Wednesday 30th September 2009
The best wet weather gear for motorbikes. I mean the best!
I’ve done 294,000kms on Harleys in the last 8 years. To clock that up at the same time as running a business, being a dad, sailing, and running seminars you need to ride rain or shine, day in day out. You need to stop using your car and make the bike your vehicle of choice. Yes I know, it suggests I’m just a tad obsessive about the ‘Milwaukee Iron’. What can I say? I guess it confirms everyone’s worst suspicions about me that I’m writing this in the waiting area of my favourite Harley Shop. Between you and me I look forward to services because it means I can ride over to Road and Sport in Hamilton and tool around among the Harleys while I wait.
Anyway, I digress. I’ve ridden about 70,000 of those kms in the rain. Which means I’ve discovered a thing or two (the hard way) about which gear really does keep out the rain, and which doesn’t.
In those eight years I’ve owned five wet weather, goretex style jackets. The first two were crap, let’s just leave it at that shall we. The second and the third jackets were both Spidi and until I got jacket number five I’d have sworn black blue that Spidi was the very best. But now I know better. Much, much better.
Now despite my Harley addition I’m the first to admit my extreme surprise that the best wet weather jacket I’ve ever owned, the most water proof, the most fitting (I can even wear this jacket around the office) is Harley Davidsons FXRG Jacket. I love this jacket – and no it’s not covered in Harley insignia (actually that’s my only complaint).
I might be besotted with Harleys but I’m not dumb. Not enough to want to sit through thousands of kms every month in a wet, cold jacket. So, as I said it came as a big surprise that this new Harley Rain Riding Jacket is so good.
Here’s another wee confession. Before I bought the FXRG I did a heap of searching on the net. I wanted to know if Harley’s high opinion of the FXRG was shared by the critics – and goodness knows there are plenty of Harley critics scratching out their grizzles on the web.
Turns out that the critics, those unbiased enough to try out Harley’s riding gear, are shocked and speechless at the quality of Harley’s FXRG rain riding gear. It’s completely waterproof they said. It’s understated they said -no garish big Harley logos so that anyone can wear one of these jackets without looking like a Hells Angel wannabe, they said. It’s more ‘temperature neutral’ than just about any other jacket around, they said. Temperature neutral is techo-speak for not getting too hot or too cold but instead making you feel just right in any temperature. And I can testify, it does! It really does.
And something that really flummoxed the critics was Harley’s own faith in the jacket. I’m not sure about in NZ, but in the States they’ve given it a 5 year guarantee. One guy said one of the zips was a little sticky so Harley immediately replaced the whole jacket. Wow!
So, armed with the support of the Harley critics I skittled back to Road and Sport and bought my FXRG jacket and then jumped straight on my bike and rode from Hamilton to Whangarei in the pouring rain. And I mean it pissed down all the way!
By Huntly I had discovered that the reason my gloves had been leaking was that the sleeves of my previous jacket were letting the water in, so that even with my gloves tucked under my sleeves the water was getting in. So within the first hour my new jacket saved me $200 odd for a new pair of gloves.
By Orewa I realised that this new jacket really wasn’t going to leak. That Harley have cracked it.
That was ten weeks ago. Since then I’ve ridden another 5000kms in the rain and I’m loving this jacket as much as the day I bought it. So much so that I went and bought my wife one just the same. And the good news ladies is that the FXRG jacket Harley make for you is tailored to make you look like a woman not a fat wee michellan man.
I could wax eloquent about the liner which is actually a separate jacket, or the hidden money pockets, yes plural – or the zip-open breathers front and back. They’ve even got a special pocket for your sunnies which, wait for it, has a micro-fibre optical cleaning cloth connected with a nifty wee chain to the jacket so you don’t lose it. I could, but, well I have haven’t I! So enough said. If you like to ride in the rain, you won’t go past Harley’s FXRG jacket. By the way you can get FXRG boots, gloves, pants too.
Mark
Monday 24th August 2009
3 steps to making this recession the best thing that ever happened to your business.
