First of all, let’s look at what customer profiling actually is. At its core, it is all about finding out more about your customers – learning about them and building up an image of the people who use your business. For instance, if asked, do you know who your ‘typical’ customer is? Customer profiling involves looking at demographic issues such as income, gender, occupation, education and age. It can also involve geographic profiling, such as identifying where your customers tend to live. Business use is another important aspect of this: how often do they use your business, how much do they spend and what do they buy?

These are all important questions that you can use with your CRM solutions to develop a more robust approach to issues such as marketing. For example, when you are launching a new product, you might decide to target it to a particular customer group based on your profile information. You might have discovered from your research the type of customers that are most likely to buy your new product based on issues such as what it is and how much it costs.

This can then be used in your marketing campaigns. Most good CRM applications enable you to set up targeted marketing campaigns and even implement them using the software. So, you could set up an email campaign to a certain group of customers announcing your new product. The fact that customer systems enable you to centralise all your important information means that employees can then track the progress of that campaign.

For example, your sales team would be able to follow up on your marketing activity, and use the customer profiles you have built up to tailor the way they engage with those customers. With a good idea of the types of people they are dealing with, they’ll be more likely to offer a good service that is relevant to their needs, and will be more likely to offer them products that will be useful for them.

This helps to illustrate just how useful customer profiling can be. It can also feed into your CRM system in terms of analysing past results. For instance, who are your most profitable customers? Who are your most frequent customers? What products do they tend to focus on? This is all useful information that you can use when determining the future focus of your company and working out where most of your revenue comes from. It might even give you insights into where to go for leads relating to new business.

CRM and customer profiling are both useful in their own right but when taken together, they can be even better, enabling you to create a picture of the people who use your services and, ultimately, make sure your business is as relevant to them as it possibly can be.

Small businesses are often better placed than larger organisations to respond and adapt to the challenges that a fiscal crisis creates. This paper offers a Toolbox for success that outlines key action points to help SME’s increase their market presence and sales during these challenging times.   The paper covers a range of topics for consideration, such as discovering new work practices and employee engagement.

How to Win Business in a Recession

How to Win Business in a Recession is a free business leadership download. The authors request anyone  downloading the paper to make a voluntary contribution to UNICEF.

Maurizio Fantato, Network Co-ordinator, explains,

“The paper was put together by a number of leading experts from Australia, Greece and the UK, providing excellent insight on how to manage business during a recession.”

“With this paper, we also wanted to extend our efforts beyond the business sphere and show our support for the excellent work carried out by UNICEF and so we ask anyone downloading it to consider donating to this organisation through the link provided.”

For new businesses, the past 5 years have been treacherous, as failure rates have increased to typically 30-40% depending on which continent you are looking at. Some of the core areas attributed to business failure over and above cash flow are lack of planning, operational mediocrity, bad marketing and general inefficiencies. All of these areas are highly relevant to the ability to develop great new business ideas.

Having recently started up a business, I have had problems being able to sleep at times due to my brain working overtime as I endeavour like many others to become the best business person humanly possible. Just like any other organisation, my business is not perfect – very much far from it. I have regular targets, a great customer base that I constantly try my hardest for and I have a stable revenue level with good growth. Like many companies however, there is a genuine opportunity to develop problem solving ideas that could transform my long term performance and this is my focus for 2012.

Innovation management is a step to far for my small firm but is something that I find both new and fascinating. Innovation management combines in-depth innovation theory, transforming organisational culture through training and idea generation through workshops.

A highly credible innovation management organisation named Think have provided lots of influence in this area globally and are in the process of helping new licensees become innovation coaches. This new initiative is called Run My Own Think and gives people looking to move into this field the chance to run their own new business. For a set-up fee, Think provides their licensees in-depth training, their trademark, on-going support and the secrets of their success. They provide people with the tools that businesses value highly: the ability to think and generate superb business ideas.

