Dublin | Greg Canty Fuzion Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Dublin’

Balancing those debits and credits!

November 11, 2013

Where did that time go?

31 years ago this boy was a raw, innocent 18 year old working as a junior accountant in a mid sized accountancy practice on the South Mall in Cork. At this stage I was two months into my apprentice and I was learning the basics.

Ironically, I had done Economics and Business Organisation in secondary school so Accounting was brand new to me!

For every debit there had to be a corresponding credit was the golden rule – if you got that, your accounts would always balance. If they didn’t balance something was wrong and you had to search for your mistake.

It’s probably easier for everyone now with the computers and the accountancy packages – we had to do it all manually with ledgers in my day. Imagine trying to dig through that lot to find where you went wrong..

I was in practice for 6 years and then went onto industry and eventually swapped the accountancy role for a general management one and that was the official end of my debits and credits (except for my own projects at least).

That debits and credits discipline always stood to me and I do think accountancy and the privilege of working with so many businesses at at a young age was the best business degree anyone I could ever hope for.

You listen and learn from clients, you understand the drivers of their businesses and you use your expertise to help them. In many ways I do exactly the same now except the expertise is quite different and I don’t have to worry about those debits and credits.

The strange thing is that life is full of debits and credits and it too must balance and if it doesn’t something is wrong.

I’ve been working hard all morning …. head out for a nice coffee

My crew work their socks off …. take them for lunch on Friday

I’ve been stuck in that proposal for hours …. time for a stroll and fresh air

We’ve been working hard all year …. where will we go for our Christmas party?

Work, work, work …. spend time with friends, meet the kids, visit the folks

Busy doing stuff for everyone else …. get tickets for that gig

I’ve been working my socks off all year …. maybe a new car at the start of the year?

Whatever you do today make sure you balance your books!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, PR
Posted in Accounting, Entertainment, Family, Personal development, PR, Self Help | 19 Comments »

You’ll never know why

November 5, 2013

Thanks for the invitation for your event but I just won’t be going.

I don’t want to shop in your store any more and I won’t be recommending that anyone else goes there.

I will probably ever so subtly actually discourage people from going to your store whereas before now I would have done the opposite.

The problem is you will never quite know why ..

The thing is you treated a good friend of someone that I know really well quite badly, which left them really upset. I know they are reasonable people so I trust the stories that I’ve heard and I believe that the poor experience was genuine and not exaggerated.

From my point of view this mightn’t be reasonable or logical but that’s often the way the world works.

Reputation is a funny thing – it takes ages to build a good reputation and it take seconds to destroy it.

Next time you have an issue with a customer consider carefully how you deal with them as it can potentially impact on many more than just them.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Graphis Design, Greg Canty, PR
Posted in Brand Loyalty, Customer Care | 10 Comments »

Can you feel the love?

October 22, 2013

“I can taste the love in the food”

I was fascinated as I listened to this restaurateur describe how he knows when the dynamic is right between the team at his restaurant. He reckons having a happy team who enjoy working together is essential to producing great tasting food.

He tells me he can taste “the love” in the food when it exists with the team and even more importantly he tells me he can taste it when the love is not there.

The ingredients are exactly the same, the preparation is exactly the same but when things aren’t 100% with his team the food just doesn’t taste as good as it should.

For this reason he works hard at talking to his team, having fun with them, listening to their issues, eliminating any issues or strains quickly and generally devoting a lot of his energy to making sure the spirit is as good as it can be.

Is it enough that your team turns up and punches in their time, is it enough that they execute their roles efficiently and professionally?

Without love that food just won’t taste as good as it should.

How does your food taste?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are an Irish Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Greg Canty
Posted in Customer Care, Motivation, Staff training, Teamwork | 2 Comments »

Can great customer service be up to the customer?

October 9, 2013

“Table of Death” was the expression he used ..

I had the most interesting conversation with an experienced restaurateur yesterday – our conversations are refreshing as he always has a different way of looking at things.

Yesterday we were chatting about the importance of great customer service and how now, more than ever, it needs to tip top as the decisions about how someone spends their disposable income are much bigger than before.

He gave me an interesting perspective about how the customer can play a huge role in the service they experience.

In particular he spoke about the “Table of Death”, which is an expression his team uses when they spot a bunch of customers who just should not be on a night out. They arrive grumpy, every interaction with the service staff is curt and unpleasant and their whole demeanour is negative.

The staff pick up on this immediately and tense up and then as sure as night follows day “Murphy’s Law” kicks in – that will be the table where something gets spilled, someone gets bumped into, something gets overcooked and there will always be something wrong with the bill.

