Tag Archives: Emotion

How Do You Engage People in a New Offering? Eight Points

Situation: A founder has created a new social media offering. The concept is to attract individuals with complimentary interests and have them engage each other for mutual benefit as a better source of information and connections. Implied trust is an important component of these connections. How do you engage people in a new offering?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • People are willing to experiment with a new social media offering – in this case because they like to help others. It makes them feel good and they like the role of helping others.
  • People are always seeking good talent. If this does a better job helping them to find good talent, they will try it out.
  • Hiring managers prefer to pass on a resume of someone known to them because a bad referral could reflect badly on them. Strengthen this aspect of the offering through information gathered from participants.
  • A small pool is a negative. Broaden the pool to include those who are looking to step up their careers. Think of this as people-to-people direct hiring and use a social approach with broad appeal. This will increase the number of people willing to play.
  • Be the place where people can come to help others. Add additional tags – help to build confidence and get inspiration. Getting a job happens as a consequence.
  • The element of trust and relationship is important to many – 40% of early users of the current network express this. Assure that the value proposition is also attractive to the 60% who are not concerned about this.
  • The network will build on the energy from the emotional play.
  • Expand the options for how people can help. Investigate allowing trusted referral relationships within the system. Allow people to refer trusted people in their own networks. This can include people who “I would trust to refer good people.”

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How Do You Market to Company Insiders? Three Suggestions

Situation: The key to a career development company’s growth, historically, is leveraging relationships with insiders in potential client companies who know the needs of their own companies. The key benefits to these people are access to good people, no recruiting fees and feeling good about the experience. What is the marketing message to this group? How do you market to company insiders?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Ask them. You already have a number of company insiders who work with you. Develop a detailed survey to query what they see as the key benefits of working with your company, and which of these benefits are most important to them.
    • Consider a broad quantitative survey that you can administer via the web.
    • Complement this with a smaller in-depth interview survey to understand qualitatively how they benefit from their relationship with your company and the service that you provide.
  • Your equity is the experience that these people enjoy when they work with you – this is your leverage.
  • Your pitch is emotionally oriented. Stick with this. Saving recruiting fees will not be as important given your focus and the company insiders that you are likely to attract.

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Arbitration or Suit to Settle a Dispute? Five Factors

Situation: A company has a long-term client that stopped a project suddenly 6 weeks ago with no explanation. Later, the client called saying that they do not intend to pay for work completed to date. Would you pursue either arbitration or injunctive relief to settle this dispute?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you have evidence of acceptance of a project contract or other documentation that the work proceeded under agreement with the client, this strengthens your position.
  • There may be other circumstances of which you are unaware such as financial or cash flow difficulties. Inquire through discrete channels to clarify this. Knowledge of the inside situation provides leverage as you negotiate a settlement.
  • Do you want to retain this client? If they have been valuable over the years this may just be the behavior of a single individual. If this is the case, work with your key contacts to bring this situation to light and try to solve the problem without legal action.
  • Because you have a long-term relationship with the client, focus your communications on the President rather than the VP who shut down the project.
    • Established your documentation, and complete your research on whether the client has cash flow problems; then call the President to work out an amiable resolution.
    • While you are justified in feeling miffed about the situation, business is business, and in this case it appears that your long-term relationship and the value of the ongoing business with the client outweigh the emotion of the present situation.
  • Focus on resolution of the dispute between the parties and do everything possible to resolve it between the companies rather than through legal avenues. This will help preserve the relationship with the client. Provided that you continue with this client, clean up the portion of the contract specifying notification and acceptance requirements and other areas of the contract that require attention.

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How Do You Structure Your Bookkeeping Function? Four Suggestions

Situation: A small company has a long term clerk employee. This individual is responsible for AR/AP, Payroll and also HR manuals and reports to the CEO. This individual has been a good employee, but doesn’t perform well in this role. How would you structure accounting and bookkeeping in a small company?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This is a key role, but there are a number of options. One is for the individual to continue reporting to the CEO, but train someone else to back them up. This will enable you to either shift the individual to another, more appropriate role within the company, or to continue with minimal disruption if the individual leaves.
  • Because of history and loyalty, this is a difficult emotional issue for you as CEO. It is important to consider what you would do if you could remove your emotions from the issue. If the answer is that you would eliminate the clerk position and hire a qualified, experienced bookkeeper at the appropriate salary, then this is your answer.
  • Packard’s Law – from one of HP’s founders – is that no company can grow beyond the capabilities of their employees. Hire the right person. This individual must be process-oriented – someone who routinely checks their own work to make sure that it is right. There is an adage in accounting that good accounting is 20% knowledge and 80% double checking the work. Hire a person who loves to do this.
  • Take care of this position in the best interests of the company, and look for another, more appropriate within the company job for the clerk.

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