15/06/2011

I spent most of my time last week in Spain. Doing some real field research if you will or what we call voice of the customer in jargon. Spain is a country with many contrasts and a variety of applications for water treatment specialists. During my traveling last week I have seen several interesting applications; I enjoyed great homemade Paella at a friend s vacation house (or Messia in Catalan) and this ancient farmhouse turned around into a fashionable vacation house for tourists with capacity up to 12 guests. However, please do not drink the water out of the faucet . Interestingly enough though they did have a private well (pozo in Spanish) but this was not used for drinking purposes. Instead customers drag their plastic bottle containers all the way up into this beautiful villa. Why not install proper water treatment equipment (including UV for inactivating pathogens) and be done with all the plastic bottles? Also a great uniqueness for the villa as well compared to others in the Penedes region (mainly well known for its Spanish sparkling wine or Cava with recognizable brands as Codorniu and Freixenet).

Also on the coast (and yes, Spain has quite some costas) I couldn t help myself not to think about all those opportunities for water treatment; so many hotels and restaurants already packed with tourists from all different kind of places. Same story in the cities; whenever in a hotel it s recommended not to drink the water. The level of chlorine in Spain has absolutely been brought down but you can still smell the odor of the chlorine pretty good. However, the opportunity for water treatment in hotels and restaurants lay not only in drinking water applications. No señor(a). The EHEC bacteria outbreak of the last couple of weeks in Germany and 7 (!) other countries has brought some other risks to the surface; over 1000 individuals have become ill, 14 already died. So how are the fruits and vegetables washed in hotels and restaurants? In fact, I also spent some time with people of the maintenance department of one of the largest hotel chains in the world at Palma, Mallorca. Interestingly several larger hotel chains originate from Palma. These people were mainly interested in water treatment for their kitchens and to less extend for drinking water applications. They told me that if people get sick in your hotel it s bad for business (no brainer, right?). It already happened to several hotels in Spain I learned. And that hotels and restaurants run high risks with contaminated food and beverages is oh so clear. The EHEC outbreak is claimed to be related to cucumbers transported from Spain to Germany, carrying the EHEC bacteria which is related to e.coli. EHEC is more dangerous than a normal gastric flu because its bacteria enter the intestines and start dissolving them. It enters the blood and begins dissolving the kidneys which can lead to kidney failure and death in the worst case. UV light happens to be highly effective against e.coli. A call for well treated water you would guess. Spain with a population of 42 million has over 8000 hotels, 800 official campsites, 90 health resorts or thermal spas and over 80 Paradores (luxury hotels, usually located in a historic building such as a monastery or castles) and many vacation houses like the one I described earlier. I already thought the hotel industry in Spain was an interesting one for water treatment (where especially in Spain high levels of chlorine are still used) and the incidents the last couple of weeks only proved this to be very true. Hotels, restaurants, camping grounds and for sure (cucumber) farms! Always a pity serious incidents need to happen before the right sense of urgency increases.

15/06/2011

One of my favorite countries of all time is Italy. And I am a very lucky person that I have been there this year on several occasions already. This year, 2011, is an important year in Italian history. On March 17th most of the country celebrated its 150th anniversary of the country s unification. As a nation-state, Italy is actually even younger than the United States. The home of the ancient Roman Empire became a nation as a whole just 150 years ago, on March 17, 1861. On that day, Victor Emmanuel II became the first king of a unified Italy.

During my travels through Italy my attention is always drawn to the amazing looking water fountains you will find anywhere you go. No matter if you are in a big city or a small little town in the middle of nowhere. You will find a mixture of different styles and backgrounds and the one fountain is even bigger and more fascinating than the other. A fountain (from the Latin "fontis", a source or spring) is a marvelous piece of architecture that pours water into its surrounding or pushes it into the air. In addition to providing drinking water, fountains were and are used for decoration and to celebrate their builders where a fountain has two functions; it is a direct water supply or has decorative purposes. World famous Italian fountains can be found anywhere in Italy but some of the most known can be found in Rome at the Trevi fountain and at Piazza Navona (which has three remarkable fountains).

These fountains also have my professional interest. Italians are well known for buying water bottles in the supermarket by the dozen (or more). Many strong water bottlers originate from Italy, such as companies like San Pellegrino and San Benedetto. However, the current economic climate has made sure that even in Italy people go more and more to local water fountains to collect water. And not just free of charge. In Italy there are several water fountains where you can pay with your personal pay card (local bancomat system) to get some water from the local water fountain. In case you are wondering if the water you are getting from these fountains is safe and treated I can assure you it is (at least in most of the cases). Actually one of my Italian partners has installed over 200 UV-systems for water disinfection at various fountains across the country. An interesting story, wouldn t you agree? In a country where the culture is so strong in regards of buying bottles of water, people actually go to their local water fountain to get (UV-treated) water. For free or even paid. Next time I am in Italy I will again refill my empty bottle with water from the local fountain. And hey, that I have the chance to study and adore these creative sculptures in detail when filling my bottle, that is just another welcome side effect.

In case you are interested in some more details about our UV-systems for this kind of water fountain applications in Italy (or anywhere else), feel free to contact me. Grazie, a presto!

