Working for the man

Or working for my little brother* as would be more appropriate.

My brother set up his own environmental consultancy company, Ecodyn, a few years ago. He would have called it Ecodyne, but someone already had the url for the website. It's been reasonably successful, expanding from just him to a staff nearing double figures in the last six years. Don't ask me what they do most of the time, I haven't a clue.

Some time before Christmas I agreed to help out with a project that one of his employees had put together before upping and leaving the company. Mostly this has involved setting up an online collaboration database, and phoning around numerous Scottish companies trying to persuade them to answer a short questionnaire.

The original plan was to get 140 questionnaires filled, representing various different sectors of the Scottish food and drink industry. The deadline for the completed analysis and report is the end of this month, and at last count we had about twenty-five forms returned.

The normal rule of thumb, if you're carrying out a postal survey, is that you can expect a 1-2% return. So for 140 responses, we should have sent out somewhere between 7000 and 14000 questionnaires. Quite apart from the cost of doing this, there are only 1200 or so businesses in Scotland that fall into the relevant categories.

Straight away you can see why the person who sold this project decided to bail out at an early stage.

The project was also given the green light to start in late October. Now any fool knows that the run-up to Christmas is the busiest time of year for food, drink and hospitality companies, so getting any response out of them south of January had to be the most wishful of thinking.

I wouldn't want you to get the idea I was doing this on my own. Most of the company has been drafted in to bully their clients into filling out questionnaires and to try and identify key personnel to target at other businesses. We've spent hours on the phones chasing up leads and pestering people. I hate phoning people, though I did it for six months for a living (maybe because I did it for six months for a living?) At least back then I was phoning people who wanted to be phoned, not cold-calling. What I've been doing (in fits and starts) for the last three months has been my all time least favourite job.**

Today was the final push to try and get a few more questionnaires filled out. It took all morning to track down and speak to just eight people, and even then I only managed to persuade three of them to even look at the questionnaire, let alone agree to fill it in.

I feel bad for my little brother, but I'll be really happy when the whole thing is over and I can go back to life as normal.


*who is bigger than me.
** and I've stuck my finger up sheep's bottoms for a living, remember.

Comments

Sandra Ruttan said…
Oh dear god, I can actually post!

I just wanted to try this to see if it was working.

26 hours, I think, and finally back up partially. Still not at Stuart's though. His comments become circus freaks when I try to comment.

Must be the special anti-Sandra filter he's been working on.

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