Tag Archives: Resource

What New Business Options Should You Pursue? Five Guidelines

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Situation: The CEO of a company observes that the business climate has been uncertain, but she hopes that it will improve soon. This will open up new options for her company. As these start to develop how do you decide what to do and what not to do? What new business options should you pursue?
Advice from the CEOs:
• Talk to your customers. What do they value about your current product or service and what is less valuable? Build on opportunities that customers value. What options are most consistent with the company’s strength and focus?
• Consider a customer survey – either online like Survey Monkey or by telephone. If there isn’t in-house expertise to design and administer a survey, look for knowledgeable outside resources. Assure that the survey questions will drive understanding of the company’s focus and potential.
• Get an expert to review the survey and administration plan. Before launching the survey to your full customer base, test it with a select group of customers. This will tell you whether it will produce usable information. If it doesn’t, revise the survey.
• Which opportunities will build sustainable recurring revenue vs. opportunistic or one-time revenue? Recurring revenue can be lower margin if the income stream is sustainable. Balance efficiency and utilization. For example, fixed fee service contracts that renew consistently.
• Judge opportunities against your “Hedgehog” as defined by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great: What you are passionate about? What you can be best at in your marketplace? What you can measure by a single economic ratio?

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How Do You Frame a Make Versus Buy Decision? Two Thoughts

Situation: A CEO is facing a decision whether to make or buy key technology frequently used by the company. What have others done when faced by similar decisions? What are the most important factors that impacted those decisions? How do you frame a make versus buy decision?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • In considering either option evaluate the opportunity by asking whether the technology:
    • Complements the company’s core strategic focus – the company’s “Main Thing” – what you are passionate about, what drives your key economic denominator, and what can you be best at in your market.
    • Supports the key economic denominator – the single factor that has the greatest impact on the company’s profitability and growth.
    • Complements the best use of the company’s critical resources.
    • Protects the company’s process secrets.
    • Feeds your passion as CEO.
  • In evaluating a buy decision look at the strengths of the people who come along with the opportunity.
    • Do they complement the company’s strengths or not?
    • Will they fit the company’s ecology and culture?

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How Do You Optimize Your Product Offering? Four Points of Focus

Situation: A CEO wants to take better advantage of his company’s product offering. There are many opportunities available, but the company needs more focus on optimizing these opportunities. How do you optimize your product offering?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Brand – Where has the company been? Where is it going? The world is constantly changing – what’s the company’s new brand? The brand identifies the company and both your customers’ and business partners’ identification of the company and its products and/or services. In a changing world with increased competition and “noise,” having a strong handle on the brand and brand message is critical to remaining at the top of customers’ and partners’ awareness.
  • Education/Customer Advocacy – An underutilized source of marketing strength includes both customer education and customer advocacy. Customer education allows the company to better position its product and/or service to the customer and helps the customer better meet unrecognized needs. Customer advocacy positions the company along with its customers in an area of mutual interest and strengthens both bonds and loyalty.
  • Diversification & Channels – In a changing and rapidly diversifying world, being open to new opportunities and channels through which to reach the company’s stakeholders is a source of sustainable advantage.
  • Partnerships to Take Advantage of Diversification & Channel Opportunities – Partnerships are an underutilized resource to creatively diversify and open new channels to stakeholders. They require less investment than doing everything on your own and can form the basis for key alliances and strengths going forward.

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Do-it-Yourself Marketing or CRM – Which is Right for You? Five Points

Situation: A CEO is looking at customer relations management (CRM) systems. To date their marketing and sales has been in-house, but he wants to investigate alternatives. What CRM systems are available and what is the experience of others with these systems? Is do-it-yourself marketing advisable or should he work with a CRM system? Is do-it-yourself marketing or CRM right for you?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Marketing, whether Do-it-Yourself or working with a CRM system, must always be in line with the company’s brand and customer set.
    • The solution selected and implemented should never confuse or dilute the brand.
  • There are many CRM systems. Check out https://www.top10.com/crm for comparisons.
    • Good systems will track both prospects and sales.
    • Some can also help to create newsletters and other marketing materials.
  • Use your resources wisely.
    • Use clubs, affiliations or organizations to target the company’s market.
  • Before securing a firm or individual to design or refresh your web presence, first know your brand and what you want to communicate. This helps to identify the right resource.
  • Resources for free or low cost marketing:
    • Focus on and work with distributors.
    • Sell through key client audiences and pay them a commission on sales gained.
    • Give key client audiences a reward that will appeal to them.
    • Serve PDFs through your web site to deliver content in your preferred, branded format.