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

15/06/2011

You probably have heard of the impression you never get a second chance for a first impression . More interesting though is that we make up our mind about a first impression in the first couple of seconds we meet a person. With the increasing amount of information overloading us, our brain is being wired differently than it was 100 years ago. Due to this enormous waterfall of information our attention span is decreasing very rapidly. Although it is perceived that multi tasking is actually a good thing, it is apparently not good for your level of attention. As you shift from one task to the other, your level of attention is decreasing with everything you do. So here we have it, our attention level is dropping fast where you want to make an impression on somebody for a bit longer than that. And if you are trying to get the attention of the person of your dreams, probably you want that attention level to stay high for a life time.

A goldfish has a memory of around 3 seconds. Imagine that goldfish swimming in his little bowl and every time he passes the same water plant he goes like; he that´s a pretty cool new plant!  And I mean, literally every time he swims by that same plant! Although the human brain has a bit of a larger memory disk, we do tend to lose our attention quite fast as well. Ever been in a presentation where your mind drifts off and after a while you caught yourself thinking about your next vacation destination? Just imagine you are going in for a sales presentation and the person you are meeting already lost you by hello . Ouch. That will be a painful presentation, don´t you think?

We all know that it starts with a firm handshake and good eye contact, right? And secondly, whatever you do, do it with confidence. However, just think about the fact that after your sales pitch the competitor will be next in with his story. And the next one after that. You get the picture. What to do? Inspire the people you meet, fascinate the people you meet. What you want to do is getting the people you are meeting with to buy in to you and your story. You can do that in several different ways. My personal approach, already covered in a previous blog, whatever you do, do it with passion! Basically attract others to your story through emotion. Other alternatives that might fit you better are the usage of power where you take command, or be a bit mysterious (about a new product launch for example) where you increase curiosity, alternatively by gaining trust and build loyalty or by alarming people and create a sense of urgency for your offering (e.g. for having safe water to drink). As you can see there are different ways of getting people´s attention and all can be equally good, you just select what fits you personally best. Just remember, you need to fascinate the other person. That gets me wondering how Kate and William met and how they got each others´ attention? By using power? By using prestige perhaps? Let me know what you think!

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

15/06/2011

I am in Russia this week and many different characteristics of this country never fail to amaze me. To keep it as laser focused as possible (with the good advice of keeping it S.H.O.R.T. !) I will stick however to some water issues I am running into here.

I probably won t have to tell you that Russia is huge, so I won t. It s beyond huge! It is actually 1,8 the size of the US and has 141,9 million inhabitants (where the US has 311M). This enormous country has borders with 14 different countries! Unfortunately the environmental conditions in this once again world power do raise the occasional concern. There has been an industrial, municipal, and agricultural pollution of inland waterways and seacoasts, deforestations is causing soil erosion and soil contamination is caused by improper application of agricultural chemicals. Groundwater is contaminated from toxic waste, urban solid waste and abandoned pesticides. On the other hand though 2/3 of Russian population draws its drinking water from surface water sources and the low prices for water leads to major water squandering. On average 278 liters of water is spent per person per day in Russia where Moscow spends the biggest amount of water in Russia, up to 400 liters per person where 10 million Russians lack access to quality drinking water! Rural life in Russia is distinct from many other nations. Russia is one of few nations that have small towns hundreds of kilometers from major population centers. You can most likely imagine how the (water) infrastructure is (not) set up in those isolated areas.

In general around 30-40% of the water that runs through pipelines is lost (leakages) and in agriculture it s sometimes even up to 80 %. Hard to imagine with all the water around, but in some areas clean water is so scarce that water is imported from other regions. You want some more stunning stats? You got it! 75% of Russia's surface water is now polluted and 50% of all water is not potable according to quality standards. Of the groundwater available 30% is highly polluted. The Russian government is seriously looking into these matters but fact remains that most water treatment facilities are obsolete, inefficient, and generally overwhelmed by the volume of material that now passes through them, but funding is not available to replace them. That all does get me thinking about the water coming out of my tap here in my lovely hotel &

Another characteristic that draws my attention is the fact Russia has approximately 21 million vacation homes or in Russian dachas  (cabins). That s two out of three urban families. Thus, dachas are a common phenomenon in Russia and these are well spread across cities and the country . The initial dachas in Russia were already present when Peter the Great was in power. At first these dachas were small estates out in the country for people who were loyal to the Tsar. The word dacha means something given.  When communism in the Soviet Union collapsed private land ownership became popular again. The majority of dachas are now privatized and Russia has the largest number of owners of second homes globally. Most of these dachas are used for weekend get a ways or as (preferred) location to spend summer vacations, away from city live. There are basically three types of dachas; traditional ones, the more modern versions and the ones for the happy few or elite (mainly brick and concrete houses). The vast majority has a more basic version though that look like (small) garden houses made of wood where gardening and living from the land is part of their way of life.

Combining these two characteristics (bad water quality and spending time away from the cities at your dacha) gets me worried though. Basically people spending time at their dacha will have their water supply coming from the mains (municipalities), from their own well (ground water) or perhaps from surface water sources. In all cases thought the risk the water is of poor quality is too high. Knowing all of this I wonder how many people get sick of drinking contaminated water at those dachas? The good thing is though that compact and easy solutions do exist to treat their water well (e.g. pre-filtration and an UV-system to get rid of water borne viruses). It is probably more a question of if the average Russian dacha owner is aware of the health risks they run when drinking contaminated water and if they have access to the right solutions. Let s hope for them they do.

