Driving home in the sweltering heat of last week I found myself behind a white van.  White van man had his elbow leaning out of the driver’s window in a rather languid pose.  On the back of the van was a small  panel advert – ‘Air-conditioning service from £35′ and a mobile number. Not only had the air conditioning unit in my car packed up, but my garage normally charged £80 for the service. I rang the number and a few seconds later the elbow shot in ”Hello – hang on a minute, I can’t hear you. Let me just  pull over into this lay-by‘.  His van pulled over and I followed him ‘Where are you calling from?’ ‘I’m right behind you’ ‘Oh my god that is spooky – are you the blue car?’ ‘Yes’ I replied ‘And anyway why is it spooky? I simply called the number you advertised on the back of your van’. He roared with laughter – and I was able to book a service on the spot. And an excellent service it was to – the car feels like a fridge now.  If you want to attract an impulse purchase put your mobile phone number on the back of your van and not just your email address.

Brad Burton rang up the other day. ‘Kevin, I urgently need a three-minute video to promote myself as a motivational speaker. Can you get to Doncaster race course next Wednesday?’ When I first filmed Brad a few years ago I noted that while he was built like a gorilla, he had the rather squeaky high-pitched voice of a girl guide and we might have to do some work in post-production to bring it down an octave or two.

Brad has employed a voice coach and personal trainer and the man we filmed last week was a completely different gorilla. He practically charged onto the seminar stage, clutching his beloved pizza box, and held the audience of Yorkshire business folk (not the easiest to warm-up) in the palm of his hand.

There is an authority and confidence that booms out of him now, mixed with some incredibly honest stories about his own personal growth and development. His stroke of genius, that has taken him from box room to a boardroom in less than two years, was to recognise every business needs two things: people and appointments. Using his innate marketing talents and creative imagination he set up a new Business Breakfast Network. Everyone thought he was mad. There were breakfast groups everywhere. But Brad held onto his dream and designed a format that simply blew away the cobwebs of traditional style network breakfast meetings. If this Somerset success story doesn’t inspire and motivate you to develop your business and expand your contacts, then nothing will!

A big thank you to Peter ‘X-factor’ Dickson for his fantastic introductory voice-over, and Barry Mellor for his excellent photography on the day.

Engraved on the doors of the Amazon warehouse entrance is Jeff Bezos’s motivational phrase to all his employees ‘Work hard, have fun, make history‘.  Just below this notice (and written in invisible ink), is the following addendum  ‘and thanks for making me a multi-billionaire in the process‘. The growth of Amazon has been truly phenomenal.  From a two-bedroom house in Seattle in 1994, with extension leads running into the garage to power the servers, to a global business now serving 45 million customers.

When I’ve run e-commerce seminars, one of the questions I regularly ask delegates is ‘What do you think is the secret of Amazon’s success?’  Almost everyone says – ‘ the low prices’ or ‘the range of stock they carry’.  I then bring up the quote from Jeff Bezos himself, which underpins the Amazon philosophy – ‘Amazon.com is obsessively focussed on great customer service‘. It is a sentence that should be enshrined in the heart of every e-commerce entrepreneur.

It is hard to believe that when Amazon started receiving its first online orders, the programmers coded a small electronic beep to sound in the office every time an order arrived.  Every beep was greeted with a loud cheer in the Amazon office. It wasn’t long before they had to switch it off. Permanently.