If you don’t know, Canal Walk is the biggest shopping mall in Cape Town and incredibly popular. It’s not the closest shopping mall to me, but it’s central which means that I do have quite a few meetings there with clients who want to meet somewhere central, rather than driving through to my offices in West Beach.

Now, Peeve #1: Canal Walk has incredibly expensive parking. R8.00 for the first hour, after which it steadily climbs. I am personally opposed to shopping malls who charge for parking. Especially at Canal Walk, where there really is no alternative – they’re slap bang in the middle of unusable marsh-land that stretches out for miles, and you can’t park outside the precinct and use public transport, because, well, there isn’t any. OK, so I’m forced to pay for parking.

Peeve #2: Their parking machines don’t accept Credit Cards. If you’re the biggest mall in the Western Cape, with the rates you charge for parking, please accept credit cards. Happily the V&A Waterfront now accepts Credit Cards at their machines, and so does the Airport … no one keeps enough cash on them, and if you do have cash, the stupid machine spits out a pile of R5 coins when paying with R50.00.

Which leads to the incident yesterday where Canal Walk Shopping Centre held me hostage:

I had a meeting yesterday with my landlord to discuss a few things and realised after the meeting I had no cash on me, so I quickly drew some cash at the ATM. Since the devaluation of the rand over the last while, you may have noticed that ATMs no longer spit out R50 notes. The smallest amount I could draw was R100.00 – which puts me in a pickle … the Parking Machines don’t accept R100 notes! No problem, I’ll ask at the Canal Walk Information Desk if they can give me change … and this was their response: “We don’t give change for parking”. Which is the response I got from all the shops along the way from the Parking Machine to the Information Desk.

I explained my dilemma to the man at the Information Desk. I normally don’t carry cash with me, I drew money from the ATM and they only spit out R100 notes. What now? “Ah yes,” he says, “we are aware of that problem. A lot of people come to us and say the same thing. Sorry, we don’t give change”.

Well then, what am I supposed to do?

I can go pay my parking at the ticket office, but it’s in some dark dingy part of the parking garages, diametrically opposed to where I had parked. My alternative, is to go into a shop and buy something. I eventually ceded to the ransom demand and bought a bottle of water so that I had enough change to pay for my parking.

On twitter, a few followers suggested I could have gone to the bank and asked for change … but have you seen the queues at banks?

My gripes:

1. If Canal Walk Management is aware of the problem (ATMs spitting out R100 notes, and machines not accepting them) what exactly are they doing about it?
2. Why do Canal Walk machines not accept Credit Cards?
3. Why not give your Information Desk the tools/ability to give out change?
4. Why not allow the Parking Offices some space in two or three points in the mall to dish out change?

Why am I forced to buy something to get change to pay for my parking?

It’s absolutely unacceptable – and let’s not even talk about the attitude I got from the people at the Information Desk – they were as helpful as a screen-door on a submarine.

I got a tweet this morning that GoogleTalk Voice is now available in SA. Many people may already be familiar with GoogleTalk, which is just another Instant Messenger, like MSN or skype-chat. But I think this is a real game-changer, and let me explain:

I use Skype for more and more calls these days – so many people are connected to skype, and it’s just much easier on my Macbook to call them via skype, than use the Telkom phone. Besides that, I have integrated video, so the people I am calling can actually see me and if they have a web-cam set up (most people do) then I can see them too. Frightfully space-aged, but increasingly “normal” in the circles I spin around in.

Then there is Skype-Out, which basically allows me to make a phone-call to any landline or mobile number in the world at a reduced rate. For example, I can call my friends in the UK and pay only a few pence per minute, far cheaper than via Telkom, and the quality is pretty great.

And that’s where Google Talk with Voice is coming to play … it’s going to offer us some ridiculously good rates. Here’s my quick comparison:

Telkom to Telkom: 50c/minute

Telkom to Mobile: 140c/minute

Vodacom to Telkom: 199/min

Vodacom to Mobile: 199/min (165/min Vodacom -> Vodacom)

Skype to Telkom: 58c/min

Skype to Mobile: 167c/min

Google to Telkom: 35c/min

Google to Mobile: 119c/min

As you can see, Google’s rates are ridiculous! It’s going to be cheaper for me to phone someone in SA on landline via my own Telkom Phone.

So the question is: One cellphone, or two?

