Facepalm business decisions
Discussion
I thought a few people here might relate to this. I was out with a friend last night and one said that their new client total for last year was 22 based on a target of 40. This came on the back of a big investment in marketing and promises of lots of new leads. Apparently the MD of the business's solution is to make the Marketing Manager a Marketing Director! Perhaps he thinks a Marketing Director will do a better job but is overlooking the fact that its still the same person.
This reminded me of a big marketing agency I dealt with 10 years ago. We had a good relationship with them and I asked them at one point about ideas for a rebrand but didn't do anything else. I didn't ask them to do any work and a couple of months later they called me over to present their ideas. I said, fine but I didn't ask you to do this. The MD pressed and pressed for £3000 for the work to the point we ditched the entire agency. He even admitted we didn't commission the work! That £3000 probably cost them £60,000+ in revenue from us for the coming 2 years. I never could get my head around what he was thinking. Later another Director tried to get us back but it was too late and we'd changed to a new agency by then. Utterly baffling as he was a nice guy and we had always got on well.
I'm sure you have others...
This reminded me of a big marketing agency I dealt with 10 years ago. We had a good relationship with them and I asked them at one point about ideas for a rebrand but didn't do anything else. I didn't ask them to do any work and a couple of months later they called me over to present their ideas. I said, fine but I didn't ask you to do this. The MD pressed and pressed for £3000 for the work to the point we ditched the entire agency. He even admitted we didn't commission the work! That £3000 probably cost them £60,000+ in revenue from us for the coming 2 years. I never could get my head around what he was thinking. Later another Director tried to get us back but it was too late and we'd changed to a new agency by then. Utterly baffling as he was a nice guy and we had always got on well.
I'm sure you have others...
Frimley111R said:
I thought a few people here might relate to this. I was out with a friend last night and one said that their new client total for last year was 22 based on a target of 40. This came on the back of a big investment in marketing and promises of lots of new leads. Apparently the MD of the business's solution is to make the Marketing Manager a Marketing Director! Perhaps he thinks a Marketing Director will do a better job but is overlooking the fact that its still the same person.
Marketing people may be good at marketing but it doesn't mean they're good at selling.Frimley111R said:
I asked them at one point about ideas for a rebrand but didn't do anything else. I didn't ask them to do any work and a couple of months later they called me over to present their ideas. I said, fine but I didn't ask you to do this.
Assumption is the mother of all - well, you know the rest!Had a squishy package arrive the post a while back. It contained nothing other than a cheap magnifying glass and a sheet of A4 paper, printed on which was a domain name / "my name" in 3pt type.
I have a look at the site and there's a photo of me and a bullet pointed profile dragged from Linkedin. The theme is real-time customer interaction or something.
As I'm reading it, my mobile rings and bloke says "what do you think of the website then?"
Turns out they had some system that enable users of sites to identified and flagged up when they were online so that key sales or or other messages could be delivered directly via phone, email or via the page. I had a project on the go at the time in which this could have fitted perfectly and agreed to a meeting.
Guy never showed up but gave him the benefit of the doubt and called to see if all was OK. He'd forgotten and we arranged another meeting ....for which he never showed up.
In the end, we got our web developed to set something up.
The guy then calls about a month later to see if we could meet up to discuss the offer?
I have a look at the site and there's a photo of me and a bullet pointed profile dragged from Linkedin. The theme is real-time customer interaction or something.
As I'm reading it, my mobile rings and bloke says "what do you think of the website then?"
Turns out they had some system that enable users of sites to identified and flagged up when they were online so that key sales or or other messages could be delivered directly via phone, email or via the page. I had a project on the go at the time in which this could have fitted perfectly and agreed to a meeting.
Guy never showed up but gave him the benefit of the doubt and called to see if all was OK. He'd forgotten and we arranged another meeting ....for which he never showed up.
In the end, we got our web developed to set something up.
The guy then calls about a month later to see if we could meet up to discuss the offer?
I work for an IT reseller and do a lot of storage. One of my customers had a load of 7 year old NetApp SANs which were creaking and we put forward a new hybrid SAN which would offer a massive leap in performance and efficiency. The proposed kit was ~£70k for a replicated environment, including 24x7x4 support for 3 years.
Their management team decided to renew the support on the old NetApp at £50k for another year to 'save money'. I really couldn't wrap my head around it, the new kit would've been only £20k more with no further costs for another 3 years. The customer then replaced the NetApp (at similar cost to the original quote) the following year.
Mind-boggling; they spent £50k more than they needed to and all they did was delay the inevitable expenditure in the end. I could understand if the difference was only £10k or so to limp on another year but £50k!?
Their management team decided to renew the support on the old NetApp at £50k for another year to 'save money'. I really couldn't wrap my head around it, the new kit would've been only £20k more with no further costs for another 3 years. The customer then replaced the NetApp (at similar cost to the original quote) the following year.
Mind-boggling; they spent £50k more than they needed to and all they did was delay the inevitable expenditure in the end. I could understand if the difference was only £10k or so to limp on another year but £50k!?
