- Fits with candidate's skills - 73%
- Company reputation/ ethics - 70%
- Career advancement opportunities - 70%
- Location - 66%
- Professional development and training - 66%
- Company culture - 61%
- Health benefits- 56%
- Job security - 51%
- Salary - 49%
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
What Should Your Employment Brand Include?
According to an Experience.com survey: Important criteria for students in evaluating job offers (% rated "very important")
Twelve Must-Have Conversations: Steve Schiffman
How many people do you aim to talk to when researching a prospect for a presentation? One? Three? Five? If any of those numbers sound about right, you’ve got a long way to go, says sales training veteran Stephen Schiffman in his book, Sales Presentation Techniques (Adams Media, 2007). To get the best possible feel for the problems a prospect is facing, he urges you talk to 12 people in that company.
Schiffman calls it “The Power of 12” and says aiming for this number has three major benefits:
1) the more people you see, the more firsthand information you’ll get that will be useful in your research
2) speaking to a dozen employees of a company gives you the opportunity to build support for your product or service at various levels within the organization
3) you may well uncover additional sales opportunities through these discussions.
Schiffman learned firsthand about benefit #3 last year. Schiffman had been hired to create a training program for the 15-person sales staff of a glass manufacturer. During an early meeting with the CEO of this company, Schiffman asked if there were a few people he might talk to so he could “better understand what they do and develop a program for them.” The CEO pointed Schiffman to the VPs of domestic and international sales, who led him to a technical person, who in turn led him to the manufacturing facility where Schiffman learned about a standalone product that was sold separately through a network of 15 distributors and 1,000 dealers. The product wasn’t on the Web site and Schiffman wouldn’t have known about it had he not sought to talk to 12 people.
Ultimately, Schiffman negotiated a deal to develop a sales training program that included not only the original 15 reps but the 15 distributors and 1,000 dealers as well. This story drives home another important point: when you talk to people, try to get below the executive level as much as possible. You’ll find the information you get from the people in the “trenches” gives you a more accurate picture of what’s going on at an organization than you’ll get from the corner offices. Or as Schiffman puts it more bluntly: “People in the trenches know more and are more honest than their bosses.”
Finally, keep in mind that you’re not always going to get to talk to 12 people. Sometimes you might speak with only eight or 10. But the point is that you should always shoot for 12 because the more people you see, the more complete a picture of the company and its situation, issues, and challenges you’ll be able to draw. “Through The Power of 12, I’ve not only learned things that made for a stronger presentation and sales pitch, but I’ve also learned where the power resides,” says Schiffman. “It isn’t always where you think it is.”
Schiffman calls it “The Power of 12” and says aiming for this number has three major benefits:
1) the more people you see, the more firsthand information you’ll get that will be useful in your research
2) speaking to a dozen employees of a company gives you the opportunity to build support for your product or service at various levels within the organization
3) you may well uncover additional sales opportunities through these discussions.
Schiffman learned firsthand about benefit #3 last year. Schiffman had been hired to create a training program for the 15-person sales staff of a glass manufacturer. During an early meeting with the CEO of this company, Schiffman asked if there were a few people he might talk to so he could “better understand what they do and develop a program for them.” The CEO pointed Schiffman to the VPs of domestic and international sales, who led him to a technical person, who in turn led him to the manufacturing facility where Schiffman learned about a standalone product that was sold separately through a network of 15 distributors and 1,000 dealers. The product wasn’t on the Web site and Schiffman wouldn’t have known about it had he not sought to talk to 12 people.
Ultimately, Schiffman negotiated a deal to develop a sales training program that included not only the original 15 reps but the 15 distributors and 1,000 dealers as well. This story drives home another important point: when you talk to people, try to get below the executive level as much as possible. You’ll find the information you get from the people in the “trenches” gives you a more accurate picture of what’s going on at an organization than you’ll get from the corner offices. Or as Schiffman puts it more bluntly: “People in the trenches know more and are more honest than their bosses.”