Similar to business coaching, innovation provides businesses with a breath of fresh air with dramatically positive results when carried out and actioned correctly. Run My Own Think offers budding innovation consultants the chance to step in a business ownership position and work with huge brands. The lucky licensees will never struggle for new ideas again.

Backing from industry is key to survival for many charities, as well as fundraising from individuals. However, some employees are struggling to support all of their colleagues’ fundraising activities and find it hard to say no to requests for sponsorship.

Gary Thompson, Managing Director of easyfundraising.org.uk says companies need to appreciate it is their responsibility to support their staff’s wellbeing and that includes helping them to overcome giving fatigue.

easyfundraising.org.uk has come up with a five-point plan to help businesses combat giving fatigue:

• Lead from the top – get the managing director to donate his time and show the workforce that supporting a good cause is central to the company’s core values.

• Research your staff’s charity interests and vote for the company’s charity of the year

• Organise teambuilding activities with a charity theme, perhaps introducing an interdepartmental competition with a fundraising element.

Consider giving staff time off to engage in their charity work – perhaps one afternoon a month for the top good cause supporter as voted for by employees.

Analyse your corporate spending and look to pay for office equipment through a charity shopping website or organise a company second-hand clothes collection for a charity shop.

Gary Thompson says:

“Many companies have a Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, in addition to the business plan. However some businesses are looking to withdraw from supporting charities as they struggle through the recession.

“The feeling of well being generated by helping a good cause has an impact on everyone in a company. Employees are definitely more productive when they feel inspired by a common goal.”
Gary Thompson says the good manager should know his or her employees and take the time to find out if they want to give their free hours to good causes.

“Businesses need to think more creatively to engage with their employees and use their skills to raise staff morale while at the same time giving something back to society,”.

easyfundraising.org.uk works closely with many businesses, large and small, to donate an average 5% of the online shopper’s spend to the charity of their choice. So far, more than £3 million has been donated to good causes.

Punk Rock People Management

Introducing my free new book “Punk Rock People Management”.  Before we start, here’s a classic piece of Punk Rock – New Rose by The Damned:

I had the great fortune of seeing The Damned, The Doctors of Madness, The Jam etc. many times at The Marquee Club in London.  This included getting ‘extinguished’ by Captain Sensible on stage when it became so hot that the Captain decided to hose those pogo-ing on stage down with a fire extinguisher amidst electricity and live cables.  This was in the pre-risk assessment era – Hooray!

Free book “Punk Rock People Management”

Punk Rock People Management suggests that the HR profession has become a bloated industry which delights in making things more complex than they need be.  In the book I have stripped down People Management to the bare essentials.  This means that each ‘chapter’ is just one page long – ideal for the busy person / Kindle reader etc.  Thus you can read a chapter in less time than it takes to pogo to a Sex Pistols or Linkin Park song!   On hearing about it , Tom Peters, the world’s greatest business thinker, author and speaker sent me a mail with just two words in it:  “Do it!” – Now that’s what I call succinct in the normally long world of HR!

To whet your appetite, here are some chapter titles.  The book is organised using the classic ‘Life, Sex and Death HR cycle’, i.e. Hiring, Inspiring and Firing:

HIRING
Selection – Shall I stay or shall I go?
Induction – It’s my first time

INSPIRING
Engagement – Pretty vacant
Motivation – Reasons to be cheerful
Training – Waiting for the great leap forwards
Innovation – What’s new pussycat?

FIRING
Conflict – Who killed Bambi?
Redundancy – Submission
To order your FREE copy of the book, please contact me via the Punk Rock People Management webpage.

Find my current book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n'Roll‘ on Amazon.

For now, let’s treat ourselves to the great punk philosopher Billy Bragg, with his song “Waiting for the great leap forwards” – a song all about the gap between talk and action in change management / organisation and HR development.  Reminds me of Red Wedge and many other great days of wide eyed optimism and passion.  There still is a better way to get your point across than stealing a bottle of water from Poundland!  Check Punk Rock People Management out for some fresh thinking on business / HR / inspiration etc.