It went something like this. Bank of Montreal, one of 4 (?) banks that dominated the Canadian high street market, decided it wanted to be a player in international banking. They already owned a decent niche stock broker, Nesbitt Burns, so they rebranded it under the BMO banner (i.e. destroyed its existing brand value) and then moved on to the Big Idea. They wanted to take over one of their domestic rivals, TD or RBC (I forget which), to give them the critical mass to compete on the global stage. Only slight issue was that competition laws meant they couldn't do that. But they were confident that if they approached the Canadian Treasury and asked nicely, then the law would be amended or an exception would be made. So they went to the Treasury ... and were told to f
k off.
"But, but, but ... that was our entire strategy for the bank. We have no idea what to do instead!"
So they went to McKinsey and said,"We, the Board, are employed to give this bank strategic direction, but are so stupid that all we could come up with was something that was obviously illegal, and now we have no idea what to do and we've already spunked a load of money expanding abroad. What should we do? "
McKinsey said, "Pay us a huge bill for doing your job for you. And now go back to trying to be a vaguely OK Canadian high street bank ... in Canada. You idiots."
I'm not really sure of the details, except that my dept in London got axed. That bit I remember quite clearly.
k off."But, but, but ... that was our entire strategy for the bank. We have no idea what to do instead!"
So they went to McKinsey and said,"We, the Board, are employed to give this bank strategic direction, but are so stupid that all we could come up with was something that was obviously illegal, and now we have no idea what to do and we've already spunked a load of money expanding abroad. What should we do? "
McKinsey said, "Pay us a huge bill for doing your job for you. And now go back to trying to be a vaguely OK Canadian high street bank ... in Canada. You idiots."
I'm not really sure of the details, except that my dept in London got axed. That bit I remember quite clearly.
Splats said:
I'd say having your staff drive a customer car directly at potholes and failing to acknowledge it or apologise when the video is posted all over the internet is right up there with the best of facepalm business decisions.
You might have to point people to the thread, but yes...This was a mate last month;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3352272/Cu...
Made pretty much all the national newspapers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3352272/Cu...
Made pretty much all the national newspapers.
IIIRestorerIII said:
EE's Power Bars. The initial cost of the bars and distribution, first recall for a batch (or two) and then finally a recall for all of them for a £20 shop voucher.
The irony was that it took a premium text to order, however there were no accessories on the EE shop I wanted so the £20 timed out and I never got anything for it. I'd rather have had the text money back to be honest.Decca Records head of A and R Dick Rowe said:
I told Mike he'd have to decide between them. It was up to him - The Beatles or Brian Poole and the Tremeoloes. He said, 'They're both good, but one's a local group, the other comes from Liverpool.' We decided it was better to take the local group. We could work with them more easily and stay closer in touch as they came from Dagenham.
He made up for it by signing a popular beat combo by the name of The Rolling Stones. 
Funk said:
Mind-boggling; they spent £50k more than they needed to and all they did was delay the inevitable expenditure in the end. I could understand if the difference was only £10k or so to limp on another year but £50k!?
Understandable if you understand how finance in big businesses works. They have a separate budget for capital expenditure, and any capital expenditure has to go through a lot of levels of authorisation and validation. An invoice for ongoing support will get passed through reasonably easily, even though they're of nearly equivalent value. davepoth said:
Funk said:
Mind-boggling; they spent £50k more than they needed to and all they did was delay the inevitable expenditure in the end. I could understand if the difference was only £10k or so to limp on another year but £50k!?
Understandable if you understand how finance in big businesses works. They have a separate budget for capital expenditure, and any capital expenditure has to go through a lot of levels of authorisation and validation. An invoice for ongoing support will get passed through reasonably easily, even though they're of nearly equivalent value. Defcon5 said:
IIIRestorerIII said:
EE's Power Bars. The initial cost of the bars and distribution, first recall for a batch (or two) and then finally a recall for all of them for a £20 shop voucher.
I've got 2 of these! Should I have returned them? Are they gonna self combust?Funk said:
Defcon5 said:
IIIRestorerIII said:
EE's Power Bars. The initial cost of the bars and distribution, first recall for a batch (or two) and then finally a recall for all of them for a £20 shop voucher.
I've got 2 of these! Should I have returned them? Are they gonna self combust?http://ee.co.uk/power-bar-recall
Thought of another one. A digital agency in Hampshire I knew was struggling financially (not surprising as when I asked a very young 'account manager' what 'bandwidth' meant in our company website stats she said 'Um, I think its the width of the screen.'!!) and so got rid of the highest paid but most skilled and experienced digital staff to save costs! They went under a year later.
In the industry I work in, the biggest company in it has a really well ranked website. In the last couple of years they have started to create new websites with new company names etc but all offering the same goods/services. A couple of other big names have started to copy this tactic resulting in page one of some Google searches being entirely full of just a couple of companies masquerading as lots of different ones.
I have created a few spreadsheets with as many of their websites as I could find, we are talking hundreds, including whois information and screenshots. Last week I reported them to Google and the reply I got was that they were escalating it to their fraud and policy department. They will lose vast sums of money if they disappear from search.
I have created a few spreadsheets with as many of their websites as I could find, we are talking hundreds, including whois information and screenshots. Last week I reported them to Google and the reply I got was that they were escalating it to their fraud and policy department. They will lose vast sums of money if they disappear from search.
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