Friday 16th March 2018

Welcome to your Weekly Roundup featuring articles from across Premier.

For more information on any of the articles featured below or for any general enquires, please email [email protected]

Going for Gold

Sales Strategy

Following on from the NTE session ‘Don’t wait for the opportunity, create it’ we are hosting a full day to help franchisees and BDMs to physically complete their own sales strategy to implement immediately, focussing on the sales process. The session will be facilitated by Danny Melling with Glenn Hoy of TIME associates and franchisee James Jennison who were both on the expert panel at the NTE session, which attendees rated as 9.5/10.

Who should attend?

Franchisees / BDMs who are committed to securing at least 20 new school meetings before the end of this academic year and are committed to investing time and/or money into the sales process and advertising. As a commitment from us we will offer those who attend a ‘Match funded’ deal on TIME appointments for up to 10 appointments per territory (worth £450) in return for weekly data sharing on sales progress.

The session is from 9.30am – 4:30pm on Thursday 22nd March.

For those who are unable to attend due to other commitments on this day, Glenn Hoy will be repeating the session on Sunday 25th March from 9.30am – 4:30pm.

Booking deadline for both is Friday 16th March so be quick and don’t miss out!

Spaces are limited so book today to avoid disappointment!

Brace Yourselves...

GDPR is coming!

In a nutshell, GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) gives customers lots more control over how their data is used, and how they are contacted by companies. Great if you want to stop getting spam, but a real challenge for people like us trying to promote our services!

There are also really strict rules about data security, relating to how we store and transfer data, and how long we keep data for. Customers also have a right to ask to see all the data we hold on them, and have any inaccuracies corrected quickly.

We’ve got until 25th May to become compliant. The majority of the changes will be made at HQ, but we need YOU to get involved now to help the whole company achieve compliance by May.

What do YOU need to do right now?

First of all, go and brew a big cup of tea/coffee/kiwi and kale smoothie/protein shake - then come back, obviously... This is not the most exciting of subjects, but it is incredibly important, and we need to get it right!

The biggest challenge we face right now is that every territory handles data differently - what they collect, how they collect, where they store it, and what they do with that data.

We can give you guidance on best practice, and give you the tools to become compliant, but it will be the responsibility of individual territories to devote time and energy to getting there.

The first step is to start thinking differently about data. Have a think, and make a list of all the data you are responsible for. At HQ, we’ve discovered data in all sorts of nooks and crannies... CVs hiding away in email inboxes; Excel spreadsheets of customer addresses on old laptops; countless parent emails squirreled away in SendGrid or MonkeySurvey. Work out exactly what you’ve got, and then assess:

• Did I need to collect this data? If you’re not doing anything with it (e.g. recording the ethnicity of participants to a programme) then you cannot collect it. Even if you think you may wish to do something with that data further down the line (‘a funding bid may need me to demonstrate the diversity of my after-school programmes’), if you can’t justify it at the poin you collect the data, you cannot collect or keep that data!
• Where am I storing it? If it’s going straight into our central database, great! If you’ve got offline email lists that could be out of date, that’s a problem.
• Do I need to hold on to this data? If you have contact info for parents whose children are now over 12, we don’t have any products to sell to them, so their info should be deleted or anonymised - more on this to follow...
• Send us any examples of GDPR issues you’ve already encountered that you need help with. If they’re common issues, we’ll include them in the GDPR guidance over the coming weeks.

Not doing this will be the quickest way to get Premier flagged for non-compliance. We all know how annoying it is to keep getting spam from a company you’ve unsubscribed from - from 25th May, all it takes is one grumpy customer to report us and we could be in serious trouble. So let’s not run that risk!

What we’re doing at HQ

Finally, we’re making sure all our systems are shaped place to make GDPR-compliance a breeze in the future (i.e. getting the correct consent at the first point of contact, and having automated systems built to handle opt-outs).

What happens if we get it wrong?

Here’s the serious bit. If we are inspected by the Information Commissioner’s Office and found to have gaps in our policy or - worst case scenario - have suffered a data breach, we can be fined up to €20m or 4% of global turnover, whichever is higher. So, it’s really important we get this right.

It’s not all doom and gloom!

Lots of businesses are concerned that when customers are asked for consent, they will say no. It’s likely that we will be left with a smaller database of contacts because not everyone who receives our comms wants to hear from us.

And if you think about it... why would we waste money trying to talk to people that don’t want to hear from us? Isn’t it better to talk to a smaller group of engaged people than shout to a room of people who aren’t interested in what we’re selling?

The other long-term bit of good news is that GDPR is stringent enough to bring us in line with many other country’s data protection regulations. This means data can be freely shared within the EU and across the USA... Hello, Premier International!

What’s next?

Once you’ve sent us some practical examples of GDPR issues you’re facing on the group, we’ll send out another communication with guidance on those specific examples.

We’ll also keep you in the loop with what we’re doing at HQ to make the transition to GDPR-compliance as smooth as possible.

So, send us your questions about GDPR issues you’ve encountered, or queries uncovered following your data audit, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions!.

National Walking Month

#TRY20 with The Golden Mile!

National Walking Month is coming up in May, and to get involved with Living Street’s initiative, Premier are calling all franchisees to #TRY20 with The Golden Mile!

So, how do I get involved?!

Download the resource pack below – including poster, social banner, letter for parents, and info sheet for schools. You can use this to help you sign schools up and promote your #Try20 challenge!

Share your photos and videos from your #Try20 Golden Mile Challenges, tagging @PremierActivate and we’ll share them on our national Facebook / Twitter accounts.

New Balance Competition Winner Announced!

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR FRANCHISEES

Please can we request that all franchises advise us of their plans for the recent snow days which led to cancellations. Please email [email protected] and let us know if you plan to offer any form of compensation such as a refund, or extra sessions.

Thanks for your co-operation.