Tag Archives: Consistent

How Do You Interview for New Hires and Promotions? Part 2, Eight Points

Situation: A CEO seeks advice on interviewing both for new hires and promotions. What advice and guidelines do others suggest to improve interviews? How do you interview for new hires and promotions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Use an interview process that is consistent with the company’s plan and culture.
    • Start with the company’s mission statement.
    • Next develop the value system.
    • Draft a hiring plan that is consistent with the company’s mission and values and develop a process to support this.
  • Monitor the process over time and improve it through experience.
  • Assure that position descriptions reflect the individual(s) that the company wants to hire.
  • Before starting the hiring process, ask “What problem am I solving?” The answer will help to define the talents and attitudes desired in candidates.
  • Utilize “listening with a plan”.
    • Be clear on how the person being interviewed is delivering their message. Is their language positive, proactive, energized, or lethargic? Do they take responsibility for their own actions? Do they look at positive aspects of the company they work for and the people they work with? The objective is to make sure that the individuals sought for the job display these characteristics.
  • Hire for growth potential, not just to fill the current slot.
  • Hire consistent with the values and culture that the company wants to create and foster.
  • Hire to skills needed rather than value to yourself and the firm.
    • Don’t just hire on cultural aspects. Evaluate and check the skill set against what this person is supposed to accomplish. Getting the skills set right is just as important as getting the culture right.

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What are the Basics of a One-Page Sales Plan? Four Points

Situation: A CEO wants a simple, one-page plan for her sales organization to help coordinate the company’s sales and marketing efforts. The objective is to boost revenue growth and market penetration with consistent sales messaging. What are the basics of a One-Page Sales Plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The key elements of construction are: research, identification of revenue sources, and construction of a Road Map.
  • Three Examples of a One-Page Sales Plan are:
    • The Customer Survey-based Sales Plan – Ask the top 15 customers what the company’s current share of wallet (SOW) looks like and what they need to do to gain additional SOW. Use the responses to identify additional revenue sources and construct the Road Map.
    • The Service Extension Sales Plan – Construct a grid representing the company’s products and services currently offered to potential customers – particularly the company’s top customers. Create a separate grid showing services that the company does not currently offer and ask customers what the company needs to do to make those services appealing to them. Use the information gained to construct the Road Map.
    • The Current and Potential Revenue Sales Plan – Construct a grid representing the customers and markets currently served and by what product or service. Look at additional customer markets not currently served. Estimate the size, new business closure rates, and the total potential market opportunity. Use the information gained to construct the Road Map.
  • The advantages of a One-Page Sales plan include:
    • One page simplifies the process.
    • Summary of current and new targets.
    • Easy to track and measure.
    • Increases the chance of success.
    • Key people get on the same page.
    • Filters out undesirable customers.
    • A plan that can be completed and implemented quickly, cost effectively with a high ROI.
  • Additional Observations:
    • The company’s principal challenge is prioritizing business opportunities. Creating an “Ideal Customer Profile” helps to produce the desired result.
    • The company has limited resources to invest in new projects. Using an effective, low-cost tool helps to maximize the impact of investment.
    • The ideal customer profile will change over time based on the business environment and the company’s long term goals.

How Do You Design an Effective Sales Compensation Plan? Three Steps

Situation: A young company is redeveloping its sales department and wants to develop an effective sales compensation plan. What advice do members have for the company on effective sales comp packages? How do you design an effective sales compensation plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The first step is to develop broad outlines to the plan:
    • What salary range is the company contemplating? What can the company afford?
    • What skills beyond the ability to sell will be required? For example, will the sales person require technical skills in addition to sales skills? Or will the sales person need engineering design assistance both in making the sale and in providing service post-sale?
    • Who will be the ongoing contact for the customer once the sale is made? Will this be the salesperson, or will ongoing customer contact will be managed by engineering?
    • The higher the skill level and both sales and post-sale responsibilities, the higher the potential salary.
  • Once the broad outline is decided, set parameters and objectives for the position. The compensation plan should reflect and be consistent with these.
  • Third, establish the behaviors that sales people are expected to exhibit. Any compensation plan should reinforce the behaviors desired by the company.
    • If salespeople are expected to bring in high margin business, focus and scale compensation based on the margin generated by the sale.
    • If an objective is to avoid customers who are bad credit risks, then pay sales people on collected funds rather than on invoiced business.