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

07/04/2011

Previously I mentioned the information overload we have to deal with on a daily basis. As we receive an overload of data it is vital to communicate as crisp and clear as possible. To provide some guidance the following building blocks to communicate efficiently.

Simple
Your message should be simple; simple to understand, simple to remember, simple to reproduce

Helpful
Ideally the information you provide is helpful for the recipient covering "what´s in it for me" (thus, for them)

Original
If you want your meaning to stick, make it original! Being creative and original helps in bringing the message across

Realistic
At least in business communication see to it that what you have to say is realistic so people really buy in to your story

To the point
Avoid being blurry and vague, sharpen your message and keep it to the point

Good luck keeping your business communication S.H.O.R.T.!

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

07/04/2011

Are you as an individual successful? Is your company successful? You think so? Based on what? How do you measure your success? A good and important evaluation of your success can be conducted by asking your own customers what they think of you. It is actually quite interesting (and in some cases surprising) how your customers perceive you and your company. To you success might be translated into sales results, margins, profits, key performance indicators, market share, gains, growth, expansion in virgin territories, implementation of new strategies and tactics, et cetera. Your customer however might review your level of success completely different.

Your customers are much more interested in your quality of service, the products you offer, the training you provide if applicable, the warranty conditions you have in place, the logistical part of the transaction, your payment terms, the availability of your goods, the price (value) of the products and services you offer, your speed to execution when support or service is needed, the brand equity your brands have in the market space, the recognition of your company name in the different markets the customer is present in and important as well, what they think of you as a person. Are you always accommodating their enquiries in a professional fashion, have you been able to build some rapport with your customers, and are you perceived as knowledgeable, as resourceful? Are you known for your ethics in supporting their business? All good questions and as you can see these are completely different factors of influence in measuring your success then if you would only evaluate this question from your company´s internal perspective.

Your customers´ opinion is quite important to you, right? That is, I am assuming you want your customers to come back to you, don't you? So when you agree your customer is important to you and your business, what have you done to ask for his or her opinion? Do you know how your customers perceive or even rate you? Remember, what your customers tell you (or not tell you) is not necessarily the exact same as what their real opinions are. My recommendation, do whatever you can to get the facts straight. Get the data, give it to the data crunchers if the amount of data is too much for you to handle yourself and pay especially attention to fix whatever needs to be fixed.

How to capture your customers´ opinion? There are many ways getting this data; via web customer surveys, through phone panels, one-on-one visits with customers using a template of questions, survey cards sent by email, discussion boards with several customers at the same time, web forums, and so on. I cannot stress enough that when your research is completed make sure you are absolutely diligent about filling the gaps that are still present in your offering according to your customers´ view. Feedback towards your customers about what you are doing to overcome the current hurdles is also more than helpful. A survey or research is a snapshot taken at a certain point in time. To be as accurate as possible, repeat your research every 6 to 18 months to see if and where you have improved in your customer´s mind. Never forget, it is your customer who pays your bill. Therefore I would value their opinion to a large extend, wouldn´t you?

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

18/03/2011

One of the great mantras I personally like and try to follow as best as possible is "whatever you do, do it with passion". And this is oh so true. If you do something with a real passion, it is a lot easier to do or finish isn´t it? When you put some "heart" in it you accomplish much more, don´t you? And in many cases you accomplish more than you initially even though you would be able to do, correct? Working on a task or some other chores you need to fulfill suddenly seem to be easy to deal with when (your) passion is involved, doesn´t it? Everything we do in live is all about passion my friends! An intense emotion where you feel enthusiasm or desire for something; a quite compelling feeling isn´t it? This feeling can become so strong it even overwhelms reason. Do you recognize anything of this? Does it ring any bells for you?

People can get inspired by different things and feel passion in various ways. Their inspiration can be rooted from artistic, biblical, creative or even business related backgrounds. Passion for a sports team, passion for a music band, passion for a movie star, passion for a designer and yes passion for fashion, for an artist, a country, for food, for wine, for a hobby, your kids, your car, your dog, your garden and so on and on.

Personal inspiration and the passions that drive us are maybe even the life line that we need to have to be successful in life. But as we live in a commercial business society driven by capitalists, can we have passion within our companies and work as well? My answer, of course we can; passion for winning, for taking market share, for beating the competitor, for getting a new customer on board, passion to be the best in presenting, or the best in engineering, passion to have your latest product innovation enter the markets, passion to be ranked number 1 in whatever you do. Ever hear people say they were able to make a living out of their hobby? Guess what, these people do what they do with a real passion. Passion can be mutually shared within companies as well. Increasingly you will see that businesses embrace non-profit institutes in order to support the "good cause" where these corporate passions become part of their company culture. How about as a company providing aid to people who suffer? No not for marketing and free publicity reasons but in order to really make a difference. That´s what I call (corporate) passion!

