Don’t worry – I am not going to
sing.
I am a reluctant desk jockey. I
like to be out and about, life on the open road and all that jazz. I also
genuinely like meeting people face to face. Telephones are functional things.
You lose the facial expressions and body language which are so important in
building rapport. I also like to know when people have smiled at one of my
jokes. I also irritate the hell out of Michelle (Our toner recycling program
administrator) and Denise (credit control, accounts and all round good time
gal) and have to give them a break occasionally before they kill me.
So last Friday I decided to
tackle our local town, East Grinstead in West Sussex, ostensibly to promote our
rather excellent Amnesty aimed at local residents, giving them a chance to get
rid of their old PC’s, laptops etc whilst ensuring that the hard disks are
properly wiped. We have been in the East Grinstead Courier (http://www.eastgrinsteadcourier.co.uk/)
and on Meridian 107FM to promote the notion of data security to the
uninitiated, so I wanted to follow that up with local businesses so that they
could tell their employees. Full Amnesty details can be found in the news
section on www.ereco.co.uk
And yes, of course, I had an
ulterior motive. I wanted to sell our services too. Because if you are a
regular reader of this blog you will know that far too many businesses are
unaware of what they should be doing with their old equipment. I reckoned that
I would have a nice soft approach to get talking to people, and that would lead
to other things, as is my want.
East Grinstead is a fairly normal
South Eastern town for the uninitiated; real commuter country, clearly prosperous in places and in
others just a tad the other way. A nice little town centre with a few empty
shops, the usual selection of charity shops, a big Waitrose and a Sainsbury’s.
For those that don’t know it, we are 8 miles from Gatwick, 30 from Brighton and
40 odd from London. The infamous Mr Angry from Tunbridge Wells is only ten
miles or so away...
As a barometer of IT recycling
efficiency I expected it to be fairly normal. I have enjoyed similar days in
Dorking, Horsham and Reigate in the last couple of months, and I reckon I have
a feel for the SME market now, but here are some key results from my Friday
travails.
- I am not joking about people having a pile of IT kit somewhere in their office.
- People really do think deleting files in Windows and emptying their recycle bin is data safe.
- I am a natural flirt.
- A surprising amount of people read the East Grinstead Courier.
- Likewise listen to Meridian 107FM. It is generally agreed that I really have the perfect face for radio and that my voice is ok. I may sing...
- It is getting quite cold.
- Business owners/senior managers do not think about the kit they are disposing of as waste at all. They remember how much they paid for it. They resent the idea that it might have a life and a value after them, and they rarely consider the risks of not making sure their old hard drives are properly wiped.
- There are more coffee shops than there are public toilets.
- When you get a chance to explain the reality of life to people, you can get through to them and then you can help them.
By the last point, you will
realise that I got some sales. There is a reason for that. Well, there are
several really. Firstly and most obviously I am not bad at what I do. Secondly,
what eReco do is both needed and fairly, transparently priced, and it is usually
just a question of finding someone with a pile of junk behind their desk or in
the bottom of the cleaner’s cupboard when I am out and about like this. I have not drawn a blank yet from these
days out and I am not planning on doing so anytime soon. Thirdly, there are a
lot of people who really wanted this problem solved for them, so I cannot claim
that there was any true brilliance on my part (false modesty obviously). I just
got in their face, explained myself concisely and professionally and gave them
the reassurance and information they were looking for.
eReco are ‘selling’ a service I
suppose. Except we aren’t, really, in my mind. There is an episode in Red Dwarf
when Lister, Rimmer and the Cat end up on Backwards Earth, a place where you
jump out of a box in the ground and get progressively younger until eventually
you climb back up your mother’s unmentionables and disappear. We are a bit like
that in many ways. We take something a business has no further use for, fire it
up, mend it, clean it, remove all traces of the previous owner and try to keep
it on the road for a few more miles.
Our customers pay for a bit of
transport, a fair amount of sorting and moving it around doing stuff, a few bits of legal paperwork and the
cost of removing the data. What we are doing is making sustainability possible.
That is not a service as such; it is our duty.
That might sound a bit heavy but
it’s true. If you cut corners with this stuff you aren’t just breaking the
rules and risking fines, you are messing with the future. We sometimes get
quite passionate about what we do but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion
that we don’t ‘sell’ the real purpose of recycling hard enough.
East Grinstead certainly
responded to the personal touch but we have to work together to get the message
out there on a wider scale. I have said it before and I will say it again, people...both
consumers and businesses (of all sizes) need educating about this stuff. The
‘green’ message is not helped by the perceptions of what ‘green’ is.
Sustainability maybe a hash tag on Twitter but the average man in the street
needs help to really get it.
The same is true about data
security. You only have to listen to the news to realise that...the amount of
successful phishing going on, lax passwords, malware breaches...even before you
get to the issue of disposing of redundant kit.
People are not taking these
issues seriously and that is why eReco will be permanently on tour shouting
this stuff from the rooftops.
You have been warned...
No comments:
Post a Comment