Finally, keep in mind that you’re not always going to get to talk to 12 people. Sometimes you might speak with only eight or 10. But the point is that you should always shoot for 12 because the more people you see, the more complete a picture of the company and its situation, issues, and challenges you’ll be able to draw. “Through The Power of 12, I’ve not only learned things that made for a stronger presentation and sales pitch, but I’ve also learned where the power resides,” says Schiffman. “It isn’t always where you think it is.”
Monday, September 24, 2007
Mejer Grocery Store Chain Looks to Consumers to Define Their Brand
Hey Ya'll,
I heard about this on the radio the other day and I thought it was interesting. The Mejer chain of grocery stores is running a contest where they are asking for video submissions from customers showing examples of their brand.
I find it interesting to look at what tactics companies are using to measure their brand in the marketplace. Check it out if you're curious.
http://www.meijerbrand.com/index.html
I heard about this on the radio the other day and I thought it was interesting. The Mejer chain of grocery stores is running a contest where they are asking for video submissions from customers showing examples of their brand.
I find it interesting to look at what tactics companies are using to measure their brand in the marketplace. Check it out if you're curious.
http://www.meijerbrand.com/index.html
NSBA Employer Study Results
NSBA Employer Study
Check out the National Small Business Association's latest study on small and mid-sized businesses. Pay special attention to the Economic Outlook and Employee and Labor Issues sections - there's lots of great info about where small businesses are right now and where they think they're heading in the next 12 months.
Some key stats:
Check out the National Small Business Association's latest study on small and mid-sized businesses. Pay special attention to the Economic Outlook and Employee and Labor Issues sections - there's lots of great info about where small businesses are right now and where they think they're heading in the next 12 months.
Some key stats:
- 23% of businesses feel that a lack of qualified workers is one of the most significant challenges to the future growth and survival of their business. This was a particular concern among businesses between 20 and 499 in size.
- 28% plan to hire new employees in order to fulfill their growth strategies in the next 12 months.
- 68% of companies offer benefits packages to their employees; however, there has been a severe dropoff in companies offering health benefits (41%) due to increased costs.
SHRM Study Shows Direct Link Between .Jobs and Positive Outcomes in Recruiting
SHRM Study Sheds Light on New HR Recruitment Techniques
So what's in your MySpace profile?
ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Respondents from high- tech organizations and organizations with large staff were more likely to have a ".jobs" domain, according to a recent study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
The 2007 Advances in E-Recruiting: Leveraging the .jobs Domain survey, queried HR professionals on the differences between organizations that utilize a ".jobs" domain compared to companies without such domains, shedding considerable light on new online search techniques used by recruiters. The Internet is used by most organizations as their primary method for recruiting.
The three most commonly reported techniques or strategies used by respondents from all organizations to engage passive job candidates were:
(1) viewing membership directories for associations and trade groups
(2) Scanning social networking sites; and (3) mining industry-specific blogs, discussion forums, newsgroups or listservs.
"The Internet has opened up a whole new set of opportunities through which HR recruiters can and are creatively sifting," said SHRM President and CEO Susan R. Meisinger. She added, "Who would have thought, for example, that social networking sites like MySpace -- often used as social hubs by so many young people -- would become a rich source of background information for job recruiters?"
The study also showed that HR respondents from all organizations (.jobs and non-.jobs organizations) said their most reliable sources for quality job candidates were: a) employee referrals; b) national online job boards (e.g. careerbuilder.com, Monster.com, HotJobs.com, etc.); and c) internal job postings.
Other summary results from the survey are:
-Organizations with a ".jobs" domain reported they had better outcomes
in recruiting due to advantages such as direct navigation and ease of
use. In addition, they were more likely to use tracking software that
allows the electronic management of an organization's recruitment
efforts.
-HR professionals from "non-.jobs" organizations cited the following as
their top five greatest challenges: a) difficulty in attracting high
quality candidates (67 percent); b) limited staff resources (39
percent); c) difficulty in attracting diverse candidates (30 percent);
and d) difficulty attracting enough candidates (30 percent); e)
difficulty in managing volumes of resumes (27 percent).
