How to sell a car - or not, as the case may be - plus short-term retail profits

All eyes chez Bird are on Italy's progress in the football, but we did buy a second-hand car last weekend.  

I can't drive anyhow, but She Who Is Far Better Organised Than I Am had a plan, as usual. 

"I (that means we) shall go to the VW and Mercedes dealers and tell them both I am definitely buying a car this weekend and whoever gives me the best deal will get my business."

Good thinking. The car people must be pretty desperate; we were bound to get a good deal, right?

Not if you go by the man at VW in Bristol.

He gave us some nonsense about only having £2-300 margin to play with, and no deals. His patronising attitude alone lost the sale

Then it started raining and we ended up at the Nissan place. The man there gave us a coffee - and was quite charming. So much so he nearly sold us something we never planned to get.

The best exchange of the day:

"What's good about this car?"

"Well, for a start it's not Italian."

"If it was it'd be better looking."  

He was the right salesmen with the wrong car.

Next day at Mercedes they did everything right. Good coffee, pleasant salesman, no wasted time, a good deal. Sold! And when he delivered the car he brought a bunch of flowers.

People buy from people. But what if there are no people?

My daughter in law here in New York works in high end fashion. She was telling me hardly anyone in the shops knows how to sell. 

I remarked that it's almost impossible to find a sales person in any of the big stores. She says the reason is they've fired people to cut costs - the sales figures are actually ghastly.

You can't build a sound business on cost-cutting. That's one of the many ways the banks went wrong.

The  best store in the U.S. is Nordstrom - famous for their service - and they are finally going to open in New York. Those other bozos had better watch out.

Your money and the liars in charge - and a little example of why everything is going wrong: the triumph of drivel

If at some time in the next few years you wonder why you are working like a maniac just to stand still (unless you just throw up your hands and give in) here is a little edited explanation from a clever man: 

“If you look at our coalition government, the one good thing they have done is somehow convince the markets that they are deficit reducers. In fact, there is virtually no evidence for it whatsoever.

“If you add in the cost of RBS and Lloyds, we have a debt to GDP ratio of 140%. We look absolutely terrible. You would have to put through £25 billion worth of cuts every year for the foreseeable future just to control the deficit”

That is Stewart Cowley of Old Mutual speaking on www.hl.co.uk/hltv three days ago. There is no sign of any such thing happening.

It is just one example of the broken promises made by the current set of pantomime horses. The one that galls me most is where they said they would sweep away all the useless committees to provide jobs for the boys and girls. No signs of that, either.

Of course the same thing applies to the U.S. but perhaps for a different reason.

The president's job is, I think,  utterly impossible. The country is governed by lobbyists - be they villains like Conagra which managed to get pizza classed as a vegetable, or the armed forces or the senator of this or that state who wants some pork-barrel deal. Keeping all these people happy requires an limitless flow of steadily depreciating $$$.

***

At the start of that excellent doorstop Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing, which I see has been  in print for 30 years and is absurdly cheap on Amazon I quote Confucius:

"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion."

Here is what I saw on a wall in Clifton Down station the other day next to some indifferently drawn but colourful pictures:

"Promoting sustainability through public transport the artworks provide a strong visual link for commuters between the station and Bristol Zoo."

I cannot complain about the drawings. After all, the Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy - an old bike called Tracey Emin - cannot draw, and the pictures were by school-kids.

 But can someone tell me what the hell the message meant?

Ah! The gentle swish of creative masturbation. But why should you care?

This piece of half-baked lunacy appeared in a magazine on Sunday.

Doctor Johnson suggested, with regard to writing "Read through your composition and whenever you see something that seems to you particularly good, strike it out."

Davbid Ogilvy referred unkindly to people "skidding about helplessly on the slippery surface of irrelevant creative brilliance" - a fine piece of onomatopoeia.

I don't think we can say the above example is particularly good or brilliant. It is a particularly fatuous and round-about way of boasting - a bad habit in advertising as in personal life.

But why should you care?

Well, it is because there is a gap worth thinking about.

Although a small army of people who want to write copy that gets results has sprung up, they almost all fall into two camps.

They are either devoted to online media, as a result of the ability to measure what works and what doesn't online, or are rusting old relics of the palmy days of direct marketing - like me.

Meanwhile, there is a yawning chasm.

Ignorance is bliss in the big advertising agencies. Showing off is confused with selling. The golden price is an award, not a sale. Countless thousands of otherwise harmless young people are inextricably marooned up their own pink little posteriors.

I predict that as we all find ourselves working away to pay for the greed and folly of the bankers, speculators and politicians a new interest in advertising that gets measurable results will arise. I hope so.

Not before time.

Anatomy of a communications failure. What is a SharePoint architect? Why is an English translation necessary?

I got this email this morning. It is an unimpeachable example of total business bollocks.

