Here is a snippet..

The financial service industry needs to rebuild trust. Without trust, the industry cannot stand. When a Goldman Sachs would sell financial derivatives products to its clients, and create a counter product to bet against them on the basis that they would fail and made billions of dollars, on the basis of its successful bet, something has fundamentally gone wrong with banking. The engagement of the US Congress with Goldman Sachs executives was very revealing. The Goldman executives tried to show that they did not break the law, that what they did was legally permissible. It does not matter. It is unethical. Goldman Sachs clients who bought the financial derivatives products that it sold trusted it. Goldman, by betting against its own product did not believe in what it sold.

Read more here

Most businesses (especially small and medium scale ones) are finding it useful to attract their online followers to offline events. They are also finding out  that it does not have to be anything fancy. It could be something as simple as 5 – 10 people meeting for cocktails in your living room, or a BBQ in your yard…

A few principles to live by when organising such events:

1. Have an idea how many people you want to have around. Crowd control is good so you get a good chance of meeting everyone.
2. Have defined objective(s) – for example: I want everyone to leave their contact details.
3. Have an agenda – this is in line with having objective(s). It gives some structure and helps you meet defined objective(s). Just make sure your agenda is not boring.
4. Have fun – try to avoid hard selling people. It’s a turn off.

A useful tool for reaching out to new customers is Facebook’s events tool. It allows you to setup an invite to an event and get people to commit (or not) to attending your event.

Have events worked for you?

The reality, however, is that many businesses are guilty of this sin online. Most businesses and brands have set-up pages and groups on Facebook and other social networking sites with the main objective of attracting people. This is a noble idea and it is to be commended.

However, it is important that if you are going to maintain a presence online, you should be ready to answer online questions and queries that come from you customers. You may be able to get away with not answering your calls in the office, but it does you absolutely no good if you don’t respond to customer queries online, as other people WILL SEE that you are not responding.

So do your business a favour and keep the (on)line(s) of communication to your customers open.

I will be glad to know what your experience has been in this regard.

(P.S. If your Internet is slow, the trick is to press the ‘Pause‘ button until the red indicator below the screen has filled the bar. Then you can press ‘Play‘ and listen without any interruptions)

I would be grateful to know what thoughts this speech inspires in you!