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How Do You Improve Your Company’s Website and Internet Presence? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A company has not updated their website for some time. As it considers making changes, how can the company optimize their web site for marketing purposes? What have others found to be most effective? How do you improve your company’s website and Internet presence?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look at how the company is currently using their website and Internet to reach clients.
    • The company currently has email addresses for 80% of their clients.
    • They have been sending an annual survey clients through either mail or email and get a 40% response rate. The best response comes from email. Assure that the survey can be completed in 5 minutes or less unless the respondent wishes to provide more detail as an option.
    • The company has a web page that comes up prominently on Google.
    • They mail or email a quarterly commentary on company performance and initiatives to clients.
  • What are the advantages of print media and mailings versus email blasts.?
    • Does the company have the capacity to automate both envelope addresses and letters for clients without email addresses? If mailings are created manually it makes sense to invest in software to create automated mailings.
    • For more personalization, use stamps instead of meters.
    • Both factors make mailings expensive to prepare versus email communications.
  • The home page of the company website should focus on:
    • Who you are.
    • What you do.
    • Who you serve.
    • Why you do it better than others – what significantly differentiates the company?
  • Invite and include clients in volunteer work to deepen relationships.
    • The company is dedicated to volunteer work.
    • Extend volunteer work opportunities beyond employees to clients who are interested in the particular project.
    • Publicize this on the company website, and send personalized thank you letters – “We built it together as a family.”
  • Create forums on the site for individuals with interest in particular topics related to the company’s offerings and activities.
    • The value of honest discussion is better than no discussion at all.
    • This also keeps the company abreast of changing attitudes and priorities of clients.
  • Create resource lists on the company web site of firms or individuals offering services which complement the company’s offerings.

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What are Best Practices for Interviewing and Hiring? Three Points

Situation: A company typically interviews candidates for open positions in a two-day process. The candidate talks to four or more people. The total time with a candidate is about 6 hours, and the hiring process, once a good candidate is identified, takes about 1 week. Is this typical of other companies? What are best practices for interviewing and hiring?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Extend the process – add some pressure to it.
    • All companies deal with pressure and stress from time to time. The team is frequently under pressure. Artificially create a pressure situation for a candidate – preferably later in the day when they are tired. This will help to identify whether they are cool under pressure, irritable or sloppy.
    • For example, put an engineering candidate in front of a computer and give them 30 minutes to do a job that you know would normally take 60 minutes. Don’t mention the mismatch to the candidate. The point is NOT whether they can complete the task, but to watch how they respond under high pressure.
    • This is not unfair to the candidate. It puts them precisely in a situation that they will find while working at the company. Give them the opportunity to demonstrate through their behavior that they either respond positively or really don’t want to be put into these situations.
  • Conduct thorough reference checks – including past employers or clients.
  • DISC profiles (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Compliance) are used to improve teamwork and understand different communication styles
    • Identify an experienced local resource who can help to assess the DISC profile of the company.
    • This individual can advise human resources and hiring managers on the use and interpretation of DISC profiles of candidates to help assure good company fit.

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How Do You Create a Professional Development Plan for Employees? Four Points

Situation: A CEO wants to develop employment growth/professional development plans to help individual employees reach their next level of skill and/or responsibility. This includes determining company needs, skill sets requirements, etc., and a plan to fulfill these.  How do you create a professional development plan for employees?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Start by defining company needs and the skills required to meet these needs. Ask:
    • Do we currently have staff in place with the requisite skills? How deep is our resource base?
    • Do we have individuals who desire to acquire skills where we are not deep?
    • Do we need to be looking outside for these skills?
  • Create a mechanism to enable employees to express their expectations and aspirations.
    • Ask about individual employee’s aspirations during quarterly manager / employee 1-on-1s.
    • Look for alignment between employee aspirations and company needs. If there is alignment draft a training plan to meet both the employee’s and the company’s needs.
    • Explore alternative options for them available within company. List skill sets needed. Develop a growth plan.
    • Ask employees to set three objectives for next 12 months. This is best done with a standard self-evaluation and aspiration form.
  • How often is the plan reviewed with each employee?
    • For specific action items – track follow-up to milestone dates.
    • Manager one-on-ones – monthly.
    • Quarterly or semi-annual evaluations.
    • Annual formal performance reviews.
  • How does the company, demonstrate that they are paying staff more than fairly?
    • Research salary surveys to determine how the company’s salaries measure up to typical local or regional salaries for comparable companies in the industry. Plan adjustments if necessary.
    • On the company level, produce data that shows overall company salary levels vs. industry averages in the company’s locale.
    • In individual salary discussions, let the employee know how their salary measures up against area averages for their position.