-The most common metrics to measure efficiency of e-recruiting efforts
from all organizations (.jobs and non-.jobs organizations) were: a)
time to fill outstanding job vacancies; b) cost per hire; c) number of
outstanding job vacancies; d) employee referral rate; and e) first-year
turnover.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Presentation Revolution - A Branded Presentation
A major component that I feel is missing from presentations today is the whole idea of "brand." Sure, branding is an old topic, but why do so many people ignore the idea of branding their presentation? Instead of "10 Ways to Financial Freedom" why not label your presentation "Freedom"? After all, don't you want your message to echo throughout your company? Brand it and you will reap the rewards.
Click to view the branded presentation: "Drive"
Click to view the branded presentation: "Drive"
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tips for Cold Calling in New York
- A lot (but not all) of New Yorkers are straight to the point people, so you want to make sure that you get your script out as soon as possible when you’re on the phone with a DFM. They consider their time to be very valuable, and don’t seem to appreciate the Midwest casualness on the phone. Get your script out, and be aggressive on your rebuttals.
- New Yorkers hang up on people pretty often, but are open to call backs. I can think of three current clients at the top of my head who hung up on me at some point during the appointment setting process. I’m not sure if they are testing you when they do it, but they have a lot of appreciation for someone who is passionate about their product to the point that they will pick up the phone and call someone who hung up on them. It will separate you from other sales calls they get on a regular basis
- They seem to get a lot more sales calls then other territories, and as a result, they often forget, or can’t differentiate between, sales people. So, if you call in one day, mess up, get hung up on, or hear a certain rebuttle, I recommend putting all the info into pivotal, and then starting from scratch. Whenever I bomb on a call with a DFM, I always right down how aggressive I was during the call, and do the complete opposite the next time I call in. It really is unique in NY in that you can change your approach with the same DFM a few different times, and they won’t remember that they hung up on you a week ago, and will be more open to a different angle.
Setting Up Google Alerts
Every top performing sales rep has a story about how Google Alerts have changed the way they do business or have impacted their relationships with prospects and clients.
It takes less than 10 seconds to set one up and here is where you do it:
www.google.com/alerts
It takes less than 10 seconds to set one up and here is where you do it:
www.google.com/alerts
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Getting Prospects to Return Your Voicemails
Getting prospects to return your voicemails
Effective voicemails must meet certain criteria. The following is a list of points for leaving great voicemails. After you understand the criteria, create specific messages that are in-line with these points.
Criteria for effective voicemails
Be Short – Voicemails should be no longer than 20
seconds. Less is better. It’s more effective to leave prospects
wondering who you are and what you called for, than for them to
delete a long-winded message.
Arouse Curiosity – This is the single most
important piece of advice. The only goal in leaving
voicemails for cold prospects is to get them to call you back.
If you tell them everything, they don’t need to call you
back. Spark their interest by having them think about who you
are. Being vague may sometimes create interest in the prospects
mind. If they are curious, they will call you back.
Be Different – Think of all the voicemail messages
that you receive. Do they inspire you to call back? If not, leave
messages that are completely different than the ones you receive.
Uniqueness will grab a prospects attention and will be more likely
to compel them to return your messages.
What’s in it for them? – If you decide to leave additional
information on your call, only state information that is a clear
benefit to the customer. What benefits of your products or your
services will most likely intrigue them enough to call you back?
Warm up the call – Take liberty in how you warm up the
call. Use whatever you may or may not know about the company.
Do you know any other people at the company? Do you know what
they do? Do you know their competitors? Any information you know
about the company can be used in a voicemail to make you sound
more familiar with the prospect and his company.
Be Confident – Don’t ask them to call you back,
tell them to call you back. You must believe that you are doing
them a favor by contacting them, not vice versa. Successful sales
calls ensure parity between you and the prospect. Failed sales
calls are ones in which you are the subordinate to the prospect.
Be Creative – Think of new and different approaches
every day. Even voicemail messages that seem odd at first may
be the most effective in getting prospects to call you back.
Be Prepared – When customers do call you back, make
sure you’re able to quickly and efficiently move into your
sales call. Fumbling around, asking them multiple times for their
name, telling them to hold on while you bring their name up in
the database, or trying to find questions you want to ask, will
kill your credibility with the customer. You should be able to
easily and effectively move into a sales presentation with only
a pen and a blank piece of paper.