3 ways to make sure you look back at this recession and say “that’s when our business really started growing!”
1. Learn from the mistakes you make during this recession!
We all make plenty of mistakes in business. But during a recession they are harder to hide. They stand out. Don’t worry, it’s happening to all of us. The secret to success is to be one of the few who learns from their mistakes. The best way I’ve ever heard to do that is, rather than pretending nothing’s wrong, take the opposite approach – instead of hiding your mistake, focus on it!. One of my mentors Barry Colman used to say “let’s have a post-mortem” whenever we did anything. Barry would then lead us step by step through what we’d done and we’d note down the things that were clearly problems AND we’d also note down solutions so that next time (there’s always a next time!) we could do things differently. Barry is now one of the country’s wealthiest men, and Grant Baker, a junior rep who attended the same ‘post-mortems’ with me became the money behind 42 Below and several other very successful ventures. So learning from your mistakes certainly works.
2. Keep testing and measuring. Use the pressure of the recession as a catalyst to try things you'd normally not bother with.
For instance you could try a special evening where you invite your customers to get together. What would you talk about? What would you give them or display or demonstrate for them? Not sure. Get your team together and start thinking through what you could do. A little butcher could do a cooking class. A car yard could invite their customers to come in to hear a mechanic explain some simple steps to maintaining your own vehicle – if popular they could even run a proper evening class over a number of months. Customers would almost certainly invite their friends along and the next thing you know they might be buying a car off the car yard too.
3. Ignore everyone who chides you for making mistakes, pretending they don't make any themselves.
The very nature of testing and measuring is that a number of things you try won’t work out. If it was true for Einstein and Edison it’s certainly going to be true for you. The very nature of testing and measuring is making mistakes. Edison tried 2000 experiments before he got his light bulb working. Thank goodness he did. Imagine if he’d listened to all the people who tried to tell him to give up during his 1999 failed experiments! A wise man once said “the person who never made a mistake, never made anything”. I can well remember a foolish chap I knew proudly telling me that he and his wife had never had a fight!” I was gob-smacked - what a boring relationship they must have had. Either that or the guy was a liar.
Mark
Friday 21st August
Ha, bloody, harley ha ha.
Life’s a funny bastard really, a constant comedy of errors. There’s always a new twist, jibe or joke he’s sending at you. Case in point; Here I am in a Te Kuiti cafe banging away at my laptop and stringing together a few paragraphs for Mike Nash about Harleys. Nash has been dribbling negatively about Harleys, and about me for riding them, in his KiwiRider column ever since we first met on a Brass Monkey seven years ago. Now he wants me to comment in print. There’s a bloody trick in here somewhere!
Now you can’t really blame Mike – when we met on the interislander heading South I was irrationally in love with the Milwaukee Iron (still am) and my fawning and stroking might have impressed Willie G, but it was like a red rag to a bull for poor old Nash (has been ever since).
Nash might be a hard bugger to look at with that whole ZZ Top thing going on, but he’s even harder to please. I txted him one summer from the Skippers Road having braved every corner, rut and rise on my Harley Road King. He txtd back with disdain, apparently his Auntie regularly rode her Vespa up the Skippers and he personally had learned to drive in an ancient Austin on that bitch of a road. (It certainly is a bitch when you’re fighting 324kg of Harley around the Skippers cliffs!!)
Back to the Te Kuiti Café. It’s a beaut, sitting sunnily in a paddock on Te Kumi Road. The very same paddock I used to play in 45 years ago. Back then I’d be skidding around in the sheepshit and mud and looking longingly out at the road at the old bangers thumping past - Indians, Harleys, AJs and Trumpets I guess - and wanting one badly (at six bloody years old!). Here I am sitting in the same paddock, old bastard now, but this time in a café with flat white, laptop, trying to look tough in my Harley gear – and still looking longingly out at an old banger. Only this this old banger’s mine, and she’s not old at all. 385kgs of sunglo red Ultra Classic and barely run in at 5 weeks old and 8400kms on the clock.
