The Failings of Data Part III (Big Tech & No Experts)

Sorry It's Tin foil Hat Time.

Out of my 5 articles this was the one I was 50/50 on the posting. Past and future ones in this set are factual and can be verified just by using your common sense for the most but this article is more conjecture and may well get me in a bit of hot water. Even though what I am writing, if you think about this logically, seems correct. Hands-up, I maybe a bit odd (crazy) in some of the thought patterns but there is a close line between genius and insanity.

I will need to lay out some ground first and I will do this in the form of questions and an overall set of answers.

1. Is the world of business warm, fluffy and full of companies/individuals trying to give you and/or your company a helping hand whenever they can?
2. Once a company gets to what I call "megadontcare" size, do they have the best customer service, is there always someone at the end of a telephone to speak to you, do they always reply to your emails fast or even at all, or are you given a blog to read, written for free by an outsider “fan” or company. Also do not forget the useless FAQ section and no contact numbers. Who loves the AI bot giving you the run around and/or permanent wrong answers.
3. When a company gets to this size and this is so important “they have their fingers in every pie”, do you think that they are all nice to you/us/the world or do you think they will “maybe” not purposefully plan, alter different arms of their business, not for the benifit of their customers or competitors, in others words, for the best of their bank balance/shareholders?

As I always do, I like to throw a curve ball into the mix that is not part of what I am explaining but is a part of it, it that makes sense. Think of it as a small moon orbiting our planet, it affects us but is not that important.

Try and research the modern click farms and how they can be used to alter social media and change voting ratios. If the big 5 are not using them or an internal way of altering data, they know about them and are basically still selling data changed by them. "In business, being compliant in something, is being part of that something, in my opinion"

Once a company gets to a certain size and we really have not seen behemoths of this size since the Rockefeller Corporation, they are effectively major countries or at least they have the reach, power and abilities of superpowers. The difference being, they are not geographically located in one spot, they are everywhere and as such, work in tandem with real countries.

It has been proven that these mega corporations work for nations and help them for multiple objectives. Some countries even state if you want acsess to our market, you will need to help us with XYZ.

The main and most powerful tool these mega corporations now have is big data, then the next most powerful tool is the ownership of the tools that tier 2 companies use to decipher their provided data. Think of it this way and this is fact, a certain very large market place is also a retailer, it sells data and owns companies that give you tools to decipher said data, they also offer hosting for your online arm. I will just leave it at that.

Search engines for example, have been taken to court by some of the larger company’s multiple times for feeding incorrect (cannot say forged) paid for data that has affected them negatively. These have all been out of court settlements, I wonder why? The issue being, if you want to use search engine named ABC, you need to use their data, as it is their game. Here in lies the issue, do you think it is beyond them to give you data to make you spend more money in different areas that you might not need to, or wrong data to make you try and spend more money?

It you remember the 80/20 rule of sales, 80% of your money is made by 20% of your sales staff, or 80% of your money is made by 20% of your customer base, maybe 80% of search engines PPC money is made of 20% of their keywords?

Using the 80/20 in Real Life

Sales manager Peter has been told his sales team need to sell more batteries. He has 100 sales people, 20 of them are super stars, beating numbers month after month and 80 of them kick tyres as soon as they hit quota, if that. Peter being Peter and not understanding the 80/20 rule, speaks to his top 20 sales people who are already selling themselves to death and they reply, “we are hitting all our KPI’s on all products and sometimes beating them, never mind selling more batteries, why are you pushing me? we are top” Those 20, maybe will sell an extra battery each an increase overall battery sales by 20 units.?However Tracy, who knows the 80/20 rule of sales contacts her 80% that are doing bad, fires them up in her special way, and 50% of those 80% sell 2 batteries each more that week, as it is easier for them to create change is their numbers. That is a total number of 80 batteries, not only that, but Bob the number 2 sales person for the last 3 week sees that Trevor, who week on week is bottom has now beaten him on battery sales and now Bob is very fired up, as he does not want Trevor to beat him again. The moral is, do not push the few staff doing their job as guess what? they are doing their job anyway, push the 80% that are not doing their job and you will get more sales in the end and the whole team gets better.

Lets do this in the world of PPC; If you want to make more overall sales as a search engine, give wrong or squwiffed data that shows that these lessor known words are the best to buy, are these just the 80% of words that no one ever buys? I am sure one of the diehard super fans of these top 5 that say they never do any wrong and they are the light from the heavens, will find some real data centric madness way of proving that my semi tin foil hat wearing proposition above is wrong but please think…..THINK! Is it so far beyond the realms of possibility that this is what is happening? Is this yet another?reasons why major brands are making these massive errors

We can now add to the list from my past articles, this one:

• Squwifedd Mass data that’s wrong
• Big data consolidation systems that are actually controlled by the companies giving you the data
• AI’s that are not giving correct answers to quires and cannot, as they are disconected to our creative cognitive processes
• Social media echo chambers
• Rigged survey data
• And finally………… the big one that we are now getting onto “where are all the experts?????”

In recent years job ads for positions such as International Sales Director or CEO of company ABC, I can guarantee you will read that the majorly of their required skill set, is data or numerical oriented; this is because the company has changed it biased towards data not skills, nor their business.

When I want to employ a sales manager, I want them to be skilled at sales, not reading an excel spread sheet. If the board wants a new CEO, how many CEO’s have you seen lead and inspire from Microsoft word? I feel I have made my point that all we are getting data wise is wrong but now we are employing data following, non creative, non experts in their respetive fields, what do you think will happen? We can actully see it happening right now. In the consumer world the top 5 companies are making all the money and the smaller guys moving towards data will start to lose? HU HU! Have you seen this happening?