Option 1: keep my existing phone but ignore the calls I don’t want to take. The downside is that the phone is always ringing, bleeping or blurping with SMS, Whatsapp, emails and calls. Also, some clients don’t like to have their calls constantly diverted to voicemail.

Option 2: Get a second phone, give this number only to close friends and family. It does mean that during a “normal” day I have to carry two phones around with me.

What would you do?

One of the major things I learnt with my time at Amway is to Ask the Right Questions.

In any sales environment, asking the Right Questions can lead to a sale. Asking the wrong questions will lead to constant rejection. It’s therefore worth your while to sit down and write out 4 or 5 questions that you want to ask a prospective client that will help you in making the sale.

I spent a session with my Action Coach on creating my questions and have found it helps phenomenally in controlling the conversation. The person who is asking the Questions, controls the conversation.

Even more so when you’re working with an online business or online marketing strategy: What Questions are you asking your prospective clients? Are you leading them to a position where they are interested in making a purchase?

Here are a few questions I like to ask:

Tell me about the kind of marketing you’re doing for your business?

What would your ideal client be?

What is your average closure rate for your current leads?

The trick is to try and keep the questions open. You don’t want people to answer “yes” and “no” because then it’ll feel like an interrogation and not a conversation.

Asking the Right Questions could lead to heaps more sales and heaps more cash-flow for your business. So take out 10 minutes and write down the questions you would ask a prospective client … and use them!

I had heard the rumours a while ago about a new design on it’s way (having bitterly complained in the past to the sterkinekor guys on twitter) and was eagerly awaiting a site that was simple, easy to use and easy to navigate. So, today I go to the site, suprised to see the new one up … IN FLASH! Let’s be honest – and leave flash websites to the Noughties (2000 – 2009 is apparently the noughties), I cannot stand the fact that I have to WAIT for the site to download … counting slowly from 0% to 100% … and I’m on a 4MB line! I cannot even begin to imagine the frustration for someone who is on 384K or dialup!

There is absolutely no reason in 2011 to be using flash. Besides the slow rate, it’s a nightmare for SEO, doesn’t work on iOS (so every iPad and iPhone in the country won’t be able to view it) and it’s confusing to navigate. I don’t care if your buttons go bleep or dance on the screen … I just want to book a movie. And another really irritating feature is the site now tells me where it thinks I should go … in my case, Cavendish (about 30km away) where Bayside is only 2.5km away … now how much did Sterkinekor pay the developers for that useless feature?

If any execs from Sterkinekor happen to cross my blog: Whatever you’ve paid for your new site, you’ve paid too much. It’s ugly, useless and cumbersome … and what’s with the adverts on the top? Why do you think you need extra advertising revenue?

Isn’t R38 for a coke and popcorn enough?

Last weekend I had the most amazing opportunity to chill out at The Winston in Simonstown, by far one of the nicest Bed&Breakfasts I’ve ever visited. Mike, the owner is an incredibly friendly chap and his staff are amazing. Boston, the resident chef prepared me scrumptious breakfasts each morning.

But the best part is the room and the view. Just a stone’s throw from Boulders, I keep expecting penguins to walk past the room, you are that close to the beach. Because the weather was really crummy, I was “forced” to stay in doors for much of the weekend, but I cannot explain how amazing it is to chill out, reading a book and watching the storm brewing over the ocean. Pure Bliss! I finished two books over the weekend.

Also, Simonstown is an absolutely incredible little town with the SA Navy Museum and the Toy Museum right there … of course there’s heaps of curio shops, Antique stores and a few great boutiques – a shoppers paradise. There are also a few great restaurants around … I loved it…Take a look at their website here: www.thewinston.co.za

OK, so the moral of my blogpost … I love the idea of talking a weekend a month off and doing nothing. And this place was perfect – I’ll definitely be going back. Mike says the whales should be around from August so it sounds good to me!

Everyone knows that the new Consumer Protection Act comes with a series of onerous responsibilities for business owners, specifically that if someone subscribes to a National Database (DNC LIST) you are not allowed to contact them. I have no idea what the penalties are going to be, but it makes absolute sense to me to do this.

As yet, there is no government controlled DNC LIST which means everyone is still trying to figure things out until something actually happens. In the mean time, the Direct Marketing Association has always had a DNC LIST for it’s members, which was emailed to us once a month. This works perfectly with Industry standards for email programmes – basically you use an “exclude” system, which tells the software:

Send Email to This person, unless they appear on the DNC LIST.