Nash and his erstwhile mate MOD, another acid pen when it comes to Harleys, are constantly asking why I insist on these bikes Easy! A Harley is the only ‘brand new vintage motorcycle’ you can ride. It’s the only chance that us old bastards have to dress up tough and ride into town in a mob and scare the locals (until we pull our helmets off that is – then the buggers just laugh). The flip top helmet was invented to solve that problem, but us Harley riders are way too bloody tough to wear them. They’re for BMW wankers like Nash and MOD and, ok like Dave and Gareth and Jo and Kit and Lance – shit I don’t think I know anyone (other than Hitler) who doesn’t ride a hairdresser’s bike.
I’ve ridden (Nash would say bounced, bumped and scraped) 285,000 happy kilometres on four Harleys – three Road Kings and this new Ultra – since August 2001. My 44th birthday actually. Best present I ever bought myself.
And don’t listen to all Nash’s shit about Harleys only being good for straight roads in the U.S. As well he knows I’ve done tens of thousands of Harley kilometres on gravel. Why? Because riding Harleys on gravel scares me shitless and I want to overcome that – we all need challenges eh! (anyone can steer a BMW over gravel). 3000kms on sand, dirt and stones in the Aussie Desert with Miriam behind me. Two or three times over the Motu with her or one of the kids up back. More than that on the Danseys, several shots at Thompsons Track just up from Lindis, and so on.
I don’t care what you say. Harleys – you love em or you hate em. I was shocked at that by the way. In my naivete I’d assumed everyone loved them. Bit of a blow really, but hey! But I love them. Love them. Love them. Love them!
I love the noise, the smell, the way you have to fight them around the corners, the dumps and thumps and wallows. The sheer size and weight!
Bit of a confession though, I might be going a bit soft – the new 09 Tourers really are as good as the hype. This Ultra is a dream. Miriam’s calling it “our bike” oops! I’ve finally figured how Nash and co zoom around corners in the wet. And there was me thinking they were better riders.
Anyway, just for Nash I pretended one year I was a poet and penned the following lines for him. My request to you gentle reader? If you’re a Harley rider, annoy the hell out of him by txting the following words to Nash on his mobile 027 650 2842. If you do I’ll love you long time. Well not really, us Harley guys are way too tough for that shit, but you get the drift.
“Why a Harley? The Journo nervous quipped.
And around to meet the jester the rider angry whipped.
“Why a Harley? Son you’d never understand.
You have to do the miles to be a real rider man.
Down dark and dusty highways the pair at night they roar
The Rider and the Harley, over countless passes soar.
The sound it is like thunder, enough to wake the dead.
But the motorcycle journo is tucked up safe and warm in bed.
Why a Harley? Son you’d never understand.
You have to do the miles to be a real rider man.
The thing goes on (‘and on’ Nash would no doubt quip – yep he’s the quipper) but this is Nash’s column and I’m borrowing his words. Actually he’s borrowing mine and being paid handsomely for them I bet. There you go, just another twist and gibe and joke! Life (and Harleys) are full of them.
Mark
Wednesday 3rd June 2009
Hopping Mad At My Keyboard and the six reasons most ads fail.
I’m sitting here at my keyboard and I’m mad, bloody ropeable in fact! I’ve chosen the subject for my blog – the only problem is that whenever I think about this subject it makes my blood boil.
I get ticked off about this particular pet subject of mine because so many kiwi businesses are suffering as a result. These businesses are paying ‘professionals’ to make their ads. Unfortunately many of those professionals have no more idea than a goat about what makes advertising sell.
The result is that businesses like yours are being scammed for millions with ads that have almost no chance at all of ever working.
Ok. I’ve had a little pace around my office and I’m calm again now. Enough anger, especially right before Christmas! After all there’s no point getting mad because most advertising professionals don’t want to learn to do their job any better. That’s obvious right? If they did want to learn, there’s plenty of scientific advertising information out there. Plenty of helpful info on easy ways to make ads work better.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll sit still here, and let my fingers do the hopping. I’ll bang away at my keyboard until I’ve given you the most important tip you’ll ever get for making money out of your advertising.