This is the Dichotomy: I read an advertisement for a CSO placed by a food manufacturing company and their must haves were:

1. Advanced excel skills
2. Numerical expert
3. Analytics guru
4. BA or better in economics

Not 1 thing about sales or sales skills or managing a sales team. We are losing our expertise in the work place.

We will soon see ads for a Systems Analyst asking for :

• Art BA
• Creative expert
• Music knowledge
• Qualified in photoshop

Sorry to write something unprofessional but "LOL LOL LOL" if it looks crazy on this side of the spectrum, trust me, to an educated and experienced person, it looks crazy the other side too.

In the UK, where I'm from, many of the top university graduate programs and post graduate courses in their business schools are not straight business or sales development etc that are all:

• Business with analytics
• International studies with applied analytics
• Data management and international sales

One of the top uni’s in the world for business, 95% of their post grad courses are all (fill in the blank) add the word business and then add something to do with data.

What Next, what do we do?

This is all good and well, standing on my orange box, writing about it but this is what I see on so many articles, no one ever tries to provide an answer to how we can at least get out of the situation that I have explained, which just continues the mess.

If I owned a games company that makes computer games for PS xBox and PC etc and I needed an international sales director I would be looking for

Must have’s:

1. Expert is Sales
2. Games guru
3. International sales experience
4. Drive
5. Target orientated
6. Sales management experience
7. Ability to forecast sales and budget responsibility
8. Prestation creation and presentation experience
9. Lateral thinker
10. Problem solver

Would be nice:

• 2nd or 3rd language
• Customer pipeline
• Ability to use modern CRM’s and software for collating reports and act on them
• Has no problems traveling

The reason why I would ask for this, is I want a games industry sales expert. I have no want for an accountant or systems analysis to run my global sales teams, as that means my global sales teams are being run by the software not a sales expert in my industry and we all know who owns the data and the downward chain from it. Tech as an overall arch is a tool to help, it is not how you run your business, fact! Now I imagine you thinking, If it is so bad Peter, should we just never use big tech and/or big data? Well you should and here is an example; I have a particular set of skills in helping companies move into, shall we say..... difficult and what some companies have said, untrustworthy countries. I point out to companies that approach me to help them move into said geo areas that this, what many think is a negative, is a good thing. If you are driving a car down a road that you know has pot holes in it, you alter your speed and driving style as you know that they will be there and as such you will make sure you do not hit them, if you know these Geo areas are untrustworthy and will cheat and steal off you, there is always a way of preparing for this. I call it, Internal Cultural Business Tax (ICBT), you write into your start-up costs and P&L going forward.?

In regards to this article, if you know what you are being given is flawed and wrong but everyone is using it and the "caring" mega corporation that is giving it to you, thinks you are using it, this is now your advantage. Even more amusing and a further advantage for you, is that competitors now have a team of NOT! industry experts using it.?

The game is rigged but you know it is and this is how you win.

"Business is simple if you let it be, work in your field of business not there’s and do it correctly"

Who wrote this?

My Name is Peter.

A great business is always built on great communication. Driven by a passion for digging out improvements and a love for making things grow. I’ve spent my career creating and delivering growth, spanning multiple global markets. Show me a CEO who has led through a spreadsheet and motivated his staff through Microsoft Word; data alone doesn’t drive people. Technology helps a business, but it isn’t?the?business. My specialism is picking apart the puzzle pieces and stripping back the layers and overcoming the hurldes. You don’t need to change everything; you just need to see the wood for the trees and focus on what you’re good at, to tackle the constraint points and get things moving. My international experience is what sets me apart. I’m keen to find companies eager to fill their ambitions. I have both the appetite and the understanding to help a business kickstart change and cross-cultural boundaries. I love sharing the joy of creating business success.

Contact me:?Expert in scaling businesses both domestically and internationally, real experience breaking into difficult but lucrative markets. Even though I'm from the UK, I can open the door "correctly" to China, South East Asia, USA and many more. Cross functional? I’m very at home in Retail, hospitality, E-Commerce, marketing: online & offline, Sales, presentations, negotiating, Blockchain, and project management. Change management into omnichannel? Here I am. Need to bring in investment? Let me raise those funds for you. From SMEs to large scale infrastructure projects, I can help. Gaining new customers? a past client I took from 10k customers to 1.2m in 6 months.

Some of the brands I have worked with, BEATS(USA), Kingston Media(Taiwan/China), Packard Bell(South East Asia) Sainsbury’s (UK), GAME(UK), Clarks(UK) Best Buy(USA), Harvey Norms(AUS), SB Furniture(TH) British Airways(UK) Thai Airways(TH) Lucas THX(Global) and many many SME’s

UK born but the globe is my home.

I do not take scalps with what I ask for and more than happy to look at equity or semi equity plays for the right projects. Reason? I know what I bring to the table works. I have a multitude of past references ranging from overseas government agencies and CEO’s, to hand written testimonials from companies now leading in their field.

Fear of losing is greater than the want to gain, so don’t lose this chance, get in contact.?

Cell +447958200865

Skills and Specialisms

Consultant Management | Strategic Planning | Sales and Marketing Director | Managing Director | Retail | Hospitality Management | Public Speaking | Growth Marketing | Project Management | Operations Director | Property | International Policy Research | Leadership Development | Corporate Training | FMCG | E-Commerce | Fintech | Blockchain | CEO

?