With my three children more interested in their Xboxes and WhatsApp than playing football in our field next door, Claire and I decided, to fence it off and bring two sheep to keep the grass down.
The first task was to fence off the field into two paddocks and we employed a local fencing contractor to do the job. Marcus arrived with the most impressive piece of machinery I’ve ever seen.
“Totally designed for the job of erecting fences and comes direct from Japan” he announced.
Have a look yourself. There’s hydraulic arms to thump home the posts, gear to pin the wire to the posts, holders to drag the heavy panels, a machine to nail-gun the panels. It does everything in the fence trade other than grow the wood.
Most impressive – the perfect tool for the job.
What about your tools for your job, are they the perfect tools? Let’s do a quick MOT on your typical tools
- Your Social Media – do you use it wisely to drive business and gain a reputation.
- Your CRM system – is it tailored to you and stored in the cloud? Do you run your business from it including diary management, email etc.
- Your communication inboxes, in other words how you receive communications from the outside world – email inbox, voicemail, mail/post, SMS Tex Messaging, Evernote. Have you tried https://ifttt.com/ what a timesaver.
- Your Laptop, tablet and SmartPhone – doesn’t matter which model or apps you use, but do you use its functions 100%?
- Your apps and software – again doesn’t matter as long as you learn how to use them fully.
- Your Factfind system, is it fit for purpose?
- Your Communications software – webinars, Webex, Citrix, Skype, BigMarker – have you the right one to suit your needs. I use Skype since it works perfectly for my webinars which are video based rather than slide based.
- Your data and files, are they accessible in the cloud? Cloud is not expensive or complex nowadays. Microsoft OneDrive, tied into their 365 cloud system is excellent or Dropbox for Business. $10 per month.
- Your Print on Demand capability, photocopiers are so last century.
- Your brain and skills – your CPD regime – how much time do you allocate, I do a day a week, but that’s me.
In no time Marcus had the fencing up and the sheep arrived. Now there’s a perfect tool for the job of cutting grass. A natural blade in the teeth, a system to get rid of the clippings and fertiliser naturally falling out the back of the machine.