Effective voicemails must meet certain criteria. The following is a list of points for leaving great voicemails. After you understand the criteria, create specific messages that are in-line with these points.
Criteria for effective voicemails
Be Short – Voicemails should be no longer than 20
seconds. Less is better. It’s more effective to leave prospects
wondering who you are and what you called for, than for them to
delete a long-winded message.
Arouse Curiosity – This is the single most
important piece of advice. The only goal in leaving
voicemails for cold prospects is to get them to call you back.
If you tell them everything, they don’t need to call you
back. Spark their interest by having them think about who you
are. Being vague may sometimes create interest in the prospects
mind. If they are curious, they will call you back.
Be Different – Think of all the voicemail messages
that you receive. Do they inspire you to call back? If not, leave
messages that are completely different than the ones you receive.
Uniqueness will grab a prospects attention and will be more likely
to compel them to return your messages.
What’s in it for them? – If you decide to leave additional
information on your call, only state information that is a clear
benefit to the customer. What benefits of your products or your
services will most likely intrigue them enough to call you back?
Warm up the call – Take liberty in how you warm up the
call. Use whatever you may or may not know about the company.
Do you know any other people at the company? Do you know what
they do? Do you know their competitors? Any information you know
about the company can be used in a voicemail to make you sound
more familiar with the prospect and his company.
Be Confident – Don’t ask them to call you back,
tell them to call you back. You must believe that you are doing
them a favor by contacting them, not vice versa. Successful sales
calls ensure parity between you and the prospect. Failed sales
calls are ones in which you are the subordinate to the prospect.
Be Creative – Think of new and different approaches
every day. Even voicemail messages that seem odd at first may
be the most effective in getting prospects to call you back.
Be Prepared – When customers do call you back, make
sure you’re able to quickly and efficiently move into your
sales call. Fumbling around, asking them multiple times for their
name, telling them to hold on while you bring their name up in
the database, or trying to find questions you want to ask, will
kill your credibility with the customer. You should be able to
easily and effectively move into a sales presentation with only
a pen and a blank piece of paper.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
3 Ways to Overcome a Common Objection
Courtesy of Rhonda Lipsey!
What would selling be like without a daily dose of "Let me think about it?"
Probably a whole lot easier and a whole lot less frustrating. But since the objection isn’t going to go away any time soon perhaps now is a good time to look at some ways to tackle it.
Is it Real?
When a prospect says "let me think about it", is he or she telling the truth? Let’s face it, some prospects toss out this classic objection because they simply want to get rid of you. They say it, not because they mean it, but because it is a polite method of getting you off the line. The trouble is, if you are not savvy to this brush off, you can waste a lot of time and energy following up with e-mails and phone calls.
On the other hand, some prospects really DO need time to think about it. Some need time to ponder their options while others like to simply digest the information to ensure that they do not make a snap decision. The trouble here is that if you are a cynical sales rep who has heard the objection time and time again, you may not take the prospect seriously and fail to follow up and hence, lose the opportunity.
So how do you tackle this objection? Here are three approaches.
#1: Say Nothing
I love this one particularly if you are dealing with a prospect over the phone. Here’s how it works: when they tell you they want to think about it, say nothing. That’s all there is to it. Just wait patiently.
Silence over the telephone creates a vacuum and most people get uncomfortable with the silence. After two or three or four seconds, most people feel the compelling need to fill the void with words.
You will be absolutely amazed at how well this technique works as long as you can discipline yourself to hold your tongue for a few seconds.
Typically, the client will elaborate on the “let me think about it” objection and this often uncovers the real objection. For example, they might explain that they have to speak to their boss or their partner. Suddenly you discover another player in the game. They may reveal that they are looking at other proposals and now you know you are in a competitive situation. Or they may simply not be interested at all. In any event, you have more information upon which to base your next step.
#2: Give Them the Time and Get a Commitment
Another approach is to grant them the time but put a time limit on their pondering. It looks something like this:
Prospect: "Well, let me think about it."
