Tag Archives: Value

Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction: What’s the Difference? Two Points

Situation: A CEO and his team have been having a debate about the difference between customer service and customer satisfaction. How do others work with their teams to improve both customer service and customer satisfaction? Is there a difference between the two and, if so, what is it?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Customer service has to be clearly defined.
    • The objective of customer service is for the customer to have a positive experience.
    • Customer service is addressing the needs and concerns of your customers in a timely fashion to create a competitive advantage and higher perceived value for a company’s products or services.
    • Customer service is a process that can be taught and trained.
  • Customer satisfaction has to be measurable.
    • Customer satisfaction is listening to what the customer has to say, addressing their issues, and providing a resolution that meets their needs and expectations.
    • It is a measure of comfort, confidence and trust.
    • There is a difference between being proactive and being reactive – work with each to assure that the customer is pleased with their experience, product and/or service.
    • To test this, record and analyze responses to the question “How did we serve you?”

[like]

How Do You Increase Lead Generation and Motivate Sales Development? Seven Points

Situation: A company needs to generate more leads and increase new business closure rates to make plan. Their customers are primarily tech companies and they use advertising, trade shows and customer lists to develop leads. What advice do others have to help the company meet their objectives? How do you increase lead generation and motivate sales development?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look closely at the definition of your market. Refine the definition of the market in light of new technology developments and opportunities. If necessary, rewrite the value proposition and the characterization of the company’s typical customer.
  • Hire a Marketing Director to take charge of this effort.
  • For each of key customer or key customer category, develop the important features and benefits that will appeal to that customer or group. Think, through their eyes, “what’s in it for me?”
  • Focus on one or two areas where the company adds the best value. Don’t attempt to be all things to all people.
  • Define the behaviors that will generate sales and inquiries. Assure that these are up to date with the market. Train or retrain your salespeople as necessary and manage those behaviors.
  • Select and manage a sales process. If necessary seek outside help to develop this. Options include; Sales Solutions, Miller Heiman, and similar sales training companies.
  • Use a wide array of resources to develop potential customer lists and to identify the needs of each of those customers:
    • Business partners
    • LinkedIn.com
    • Google Ads
    • Salesforce.com or Jigsaw
    • Webinars and Social Media

[like]

How Do You Negotiate a Merger? Eleven Points

Situation: A company is considering a merger with a smaller company. What are the important considerations to take into account in considering and negotiating a possible merger? How do you negotiate a merger?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look for synergies between the companies. During the negotiation, emphasize these and the mutual benefit available to both companies.
  • In a merger between a larger and smaller company look for the key motivations of each party. What does the smaller company have that the larger company wants? How much is that worth to them? Make a list.
  • Consider combining vs. merging. An alliance can be mutually beneficial while allowing both companies to retain independent ownership.
  • Look at earn out options in a purchase scenario. What are the possible terms and the financial implications of these?
  • Beware of the distraction that a merger will present to current day-to-day operations.
  • Identify other parties with whom mergers are possible. Why is the target partner better?
  • Partner prior to the merger – how do the two companies play together in the sand box? This can reveal cultural differences and differences in focus that will impact the value of the merger.
  • Consider an LLP option – a third Company that is the owner of the two merged companies. This may present tax and other advantages.
  • Look at Product vs. Service
    • Product is always worth something.
    • When service stops, it is worth nothing.
    • Key players must work together well or the service evaporates.
  • Never assume what the other party’s interests are. Make sure that both interests and priorities are discussed and evaluated during discussions between the parties.
  • Ask clarifying questions anytime a topic is raised that requires additional understanding.