The tension that is created by the negative vibe of that group of customer’s just infects everything and everyone they touch – a good night guaranteed!

He reckons they get at least one group like that every second night and they can spot them nearly the minute they walk in the door.

I notice myself that the pleasant client will get more from our team. The really mannerly and appreciative client will get somersaults from our guys. When you hear our team saying “I love working on that account” or “they are my favourite client” you know that client will get the very best from us and will enjoy the best results from their investment.

For some reason some people have decided that the best approach to business is by being “nasty” – it might make people jump but it will never get the best from them.

Next time you go for a meal ask the waiting staff how their day was!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are an Irish Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Greg Canty
Posted in Customer Care, Hospitality, Motivation, Positivity | 5 Comments »

Taking a Fountain Pen to your Social Media

October 7, 2013

I was presenting to the team of one of our clients this week about how they could use social media best for their business.

At my sessions before we look at any of the social media tools I do this simple exercise by asking the group a question “What are the characteristics of people you like to do business with?”

The group give me a list of characteristics – Now, take all of that into account and apply it to your online behaviour and you will be really effective.

During this part of the session I noticed the younger members of the team had glazed looks across their faces ….what is he talking about, I thought this was a training session about social media?

Social media isn’t about technology, it’s about how you use it to connect and interact with people.

The older experienced members of the team got what I was saying immediately and one of the most senior in the group gave me an incredible example of how you apply old world values to new world technology:

“When I spot online that a company has won an award or has experienced some other good news or when I see someone has been appointed to a new role, I congratulate them”

“How do you congratulate them” I asked.

“I write them a personalised handwritten note on my own notepaper using a special fountain pen and I post it to them”

Wow, that’s so simple but it’s genius – what a way to stand out

Making social media work?…..take all the stuff you are great at already and apply it online

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin in Ireland offer social media training and consultancy services

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Training | 15 Comments »

Tipping the Customer

September 28, 2013

It was bucketing out of the heavens as we stared out the window of our hotel in Garda in Italy during our summer holidays. It hadn’t let up for over an hour and it showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.

We had planned a leisurely stroll into the lakeside town and a nice meal on the waterfront but that was impossible – the tummies were groaning at this stage and the hotel restaurant was shut.

The restaurant that was directly across from the hotel (we were about a mile away from the lakeside strip) didn’t have the views that were on the lake but it didn’t seem to stop the steady stream of locals using the place since we had arrived.

Day and night there was a constant stream of Italian cars in and out of the place – it must be good if the locals were going there we reckoned. I checked on Four Square (a phone APP where you can leave tips about places) on my phone and the restaurant had some quite good reviews left by previous diners.

We decided to make a dash for it and despite it being just across the street we did get fairly wet.

Hostoria La Cross gave us a warm greeting as we entered but after doing so the waitress left us standing there – two minutes later she came back to us with two glasses of prosecco .. “welcome!“.

Wow – we were given a gift on the house before we had sat down or ordered anything.

It put us in great form and we had a fabulous meal (despite every second dish being laced in truffle oil..can’t stand that smell!)

Of course we left a big tip after our special night but really appreciated the “tip” the restaurant gave us at the start of the meal.

The last few times I have taken taxis in Dublin and in Cork I have noticed that each time the driver has “rounded down” when it has comes to the fare “€10 is fine” when the fare clocked €10.70.

The simple gesture is a big change to how it used be and it shows the appreciation of the business and invariably you end up leaving a good tip.

Last night after our meal in Bacco in Ballincollig we were offered a Limoncello on the house as we were settling the bill. They showed their appreciation for the business …”Thank you, we’ll be back”

Giving the customer something they are not expecting is a clever way of saying thank you and building customer loyalty.

Are you tipping your customer?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Bacco, Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Garda, Greg Canty, Hostaria La Cross
Posted in Customer Care, Holidays, Hospitality, Marketing, Sales, Tourism, Travel | 9 Comments »

10 Years, Crystal Balls and Awards

September 19, 2013

10 Years ago my buddy Tommy Doyle collected me from my old job. I handed back the keys to my five month old Saab 93 (that was tough as it was the best car I had ever driven!) and I handed in the keys to the office – I was done with my well paid job as General Manager and about to start my life as a 100% self employed person.

Tommy took me to O’Brien’s in Little Island for a sensible breakfast before we started a day of celebratory drinks – the boy was set free!!

While I was in celebratory mood quietly I was really nervous – I had just shut the door on a long and quite successful career in the drinks industry and was about to enter a new world, which required me to totally reinvent myself and put bread on the table at the same time.

