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MONDAY
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Unusually the weekend hasn't included any work, so it isn't necessary to start the day by checking the post and e-mail to see what has arrived since Friday. I typically get about 25 e-mails a day and always try to reply promptly to everyone. Then I attend a meeting with the marketing management office. Jigsaw's public relations providers. They organised the media launch of the business a few weeks ago and are now heavily involved in managing the enquiries this has produced. Lastly I meet two members of the Labyrinth team who are working on a consultancy project for a grocery manufactunng client. We discuss various aspects of the project prior to preparing an action plan to be fed back to the client.
TUESDAY
A day of detailed work. We are currently putting together a major new business proposal on behalf of Jigsaw. Today our project manager and myself spend the day writing sections as diverse as "Our approach to managing KPIs (key performance indicators)" and The Jigsaw Client IT interlaces". We also have a wide range of conversations with our eight haulier-partners to establish exactly how they want us to approach various aspects of our response. The client's tender document is well written and clear, which does at least eliminate a lot of the usual problems encountered when dealing with this sort of matter. The hauliers always have a substantial input to various commercial aspects of the tender. We are mindful of the need to tread a narrow line between providing the client with an operationally practicable solution at an attractive rate while still enabling the transport operations to return a margin—never an easy proposition.
WEDNESDAY
Most of the day is spent in the car travelling to and from a presentation given to another prospective Jigsaw client. Because Jigsaw is in its infancy we have to spend time introducing and explaining the concept to our prospects. We leave the presentatioi with a list of areas in which we need to do more work prior to our next meeting with the client, and spend the entire journey home on the phone trying to organise some of this.
THURSDAY
We begin the aay with a sales meeting to go over Jigsaw's Pipeline report and marketing plan. Meetings with Labyrinth's accountants and our bank manager follow. In the afternoon I read a tender document received by Jigsaw from a potential customer and evaluate our suitability for it. Jigsaw is a low-overheac business, and in order to maintain the edge that this gives us it is important that we don't waste time and effort on customers who are unsuitable to the services we offer, or who are not serious about changing their transport supplier.
FRIDAY
I speak to two Labyrinth clients about projects we are currently helping with. One relates to the productivity of an existing operation, and the second to assisting with a marketing plan. We very strictly assess all consultancy enquiries to ensure that there is no conflict of interest with work we are doing for Jigsaw. Fortunately, to date there have only been one or two jobs that we have had to decline on this basis. In the afternoon I meet the creative team who have designe the Labyrinth website to discuss some modifications and this year's Christmas card design. When we reac a "creative impasse" on the subject of Larsen-style cartoon reindeer I decide to leave them to it, and hea home for the weekend!