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What Can be Learned from Employee Departures? Five Observations

Situation: A company has recently seen the departure of several younger employees. Reasons given were better offers at other companies. These employees have been replaced by what appears to be better talent. The CEO took these departures personally and is concerned about the impact on the departments of those who departed. What can be learned from employee departures?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • In working with Millennial employees, it may be necessary to lower your expectations in terms of employee loyalty, work ethic and longevity. Millennials have a different perspective. Recognize this and build expectations around it.
  • Be frank with new employees up front. Plan their career progression out 36 to 48 months and let them know that this time will give them great training. If they are interested in the company and career progression beyond this, then the company be open to discussing options with them.
  • Use outside resources to do a 2–3-month post-op on those who left, as well as to help monitor employee attitudes on an ongoing basis.
    • The outside resource can conduct interviews by telephone, on a confidential basis. The objective will be to assess the reasons why the employees left once the emotions of the action have died down. Summary results of the interviews will not identify the past employee. This will prompt them to be frank with their feedback.
    • Similarly, use an outside resource to conduct confidential telephone interviews with random current employees on a periodic basis. Let the employees know that they will be contacted by an outside agency on a random basis, and that their responses will be confidential. The purpose is to gain information on how the company can better address employee needs in the work environment. Only aggregated and summary results will be presented to the company.
    • These actions will help to assess whether the departures were an extraordinary event or an early warning of more systemic challenges within the workforce.
  • The increased salary needs of those who left may be symptomatic of the current economic conditions.
    • Currently, the need of companies to attract talent has increased pressure to raise wages. Along with this and there is increased turnover among employees who believe that they can make more elsewhere. There is little that can be done to run a sensible business while trying to keep up with current salary demands.
    • Most companies who survive successive boom and bust cycles do not respond to wage pressure, knowing that each boom will be followed by a bust.
    • Once the next bust sets in, wage demands will go down until the next boom cycle starts.
  • Should anything to mitigate the impact of employee departure on their departments?
    • Keep ears open for any sign of an ongoing impact.
    • As above, consider an outside resource to check the temperature of the employees.
    • The best mitigation may be a strong integration of the new, energetic R&D employees into the team.

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What’s the Optimum Business Strategy: Going Broader or Deeper? Five Points

Situation: A CEO wants to expand her company’s business base, either by diversifying its client base, or by going deeper into current clients. What are some of the key questions that should be considered as they evaluate these two alternatives? What’s the optimum business strategy – going broader or deeper?

Advice of the Forum:

  • If the company diversifies, what will be the perception of current clients?
    • Will they see this as more or less beneficial to their interests?
  • What are the most important objectives – what is leadership trying to achieve? Does the response to this question weigh in favor or one or the other alternative?
  • Analyze the available markets, as well as the company’s current share of the existing market. Is the company the dominant player in its market or is there still ample growth opportunity by investing in deeper penetration of the existing market?
  • Are there important vulnerabilities regarding the current client base? Is the company too dependent on a small number of customers? What will happen if key customers decide to choose another vendor or to develop internal resources to meet their needs?
  • For the option to go deeper into the current client base, what is the resource match between the objective and current resources?
    • Do current employees have the appropriate competencies?
    • What is the available time and dollars to pursue the market?
    • What is the ROI target and what are the risks?
    • Does the company have the right infrastructure to pursue the market, or will it require developing additional infrastructure? What is the cost of development in time, money and resources?
    • It is an area in which the company can excel, and does it align with the passion and drive of the current business focus?

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How Do You Hold People Accountable? Four Suggestions

Situation: A new CEO of a small company finds it difficult to hold people accountable. To her, delivering criticism feels like delivering “bad news.” This makes her feel uncomfortable, so she hesitates and often takes care of tasks herself. This cuts into her planning and strategy time. How do you hold people accountable?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This may be a question of semantics and the view of the task.
    • From a big picture standpoint, real bad news is saying “you’re fired!” By comparison, providing input to correct behavior or results is minor. Consider it coaching instead of bad news.
    • Consider the other person. Constructive feedback is positive. It communicates care about them as a person and their future within the company. It expresses a desire that they do well, and that the CEO is willing to take the time to help them.
  • The CEO’s job is to captain the ship that the team serves. When the CEO “does it herself” instead of providing coaching to others, she has abandoned the wheel. It also suggests that others aren’t up to the job.
  • Step back and look at the CEO’s big picture.
    • Nobody expects immediate perfection. The CEO position was offered because others judged the person as ready for it. They know from experience that learning management takes time.
    • However, they also know that becoming CEO requires giving up past responsibilities. The job is to coach others to perform to company standards.
  • What immediate steps can be taken?
    • Prioritize management time over task time.
    • When a team member’s work needs correction, do this with them. Show them how to correct the work. Coach them to the proper standards. Assure that they are clear on why and how to complete the work.
    • This is a double win – getting the job done in less time (for the CEO) and helping the team member to complete the work correctly the next time.
    • The CEO’s position is not as a resource. The role is to develop resources. This is the new value to the firm, the justification for the CEO’s salary, and the key to future success.

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