Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Thursday, 2 April 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The Cinnamon Grand recently played host to Sri Lanka’s first international corporate planning workshop conducted by bestselling author and internationally-acclaimed speaker, corporate advisor and creator of the SOSTAC Planning System, Paul Smith.
A sought-after expert in the field of marketing and communication, Smith holds extensive experience consulting with a wide spectrum of corporate clients and regularly travels the world to deliver simple yet powerful insights into the secrets to marketing success.
An acronym for Situational analysis, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action and Control, Smith has leveraged his SOSTAC system to help corporates around the world develop stronger business, marketing and digital marketing plans, a factor which has led to it being rated among the Top Three Global Business Models by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) UK.
Speaking to Daily FT on the sidelines of his Colombo workshop, Smith elaborated on the benefits of nurturing a culture of questioning in companies and trends in big data and analytics while also providing a brief glimpse into the challenges of being a globetrotting author, consultant and speaker. Following are excerpts:
Q: To start with, could you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your career in the field of marketing and communication?
A: For starters, my name is Paul Smith, although I use the pen name and brand name of PR Smith. Since there are probably a few thousand Paul Smiths in the UK, I would likely be lost in a sea of Paul Smiths if I didn’t. I graduated in Dublin, Ireland and left soon after to work for a multinational for a few years before returning to the UK.
Eventually I chose to leave that job in order to pursue an MBA after which I started up a consultancy marketing Christmas Crackers in America and I have to say that was one of the best, most enjoyable jobs that I ever had. After I got my MBA, I started doing some lecturing but always continued my consultancy which I worked on for about 10 years. During that time I also started writing books, I set up an e-learning company and after another 10 years as managing director, I left to focus on my consultancy, my writing and of course my speaking engagements.
At the moment I have written six books which have been translated into seven languages, the most popular of which is called Marketing and Communications. This book has been a bestseller for my publisher ever since its first edition and I am currently working on a sixth edition of it but my latest book is the SOSTAC Planning Guide which I am really proud of. It’s been many years in the making and I’ve just recently launched a hybrid version of the book online in addition to a print-on-demand paperback version as well.
Having worked in Africa, Europe, China and America I’m really happy to be in Sri Lanka. I’ve only seen a little bit of Galle and Colombo and already I feel like I’m in love with this country, from the beautiful beaches to the rich and ancient history and culture, I just love it here. In fact I might be jumping the gun a bit here but I’m already planning on coming back later to set up a consultancy in the near future.
Q: Having listened to a small portion of your corporate planning workshop, I get the sense that the ability to develop powerful questions seems to be at the core of your planning guide. Would that be an accurate assessment and how do you suggest we go about developing our ability to ask better questions?
A: Yes the ability to ask good questions does have a lot to do with effective planning. In fact the SOSTAC framework sets out five steps that you can take to improve and develop your questions. The first step is to identify the opportunity or problem you wish to focus on very clearly.
The second step is for you to decide what information you will require to really make a great decision, and this is probably the trickiest part of the process. In the third step you set about acquiring this information and – number four – you digest this information until you reach the final stage which is of course, making a decision based on this information.
So that’s how you make the perfect decision but as I said earlier, its step two that’s the big one. To be really clever, you need to decide what information you need. So for example, if you’re looking for more customers, then you should ask yourself: Who is my customer? What time do they start tweeting? What time do they look at Facebook? What is the best time of the day or the week to get their attention? What do they want? What can I give them that is of use to them in terms of content or product?
The details may change depending on the type of business you’re running but if you get a lot of traffic coming into a website or a shop, then you need to make sure that you find out why that traffic is coming there and you need to understand why they leave.
For example, if I was running my own little retail business and someone walks in, looks around and then leaves, I would make it a point to go after them and say: ‘Excuse me, I’m really sorry to disturb you but if can you give me just two minutes of your time and by the way, here’s a voucher for our store.’
I would then take that opportunity to ask that customer what we could have done to get their business. If you ask enough of people, eventually you will start to gather some really valuable feedback which you can use to transform your business.
