Celebrity and spin
I was recently accosted in my local Post Office after featuring in a lifestyle piece in Elegance Magazine (incidentally the worst photo you’ll ever see of me).
Anyway, I was all logo-ed up in my ‘O2GO drink more water’ jacket when a charming lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked ‘are you Jonathan Yates?’. So I am officially a minor local celebrity, a weird feeling. But it is inevitable and a great result of our effective PR; it’s just not something I’m used to.
Key to the article was the incredible importance of family to an entrepreneur running their own business. My wife and boys have been so supportive from the start. But you do need to also listen to more objective opinions - for every head-nodder and yes-sayer it’s really important to take advice from people outside of your circle who will tell you exactly what they think.
I don’t opt for help from coaching firms because I have a very good network of professionals who are friends and consult with me on a free basis to give their advice in view of their own experiences in business. These are 50 or 60 year-olds who have been in business all of their lives, at very high levels, and they will tell me the truth about what I am doing wrong or could improve on. I feel lucky to have this.
We always try to sift through our emails to find out their exact source. We have so many touch-points for the customer that we want to know exactly how they heard about us and when. It’s easy to lose track of where you have met them or if they have responded to an email newsletter, advert or text message … so we are now tagging our adverts and vouchers with a code so we know where they have come from.
Big news for us is that we are setting up a new text message service for customers. This is how it works - people can subscribe to it for free, and they receive three text messages (morning, lunchtime and evening) with humorous gems from my new PR recruit Paul Thomas (who is doing a sterling job,
having been with us for three weeks, freeing me up to concentrate on sales), which will remind them to drink more water, but after buttering them up first (e.g. ‘come on, get up, you’re looking gorgeous but you must drink more water’). It should be up and running next week and will be a great marketing tool. We are trying to consolidate on the way that we interact with the customer and hope this’ll do it!
Last week’s delivery of our products went well, and the Irish MoD have just doubled their order, as they liked it so much. So the trial is to be extended to a further 8,000 ration packs. It was a tough week for me, what with dealing with production and manufacturing, so on Friday I thought ok, I am going to get my sales contacts list and get in touch with everyone on there.
And as luck would have it, the first call was to First Great Western Railways. The Buying Manager answered and said ‘I’m so glad you called’ (which, believe me, you never get with sales calls). It so happened that she loves the product and has also got her Procurement Director hooked on O2GO. They had just run out of sachets and had a spinning class that night, so wanted some samples! So I am due to have a meeting with them to talk about putting O2GO on the trains. Such good news and a happy coincidence. Cold-calling isn’t such a bad technique if you give people information about your product or company beforehand, and I am passionate about my product, so enjoy selling it!
Supermarkets have a tendency to go hot and cold - they get excited about the product, and then leave you hanging! I would prefer a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’ so I know whether to keep pursuing them or to move away, and Asda and Tesco are keeping us dangling a bit. But next to target are Coop and Spar, so we will be going all out for that over the next week or so …