I’ve called it SIX REASONS MOST ADS FAIL. Print this out and put it in a file somewhere. It could make you a lot of money. The sad thing is that, as you’ll see, these pointers are so very very simple, and yet most advertising and marketing ‘professionals’ don’t even know they exist. Go figure!
1. The most common reason your ads fail is that they do not tell your customer about your secret strengths. Every business has a secret strength. Yours is no exception. Your strengths are often a secret to you (because you’re not sure why your customer buys from you) but they’re no secret to your customers. If the key reasons your customers already buy from you were communicated in your ads, you would almost certainly see an increase in results.
2. The second most common reason your ads fail is that they do not have a powerful headline. 80% of people ONLY READ the headline, or in the case of a radio ad, listen to the beginning. So it’s obvious that 80% of your money is wasted if your ad has a poor headline, or worse, no headline at all. Holloways have discovered that often it’s the longest headlines that sell the most product and services. Yet if you look at today’s paper you’ll find that the ads almost all have very short headlines. The newspaper editor however isn’t so silly – you’ll notice the newspaper uses long headlines in their stories.
3. Most ads fail because they do not contain photographs with ‘story-appeal’. Story Appeal is what newspaper editors call the quality that makes the reader say “What goes on here?” It can be as simple as a photograph of a farm trailer with a person pointing to the special tipping feature that makes that trailer so popular already. We’re trying to get your customer’s attention here, not win a photographic award. If cheesy gets their attention, then so be it!
4. Most ads fail because they do not use selling captions under photographs. Your reader will ALWAYS LOOK under the photo to find out what it’s about. If you do not give them a selling story right there, under the photo, you’ve wasted a huge part of your ad budget.
5. Ads fail because they do not have long selling copy. The startling truth is that people will read up to 1500 words of copy about your product and services if you make it interesting. You have already read over 500 words in this blog and you’re still going. Yet most people make the mistake of thinking that ‘people don’t read ads’. Every time you make that mistake you’re losing money!
6. Your ad will fail if it does not include an offer. An offer is one of the most read parts of an ad after the headline. The sad thing is that most people don’t include an offer at all. And those who do almost always make it a discount. Holloways have learned that discounts are often the least effective of the three types of offer.
Mark
Sunday 4th February 2009
Advertising, marketing and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
I’m writing this from the waiting room of my favourite Harley shop. It’s three days before Christmas and my Harley is kicking and coughing and spitting – the good fellows in the service department are doing everything they can to fix it, but it’s taking time, and there doesn’t appear to be any quick fix.
I’m consoling myself (between pacing up and down the waiting room floor) that this is wonderful lesson in patience – what else could it be? I’ve got three weeks off after a bloody hard year and now, just when I need it, my bike is running like a pig and the technicians can’t locate the problem. But they will of course, eventually they’re going to get that big beautiful bike humming like it was made to do. But there’s no guarantee it’ll in my timeframe. Life’s like that isn’t it!
And suddenly, here in a hot Harley Waiting Room, I realise what the REAL lesson is. This isn’t about whether the experts can get my bike working, after all there’s no doubt they will, eventually – the real lesson is about learning to have enough patience to wait for the job to get done.
As I sit here congratulating myself for realising this it hits me…this is the very same lesson I teach the hundreds of small business owners who attend my seminars on ‘The four steps to Marketing Profits’.
I stand there and proudly tell them there’s no QUICK FIX if they want to make money from their marketing. And now, just when I least expected it, I’m having to learn the same lesson. My lesson is to do with a motorbike, but it’s the very same lesson you have to learn about your advertising and marketing.
I explain to seminar goers that if they want to make money from their ads it’ll take time. There’s no doubt that it will happen, eventually, if they do it right, they’ll make a lot more money from their ads.