Q: Could you explain how and where this mindset would feed back into your SOSTAC planning framework?
A: In terms of SOSTAC, I would say that questioning fits in primarily within the first phase of the framework that is situational analysis. Using these types of questions, you can gain an understanding not just of your customer but also your competitors. How do they win business that we don’t? What can I do to improve my business and so on?
To a lesser extent, the questions also play a role in the tactics stage but there its more about micro-level questions that you need to be asking but again some of the questions asked at the situational analysis level can be reused at the tactics level if say you’re running an ad campaign and you need insight into your target demographic, about what drives them and why.
Situational analysis drives a lot of it but beyond the SOSTAC framework, I think it is ultimately crucial that that we strive to make companies into questioning companies. Google is a great example of that kind of question-driven company that nurtures intelligent questions. By asking good questions, difficult questions, you will find answers and when you do, you will unlock all the information you need to really drive performance.
After all, with good information, you can easily reduce your risk factor to zero. Ultimately, good questions are never wasted and I believe all companies should strive to nurture a culture where people reward good questions; this will help put in place other factors which will help your company to thrive.
Q: Could you give us a few examples of success stories enabled by SOSTAC? What would you consider to be some of the best uses of your system in practice?
A: Well I wouldn’t say that I have a particular claim to fame as such although there was one Irish company that I worked with in the past called Airtricity. They are a wind farming company that was founded by a close friend of mine, Dr. Eddie O’Connor. I wrote their first marketing plan and at first I refused payment for it since it was a close friend of mine but Eddie insisted and he cut me a fairly large cheque. I suppose my mistake here was that I should have asked for an equity stake instead because some time later Eddie was forced to sell the company for 1.2 billion Euros.
SOSTAC formed the basis of the plan that I made for them and they used it to determine the direction of their marketing plan, although I cannot of course say that this was solely down to my work since they ended up recruiting a truly brilliant team around him.
After selling Airtricity, he decided he wanted another go at it so he set up a new company called Mainstream Renewable Power. Where Airtricity was more of a B2C model that used wind farms to sell electricity to the grid, this new company followed a B2B model used solar and wind farms around the world to sell electricity to governments and blue chip brands. Their first client was IKEA and here too I applied the SOSTAC framework to draw up their marketing plan. Within about 12 months from the time the company was started, they went from zero to a market capitalization of 0.5 billion Euros so that was certainly another impressive one for me.
Of course Dr. Eddie O’ Connor is really an incredible guy and anything he puts his hands on seems to do well but one thing that I noticed about him is that he too asks really good questions. When I was formulating their marketing plan he told me that the most important thing for him was to understand the process behind what I had planned for their website. He wanted to know about exactly what the process was, not just to build the website but also in how it would be maintained and I have a feeling it’s that kind of attitude that has helped him become as successful as he has.
I also applied SOSTAC to the e-learning company that I ran and during that time we sold to 63 countries and IBM was our biggest customer. We operated that company with just a very small team of about eight people and it was a real success so that would be another project that I’m quite proud of.
We’re also pitching for a piece of business – I can’t say for whom just now – but when we showed them our SOSTAC plan, it was like the lights all came on at once and they could really see how everything fitted together and they loved the clarity of it. Now they’re using this model to tender against some of the larger companies so again this would be another good example of SOSTAC in practice.
Q: During your workshop you touched briefly on the subject of big data and analytics. Can you go through the importance of these new advances, particularly for smaller companies? What would the implications be for a company that ignores big data?
A: Well the first thing I would point out is that it doesn’t really require a sizeable investment to implement a basic analytics system. Google Analytics for example is free to use, there’s a few coding issues you need to get set up but once those are set up, it’s actually a fairly straightforward system.
As for companies that chose to ignore analytics, I can safely say that would be a bad idea. Everyone should be exploring this field. It may take 10-20 years maybe before we start to see the true benefits of these systems in practice but those companies that ignore big data will be left in the dark when marketing to their consumers and eventually they will be left behind.