Personally I do believe I have quite some passion in me. Passion for my family, my work (hobby), for international business, passion to support my business partners, passion to be involved with solutions that treat drinking water, passion to travel and meet people from all around the world, for sports (active and not so active), for Italian food and yes even passion to write this blog. But all that I am trying to bring across in this blog´s edition is that no matter what you do, put some heart into it, do it with passion and try to focus on those things in your work (and life) that truly provide you joy and keep your engine running. As the latest events in Japan show us, it all can be over in a heartbeat so we better make the most out of it. And if that´s spending some time at the dinner table enjoying a tasty Italian pasta, hey, that would work for me. Enjoy your passion!

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

07/03/2011

Ever imagined to be a time traveler? I actually have. I know, I have a great fantasy. But just imagine you would live in 1911 and would be leapfrogged through time and ended up in our time, one century later. How in the world would you be able to deal with our way of living? Our whole way of living has changed drastically. Transportation, communication, globalization, information. Let´s zoom in a bit more on the last one; information. The amount of information around us is enormous. Just look at all the fancy devices we have to access any kind of information; TV, radio, PC, laptop, smart phones, PDA´s. And the information overkill is anywhere around us. We get bombarded with information. Just in the UK alone over 130.000 new books were published in 2009. In total there are between 75-175 million different book titles in the world, there are over 100 million websites with blogs alone, in 2009 90 trillion (!) emails were sent, an average of 247 billion emails are sent every day, there are 1.4 billion number of email users worldwide, adding 100 million every year (and yes, spam is a huge factor here) and the list goes on and one. As a matter of fact, looking at the BRIC- countries (Brazil, India, China and Russia) the amount of internet users will only increase exponentially. Especially the amount of internet users in India is believed to grow at extreme high speed over the next decade.

Actually you don´t even have to become a time traveler to become completely overwhelmed with the amount of information we have to deal with. As little as 5-7 years ago we would not have had the privilege (?) to use the tools we use today (RSS feeds, smart phones, iPads, blogs, twitter); welcome in the digital and information age. Did you know that the risk of heart failure after a vacation is higher than prior to your vacation? Do you know why? After spending great time at a perfect get-a-way, people are reluctant going back to the thrills of going over x-amount of emails every day, searching through piles of magazines and articles on their desk, meeting notes to read, industry related RSS-feeds to follow, tuning in on business news and of course the most important, following the weather channel (instead of just sticking your head outside).

So yes, we do live in exponential times. Did you know that the Top10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004? And that 50% of what students in technical undergraduate degrees learn in their first year is outdated by year 3? With the information overload we have to face every day, and the changes new technology have to offer, how can we simply manage? We already know that the information era is resulting in more difficulties for people to understand an issue and to make decisions which already can lead to disorientation and lack of responsiveness. My personal solution for this is what I call the SCD-model. Where the S stands for Select, the C for Center and the D for Delete. And that is to my personal opinion at least a good start how we should deal with all the information coming at (and after) us every day. First of all select only the information you really need. What is your weekly or daily (business or personal) objective? Is the information you have affront of you in line with these objectives? Then you center the information you really require and just go through the ones that have your highest interest and can actually be beneficial to you. Finally all the rest goes down the drain and is deleted. Let me tell you, deleting most of the irrelevant and pointless information will give you a great feeling of relief and joy! Give it a try and you will find that the SFD-model will actually help you going through the information overkill we are facing every day. And in case you wonder how my blog attributes to this information overload; well I guess the SFD-model is my answer to that and in fact, people who do write frequently (via blogs, tweets or whatever) happen to be more efficient. That´s good to know, isn´t it?

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

04/03/2011

We just entered the third month of 2011 already. "Time flies, especially as you are having fun", the saying goes. Well, are you having fun so far? Two months out of the twelve. That means that already 16% of our total calendar year has gone by before we know it. In other words, we have 10 months to make our 2011 plans happen. That is assuming you have a plan in place for this year.

Let me ask you some personal questions? Are you married? If so, did you organise your wedding with some support of a wedding planner? (Professional or not does not matter). Why was that? Most likely because the most special day of your life needed to be perfect, right? Let´s take that same spirit to our businesses. Every business day should be special, organised and prepared in full detail. How about that! Many businesses pencil down different kind of plans. Such as business plans, sales plans, marketing plans and so on. However, there are lots of businesses around there that don´t write any plan down at all. And yes, some of them are very successful! There are organisations that have become large and successful without having an (initial) business plan in place. Maybe some scratches on the back of a beer coaster and that´s that. It is proven though that the more you plan (in written format) the more you will achieve. Actually, did you know that in Japan it was not uncommon to have business plans in place for the next 50 years? Yes, the next 50 years! I agree that is a bit too much for our Western standards but it is a nice thought though.

