JY&A Consulting
http://jyanet.com/consulting
Fancy offices have been out for a long time, so what do we seek now to tell us that a company is worth our time? Jack Yan’s advice to companies is to listen to your customers and find out
Jack Yan
Jack Yan is founder and CEO of Jack Yan & Associates and
president of JY&A Consulting.
THE 1990s saw to a shift in what was required for a company to appear credible
to the public. Without a web site, you could be considered, unless your industry
happened to be very local, to lack credibility. But at the same time, there
were plenty of people willing to use the "I have a web site" mantra to trick
audiences—we hear of plenty getting in to industry conventions and shows on
account of being in the "media".
Web legitimacy soon shifted to having proper domains, rather
than having pages hosted free on Geocities. Really, it's not too different from
fly-by-night companies that operated from a postbox and shared offices: just
that the internet ones are more visible because we are no longer restricted
to learning of such companies locally. The scope crosses borders.
But it also means that companies can now forget about some
other sources that might have made them appear legitimate in the past. If we
are indeed about a customer orientation, we need to understand what our customers
seek—and from where they seek us.
This company, for example, has operated successfully for nearly
15 years without a Yellow Pages listing. And we have no plans to get one in
any country in which we operate. We don't require it like a local electrician
or florist might.
However, that was not good enough for one antipodean newspaper,
which was interested in one of our press releases, but appeared to decline to
publish it when it discovered that we did not have, in our New Zealand office,
an "018" listing.
Not only have I not heard of "018", but few of my customers
would have. I understand that it is to do with the telephone service but I have
never seen a single promotion for it from Telecom New Zealand. From this it
seems that it is not very important to Telecom New Zealand, either.
Using some obscure service in an even more obscure test of
legitimacy strikes me as very odd. The newspaper obviously needed to keep up
with the times, particularly down in New Zealand which thrives on innovation
from small companies. From the phone call I had with the journalist, that knowledge
had not made it to the business newsdesk there. When I asked a JY&A Media
journalist based in New Zealand, she told me that it was ‘the Kiwi knocking
machine at work,’ which could well explain why there are all those antipodeans
working in the British IT industry and being appreciated.
Many modern organizations operate worldwide, legitimately,
but at the same time they can be small- to medium-sized enterprises. That is
the pattern of the Kiwi company: smaller businesses that have more smarts than
the larger ones. Such enterprises are careful about the money they spend. Membership
to associations might already stretch resources but their industries demand
it. Maybe there are some that would like a Better Business Bureau endorsement
or membership to a regional or national chamber of commerce. Therefore, there's
that much less left for other applications.
Some businesses may prefer not to go the established routes
in order to show how novel they are. Purposely omitting certain services at
which one's customers are unlikely to go—we did so with the Yellow Pages—emphasizes
differentiation. And differentiation, as we know, is the foundation for good
branding.
We trusted our reputation more. While we can afford the listing,
we still do not have any need for it. Our customers have always been global.
The internet was a medium that fitted us. Therefore, it was more important to
make sure our web presence was world-class, our site visible on search engines
found through purely honest means, that our materials not have spelling mistakes
with a consistent application of Hart’s Rules, and that there is
outstanding customer service which includes the boss answering emails from enquirers.
It's what our customers want and expect. I'm pretty sure that's
what Narver and Slater, the two academic experts into the concept of "market
orientation", reckons we should do, too. Listen to the folks who are likely
to hire you. Until mine start screaming ‘018’ with something closer
to religious fervour, I'm going to continue disappointing that journalist. •