We’re overdue for pointing our readers in the direction of life in the middle, a blog by Paul Colman. Paul is an amusing and perceptive commentator on marketing, martial arts and other things. He’s a client of ours. And he’s apparently quite hard. But despite these things, we’d be recommending his blog as worth reading. Because it is.

He added an interesting post recently on cold calling.

However you look at it, cold calling is shit, really. I’ve been on both ends of it. It’s miserable having to call people you don’t know and try to sell them stuff. And it’s depressing getting a call from someone you don’t know who says, ‘And how are you today?’ when we both know that he doesn’t care how I am and he’s about to follow a script designed to part me inexorably from my time and my company’s money. So the two of us understand that he’s going to have to speak for as long as possible without drawing breath because basic politeness will probably stop me from either interrupting or simply hanging up, however tempting these options might be. And then I love those assumptive ‘questions’ in the script – ‘Is one of your company’s objectives to maximise revenue from blue chip new clients?’

‘No, our objectives are to carve figurines out of cheese and buy as many as possible of those scary little ornaments made of real, dead but somehow embalmed or glazed frogs playing little musical instruments.’

When you give an answer like this there’s usually a bit of a pause on the other end of the phone… And then you realise you’re not being clever or funny, you’re just making their already unpleasant job even worse.

Paul’s cold-calling guidelines look pretty good to me and I’d commend them to anyone who might be thinking of cold-calling wieden + kennedy. Unfortunately, in my exerience, most of the people who cold-call me haven’t gone to the trouble to look at our blog or website. So they probably won’t get this tip.

What makes a great meeting? Or is ‘great meeting’ an oxymoron? (You could be forgiven for thinking, watching the Apprentice, or The Office, that meetings in British business have to involve flip-charts, bullshit, bravado and the despair you feel as you remove the cellophane from the biscuit plate in conference room 14c in a business park in  Runcorn while you wait for someone to set up an interminable powerpoint presentation.) I started thinking about this after a meeting I attended this morning. It was a great meeting.

We’re pitching for the Guardian at the moment. As part of that process, we were invited to one of their editorial meetings. Which was fascinating for a number of reasons. Partly the content of the meeting – the people and what they discussed – and partly the style in which the meeting was conducted. Anyone from the Guardian is welcome to attend these open meetings, at which that day’s paper is reviewed and the next day’s stories are discussed. There’s a big team of people – about 30 – and they all seem incredibly well-prepared, smart, focused and switched on. No-one shuffles in a few minutes late because they slept in or missed the bus – they all assemble promptly and come ready to contribute. No-one makes excuses for not having had time to prepare. The mood is positive, supportive, but quite high-pressure. They cover a lot of stuff at some speed, as you would expect for an organisation that has to turn out in 24 hours, every day,  something that will be read by millions and scrutinised by the country’s opinion formers and leaders. It was inspiring to watch the passion and good humour with which they approach this. At the end of the meeting there’s no hnaging around chatting; everyone disappears at once to get on with things. It made me think a couple of things about our business:

– we’re lousy at running meetings productively and efficiently. There must be ways in which we can make them both more effective and more inspiring.

– people in communications talk about the pressure and stress of the deadlines we face and the high expectations of our clients. We have it pretty easy in both these respects compared to putting together the Guardian.