Unfortunately during April/May there was some idiot who decided to distribute the DNC LIST to a whole bunch of spammers … as you can imagine, a big mess, with loads of people who specifically asked not to receive emails, now getting heaps of emails.

The DMA (who are tendering for the government contract to manage the National Registry) have now decided to handle the list-exclude on their server. Basically this means that I have to regularly upload my list to them, they’ll remove the duplicates and then return the list to me. Sounds fair-enough, except the DMA have decided to use ID Numbers as the exclude criteria (instead of email addresses and/or cellphone numbers). I don’t know about you, but when last did anyone ask you for your ID number when signing up to join a newsletter?

I suspect loads of people are now going to get more spam, even after registering with the DMA because the marketing guys don’t know you’ve unsubscribed – even guys like me, who really don’t want to be spamming you.

I have made contact with the folks at the DMA and they have told me that if I have problems with their system, I need to email them a non-disclosure agreement and a copy of my list, they’ll clean it up and email me the clean list. Besides the fact that my list is about 60MB big – how often do they expect to do this?

Currently the DMA only has a few hundred members. What happens if they win the government contract and you have 100 000 companies who need their list cleaned up?

This is an absolute disaster in my personal opinion. I would have left the system as it was and then nailed the idiot who broke the rules really hard.

Why is there always one idiot who decides to spoil it for everyone else?

Basically, referral commission is a small fee you get paid for when you refer someone to a company. For example if you know a friend is looking for a house, and you give this person’s details to an estate-agent, the Agent will pay you a referral commission if that friend buys a place (it’s usually something like R1000.00 or so).

Now, I know many businesses that use the Referral Commission model as part of growing a business and client acquisition – we’ll pay you RX.XX if you refer us a client.

In 2010 the US passed a law requiring everyone to declare their interest in referring you – and this makes sense. A person is more likely to refer you to a company that pays the best commission, rather than the company that provides the best service.

But I think to make Referral Commissions now completely illegal is taking things too far. I know the premise of the CPA is to look after a society that is simply too stupid to think for themselves (yes, I will admit, I am anti-CPA or anything Nanny-State-like) but this is yet another move to make it more and more difficult for business in South Africa to actually do business.

As a small business owner, I’m expected to spend a fortune on legal-fees to ensure all my documentation is now in order for this crazy CPA and now they tell me I can’t pay for business referrals? Good heavens! (Actually I don’t use a referral model system, but I should have the right to choose one).

What are your thoughts on Referral Commissions and the CPA?

A few months ago we developed a website for a small company (let’s leave the names out, OK?) based on WordPress. The client has now demanded that we take down the website for two reasons:

1. We left the website incomplete and it’s ruining her company image.
2. She doesn’t get any business out of her website and we’re just costing her money.

To address number 1: We designed the client a WordPress site. It’s by far the most powerful tool that any small business owner can possess. Gone are the days when you are required to pay a web developer R500 for every minor change you want done to your site as you can do do it yourself. Secondly, it affords the small-business owner a really cheap alternative to a grounds-up Content Management System.

The reason why the site was incomplete was because the client never fulfilled her obligation – which was to populate the content of the site. Our job was to design the front end and make the site SEO-friendly.

If you’re going to build a website, make sure that you understand the terms and conditions. OK, I’ll take responsibility for this, because obviously I didn’t position my client properly before launching the project. I did, however, email her numerous times regarding her populating the site.

Secondly, and this is the important part: The client has done no website marketing.

Which, technically is what this post is all about … you *have* to market your website if you want it to do anything for your business. You can’t just slap it up there and expect someone to randomly find it – especially if you’re in a competitive industry.

You need to be running SEO, GoogleAds, Blogs, Articles and just about anything else that will drive traffic to your site. A combination of an effective Sales-Funnel and a good online marketing stream will do wonders for building a cash-generating business.

A website should be making you money. If it’s not, then something is wrong.

And your website shouldn’t be a stand-alone – it needs to be part of a running Sales Funnel – rather as a lead generator than a deal-closer.

So, next week is going to be rather busy – as I’ve decided it’s time to go through and audit each client’s website and marketing strategy … if your website is not making you money, speak to me … because it should!

If you’re on the PSN network, take some care to change your password, as well as linked accounts (like gmail, facebook, skype) and keep an eye on your credit card statement for any fraudulent activity.