If I had a crystal ball I couldn’t have predicted the 10 years that I have had …

We traded in Dee’s car and bought a second had Santa Fe jeep (hated that jeep!)
We toured Ireland with our high profile luxury women’s event Catwalks with top models, top brands and Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet fame (great fun but exhausting!)
I sold my music stores – I had three stores in Cork, Limerick and Dublin
We did a lot of work with Killarney Golf and Fishing Club, launching the new Killeen course
We took on our first staff member, Ali who is still with us
We took on more PR staff and a graphic designer
We opened an office in Cork city – who remembers the punishing four flights of very uneven stairs?
The recession came crashing in and wiped out some really good clients – We adopted the “storm the recession” approach (great book)
We bought a new Santa Fe jeep (liked this one!)
We had to write off nearly €200k in bad debts over three years, mostly because people were unable to pay but we did get caught by some chancers as well – the Credit Control Warrior and Famous were born!
We started to do PR and social media training – this has been so enjoyable and we have met so many great people through these courses
We got married eventually – Dee still calls it “her” wedding!
I started blogging and realised I love writing
We won a national PR award for the “War Crimes” Cystic Fibrosis , St. Vincent’s Hospital Campaign
We took on staff in Dublin and opened an office
Dee’s mum Joan sadly passed away – a dynamic and challenging woman (my buddy Tommy made her giggle by calling her a …. I better no say!)
We moved to better offices and celebrated Fuzion’s 10 years in business
I really started to excel at social media lecturing for the Digital Marketing Institute and providing courses for Enterprise Boards and clients
My kids are both flying, Brendan with his video production company Feel Good Lost and Ellen with her own career
We bought a brand new car, a Jaguar XF, one that was better than anything I ever had before – this is something we had to do for oursleves
We managed a few really great holidays to the US, Italy, Turkey, Greece and Cuba and back to Italy again
We continued to grow picking up national PR recommendations for Tour de Munster and Safebook
We are about to unveil a statue to celebrate the values of a great man Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty

No crystal ball could have predicted these 10 years, the variety, the speed that it has flown by, the tough economy that have us working our socks off and digging deep continuously, the sadness and the smiles, the stress and the joy, the worry and the excitement, the highs and some lows, the friends and team mates past and present.

I have had to totally reinvent Greg, bringing all of my old skills and moulding these into a new sector including social media which didn’t exist 10 years ago when I started this journey. When I tell people I started off life as an accountant most won’t believe me!

For me the culmination of this 10 years was accepting a National Award at the Chambers Ireland, Corporate Social Responsibility Awards event last week for the work we did on “Safebook“, which was really my baby. We designed a simple info-graphic to encourage our young people to behave responsibly and respectfully online and a simple “how to” if they are victims of cyberbullying.

All of the Fuzion skills including PR, Design and my knowledge of social media helped us to push this out internationally to over 100 countries (a few months ago we were asked to translate it into Hungarian for a conference in Zagreb!) – we are making a difference!

!0 years …wow!

What will the next 10 years bring for me and for you?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Graphic Design, Greg Canty, Marketing
Posted in Business Start Ups, Marketing, Personal development, Positivity, Social Media | 29 Comments »

Driving too hard a bargain

August 20, 2013

We were thrilled when the biggest super pub in the City called us and invited us to pitch for their business – we must be doing something right I thought.

At the time I was the General Manager of Deasy’s, a Guinness subsidiary with depots in Cork and West Cork. We were drinks wholesalers and we delivered beer and soft drinks to the pub and off licence trade in these areas.

We had been doing quite well and this pub was one of those “prize” accounts that all our competitors were chasing. The business they were doing would probably be about 20 times the size of a normal pub.

This was an account we wanted so we put a really competitive price list together. There was enough in the price to win the business but still leave enough for us to make it worth our while.

Not good enough – we had to do better.

I guess this was no surprise as the incumbent wasn’t going to lose this business easily and the buyer (in those days no one had a buyer but this crew had!) was going to quite naturally play us off against each other.

We sharpened the pencils and ate into our margins leaving a little left for us.

Not good enough – we had to do better.

At this stage we cut our margin on products across the board effectively giving them the cheapest prices we were giving anyone – this was crazy but if we wanted this prize account its what we had to do.

The buyer rang our Sales Manager – congratulations, we had won the account and they looked forward to doing business with us. Over time with the introduction of some new products and a few substitute brands we might be able to bring it back to some level profitability.

After our first delivery the buyer rang and told us that he had some breakages left over from his previous supplier that he wanted us to uplift. We would have a look at them and decide what we could do – even with out of date alcoholic products we would be able to reclaim the duty and pass the rebate back to them.