There are so much valuable insights to be gained and so many new metrics that can be used to formulate new marketing strategies that it just doesn’t make sense to ignore big data and I’m sure most companies are already aware of this and are already looking to adjust. In fact I’ll be sharing more about analytics and multi-channel funnels on my PR Smith Blog if any of your readers are interested in further information about this subject.
Q: As you have stated before the SOSTAC Planning Guide is usually applied to marketing and business models however it also has more holistic applications. Given the holistic nature of your system, and given the current social and environmental turmoil that we are seeing around the world, arguably as a result of corporate activity, have you given much thought to the role of ethics in planning?
A: Certainly I have although this is of course one of those issues that I fear we will be dealing with for a long time. I think ethics in business seems to be somewhat cyclical in nature so during the 80s for example, we saw a lot of activism around consumer protection and stock market ethics but that seemed to die out over time and now again we’re seeing this debate get restarted.
There are many great examples of ethical business models of course, there is the Percent Club for instance that encourages companies to donate a percentage of their profits to community upliftment and companies like Ben and Jerry’s for example donate 8% of their profits to the communities around them. There has also been some great work done by the Quaker companies and Cadbury’s is another really great example. Some would call it philanthropy and perhaps the more cynical would call it enlightened self interest but it’s interesting to note that many of the oldest companies around have some very strong CSR programs.
For example, Guinness was founded in 1759 so it’s about 250 years old. The social programs that they have done through the years are incredible, from housing to hygiene. So maybe there is an argument to say that if you behave more ethically, you will enjoy more robust success and in the event that those companies do go through some kind of PR crisis, but still maintain strong CSR programs, people might be more willing to hear them out when they see all the good work they do, it gives them a better chance of survival in times of crisis. It also gives you something nice to show your stakeholders and customers so in that sense I suppose it is enlightened self interest and more companies should really be looking to genuinely engage in this field.
Q: I was also curious to know more about your process as a writer. How did you decide that you wanted to become an author and what kind of commitment does that require?
A: It’s a lonely life to be honest. It has to be lonely because you can’t do it in the company of people so I have to isolate myself in my study for six months at a time. There is a trade off here, my kids are growing up and of course I have to be around for them but when there’s a deadline for a book, you just have to do the long hours. When people go to bed, you do another 5-6 hours, finish late, rest a little while and then get an early start between whatever your normal job is. I just finished the SOSTAC book but I’m on another deadline for the Marketing and Communications book and I’m slightly behind but I am committed to it because there’s a lot of other people committed to it as well and you end up messing up people’s schedules if you don’t keep to these deadlines. Luckily I have all the raw materials I need and it’s a just a matter of fine-tuning it. Sometimes as a writer you allow other things to get in your way, emails, or videos and such, so really the only way to do it is to cut out all other distractions and really focus on the task at hand at least for half a day at a time. So it can be a lonely experience but I quite enjoy it.
Q: And what about the first time that you really decided to write? What was the real reason that led you to decide that you wanted to put your thoughts down for others to see?
A: I was lucky in that sense because I would never have had the audacity to suggest that I could write a book. I was approached by a student of mine who worked for a publisher. She was a senior and she came up to me after one of my lectures and just told me that my material really needed to be compiled into a book. ‘You have got to write this down’ she said, and in fact she was maybe more enthusiastic about the book than I was.
To be honest I was reluctant at first to spend that much effort but she told me that it would be worth my while, it most likely won’t pay your mortgage but it will open doors and so I took her advice and I suppose today’s event is the result of that.
At the time that I wrote my first book, there also wasn’t too much competition in the marketing and communications space where today there is a few more out there, but I find that many authors make the mistake of trying to convey their message in a way that’s just too heavy and academic out of something that’s actually much more straightforward. I get bored reading pure academic journals so part of my job is to write in a way that’s entertaining as well, and when you do that, you find that it opens you up to really interesting perspectives.
You can find out more about PR Smith by following him on Twitter at: pr_smith, on Facebook at: PRSmithMarketing or on his website and blog at: www.PRSmith.org
Pix by Lasantha Kumara