[like]

How Do You Maximize Company Value & Strategic Positioning? Five Points

Situation: A CEO has a young company in a very favorable strategic position. The Founders have bootstrapped the company and it is currently on the “blade” of the growth hockey stick. How can the Founders maximize the value of the company as they grow it? How do you maximize company value and strategic positioning?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • What are company’s principal challenges and goals?
    • Over time, as the market begins to mature, there will be more competition and margins will drop.
    • Before this happens organize the company for maximum value, and build additional products and/or services that will maximize company value.
  • Hire managers to manage on-going business while devoting top management time to strategic market expansion and building new products and/or accompanying services.
  • Perform a strategic analysis focused on the long-term plan and building equity value. Plan a future that will optimize the company’s strategic position while increasing cash flow and equity value.
  • Anticipate, plan and organize for the he most likely coming changes to the market.
  • Consider starting a second company to compliment the value and products of the current company. For example, if he company is best at a key technology, start a second company to provide accompanying services that will enhance the value of the technology. Having done this, future options open up to either combine the two companies or to let them grow on complimentary paths.

[like]

 

How Do You Improve Infrastructure to Manage Cash Flow? Seven Points

Situation: A CEO wants to improve management of his company’s cash flow. While this is particularly important during times of tight cash and rapidly changing market conditions, the CEO wants to know what others focus on when monitoring cash flow in their companies. How do you improve infrastructure to manage cash flow?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Track project mix and margin contribution both in part and in total. To accomplish this estimate relative contribution margins of different project types.
  • Adjust sales targets and commissions to emphasize projects with higher contribution.
  • Segment the company’s business model by margins, overhead, and cash flow. Set targets and drive focus on profit per “X” (selecting the proper indicators).
  • Analyze contribution per direct cost factor, for example per engineer on payroll.
  • Develop detailed cash budgets on a monthly or even weekly basis when times are uncertain. For example, inflows and outflows by major category tracking actual cash receipt or disbursement.
  • Start with broad projections, and refine the analysis over time as the company better understands the factors that drive cash flow and profitability.
  • As understanding improves, formulate value propositions for salespeople which reflect the most advantageous cash flow contributors of the business.

[like]

How Do You Guide a Company Through a Sale? Five Thoughts

Situation: A company was built on capital equipment complemented by annuity sales of supplies used by the equipment. The company is moving toward automation of technology and offshore production of OEM equipment. An OEM partner will take on the equipment side of the business and the company will focus on automated supply solutions with sales direct to the end customer. The OEM partner has approached the company with a purchase offer. How do you guide a company through a sale?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is important to determine the value proposition, both from the company’s standpoint and the standpoint of the OEM buyer. The company’s objective will be to optimize the intersection of these two views of the value proposition — to its benefit.
  • Look at current employees and the technology and determine what to do to preserve their positions and interests. This will become part of the negotiation, but it is essential to have a clear idea of how this meshes with the CEO’s personal priorities.
  • Look to outside experts for advice on exit and succession planning.
  • Determine the CEO’s vision and path of involvement up to the sale. This involvement is negotiable, but should remain consistent with the CEO’s vision during the negotiation.
  • What is the company’s patent position, and the value of the patents in terms of future revenue? IP produces a future revenue stream. Consider the valuation to be in the range of 4 years of IP value.

[like]

How Do You Increase Employee Engagement? Six Suggestions

Situation: A  CEO wants to increase employee engagement throughout her family-owned company.  Performance is frequently poor, employees sometimes treat each other badly, and employees rarely put out the extra effort that could make a difference. What have others done to turn around a poor company culture? How do you increase employee engagement?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • To add some energy, for example to the accounting department, bring in AccountTemps for 3 months to bring everything up to date. This will help to establish a new level of expectation within the company. AccountTemps can also produce templates that will make it easier to stay up to date in the future. This will send a message to employees that the company is willing to invest to create new standards.
  • For those who are managing underperforming areas, link their pay to performance.
  • Leverage promising young employees by giving them more responsibility in their departments. This may facilitate a shift of resources to areas of the business needing attention.
  • Have employees make customer phone calls – to current and former customers – with instructions to listen to what the customers have to say about the company’s product and services.
    • Collect and use this information to foster a customer-oriented mindset.
    • Encourage employees to take pride in the final value delivered (or not delivered) to the customer.
  • Consider a second “Founding of the Company.” An event that will wake everyone up and reinforce both the value that they represent for the company and the company represents for them.
  • To increase cohesion within the company, create an event to bring everyone together, and help them to see and value what employees share rather than what makes them different.
    • Ask employees to put up photos of themselves at age 4-6. Ask those with children to add pictures of their kids as well. Conduct a contest is to match the photo to the employee.
    • Use special events to build a team focus at work. Examples are a company picnic with a 3-legged race or a movie and pizza at 6:00pm.

