Why the worlds global local bank called me for PR and how confessions of a pricing man can make news.

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Speak PR podcast. My name is Jim James and I am your host today. So I'd like to talk to you today about second value pricing. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it's something that came to mind to me today because I registered East West Public Relations as a limited company on Monday and on Tuesday I got confirmation from, from Companies House and I'm pretty excited about it, to be honest. I'm 25 years after I registered my first company in Asia. I've registered my, my company here in the uk, moving from sole proprietor to private limited. So I rang up HSBC because I bank with them all over the world and have an account already. And when I said I want to convert this to a private limited, they said to me that that was going to require opening a new bank account. Now, I have to confess, I'm a bit disappointed about that. I was hoping that I would be able to commute one to the other. So I had a very nice chat with the young man on the phone because I was trying to navigate to the forms and I asked how long it would take and he said, actually, sir, I don't know because we've had a backlog of people working that used to be on the new account openings, now working on the bounce Back loans. Now, Rishi Sunak has obviously done a great job. Many companies, including my own, have applied for this Bounce Back loan and it's a saving grace. HSBC alone had 110,000 applications. And as the young man said, this is over six years worth of requests in the space of about six weeks. So the team are massively behind. And I said, oh well, actually we've applied and the bounce back loan was approved within five days and the money was in my account. I think you guys did a great job. He said, oh, you know, that is so nice. Thank you so much for letting me know and do you mind if I tell my, my team? And I said, I'm happy for you to tell your team because it's good news and they've done a good job and I appreciate it. So I thought, you know, nothing of it. Then today I received a letter from what I thought was Companies House, but I opened it. It was from a company called Counting Up. Now I opened the letter and it says, if Congratulations, Adrian, on starting a company on your own, which can be a challenge. Counting up makes it simple. Open your free business account in just five minutes, scan the QRC on your phone and download the app and Follow the setup signs and I will have a an account number and a sort code and a MasterCard. Now this letter says it's entrepreneurs like me that power our economy. And I agree with that and says we're like you, we got fed up with the month long wait to open a High street bank account with their lengthy application forms. Now I have to say I'm both impressed and slightly bemused how within 48 hours of actually opening a company and going to company's house, this letter is in my house. So one question is from a PR point of view, is it good to get some such a personal email so quickly? Is it, is it efficiency or slightly eerie? Well, I decided of course that I would have a look at the website and because I haven't heard of Counting up and I haven't seen it in any other press about banks and on the website there is a narrative about the founders who went to school together and started this bank not that long ago in 2018. But there's no, no press coverage. There's a blog and apparently an astounding 20,000 customers qualifying for the free account or up to £9 99amonth. So it calls itself the Accounting bank because it counts and combines banking and accounting for business. And the, the inevitable, because it's a great idea. I inevitably went online and checked things like trustpilot and I found one, one piece of coverage saying that Counting up isn't officially a bank so your deposits won't Enjoy the standard 85,000 pound protection that comes with the FSCS, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Now so I was interested in the free, I was interested in the quick. I'm interested in integrating my banking with my online accounting. So that would save me doing a direct feed from my Xero account to my HSBC and back again and so I could save a whole step. So from a PR point of view I have thought that's a great proposition, but there isn't a lot of supporting evidence online to make me feel comfortable and particularly happy about taking that step. So I'm influenced here by the Cascade theory of Watts which I've mentioned before in our blog on how Captain Tom became a global sensation, and the Cascade theory of Watts and, and other people, including Dodds Artridge shows that the, the importance of influencing people to get viral PR is to reach out to people who are easily influenced because it's through these people that you can get great pr. Now, Counting up, they've got a lovely narrative on their website and the, the issue though, for me is that I don't see the, the conversations online creating for me a cascade that's reassuring me about what I should do with my money. Of course, one of the things that I look at when I'm looking at the anything is price. And so I have decided to record a video on my website and I have included on there an explanation of why we're now publishing our prices online. Now most professional services firms issue putting their pricing online because you know, let's have a conversation because you know you don't buy on price, you buy us as service providers. But we recently lost a piece of business in Singapore and I asked the the company always why we win and also why we lose. And this official business organization in Singapore, they kindly wrote back to me saying that actually all the proposals met the requirements which makes sense because all agencies meet the brief, otherwise they wouldn't be there. But the other agencies had been more competitive on price and added in more things that were going to be part of the package deal. Now agencies like mine, we all spend time and money building these proposals for clients and trying to differentiate, but we also have to compete on price. Now I decided that what I'm going to do and have done is I've published my fees online because actually people need to decide fairly early on if they can afford the services I'm offering or like counting up. Do you want to pay £9.95 for your banking integrated with your with your finance app? Because as Herman Simon says who is the considered to be the father of modern pricing, the ultimately the consumer or the customer is only willing to pay for the value that he or she gets. So if I look at counting up and I say for £9 95am I getting value? Quite probably. If people look at my website and they say am I getting value from this agency? Then I have to hope that they say quite possibly. Now what we know is that this customer in Singapore that used to be a customer then moved away from us and purchased based on price last year and were unhappy in fact with the lower cost provider they went for because what they found was as is so often the case, you get what you pay for. Now what Herman Simon goes on to say and I can recommend his book, it's called author of the book is called Confessions of a Pricing Man. Price affects everything. Not only does he say that ultimately a