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How Do You Maintain a Culture Focused on Quality? Five Points

Situation: Quality is a CEO’s #1 objective for his company. As the company has grown and processes have become more complex with more people involved, consistent quality is becoming an issue. The CEO wants to refocus and reestablish a quality culture to support future growth. What have others done to increase the quality of their product or service? How do you maintain a culture focused on quality?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Trust is a company’s most important commodity. This trumps financial exposure. In case described, the client trusts the company to produce and deliver a quality service upon which they can rely.
  • Go all of the way back into system design – or how any particular product system is set up.
    • Assemble a diverse group to review both the company’s deliverables and the system inputs.
    • Brainstorm everything that can break.
    • Prioritize the list based on potential exposure to the company.
    • Do a deep-dive analysis of the top 5 or 10 exposure areas.
    • Reprioritize after the deep dive has been completed.
    • Fix all issues identified in order of exposure.
    • Repeat the exercise periodically to assure that quality is maintained.
  • Empower and reward anyone who develops improvements in quality control.
  • Shield the company from any exposure over which it has no control. This can be accomplished through language in the company’s service agreements, and through language covering service deliverables.
  • Once the company has shielded itself from an exposure, set up flags in the monitoring systems that will alert the company of events or situations that will impact clients. This allows the company to inform clients of situations that may impact them without making recommendations as to how the client should handle the situation.

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How Do You Address the Compensation Side of an Employee Development Plan? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has an employee who consistently performs above expectations. The employee has asked whether they could be rewarded for over-performance on customer retention and for gaining new business from existing customers. How can this be structured? How do you address the compensation side of an employee development plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This is the type of employee that every CEO wants to see. Responding positively to the employee’s request is essential, and an opportunity to assure the employee’s loyalty and retention by the company.
  • One structure is bonus multipliers based on under or over performance. An example of the structure could be to assign and have the employee agree to a target for customer retention or new business acquisition from existing customers. Bonus is then impacted by their performance against this objective as follows:
    • Hit <85% of the target – no bonus;
    • Hit 85-100% of target – receive your standard bonus;
    • Hit 110% of target – get bonus times 10%
    • Hit 120% of target – get bonus times 20%
    • And so on.
  • This is just an example for the purpose of illustration. Variations on the original bonus plan can be negotiated with the employee, and adjusted over time to further encourage continued outstanding performance.
  • The multipliers do not necessarily have to be large, but are there to show that a certain level of performance is expected to receive this portion of the bonus. In addition, the employee can increase the bonus by overachieving their objectives.

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How Do You Manage a Remote Team? Three Suggestions

Situation: A company just acquired a remote office, including a team that has worked together for years. The manager has 20 years of experience. During the early weeks working with this office, some challenges have developed, specifically resistance to the new reporting relationship. Meeting schedules have been adjusted to accommodate the manager. The principal concern is buy-in from manager’s reports. How do you manage a remote team?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • From the discussion, the remote manager has been getting disparate and sometimes conflicting direction from several different people at the home office.
    • Meet with home office team. Develop a consistent set of expectations and priorities so that the Manager is not struggling with different directions from different people.
    • Consider that in the coming months there will be two business phases:
      • Phase A: Business and client transition to the new ownership.
      • Phase B: Client maintenance and business expansion.
    • Different strategies and objectives will be needed to address each stage.
    • Ask for input from the home team on how best to achieve these strategies and objectives.
  • Have a discussion with the remote office manager.
    • Explain Phases A and B and the focus of each phase.
    • Expectations will be flexible during Phase A as business is transitioned.
    • In Phase B the focus will be on Team procedures and development.
    • Listen to the remote office manager for her thoughts and suggestions on the strategy for each stage and how her team will best meet expectations.
  • Similar advice applies to working with remote managers and employees, a situation that has become more common following the COVID Pandemic. Listen to their input and ask for suggestions as how to best achieve their objectives.

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How Do You Enhance Teamwork and Leadership? Six Suggestions

Situation: A CEO wants to enhance teamwork and improve leadership at all levels within the company. Occasionally there is an attitude of “not my job” in response to a request. Differences in direction from leadership within the company has led to confusion of priorities. A common issue is the need to assure that priorities are aligned and consistently communicated across teams and the organization. How do you keep everybody on the same page? How do you enhance teamwork and leadership?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Conduct daily and/or weekly meetings to assure that everyone is aligned and on message. This has the additional advantage of bubbling up more ideas from deeper down in the organization.
  • Develop clear action items within these meetings. Confirm at least verbal understanding and agreement on each item.
  • Involve all team members in team meetings. Enforce participation.
  • As facilitator, take charge of the meetings.
    • Reduce long, drawn-out meetings to short, concise meetings.
    • Prep ahead of the meeting – let all participants know that they are expected to come prepared as well.
    • Stay on focus during the meetings.
    • At the end of important discussions, and again at the end of the meeting, summarize action items and responsibilities, and confirm understanding.
  • Other things that help:
    • Reduce the use of buss words during meetings. Speak in language that all understand.
    • Speak in terms of outcomes, not tasks. If the discussion is derailed, refocus on outcomes.
  • This works effectively in meetings with all levels of employees.