So back to my questions to you. Do you have a business plan in place for this year or even for the next three to five years? What does this plan include? Does it include your overall business strategy for the next coming while? How you would like to increase sales or perhaps reduce costs? How to beat that nasty competitor around the corner? How to implement some unique offerings that nobody can beat? All great ideas and again, you will reach your goals better when they are written down and are reviewed frequently. I know several people who have their own "life plan" in place. What are your goals and objectives in your personal life? Write them down, hang them on the wall, look at them and change them where needed. I can assure you, after reviewing your plan every now and then you will achieve more then when you would not have such a plan hanging on your wall or fridge. And it is a great personal feeling of accomplishment when you look at your life plan and see that you have actually achieved quite a bit of your plan already. Naturally you can change your plan whenever you see fit and add new things you want to achieve. This "life plan philosophy" is basically the same for your business plan. My two cents of advice; if you have not written down your 2011 plan yet, I would start with it today. These business plans are not only valid and applicable for the management of a company. Basically every department should have such a plan in place. Or even better, every co-worker should have his or her plan for 2011 written down. Discuss the plan with your co-workers, review this on a monthly or even weekly basis and see where you are. What have you achieved of your plan? Where are you with the items on the plan you were suppose to organise in a certain period? Where do you need support? Creating plans and implementing this in your day to day business will become a habit that is beneficial to your business. So get your notebook and start planning your plan today!

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

18/02/2011

Living in a highly populated country such as The Netherlands, I love to spend some time in the countryside. In many places in Europe and North America, getting into the wild is actually quite easy; large groups of people in these regions own a second home for their weekend get-aways or their summer or winter holidays. These holiday homes can mainly be found outside the city environment and close to natural water supplies such as lakes, rivers and the coast. Holiday cottages are popular in regions such as Scandinavia and North America and also within mountain areas in, for example, France, Switzerland and Austria.

Having your own (or family) cottage is part of culture and history in many regions. A cottage is all about exploring rural life - getting away from the modern way of living and returning to nature, close to the location of the origin of the family. Many individuals are quite attached to their cottage where they will go for relaxation, fishing, hunting, having a barbeque or simply spending their valuable time with friends and family. Since the aim of spending time at these holiday homes is simply to forget about it all, the important topic of drinking water quality at these homes is often neglected - more on this later.

The number of people with second homes is overwhelming; of a population of 9 million, over 650,000 have a cottage (or stuga in Swedish). The figures are just as intriguing for neighboring Norway, which has almost half of the population of Sweden. However, these 4.8 million Norwegians still own close to 400,000 cottages! The culture of owning a holiday home is perhaps even bigger in Norway than in Sweden, where having your own hytte is a common way of life. It is preferable to have a cottage which is close to natural water, and there are plenty of location options in Scandinavia. To illustrate, Norway has a total of 455,000 lakes covering an area of about 5% of the entire country.

It´s not just the Scandinavians who enjoy their cottages; many Canadians and Americans own a cabin in a beautiful location. Russians are no different; of a population of 142 million, around 7 million own or have access to a dacha.

The culture of owning a holiday cottage is much more common than most people are aware of. Where does this leave us water treatment specialists? When staying at a cottage, many will use surface water (from lakes, rivers, streams, etc.) or groundwater (dug or drilled wells) for consumption and household purposes. In all the countries mentioned above, bacteria outbreaks have occurred. It is therefore critical that families and friends spending their time at their beloved rural homes have the right water-treatment solutions to ensure that their well-deserved weekend gatherings and summer breaks don't include the risk of facing uninvited waterborne viruses. Getting away from it all should not be spoiled by drinking bad water.

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

09/02/2011

You can hardly go anywhere or you will find information about the "social media hype". What you will find is excessive publicity and ensuing commotion regarding this "Web 2.0." development. It is very interesting though to see what these media tools, intended for social interaction, are getting achieved within business environments as well. Especially as these tools are using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques they truly are ubiquitous. Today any serious organization about themselves is looking how to implement a sustainable social media strategy. It comes down to three options; adapt, manage or suffer. And with that also the role of marketing is changing. Do you need a traditional marketing manager or a social media manager? Do you think these roles are one and the same? Think again! They are indeed different and you do need both (or at least combined).

Today many industries organize seminars how to deal with social media. How to communicate and interact with your customers, happy and not so happy, where to engage prospects, what to offer and much more. Also in the water treatment business people set up and organize this kind of seminars. How about the title of this upcoming event; "How a Water Professional Can Use Social Media to Engage, Influence and Learn Now." I cannot wait to find out! I wonder what they will have to tell me. Perhaps that I need to have my own Youtube channel, my own Twitter account, a Facebook account with at least 500 followers and of course a personal and company profile on Linkedin. All true of course. Linkedin by the way just announced late January that they have plans for an IPO which is already described as a "high-profile Internet IPO". The amount of users these platforms already have are staggerating; Facebook (a social networking service) has 500 million users, Linkedin (focused on professional users) 90 million. Twitter has enormous amounts of users and growing every second. And what to think about Youtube? This video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos was created in 2005. The website basically created a whole new principle. If you have any kind of talent (or humor), you just post your video online and try to get as many hits as possible. In 2006 the company was bought by Google for 1.65 billion (!) US$. It was reported in May 2010 that YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day. Most of these social media platforms initially started out serving every average Joe (or Jane) and his family. Since several years though commercial businesses and non-profit institutes have jumped on this social media rodeo and try to master the skills of using these social media tools for profiting purposes. Well, perhaps not direct profit though. But indirect that is however in most cases definitely the objective, won´t you think? There are several large global organizations already that do not spend a dime on advertising anymore but do spend it all on social media. That is pretty ballsy, wouldn´t you agree? Not spending any money on traditional advertising anymore, not launching advertising campaigns via TV commercials but just posting them on Youtube? Of course shouldered with a well-tailored marketing campaign to draw attention to the new campaign, brought to you only via Youtube. As I mentioned, the role of marketing is definitely changing because of this social media happening.