Rep: "I understand completely, Mr. Thomas. A decision like this needs some time. And what I would like to recommend is that I give you a call next week to get your thoughts and to determine the next steps. How does Wednesday at 8:45 look on your calendar?"
If the prospect accepts the recommendation the objection is probably legitimate. The client needs time for whatever reason. You know this because she has agreed to a specific time and date. It shows commitment. Again, the key is to not only get a follow up date but also a specific time.
This approach is very non-threatening and is perfect for prospects who legitimately want more time. They will appreciate your courtesy and understanding. That’s why you deliberately empathize with the prospect by saying you “understand.” These types of prospects don’t like being cajoled or pressured. If you push too hard, they will say no to your offer because they don’t like you and your ‘aggressive’ approach. Your offer could be extremely valuable and well priced but these prospects value trust and relationship more.
If the prospect balks at your first suggestion, try another date and time and see if they positively respond. If they balk again, ask when would be a good time and date. If they cannot make a commitment chances are they are brushing you off and your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
#3: Probe for Legitimacy
I borrowed this approach from sales trainer Brian Jeffrey (visit: www.salesforcetraining.com ). His approach is to first empathize with the prospect and then to go on and question to determine if the objection is legitimate or a smokescreen.
Prospect: "Hmmmm. Let me think about it."
Rep: "I understand completely. If I were in your shoes I’d want to think about it as well." "May I ask what concerns you still have?" Or "May I ask what’s causing you to hesitate?" or "May I ask what questions I’ve left unanswered?" or "May I ask what your final decision will be based on?" Needless to say, this type of probing gets the prospect to open up and to help you determine if the objection is real or otherwise.
The next time a prospect says he would like to think about it, think about one of these three approaches. Give it a try and tell me what you think.
What would selling be like without a daily dose of "Let me think about it?"
Probably a whole lot easier and a whole lot less frustrating. But since the objection isn’t going to go away any time soon perhaps now is a good time to look at some ways to tackle it.
Is it Real?
When a prospect says "let me think about it", is he or she telling the truth? Let’s face it, some prospects toss out this classic objection because they simply want to get rid of you. They say it, not because they mean it, but because it is a polite method of getting you off the line. The trouble is, if you are not savvy to this brush off, you can waste a lot of time and energy following up with e-mails and phone calls.
On the other hand, some prospects really DO need time to think about it. Some need time to ponder their options while others like to simply digest the information to ensure that they do not make a snap decision. The trouble here is that if you are a cynical sales rep who has heard the objection time and time again, you may not take the prospect seriously and fail to follow up and hence, lose the opportunity.
So how do you tackle this objection? Here are three approaches.
#1: Say Nothing
I love this one particularly if you are dealing with a prospect over the phone. Here’s how it works: when they tell you they want to think about it, say nothing. That’s all there is to it. Just wait patiently.
Silence over the telephone creates a vacuum and most people get uncomfortable with the silence. After two or three or four seconds, most people feel the compelling need to fill the void with words.
You will be absolutely amazed at how well this technique works as long as you can discipline yourself to hold your tongue for a few seconds.
Typically, the client will elaborate on the “let me think about it” objection and this often uncovers the real objection. For example, they might explain that they have to speak to their boss or their partner. Suddenly you discover another player in the game. They may reveal that they are looking at other proposals and now you know you are in a competitive situation. Or they may simply not be interested at all. In any event, you have more information upon which to base your next step.
#2: Give Them the Time and Get a Commitment
Another approach is to grant them the time but put a time limit on their pondering. It looks something like this:
Prospect: "Well, let me think about it."
Rep: "I understand completely, Mr. Thomas. A decision like this needs some time. And what I would like to recommend is that I give you a call next week to get your thoughts and to determine the next steps. How does Wednesday at 8:45 look on your calendar?"
If the prospect accepts the recommendation the objection is probably legitimate. The client needs time for whatever reason. You know this because she has agreed to a specific time and date. It shows commitment. Again, the key is to not only get a follow up date but also a specific time.
