:11:44. > :11:48.using Facebook. have any of you gone down that sort of path? We do
:11:48. > :11:53.a lot on Facebook. Is that efficient? You claim that you had
:11:53. > :11:57.tried loads of things and say that it does not work. The claim about
:11:57. > :12:03.that kind of advertising is that is more efficient because people are
:12:03. > :12:10.self-selected. You're heading into murky water with things like
:12:10. > :12:16.Facebook and social media. Businesses that tree that might
:12:17. > :12:22.mean channels tend not to get much out of it. They are interactive,
:12:22. > :12:25.people go there to do things with them. What we found works is re-
:12:25. > :12:29.engaging with people by putting up around Facebook page and baby
:12:29. > :12:34.coming to talk about the games. We get a lot of people moaning about
:12:34. > :12:39.not getting a bonus or the customer services jumping on it. It works
:12:39. > :12:45.really well. It is hard work. had a lot of investment time into
:12:45. > :12:55.it. We cannot live the criticisms of their for everyone to see.
:12:55. > :12:56.
:12:56. > :13:05.cannot talent to go away after Bank for our idle boast
:13:05. > :13:14.traditional? I do not think so. 70 % of abusers is online. One problem
:13:14. > :13:22.is we do a lot of offers. Facebook is confusing for the customer. You
:13:22. > :13:31.can give an offer for a new customer. It can be a bit of a
:13:31. > :13:36.problem. A lot of people say they have been a customer for five years
:13:36. > :13:41.and why can't they had these introductory offer. We tell them
:13:41. > :13:46.they did at it an introductory offer when they started. This comes
:13:46. > :13:50.up a blot on this programme. Another way of saying this is you
:13:50. > :13:59.cannot say a lot of different things to different people. You
:13:59. > :14:06.have to be transparent. That is not consistent four you. The internet
:14:06. > :14:12.is making businesses much more transparent. That is a good thing.
:14:12. > :14:18.We have a product which is a feedback company. Every time
:14:18. > :14:26.somebody buys from cars they get an e-mail from them and are asked to
:14:26. > :14:33.read out product. As soon as they put in their response it goes live
:14:33. > :14:39.on a home page. You can go on to out homepage, so far 117,000 people
:14:39. > :14:43.have given feedback. You can just choose the ones that a letter bad
:14:43. > :14:49.or good or excellent. That is telling the customer we have
:14:49. > :14:52.nothing to hide. They can see what is wrong with us. The internet is
:14:52. > :14:58.giving transparency. If you resist that you have a problem because
:14:58. > :15:04.people will find out through third parties. It is much better to have
:15:04. > :15:10.a forum you are participating in on your side with a fruit faced Bich
:15:10. > :15:15.bought witting or whatever. This direct response is taking the place
:15:15. > :15:22.of the focus groups we used to talk about or traditional customer
:15:22. > :15:27.research or are you still doing that? We still do lots of focus
:15:27. > :15:36.group -- groups and traditional research. You had a different
:15:36. > :15:40.approach when he talked about TV advertising. Edis different to
:15:40. > :15:44.trialling everything stubby avert the great thing about direct-
:15:44. > :15:51.marketing his it is the closest you can get to science. You can learn,
:15:51. > :15:57.do very small testing, you can roll it out if it works and not if it
:15:57. > :16:04.does not stop Ella the web for us is about bringing in a whole new
:16:04. > :16:09.group of younger customers. Traditionally our members are older
:16:10. > :16:16.and wiser and by by direct marketing. Our newer customers are
:16:16. > :16:21.going to the web because they have never had a home emergency.
:16:21. > :16:31.Suddenly they do and they are going there to find a tradesman. If you
:16:31. > :16:40.
:16:40. > :16:47.want to learn more about the topics Albert Einstein is reported to have
:16:47. > :16:51.said, Oh What is an empty desk a sign? There is a prejudice against
:16:52. > :16:56.mess in the workplace. We might think messy people are creative but
:16:56. > :17:03.they do not get the corner offers. A lot of us think we would be more
:17:03. > :17:11.successful if we were metre. I want to talk with walk you about mess.