So how to deal with these social media tools? First of all, as in many cases, it starts with a strategy. And with that then an objective. What do you actually want to achieve? Perhaps a better product image, more awareness for your company? Or just a new way of interacting with your customers and potential customers in order to get more direct feedback? Whatever it is, my suggestion is to write it all down, get internal consensus about your plans and have someone assigned for being in charge for the roll out of the plan and the on-going follow-up. With that most likely you will have your company profile added or updated on different platforms, where you also initiate new groups, you will post your customer reference videos, your product introduction videos and your online commercials, your management staff will open their own blogs and tweets, you will communicate more directly with and within your community of interest and in the end, we all get very social about our media. The fun has only just begun!

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

01/02/2011

Last week I was in Sweden again. Personally I always like being in Scandinavia. Well to be honest, I like being in most of the places that I visit. But what always fascinates me in Scandinavia is something that is called "Jante Law". It means something like everyone is equal and don´t think or act like you are any more special than the rest of us. Basically it is a pattern of group behavior towards individuals within Scandinavian communities, where this group negatively portrays and criticizes success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate. In his 1933 novel "A fugitive crosses his tracks" (original title "En flyktning krysser sitt spor") the Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose identified the Jante Law as a series of rules. Some of these rules really intrigue me. How about; "don't think anyone cares about you" or "don't think you can teach us anything". With that in mind I read and talked about the recent cryptosporidium outbreak in Sweden that occurred late November 2010 in the city of Östersund's.

On November 30, 2010 local and international news reported that a criminal investigation was under way in Sweden to determine how an intestinal parasite ended up in the town of Östersund's municipal water supply. Environmental prosecutor Christer B. Jarlas said release of the parasite cryptosporidium may have been the result of criminal negligence. Eventually the news reported about the fact that 2.000 people got sick. Then this number grew to 5.500 people but today this number already reached the stunning figure of 11.000 people! Apparently the local authorities do not know for certain how this intestinal parasite got into the water and the local news calls this the "Östersund's water nightmare". The issue is now also showing up in other regions. The cities of Âre, Ottsjö (lake Ottsjön) and Edsåsdalen (lake Hensjön) have confirmed that the stomach bug has been found in the water and they advise people to boil their water and not to take any water from the lakes. Local authorities are especially surprised the bug showed up in Hensjön. The cities and towns did not have any UV-installations in place but after the incident occurred, Östersund now does have UV-water treatment implemented. Other cities and towns are also planning to do this and even borrowing UV-systems from neighboring places like Mattmar. Needless to say that the demand for UV-systems for water disinfection in that region has significantly increased over the last two months. Water disinfection by UV and preventing these outbreaks seem to be on many people´s agenda now.

I also want to share a story I heard from my good friends in Sweden; around Christmas time some grandparents got their worried grandkids on the phone as these kids did not want to come over to visit their grandparents. No it was not because they expected not to get any presents. Nor was it the fact the kids did not like the color of the Christmas tree decoration, nor the way the traditional Christmas meal would be prepared. The real reason? The kids were afraid of drinking the water at their grandparents´ homes as the cryptosporidium outbreak was on national television and got quite some coverage in local media as well. Of course the fact these grandchildren did not want to come over to their grandparents house for Christmas was then upsetting their grandparents as they did not want to miss out on having their grandchildren over during the holiday season. As you can see again, incidents like these do happen; people get worried, people even get sick. And in the case of Östersund's and towns in the surrounding area, many people got sick. I wonder who´s law that is?

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

26/01/2011

No I am not going to write about Sting´s famous song. I prefer writing about the impact water bottles have on our environment.

Who hasn´t seen those trendy, exotic looking water bottles around? Those bottles of water with images of beautiful glaciers, lakes or mountain streams? Look very nice, don´t they? But guess what; does the water you drink out of that bottle of water truly come from those sources? In many cases the water you drink actually comes from tap water. For your information; one third of bottled water in the US comes from tap water. That is a bit different then coming from glaciers or lakes, isn´t it? Basically what you buy is pure fantasy. As a matter of fact, water coming out of your tap is in most cases more regulated than the water you can buy from commercial companies. Several tests have proven that water coming out of the tap had lower quality, had lower scores on taste tests and costs 1000´s of times more. Do you know what you pay for your water coming out of the tap? Well I do as I checked. Where I live I pay 0,88 Euro (1,20 US$) cents per 1.000 liters. How much does a bottle of water cost in a super market? Around 2 Euros for a liter, right? And possibly 2,5 Euros at a gas station. Would you buy a loaf of bread for 10.227,27 Euros or 14.007,64 US dollars? Then why buy a bottle of water at the same ratio? Basically that bottle of water is in my example 5.681 more expensive than water coming out of the tap. However your bottle of water also costs 2000 times more energy to produce than tap water. The environmental impact of water bottles is enormous and outrageous. In the US alone half a billion of bottles are purchased every week. That is enough to circle the earth 5 times! And of the total amount of water bottles, only 13% are being recycled, leaving tens of millions to go to landfills and become waste. To produce the demand for bottles of water quite some oil and energy is needed to still our thirst. The oil and energy needed to produce the amount of water bottles drank in the US alone on a yearly basis equals the amount of petrol or gas to fill 1 million cars. That is just the amount of oil to produce the bottle. When the bottle is produced it still needs to be transported from the water bottle company to the wholesales, the retail and the end user. If you fill your bottle of water up to 1/3 you get the amount of oil that is needed to produce and transport that bottle of water to your home. Pretty shocking, isn´t it? So what happens with all those plastic bottles? Well 80% end up in landfills, some are burned (which causes some additional toxic pollution) and some are being recycled or down cycled where the plastic is used for less demanding products.