[like]

How Do You Train Others to Do Your Old Job? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who has just been promoted to an important managerial position within the company. The task for this individual is to train others to do what he has done in the past. However. this individual feels uncomfortable training others to do what he was able to do. He feels like he is obsolescing himself. How do you coach this individual to let go of past responsibilities? How do you train others to do your old job?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This individual was promoted because he excelled in his former job. His mastery of these skills, plus his past management background, prompted the CEO to offer him a managerial position. It is critical to understand that his job and responsibilities are no longer what they used to be.
  • As a manager, an individual is no longer expected to be a “doer”. The primary responsibility is now to select, manage, train, and promote others whose primary responsibility is “doing.”
  • As this individual is coached, encourage him to step back and look at the big picture of his new role.
    • The CEO does not expect perfection from the start. He understands from his own experience that learning management takes time.
    • However, he also knows that to become a new manager requires giving up many of the hands-on activities that one used to perform. The job is no longer to do these yourself, but to coach others to be able to perform these tasks to the standards of the firm.
    • Initially, this takes more time than “doing it yourself.” However, this individual now has talented people reporting to him and they will learn quickly. In a short while, it will take less time to delegate than to do it himself.
    • From a big picture standpoint, a manager justifies the higher salary and greater prospects that come with a new position by training his or her team to do what used to be “their job” at a lower salary than the manager’s current salary.
  • In short, in the role of manager, the better one is at developing others who can take on the skills that they used to demonstrate, the more successful that individual will be as a manager, and the more value they will bring to the Company.

[like]

How Do You Improve Communications and Quality? Five Points

Situation: A company has a good team to support its projects. They work together well and demonstrate good work habits. However, communication between team members, and between certain team members and management is challenging, particularly when performance issues are involved. How do you improve communications and quality?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • What has been tried?
    • Once a month, The CEO plans an outside event for the team, for example a long dinner in a nice location.
    • During the latest event, the team members started opening up to one-another and to the CEO. They were much more open than they are at work.
  • Are the concerns about communication within teams, between teams, or between teams and management?
    • Several team members are relatively new. A few others are long-term and often fail to perform to standards. This group frequently has issues and it takes their foreman’s time to address these. This frustrates the foreman.
  • How should the CEO deal with this situation?
    • The foreman is a long-term employee who reports directly to the CEO. It is the responsibility of the CEO to develop a solution that serves the interests of the company.
    • For example: the company lives and breathes on customer satisfaction. Any worker with a pattern of substandard work negatively impacts both the image and value of the company.
    • Further, distracting the foreman from his primary responsibilities impacts his ability to complete other work demands.
  • Try the following solution:
    • Explain the problem and the negative impact that this has on the company.
    • Establish a policy that workers are responsible for assuring that work meets standards before completing a job.
    • Establish a list of specific standards for work and checklists to assure that the work is complete and meets standards.
    • Establish and publish a policy that if a Foreman or supervisor finds work performed below standard this will result in a warning to the worker. Continued performance of substandard work becomes grounds for termination. Misrepresentation of work quality is grounds for immediate termination.
    • Ask key managers, supervisors and foremen for input on the policy.
    • Once the policy is finalized, post it, provide all employees with a copy of the policy, and make sure that it is openly communicated to them both verbally and in writing.
  • If any worker currently presenting problems persists in this behavior, the company will have established a policy and procedure for disciplinary action and, if necessary, termination.

[like]