Note the gripping heading. That'll have them foaming at the mouth for more.

SharePoint 2010 Implementation and Upgrade Super-7 


I have recently been working extensively with our key clients who undertaken SharePoint implementations and upgrades in a range of organisation of varying sizes within both the private and public sector. The overwhelming feedback I have received from the hiring managers has been that historically they have found it extremely difficult to find the necessary expertise to fulfil their business objectives. In response to this I have compiled a team of SharePoint 2010 experts who are available and willing to help you maximise the benefit from your SharePoint system. Whether you are looking at implementation, upgrade or maintaining your system – we can provide the expertise to meet your requirements. 


 I am currently working with experienced contract SharePoint Project Managers, Architects, Consultants, Developers, System Administrators, and Test Analysts and below are a selection of the screened and referenced candidates I am currently exploring new opportunities with. To book an interview with any of these candidates, contact me on 01628 771 811 – if you have another requirement that we can assist with, call me for a frank discussion as to how Ninesharp can help you deliver on your business objectives. 

Ok, after I wrote that, I went online to see if I could find out.

And, lo and behold, there is an explanation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12Jb5Z2xaE.

This was given 11 years after the thing was first launched. A bit late.

I commend it to you not because it explains what SharePoint is, nor because of the astonishingly irritating voice used, but because of the very funny comments about the sexuality of the protagonist, an androgynous creature called Monique.

SharePoint is a Microsoft thingy, which may explain a lot - starting with the confusing name (I thought it was some sort of incentive programme).

But these comments illuminate the vast chasm between the people who make and sell these things - which are generally called "solutions" and the normal human beings they try to sell them to.

Having said that, here is a serious point.

If people fail to explain what they sell in plain English, they will either fail or do far less well than they deserve. A lot of very good ideas - this seems one - get buried alive beneath a suffocating mountain of linguistic garbage.

I cannot leave this subject without directing you (YAWN) to  http://draytonbirdcommonsense.com/b2b-letter-webinar - the free seminar I put up yesterday for anyone who is interested in how to sell complex stuff to business people.

I love my cleaning lady, who is called Anya. She is Polish. Before her we had Kasia, also Polish. But here is a hilarious message to a cleaning lady who lacked their skills

This was sent to me by Richard Hanrahan in April on Facebook. I only just saw it.

That's because no matter how "social" Facebook fondly thinks it is, I read messages sent me directly every day - not ones sent indirectly, which I look at once every three months. It is a message from Werner Herzog to his cleaner.

I doubt if she appreciated it, but I do. And so will you if you like good writing. Though I think the second sentence in the last paragraph but one is a mess.

Rosalina. Woman.

You constantly revile me with your singular lack of vision. Be aware, there is an essential truth and beauty in all things. From the death throes of a speared gazelle to the damaged smile of a freeway homeless. But that does not mean that the invisibility of something implies its lack of being. Though simpleton babies foolishly believe the person before them vanishes when they cover their eyes during a hateful game of peek-a-boo, this is a fallacy. And so it is that the unseen dusty build up that accumulates behind the DVD shelves in the rumpus room exists also. This is unacceptable.

I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy. The joy of nothingness, the joy of the real. I want you to be real in everything you do. If you cannot be real, then a semblance of reality must be maintained. A real semblance of the fake real, or "real". I have conquered volcanoes and visited the bitter depths of the earth's oceans. Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. In this regard, you are not being real.

Now we must turn to the horrors of nature. I am afraid this is inevitable. Nature is not something to be coddled and accepted and held to your bosom like a wounded snake. Tell me, what was there before you were born? What do you remember? That is nature. Nature is a void. An emptiness. A vacuum. And speaking of vacuum, I am not sure you're using the retractable nozzle correctly or applying the 'full weft' setting when attending to the lush carpets of the den. I found some dander there.

I have only listened to two songs in my entire life. One was an aria by Wagner that I played compulsively from the ages of 19 to 27 at least 60 times a day until the local townsfolk drove me from my dwelling using rudimentary pitchforks and blazing torches. The other was Dido. Both appalled me to the point of paralysis. Every quaver was like a brickbat against my soul. Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the 'pop radio' I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push.

The situation regarding spoons remains unchanged. If I see one, I will kill it.

That is all. Do not fail to think that you are not the finest woman I have ever met. You are. And I am including on this list my mother and the wife of Brad Dourif (the second wife, not the one with the lip thing). Thank you for listening and sorry if parts of this note were smudged. I have been weeping.

Your money is under the guillotine.

Herzog.

***

From the sublimely droll to the boringly practical:

Tomorrow, all being well (which it may not be as I am off to London for some frolics) I shall put up a free 25 minute webinar on copywriting to sell to businesses.

You may find it helpful.

But then again, you may not.