This approach is very non-threatening and is perfect for prospects who legitimately want more time. They will appreciate your courtesy and understanding. That’s why you deliberately empathize with the prospect by saying you “understand.” These types of prospects don’t like being cajoled or pressured. If you push too hard, they will say no to your offer because they don’t like you and your ‘aggressive’ approach. Your offer could be extremely valuable and well priced but these prospects value trust and relationship more.
If the prospect balks at your first suggestion, try another date and time and see if they positively respond. If they balk again, ask when would be a good time and date. If they cannot make a commitment chances are they are brushing you off and your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
#3: Probe for Legitimacy
I borrowed this approach from sales trainer Brian Jeffrey (visit: www.salesforcetraining.com ). His approach is to first empathize with the prospect and then to go on and question to determine if the objection is legitimate or a smokescreen.
Prospect: "Hmmmm. Let me think about it."
Rep: "I understand completely. If I were in your shoes I’d want to think about it as well." "May I ask what concerns you still have?" Or "May I ask what’s causing you to hesitate?" or "May I ask what questions I’ve left unanswered?" or "May I ask what your final decision will be based on?" Needless to say, this type of probing gets the prospect to open up and to help you determine if the objection is real or otherwise.
The next time a prospect says he would like to think about it, think about one of these three approaches. Give it a try and tell me what you think.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Why We Hate HR
In a knowledge economy, companies with the best talent win. And finding, nurturing, and developing that talent should be one of the most important tasks in a corporation. So why does human resources do such a bad job -- and how can we fix it?
From: Issue 97 August 2005 Page 40 By: Keith H. Hammonds
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, here's a rockin' party: a gathering of several hundred midlevel human-resources executives in Las Vegas. (Yo, Wayne Newton! How's the 401(k)?) They are here, ensconced for two days at faux-glam Caesars Palace, to confer on "strategic HR leadership," a conceit that sounds, to the lay observer, at once frightening and self-contradictory. If not plain laughable.
Because let's face it: After close to 20 years of hopeful rhetoric about becoming "strategic partners" with a "seat at the table" where the business decisions that matter are made, most human-resources professionals aren't nearly there. They have no seat, and the table is locked inside a conference room to which they have no key. HR people are, for most practical purposes, neither strategic nor leaders.
I don't care for Las Vegas. And if it's not clear already, I don't like HR, either, which is why I'm here. The human-resources trade long ago proved itself, at best, a necessary evil -- and at worst, a dark bureaucratic force that blindly enforces nonsensical rules, resists creativity, and impedes constructive change. HR is the corporate function with the greatest potential -- the key driver, in theory, of business performance -- and also the one that most consistently underdelivers. And I am here to find out why.
Why are annual performance appraisals so time-consuming -- and so routinely useless? Why is HR so often a henchman for the chief financial officer, finding ever-more ingenious ways to cut benefits and hack at payroll? Why do its communications -- when we can understand them at all -- so often flout reality? Why are so many people processes duplicative and wasteful, creating a forest of paperwork for every minor transaction? And why does HR insist on sameness as a proxy for equity?
It's no wonder that we hate HR. In a 2005 survey by consultancy Hay Group, just 40% of employees commended their companies for retaining high-quality workers. Just 41% agreed that performance evaluations were fair. Only 58% rated their job training as favorable. Most said they had few opportunities for advancement -- and that they didn't know, in any case, what was required to move up. Most telling, only about half of workers below the manager level believed their companies took a genuine interest in their well-being.
None of this is explained immediately in Vegas. These HR folks, from employers across the nation, are neither evil courtiers nor thoughtless automatons. They are mostly smart, engaging people who seem genuinely interested in doing their jobs better. They speak convincingly about employee development and cultural transformation. And, over drinks, they spin some pretty funny yarns of employee weirdness. (Like the one about the guy who threatened to sue his wife's company for "enabling" her affair with a coworker. Then there was the mentally disabled worker and the hooker -- well, no, never mind. . . .)
But then the facade cracks. It happens at an afternoon presentation called "From Technicians to Consultants: How to Transform Your HR Staff into Strategic Business Partners." The speaker, Julie Muckler, is senior vice president of human resources at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. She is an enthusiastic woman with a broad smile and 20 years of experience at companies such as Johnson & Johnson and General Tire. She has degrees in consumer economics and human resources and organizational development.