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How Do You Restore a Strong Team? Five Points

Situation: A CEO is looking at his company following the pandemic slowdown. Employees have returned but much of the energy that was there before the pandemic has dissipated. Employees seem to be looking for guidance and inspiration. How do you restore a strong team?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There are many options for team building activities. There have been some excellent TV shows like Monster Garage and American Chopper that address these. Though these series are no longer aired, episodes can be downloaded. These feature some very effective methods of building team camaraderie and energy.
  • One company regularly conducts team building activities:
    • Taking the crew to the new movie openings of epic movies that are best seen on the big screen.
    • Go-Cart racing.
    • This is done during working hours, and the employees appreciate both the effort of the company, and the fact that they are not asked to do this after hours.
  • While team building functions are an essential part of building and maintaining company culture, they are only part of the task of building a strong team. The group considered conditions that they had previously experienced that harmed morale and even prompted some employees to leave:
    • Lack of advancement or any clear path to advancement,
    • Ambiguity in roles and expectations,
    • Salary and advancement caps,
    • Poor managers, and
    • Lack of consistent or clear feedback on performance.
  • Looking at this list, the converse represent the things that are needed to build a strong retention culture and strong teams:
    • Clear expectations of employees in terms of performance,
    • Clear and public tracks for advancement in job and salary increases,
    • Frequent and consistent feedback on performance – both positive and as necessary corrective feedback – but always with considerate and constructive delivery,
    • Well-trained managers.
  • These factors parallel the findings of the Gallup Organization in their investigation of factors contributing to high levels of employee engagement and profitable growth.

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How Do You Maintain Your Culture as You Grow? Five Points

Situation: A company has been growing well and has developed a solid culture. Currently a key individual has decided to leave the company and has said that he is uncomfortable with the company’s culture and values and feels that he could make more money elsewhere. This has caused the CEO to question how he maintains the company’s culture. How do you maintain your culture as you grow?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The individual who is leaving was the wrong person for the company. The company is lucky that he is leaving.
    • As this individual departs the company, conduct an exit interview and listen closely to what he has to say.
  • Develop a simple statement of the company’s culture. This is not the current vision and mission but is a statement that represents the core values to be maintained by the company and staff.
    • This will help to identify and evaluate new people as they are brought onboard.
    • It will also help to guide the company as it faces both new opportunities and the numerous business choices that will be encountered in managing both current business and future growth.
    • As an example, J&J’s “Credo” starts: “We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality.”
    • This statement of values guides everything that J&J does and saved them as they formulated their response to the Tylenol scare.
  • The team leads are the key to cultural fit. They determine whether the culture of their teams is consistent with the culture of the company.
  • Look at the culture of subgroups within the company. These have a huge impact and represent areas where the company truly excels.
    • Microsoft excels at managing software development but does not have the skill set to manage networks – nor do they care to develop this. Focus on what the company’s leadership are staff are best at doing.
  • From what has been said, it appears that the company was founded:
    • To create a professional work environment – to the founder’s standards; and
    • To be of uncommon value to the company’s clients.
    • If leadership conforms to these two standards, they will guide decisions about new opportunities and directions. Either a particular choice fits these standards, or it does not.

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Do You Diversify or Stay the Course? Five Thoughts

Situation: A CEO seeks advice on the direction of her company. Her objective is to build a lasting company which is a wonderful place to work. She has a creative group of employees who have suggested options to expand the scope of the company. Should she maintain the current direction or entertain exploration of these options? Do you diversify or stay the course?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • With a solid, sustainable business model and the current level of revenue, diversification is not as important as it was when the company was a fraction of its current size. Current objectives could well be reached by just doing more of what the company does now.
  • The most important question to ask is: “What do we want from this or that option?”
  • Concerning the top opportunity under consideration, the group felt that:
    • It’s not the company’s core business and doesn’t play to the company’s strengths.
    • However, there are aspects of the opportunity that fit both the company and the existing client base. These represent an opportunity that fit’s the company’s culture.
    • Explore these aspects in small steps that do not detract from the current business.
  • If culture is a key ingredient of the company’s offering, how scalable is this, particularly into new markets? Look for ways to grow that are consistent with the strong culture that already exists.
  • Improve selling the full breadth of the company’s offering. The company offers many services that may be of interest to clients, but which are not mentioning in initial sales calls.
    • In sales presentations focus on the client, rather than a detailed description of the service offering. Offer clients a small brochure that covers the range of the company’s services.
    • By focusing on clients’ needs it is easier to selectively mention options that will serve these needs.

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