But first they’ll have to stop their frivolous award winning brand ads, wipe the desk clean of their design-focused ads, and stop running the silly ads that the media reps make for them.
The only way they’re ever going to make serious money from marketing is to take the time to painstakingly go through the following six steps (these six steps to profitable marketing are a bit like waiting for your Harley to get fixed – painful, but well worth it).
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Discover what the ‘secret strength’ of your business is. We call it the ‘secret strength’ because although your customers know what it is, you don’t (it’s secret to you).
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Include your secret strength (the reason people already buy from you) in all of your marketing. If you don’t, it will never work.
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Make sure your marketing is made up of one part brand, to five parts scientific. There’s a big difference between brand and scientific, and you need to know it to get the five to one mix working right.
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Test and measure your new marketing until you find messages that really do make money. This is the hardest part, because the most profitable messages are the ones that work long term, and the ones that work long term, normally do not show up in your first steps. There it is again, that bloody patience lesson.
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Keep investing in the messages that tested the best.
Mark
December 11th 2008
The Man who came back from the dead AND why sales people should never judge a book by it's cover. An amazing story of life, death and success in selling - part 1
The man who came back from the dead
Picture this. My wife Miriam, the very same wife who after careful manipulation from me, has gone from motorcycle-hater to riding through 3000km of Aussie outback gravel on the back of my Harley Road King.
Now you see her with shopping friend, here they are, in car and edging through the 5pm traffic crush-up on the bridge from Manukau city toward the onramp to the motorway south.
Now you see a rider on a big angry naked Yamaha 1300, he’s all in black and whistling up the outside of the lane, past my wife, past the truck in front of her, and wham! He’s hit the traffic island on the corner of the off ramp.
His bike goes one way, he goes the other. His bike ends up in the middle of the road, he takes a worse route and comes to rest under the truck.
Cut to the truck driver. He’s seen none of this, so continues to edge forward, now dragging our hapless rider and coming to rest with wheel on top of the rider’s chest.
My wife and her shopping buddy, open mouthed, have it seen it all. Miriam, ex-cop and ex-nurse, goes automatic, leaps out of the car and she’s all over the rider, all business. Two other motorists run to help. They’ve got his helmet off, he’s bleeding from mouth and ears and within minutes his pulse has gone, and so has he. Dead. Stone cold.
The ambulance arrives and the paramedics start working on our rider. He’s been dead three minutes and counting. They bundle him into the ambulance and they’re off.
Accident Patrol turns up and now they’ve got my wife in the patrol car asking how it all went down. She’s shaking and crying, as you do. Her cell rings and here’s her motorcyclist husband, yours truly, phoning to see how she’s doing. Man, I just can’t seem to get my timing right!
Now it’s my fault. I’m a bloody motorcyclist after all. And worse, our dead rider had on the very same gear that I’ve sworn to her will keep us safe from all accidents.
Cut to next week. My wife is frantically searching the Auckland newspapers looking for this guy’s funeral notice. She wants to go. She needs closure. No luck, no one’s talking about this guy. His is the big secret death. When she phones them in desperation, the police want to tell her what’s going down, but the Privacy Act says nope they can’t. Thanks Helen! Or was it you, Michael?
Long story short, friend of my wife gets a call asking her to pray for this guy who’s come off his bike and ended up under a truck on the Manukau off-ramp, and now he’s critical. A few more phone calls and sure enough, it turns out this is our rider. The very guy, after three and a half minutes dead, was brought back from the other side by those amazing bloody paramedics, in the ambulance, on the way to the morgue at Middlemore.
Motorcyclists reading this – be nice to those guys, they’re our guardian angels! And by the way, if you’re ever strolling up Mt Everest and you spot someone nearly dead, take your lead from my story. Even three minutes dead isn’t the end it would seem.
Cut to three months later. Miriam and her shopping buddy Tonia have a tearful ‘re-union’ with our rider back from the dead: Jason Montgomery. Yes, he’s walking, back at work and on the up and up. He’s even riding again.
