Category Archives: MyOrbit Blogs

Advertising, Business Development, Contracts & Legal, Internet, MyOrbit Blogs, Online Marketing, Sales & Marketing

Be Careful with “Double Your Sales” Guarantees

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We came across a “double your sales, guarantee” today through an email newsletter and the presentation vs details of their offer demanded this quick post to show you why its really necessary to read the terms for any offer, especially when the offer comes with an attractive wording of guarantee.

Here’s the offer page  and here are the Terms and Conditions for their Money Back Guarantee.

We feel the offer page should have mentioned/clarified a couple of essential terms before asking a prospect to spend time in filling the form.  For example:

#4 of Terms: …Your refund request must be accompanied by a CPA-approved record of revenue for the prior 18 months, showing that you have not doubled your gross sales revenue for any comparable month from the prior year.

[Which means, the doubling of sales will not be assessed over the year or quarter (which is the accepted business growth comparison timeframe),  but any month of the year. This is not evident at all from the way the advertising is presented, and could face difficulty

#6 of Terms:  Only the set up and consulting fees previously paid by you to Infusionsoft are eligible for refund under this program. Your monthly subscription charges to the Infusionsoft service are not refundable.

[What the above term says is that that the various services you need to buy to qualify for money back guarantee are not part of the money back the guarantee! Not sure if this clause has been reviewed by their lawyers because it can’t stand in a court of law]

Therefore, always read the terms of a money back guarantee because its very rare in any services business, irrespective of how the offer is being shown. But if you do find a business partner who is willing to give a written money back guarantee on services, then that’s a thing, and worth going for. Hope you found this useful.

Capital Markets, MyOrbit Blogs, People, Risk Management

Temasek Holdings Reveals $39 Billion Loss

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http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YlvEjlIelzk/R-xvJCBdpJI/AAAAAAAAJ0Y/Q997dhiOFP0/s400/Temasek%2BHoldings.jpgTemasek Holdings, the Singapore state owned investment company, has revealed today that it has lost $39 billion, or 31 percent of its holdings, in eight months last year.Temasek Holdings portfolio went down from SG$ 185 billion to SG$ 127 billion Singapore dollars ($85 billion) as of November 30.

The revelation comes just days after Temasek said Chief Executive Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore’s premier Lee Hsien Loong, steps down to be replaced by former BHP Billiton CEO Charles Goodyear.

The fund made a number of wrong moves under Ho Ching, including a $5 billion investment in brokerage Merrill Lynch in late 2007. And as you may know already, Merrill’s shares fell 78 percent in 2008 amid the global financial turmoil and it was bought by Bank of America Corp. on 1st Jan in a lifesaving deal.

Temasek Holdings also has large stakes in other financial companies such as Standard Chartered Plc, DBS Group Holdings Ltd and Barclays Plc. So it looks like Temasek financed a good chunk of the toxic mortgage securities in the US.

This is a learning for all of us. Warren Buffet invested $5bn in Goldman Sachs, and Temasek in ML. And the difference in the quality of decision making is clear.

Advertising, Business Development, Innovation, MyOrbit Blogs, Sales & Marketing

Business Lesson from Recession-hit London Restaurants

Recession-hit restaurants in Britain have started offering free food and major discounts to entice customers, many of whom have stopped eating out frequently following job losses and salary cuts.

Offering free food was one of the ways of beating recession in the 1980s, and restaurant owners are hoping it will work this time too. Hundreds of restaurants have closed in the recent months.

Little Bay Restaurant, Farringdon Road, London

The offer of free food is premised on the belief that customers would be too embarrassed not to leave behind money after dinner. Restaurants owners believe that except students, most customers would not leave without leaving money behind.

For example, the menu card at The Little Bay in Farringdon, London (featured in the photo) does not mention prices for dishes. Customers pay only for the drinks. Restaurant owner Peter Ilic said, “You can leave 50 pounds or nothing; it doesn’t matter, I will treat you the same,” he said.

Btw, if you are in London, you can visit the Little Bay restaurant at:
171 Farringdon Road
Clerkenwell, London EC1R 3AL
Tel: 020 7278 1234

And now the Lesson for those of us in other businesses, including the online business.

Its called the 5% rule, ie. before you ask for anything, offer your customer at least 5% worth of sample or value or product or service or whatever that you sell. We have seen this working in both B2B and B2C businesses.

In fact, a money back guarantee or performance guarantee of some sort also achieves the same result as above.

They make it difficult for the customer to refuse the offer, by removing all possible barriers.

In our experience, too many companies don’t want to try any of the above because sometimes things will fail, and majority of managers are risk-averse. So if you say your company can’t do it, that’s fine too. We are sure someone else will do it and go on to win the sale. Nobody is forced to give us a sale, we have to win it. This recession will test the best. So give it a serious thought.

MyOrbit Blogs

Merry Christmas!

Hello Everyone, we wish you a Merry Christmas! We are now in the last week of the year (it still feels like Feb/March!). So yes, the year has gone by (with some hard hitting events). This is the time to just sit back, relax and plan for the coming year. We wish all our friends, teams, clients/partners, and visitors, and we promise a few exciting things in the new year. By the way, here’s a photo of the Xmas tree at our place. Once again, best wishes to you!

Christmas 2007

Capital Markets, Finance, Market News, MyOrbit Blogs, Risk Management

Goldman Sachs Reports First Quarterly Loss But Remains Strong

The unbeatable hero of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, has reported its first ever quarterly loss since it went public 9 years ago. And yes, the market conditions are quite bad.

Goldman Sachs has posted a quarterly loss of $2.1 billion, or $4.97 per share, on net negative revenue $1.58 billion, down from a profit of $7.01 per share in the same quarter last year. Results for the entire year weren’t actually all that bad; the i-bank posted a profit of $2.3 billion, or $4.47 per share, on revenue of $22.2 billion.

Though some may say its down from an $11.6 billion profit last year, but if you see it with a “grounded perspective”, most of Goldman Sach’s competition is in tatters, or buried already.

To us, a surviving and standing Goldman Sachs represents strength. And they have managed to be significantly less exposed to much of the sub-prime crisis and its toxic derivatives.

More than that, Goldman Sachs has the belief to battle it out. If anyone on Wall Street can do it, it has to be Goldman Sachs. And at their current valuation, they are still a ‘buy’!