customer is willing to pay for the value he or she gets, but he goes on to say that the only fundamental driver of willingness to pay is the perceived value in the Eyes of the customer. The important word there is the perceived. And often in public relations we talk about perception management. That used to be a phrase that I believe Adelman or someone like that coined. So the perceived value of your business and your offering is really what people are going to pay for. Now Herman goes on to create, to give an illustration, and he talks about what he calls the second order effect. And this is something that in public relations we almost never talk about and nor do we in advertising. We go for the primary order effect, which is the, if you buy this, what do you get out of it? The secondary order effect is much more powerful. And he brings the case of the air conditioner that was being sold for trucks. And there was a company making premium quality air conditioners and they were losing market share to the companies that were making low cost air conditioning units. So they commissioned a survey. And what they found when they did the survey from the buyers of these air conditioners, the expensive trucks were buying the expensive air conditioners. And what they found was the real value was the reduced number of sick days of the drivers due to fatigue in the heated cabins. So the poor air conditioning was basically reducing the quality of the environment for the drivers. They were then able to drive less distance and they were taking more sick days. So the proposition for that air conditioning company became not buy us because we're low price and we can compete, but by us because actually the performance of our components are higher. It costs more to buy because it's better quality and that will keep your, your drivers healthier because there will be less downtime on the air conditioning. So it's the secondary order effect that became the marketing message. So let's think about, let's think about your pr and when you're talking about the primary order effect for your business, often in PR people look for an agency and they say, I want to get noticed. And how much does that cost? Now that's normally the primary order. The secondary order is that they want to get a new contract or they want to look good or they want to get something else. And this is what Paul dunn of the B1G1 talks about, which I mentioned in an earlier podcast is the. So that question, as you're looking at your marketing and your pr, if you have issues with your product in terms of marketing, can you extend the value by saying, we provide this quality, this value so that you can do this? Now, today I spent three hours making a video of the Speak PR program. And the Speak PR program is a five stage methodology that I'VE developed for entrepreneurs and business owners to be able to manage their own PR because they may or may not be to afford an agency. When I went to make the video today, I wondered what's the perception of value that I am giving when I do my promotion and when I make my video? So I've invested in a high definition camera, I've invested in rode, the brand new RODE wireless microphones so that the sound quality is perfect. I have a RODE desktop for here. I have the best MacBook Pro that I can afford because the lighting, the sound all add value to the, to my presentation. And I would like my, my audience and my potential customers to see that if, if I pay this much attention to what I am delivering and how I deliver it, I would deliver that much value to them. And the secondary order is that their business would then improve, their career would then improve. So the importance of lighting, sound and I also took a tip from Brian Hill who I mentioned on the podcast earlier was about the importance of hands. So I took the camera back and I made sure that I'm filming my hands as well. So that it's not just a talking head, it's also about my whole body. Because if it's true that our hands send the most messages, then if I'm giving a presentation, then not only are my slides important and my voice important and the lighting, but also that people can see me gesturing now. Meanwhile, Andy Walter was busy working at the Progress Shed. And Andy shared their ambition for building their company and as indeed he was laboring hard to rebuild their offices. Now, as we've seen, ambition is a good thing. And if we look at the Counting up website, there's a narrative about the ambition and it's very compelling that Tim Fouraker and his high school friend, the computer science classmate Mike Mote, they have the ambition to build something bigger and greater than what currently exists. The problem is that it's not just the 995 and integrating my banking with my accounting software, it's the secondary order value that matters because looking after my money, looking after my accounting is only part of a much bigger picture. It's part of running my business too. So the absence of other people telling me that they're doing that already with Counting up makes me a bit nervous. Now on my way home, driving back from the three hours of filming of the speak PR program, HSBC rang me and they said, Mr. James, thank you so much for your compliments today to the call center. We, we were wondering if you'd be willing to give a testimonial if you'd be willing to talk to our PR agency, Grayling, as a Bounce Back loan recipient that was applied for and delivered through hsbc. Well, of course I'm in pr. I can see the value of PR both for myself and for hsbc. I'm not embarrassed about taking the Bounce Back loan because I think it's a very prudent thing to do from a business perspective. And if I can have, you know, an opportunity, an audience with HSBC and East west public relations being seen together, then obviously that's potentially good PR for me. And plainly, you know, they must be desperate, but they're obviously thinking it might well be good PR for them, too. And I have an interesting story because I've been overseas for 25 years and I've come back and the timing of this is all. It was all a bit of a challenge. So the HSBC speed of solution has been really very beneficial. So there's a narrative that I'm weaving in and I mentioned to the lady from HSBC that I'd be happy to share. So the secondary order value of working with a bank like HSBC is the reassurance that that my funds are going to be safe, the continuity of where my business currently resides, but also the halo effect that can come with a large brand. As you plan your PR and you manage your communications, maybe look at what's right about a bank, like counting up in terms of the offer. But maybe look at what is the challenge for a company like counting up when it comes to overcoming how they're communicating the secondary order value. I recommend Herman Simon's book. He says price affects everything. And it's not just the price, it's how willing are we to pay for the value that we get. But most importantly, as an entrepreneur or a business owner, how are you communicating the value that you're bringing to the company and the company is bringing to your customer or to your consumer? Thank you for listening to this episode of Speak pr. I pray that you're safe, that your business is profitable, and that you keep on communicating. Thank you. My name is Jim James.