We inspected the breakages and there was a huge quantity of all sorts that he wanted to return – clearly they had done a clear out of their stock room and expected us to take back this rubbish that had been accumulated for years. Many of the products were non-alcoholic and some were brands that we never stocked and would not be able to get credit from anyone.

We carefully assessed the breakages and informed the buyer how much credit we would be able to manage. He informed us in no uncertain terms that he would pull the whole contract if we did not give him a 100% credit at our list prices – he was being totally unreasonable but he was serious.

We reluctantly collected the “rubbish” and processed the credit.

The account continued in this vein – he wanted emergency deliveries at a moments notice whenever he ran short, often at quite unreasonable times.

He pushed us so hard and continued to do so – so much so that there was no win left for us and we were starting to feel quite abused.

All of a sudden it wasn’t our prize account, it was a thorn in our sides. We started to get strict with them – they had to order properly, we cut out emergency deliveries. We maintained a good level of service but now it was on our terms.

From time to time our suppliers would give us beer fridges and promotional events that we could allocate where we chose – needless to say we never passed these onto our “prize” account.

After six months we got a call from their purchasing manager who wanted to do another round of “squeezing” and was inviting us to submit our best prices.

This time we did a full review of our price list, increased the prices across the board and politely let someone else be a busy fool – that was the last time we set foot in the place.

In James Caan’s book “The Real Deal” he spoke about a valuable lesson his dad had taught him from his leather trading days – it was always vital that you made sure there was a “Win-Win” left for both parties in a deal.

In our case there was certainly no win for us and in truth the supplier also lost out – they pushed us to the point where we didn’t actually care about their business any more.

Be careful not to drive “too hard” a bargain and make sure you walk away before the point where the business just isn’t worth it anymore

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Greg Canty
Posted in Accounting, Customer Care | 13 Comments »

Barack Obama and his lesson in Social Media

August 11, 2013

I probably show too many slides when I give my social media courses.

I always try to communicate my points with visuals using as few words as possible. At all times I will try to avoid slides with lots of text – I get bored with them so I’m sure anyone reading will do likewise.

My usual courses run over either two or three sessions and I normally try to leave it at least a week between sessions so that students and clients can practice in between sessions and get the most from the training programme.

The big challenge is when I am asked to cut the course into one session – this is really tricky as I have to do a huge “cull” of my material to come in at the required time and still cover the ground sufficiently.

I hate losing slides as all the material is designed to make a specific point, so inevitably valuable material gets lost.

There is one slide above all in my presentations that is precious and if I had a situation whereby I had the time to show only one this would be it.

I love this particular image because for me it sums up the magic of social media and teaches a huge lesson in how to use it.

I was asked to make a presentation to Dublin Chamber about the use of Twitter for business and it happened to coincide with the results of the last US election. Due to other commitments the night before I had to travel from Cork early in the morning to get to Dublin for the 7:30am presentation.

Like the rest of world I was intrigued about the result so the first thing I did when I woke was to check twitter on my smart phone and this is the tweet I saw.

This Barack Obama tweet was the most retweeted of all time – even at 4:19 am our time, it had been retweeted 475,000 times.

Why do you think I love using this tweet so much?

It demonstrates how Twitter is now the first port of call for breaking news
It demonstrates the shift from Facebook to Twitter – During his first Presidential campaign he was not using Twitter, it was all about Facebook.
This medium was how he chose to communicate to the outside world that he had accepted he had won the presidential race
The message is really simple and concise (often the best way to use social media)
The picture he chose to accompany the tweet demonstrates the biggest social media tip of all, much better than I could ever explain it

The Picture!

Why is this picture so powerful?

Cleverly he didn’t show a picture of himself in a suit with all of his team – he chose a picture of himself, eyes closed, without a jacket, with his sleeves rolled up hugging his wife in a loving embrace.

The President knows instinctively that showing himself as human, as a family man, even slightly vulnerable is the way to connect with the majority of people and this is a winning formula.

A great way to win on social media is by allowing yourself to be human, personal and even vulnerable at times.

People are intrigued by people and even if you are running the most boring business in the world you can bring it alive on-line by interacting and showing people who you are, what you are all about and giving them a chance to get to know you.

Social media provides you with that opportunity – grab it!

Greg Canty is a parter of Fuzion

Fuzion provide Social Media Consultancy and Training in Ireland from offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Barack Obama, Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, social media training
Posted in Social Media, Training, Twitter | 5 Comments »

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Greg Canty Fuzion Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Dublin’

Balancing those debits and credits!

You’ll never know why

Can you feel the love?

Can great customer service be up to the customer?

Tipping the Customer

Driving too hard a bargain

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