Drinking water out of a water bottle purchased in super markets, restaurants, gas stations, theaters and the like is actually a successful marketing story. Major soda drink manufactures saw their soda drink revenues decline in the last seventies. The next big thing for them was to jump on the bandwagon of selling water bottles. And they did. These companies created not only a great image of trendy, sophisticated and healthy brands, initially only for Yuppies (think about the famous French water brand) but they also created a great consumer demand. Selling water had become big business for many of these companies and large marketing budgets were kept in order to sustain and grow consumer demand. The good news is that public awareness about the true source of the water of many of these bottles is becoming more known. We also realize more what happens with the plastic bottles after we have drank the bottle in just a few minutes. There are actually already some public buildings where you cannot bring your plastic bottle in. And restaurants are now more willing to offer tap water instead of trendy water brands. In Scandinavia a large chain of hotels is offering their own water brand (same name of the company) where the guests can chose from still or sparkling water. The water is actually treated locally at the hotel. Other good news is that the market for water bottles is decreasing and refilling bottles is increasing. That is indeed good news as we have to become more aware how to prevent any further pollution. In many places around the world clean tap water is potable and palatable. If not, it is recommended to have a water treatment installation at your home that looks after the quality of your water. By all means, using tap water and if needed an additional private water treatment installation is by far cheaper than buying bottles of water. It is not only better for your own wallet, it is also better for our environment. So why buy those bottles of water if you can get it almost for free out of your own kitchen?

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

17/01/2011

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darwin.

We all know that everything around us changes. Rather we like it or not. As water specialists we know the conditions of water can change. Water can be liquid, solid and gaseous and as a solvent it dissolves at least a portion of everything it touches. All depending on the conditions of its surroundings. Actually management styles of our organizations change too. Every time your organization has a new CEO or company owner the strategy of your company changes, doesn´t it? Or when something in the market happens; for example a new entrant shows up, your competition drops their prices like there is no tomorrow, your distributors raise their prices, new products enter the market, and so on. Change is ubiquitous. But how do we deal with change? As human beings we do change but in most cases at the start of it we don´t like to. When change happens to us we first are surprised, then in many cases we are actually angry or disappointed, even feel rejected and are definitely not supportive to the change. But when time passes we come to accept the change and during the final stage we are actually committed to the change. How do you think our ancestors reacted seeing the first cars drive in their streets a hundred years ago? Supportive and committed to this new way of transportation? Think again. How did or do we react towards globalization and the multi cultural community that we have today? How do we deal with the evolution of new technology? (Just think about how old fashioned photo camera manufactures struggled when digital cameras entered the market). The influence of media? (Where we would have only a few TV stations just 15 years ago, today we can view hundreds of channels). Personal computers and the internet? Just think for a moment how the IT industry neglected the opportunities personal computers and internet could bring them already decades ago. They just did not believe their (IT) world would change towards that direction. But oh boy, it did!

There are plenty of books on change management. The key is what´s there to change? Too many organizations change for the sake of changing. The only objective of change should be improvement. An improvement can be in many different respects. As an organization perhaps you want to change your product performance, your customer loyalty, your brand equity, your profitability, your market reach, your go to market strategy, your sales approach, the market segments you cover today and so on. A lot can be changed. But what changes bring you the desired outcome? First of all any change should be aligned with your company strategy. Do you want to be product leader in your domain, do you want to be the most efficient organization in your market or do you want to be as close to your customer as possible? Are your changes based on optimizing your company´s efficiency or improving your sales numbers? Whatever you want to change, start with a plan where you well define your objectives of the change you want to make. The world around us changes fast. Faster then we realize. The internet has changed the way we live and work, so have mobile phones. Or think about the price of getting on a plane and traveling the world. Was that possible for that many people 15 years ago? We might not realize this until you have no access to any computer or phone anymore and we get back to our travel patterns we used to have only two decades ago. So the process of change is unstoppable. When you stop, your competitor is already two steps ahead of you.

I already mentioned to focus on those changes that are aligned with your company´s strategy. Secondly and equally important; only focus on those changes where the difference you have achieved is sustainable.

In short, no question you and your organization have to change. Just think carefully about what you want to change, why you want to change this and what the outcome should be. Before you know, your exercise does not have the outcome you were looking for and guess what, you will have to change it again.