Great story, and great ending for the writer who wants to keep riding and has permission from ‘her indoors’ as a result of this happy outcome.
Mark
Part Two: Why motorcycle sales people should never judge a book by its cover.
Roll back the clock to a year before the accident. Here’s our miracle rider Jason Montgomery, this is before he died and returned from the dead.
On this day we find Jason, Redbands, black singlet and beanie on, walking the isles of two very well-known Auckland and North Shore motorcycle shops. He’s hunting for a brand new Yamaha 1300 and, get this, he’s got 20 grand cash in his back pocket. He wants this bike today! ‘Man’s frothing at the gills, the highway’s calling. HE WANTS TO RIDE, and he wants to do it now. You know how it is.
But there’s nothing doing. As far as the salespeople at the two stores he visits are concerned, Jason’s the invisible man. Jason is a paramedic and a highly trained airport fireman, but of course all that’s under the skin. And while we’re on the subject of skin, Jason’s is brown. Yep, Jason’s Maori. Now put that fact together with his Redbands, black singlet and beanie and our all-assuming motorcycle sales people draw the wrong conclusion and decide this ‘dumb Maori’ can’t be a customer worth talking to.
I’m sure you know the rest. In fact, dare I suggest that many readers, brown skin or not, will have experienced similar discrimination at the hands of such motorcycle sales people. You wanted their bike, but they didn’t want to sell it to you!
Disgusted, Jason returns home, gets out the phone book and calls Waikato Yamaha and talks to John. Remember, you Auckland motorcycle sales people, Jason lives in Manukau (he’d never met John from Waikato until you made him so mad). Oh dear, what will your bosses say? Hopefully you’re going to find out after they’ve read this.
The very next day, Jason’s at Waikato Yamaha – the man wants to buy, remember, and he wants to do it NOW! He’s got on the same Redbands, same black singlet, same beanie and same beautiful 20,000 pingers in his pocket. Uhuh, Auckland, it could have all been yours!
After about ten minutes of talk, John’s sold Jason the bike that he WANTED to buy in Auckland. Jason’s got the bike he wanted, and John’s got the 20 grand cash he wanted. Everyone’s happy. Even our Auckland Yamaha sales people are happy, because of course, they’re none the wiser. Where do we get these people?
Readers, you know what I’m talking about. My point is not lost on you. But what about you Yamaha salesfolk in Auckland, do you get it, or are you searching about right now for someone else to blame? This is about taking responsibility, not handing out blame, that will get you the sale, guys. Do the reality check if you must. And better luck next time.
Is it something about Auckland? I’d guess not. In fact, I’d guess this sort of treatment is experienced by motorcycle buyers all over the country.
Are all the stories bad? Absolutely not! I’m a Harley rider and I live in Tauranga, I’ve bought three Road Kings, two brand new in the last five years. And although I’ve never bought one out of Hamilton or Palmerston North yet, I can tell you that when I talk to Harley sales people in those two towns they actually treat me like I’m a real live human being.
Get this. I’ve seen Al at Road and Sport in Hamilton courier all kinds of gear to me without any conditions and happily receive it all back when it didn’t fit. No grizzles at all from Al, no siree! Or Keiren, ANZA’s intrepid salesman in Palmerston North, I’ve seen him offer a courtesy car to his customers and find them a motel to lounge in while they wait. Top guy that Keiren!
Then there’s Paul, the ANZA service manager. I know a bloke who phoned Paul on his mobile on a Thursday night, and although Paul was up to his arms in kids and dinner, he still reorganised his workshop schedule so this bloke could ride down from Tauranga to get his bike serviced the next day. There was none of this “ride it up and we’ll see if we can fit it in” bullshit I personally have been handed out from other workshops. Paul actually guaranteed he’d do the job. And he was good as his word. Figure that out.
So, here’s to John at Waikato Yamaha, Al at Road and Sport and Keiren and Paul at ANZA. Thanks guys. Your blood’s worth bottling!
Mark
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