:17:11. > :17:20.The metaphorical sense of mess later. Can we talk about the desk
:17:20. > :17:26.first. Richard, what is your philosophy? Are very clear desk
:17:26. > :17:30.means you only handle one thing at a time. In my marketing days,
:17:30. > :17:39.somebody used to go around the office at night and make sure
:17:39. > :17:46.everybody had a clean desk. Do you do that? Note. But it is important
:17:46. > :17:54.to have an uncluttered desk because it means you have more focus on the
:17:54. > :18:00.task. Tidy desk, tidy mind. would absolutely love to be a clean
:18:00. > :18:09.desk person. My desk is a bit of a mess which means untidy mind. We
:18:09. > :18:14.have just done an Office revamp. For a few weeks it looked tidy but
:18:14. > :18:21.then people revert to type. Some people have tidy desks and some
:18:21. > :18:29.people who do not. We have great people who did both. It sounds like
:18:29. > :18:38.you employed a lot of fellow clutter people stop to it not a lot.
:18:38. > :18:41.There is a good balance. It is important to have a balance.
:18:42. > :18:51.Creative ideas can come from people who are thinking about different
:18:52. > :18:53.
:18:53. > :19:02.things at the same time. Charles, which side of the fence are you? My
:19:02. > :19:07.personal desk? It depends what days. There is the principle of entropy
:19:07. > :19:13.which means everything to a ends towards chaos. Things tend to
:19:13. > :19:21.appear out of nowhere. They have a mind of their own. Sometimes life
:19:21. > :19:26.is too short to spend your time sorting things into piles. You're
:19:26. > :19:35.liable still talking about aisles. You have not got a paper-free
:19:35. > :19:44.offers? Many people will be glad to hear that. Charles, do you find it
:19:44. > :19:54.hard to keep your mind clean it? That is just something you burn out
:19:54. > :19:58.
:19:58. > :20:03.to do it. Do you organise the individual company in a clear way?
:20:03. > :20:13.You would have to speak to the people who were forced May to see
:20:13. > :20:14.
:20:14. > :20:20.if it works or not. The results speak for themselves. Can you
:20:20. > :20:26.attract great people? Do they feel they are making a contribution?
:20:26. > :20:36.Does that turn into a good business? Do you feel comfortable
:20:36. > :20:41.
:20:41. > :20:51.with messy solutions? To you worry about it? If it works, happy days.
:20:51. > :20:51.
:20:51. > :20:57.I worry about it. I like to have clean solutions. You have a
:20:57. > :21:04.responsibility to shareholders. When I started the business I never
:21:04. > :21:12.wanted to float it or sell it. I want a great business in the long-
:21:12. > :21:19.term. Sometimes you Kent spend a long time waiting for a clean
:21:19. > :21:24.solution. I don't think so. If you have a messy solution you clean it
:21:24. > :21:29.up a little bit and refine it and come up with a long-term solution.
:21:29. > :21:36.That is always right for the long term of the Business. If you are
:21:36. > :21:44.selling it next week that is different. Unlike the bill Gates
:21:44. > :21:48.solution which is 85 % of the way there. Then you were a conversion
:21:48. > :21:53.to and refine it and listen to customers. There is always seek
:21:53. > :22:00.tension between getting some think it that is good enough to work now
:22:00. > :22:04.and getting a perfect solution. They bought an elegant solution but
:22:04. > :22:11.that is three months' work end you need something right now, which is
:22:11. > :22:17.called a hack, and a hack is terrible. It is dirty Lennon on the
:22:17. > :22:22.floor, yet from a business you you need to get it to work so they have
:22:22. > :22:28.to do it. But some companies do not know the difference between the two
:22:28. > :22:31.and end up hitting a wall and having an inquiry afterwards and
:22:31. > :22:36.realising it was because they just let the thing grow without any
:22:36. > :22:42.discipline and they were not tidy when they should have been and they
:22:42. > :22:46.lost the ability to tell the difference. That is why it is
:22:46. > :22:51.important, one of the biggest things we have experimented with,
:22:51. > :22:56.is how do you Keith autonomy to the individual countries because they
:22:56. > :23:02.have autonomous management, but they all want to share the learning
:23:02. > :23:12.rather than reinventing the wheel. We have the FIFA award which is
:23:12. > :23:13.
:23:13. > :23:21.copping an idea from another country and using it. Have a word
:23:21. > :23:31.with Angela Merkel. Getting back to basics, are the stereotypes true in
:23:31. > :23:33.
:23:33. > :23:43.your experience? Messy people, are they creative or just messy? I
:23:43. > :23:50.
:23:50. > :23:57.think they are just messy. I think they can be creative. If they are
:23:57. > :24:04.accountants then it is dangerous. prefer a tidy accountant to a messy
:24:04. > :24:08.one. Most people would agree to that but it sounds like on balance,
:24:08. > :24:13.everybody out there who thinks they need to tidy up their desk, they
:24:13. > :24:22.probably should. Thank you to Charles Cowan, Richard Harden and