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

14/01/2011

The flooding in different places around the globe last week got me thinking about the rise of our Sea Levels again. Thanks to people like Al Gore and the like we are all aware of the fact that our Sea Level is rising. According to research the sea level rose 1.8 mm per year for the last 100 years. And since we are using satellites for sea level measurement these levels are actually estimated at approximately 3 mm per year between 1993 and 2003. But that´s not the end of it; these sea levels will continue to increase over the coming century and longer periods. So that´s pretty disturbing, won´t you think?

When I read those articles about our Sea Level I always automatically think about two of my all time favorites and beautiful places I luckily have been to myself; The Maldives and Venice, Italy.

The Republic of Maldives is a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean with twenty six atolls going from north to south. This island nation is located in the Laccadive Sea at approximately 400 hundred kilometers south west of India. The entire atolls of the Maldives are spread out over about 90,000 square kilometers. Basically it is the lowest country on the planet with only 1,5 meter above sea level on average. When the Tsunami hit in 2004 many islands vanished. If the sea level continues to rise at current´s rate, most of The Maldives will be gone in 50 years. The president of the Maldives, Mr. Mohamed Nasheed is on behalf of the government already saving money and investing this in India so when time comes, the population can move to a new "home." If you haven´t been to The Maldives, it is a fantastic spot to be at, especially for a honeymoon!

Venice (Venezia) is a city in northern Italy and today mainly known for tourism. The city was already inhabited in Roman times and was historically the capital of this independent city state. Venice became an important center for commerce and art in the 13th century and held that position until the 17th century. Mainly because of its maritime power Venice has been a very wealthy city throughout the time. Also Venice contains a large group of in islands. In total 117 small islands are situated in the Venetian lagoon. The Rialto Bridge, the Duke palace and the Piazza San Marco are famous landmarks. Unfortunately these beautiful landmarks - especially the Piazza San Marco - faces every now and then what they call in the region Acqua Alta or high water. This term stands for the exceptional tide peak that occurs in the region with a maximum peak at the Venetian Lagoon. These peaks that may cause partial flooding of Venice take mainly place between fall and spring. The rising of our Sea Level is definitely not helping the cause. If you haven´t been to Venice, it is a fantastic spot to be at, especially for a second honeymoon!

Now a few words about a different kind of C-Level. And this time I mean those acronyms that represent corporate titles or business titles on company officials identifying their function within their organization. You probably know what I am talking about, don´t you? I mean all the CEO´s, CFO´s, COO´s and CTO´s of our (global) companies. I started this blog with the title "Sea Level at the C-Level". The style of our management has changed over the last few decades. In the 50´s and 60´s our C-Level focused on planning, organizing and control. In the 80´s and 90´s it shifted more towards increasing shareholders value, remember? Today, the C-Level of our major companies strive to contribute to our society, provide environmental sustainability and enrich our lives as individuals. Companies think (and act) more "green." Being environmentally friendly is not just a great marketing concept any longer. Different organizations have actually adopted this as part of their philosophy, starting at the C-Level. So being involved in a business (our business) that actually supports and in many ways protects our environment has become the right thing to do for many of us. If it is not for the money it sure is for the love of our planet. Hey, if it even works for global companies to include their environment friendliness in their mission and philosophy, why wouldn´t work for us as individuals?

Sandor Willems
Sales and opportunity re-booster

07/01/2011

Isn´t that great, you have been working a whole year as hard as you can and now, just a few days in the New Year you are already all prepared and ready for 2011. Aren´t you? 2010 was just last week but already part of history again. And hello 2011! New targets, new objectives, new everything. Well not quite that dramatic but for most businesses all dash boards filled with spiffy key performance indicators have restarted at zero again.

That´s actually a good thing if 2010 was a lousy year for you because you will have good chances and high hopes to do better in 2011. For those who had an outstanding year in 2010 already, well you probably know you just have to top that in 2011! But the main question probably is; how do you exceed a already successful year. Or if last year was not successful for you, how do you bend the line? Well, how about your company strategy? When you look at your company strategy, how does that look like? Does it still sound right to you? I mean, assuming you have a company strategy - shouldered by a business plan. You have this strategy somewhere written down, right? If so, have you updated this recently? Hey, the market is changing. And fast. So what to do this year? Or actually, what to do different? A wise saying goes as follows; "if you do what you always did, you will get what you always got". And that´s just fine as long as you are ok with that. If not, something has to change. And muy rapido. So for arguments sake we can say you have your company strategy in place and your business plan is all aligned with your strategy. Looking at it again it all sounds still pretty darn good to you. Let´s check that again: does it include or is it linked to your company mission, your customers, the competition you face out there every day, the product and services you offer and the market (segments) you operate in? How about this year´s objectives, smeared out over several different performance indicators that are key to your business? Still with me? Good for you!

As I mentioned, a whole new year has just started. And within this year some deals will be lost where hopefully many will be won. In order to do things differently this year always keep in mind the following three basics questions; "where am I today with my business (scope)", "where should I be" and "how do I get there". By answering these basic questions you can monitor if you are on the right track. And that is to improve your current situation. No matter how good your current situation already is, it can always and should continuously be improved.

So to all of you out there in the field; lots of wisdom in 2011 and lets´ get those needles moving again! Happy New Year!

Sandor Willems

Sales and opportunity re-booster