And I have no idea what she's talking about. There is mention of "internal action learning" and "being more planful in my approach." PowerPoint slides outline Wells Fargo Home Mortgage's initiatives in performance management, organization design, and horizontal-solutions teams. Muckler describes leveraging internal resources and involving external resources -- and she leaves her audience dazed. That evening, even the human-resources pros confide they didn't understand much of it, either.
This, friends, is the trouble with HR. In a knowledge economy, companies that have the best talent win. We all know that. Human resources execs should be making the most of our, well, human resources -- finding the best hires, nurturing the stars, fostering a productive work environment -- just as IT runs the computers and finance minds the capital. HR should be joined to business strategy at the hip.
Instead, most HR organizations have ghettoized themselves literally to the brink of obsolescence. They are competent at the administrivia of pay, benefits, and retirement, but companies increasingly are farming those functions out to contractors who can handle such routine tasks at lower expense. What's left is the more important strategic role of raising the reputational and intellectual capital of the company -- but HR is, it turns out, uniquely unsuited for that.
Here's why.
1. HR people aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. We'll be blunt: If you are an ambitious young thing newly graduated from a top college or B-school with your eye on a rewarding career in business, your first instinct is not to join the human-resources dance. (At the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, which arguably boasts the nation's top faculty for organizational issues, just 1.2% of 2004 grads did so.) Says a management professor at one leading school: "The best and the brightest don't go into HR."
Who does? Intelligent people, sometimes -- but not businesspeople. "HR doesn't tend to hire a lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses," says Garold L. Markle, a longtime human-resources executive at Exxon and Shell Offshore who now runs his own consultancy. Some are exiles from the corporate mainstream: They've fared poorly in meatier roles -- but not poorly enough to be fired. For them, and for their employers, HR represents a relatively low-risk parking spot.
Others enter the field by choice and with the best of intentions, but for the wrong reasons. They like working with people, and they want to be helpful -- noble motives that thoroughly tick off some HR thinkers. "When people have come to me and said, 'I want to work with people,' I say, 'Good, go be a social worker,' " says Arnold Kanarick, who has headed human resources at the Limited and, until recently, at Bear Stearns. "HR isn't about being a do-gooder. It's about how do you get the best and brightest people and raise the value of the firm."
The really scary news is that the gulf between capabilities and job requirements appears to be widening. As business and legal demands on the function intensify, staffers' educational qualifications haven't kept pace. In fact, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a considerably smaller proportion of HR professionals today have some education beyond a bachelor's degree than in 1990.
And here's one more slice of telling SHRM data: When HR professionals were asked about the worth of various academic courses toward a "successful career in HR," 83% said that classes in interpersonal communications skills had "extremely high value." Employment law and business ethics followed, at 71% and 66%, respectively. Where was change management? At 35%. Strategic management? 32%. Finance? Um, that was just 2%.
The truth? Most human-resources managers aren't particularly interested in, or equipped for, doing business. And in a business, that's sort of a problem. As guardians of a company's talent, HR has to understand how people serve corporate objectives. Instead, "business acumen is the single biggest factor that HR professionals in the U.S. lack today," says Anthony J. Rucci, executive vice president at Cardinal Health Inc., a big health-care supply distributor.
Rucci is consistently mentioned by academics, consultants, and other HR leaders as an executive who actually does know business. At Baxter International, he ran both HR and corporate strategy. Before that, at Sears, he led a study of results at 800 stores over five years to assess the connection between employee commitment, customer loyalty, and profitability.
As far as Rucci is concerned, there are three questions that any decent HR person in the world should be able to answer. First, who is your company's core customer? "Have you talked to one lately? Do you know what challenges they face?" Second, who is the competition? "What do they do well and not well?" And most important, who are we? "What is a realistic assessment of what we do well and not so well vis a vis the customer and the competition?"
Does your HR pro know the answers?
2. HR pursues efficiency in lieu of value. Why? Because it's easier -- and easier to measure. Dave Ulrich, a professor at the University of Michigan, recalls meeting with the chairman and top HR people from a big bank. "The training person said that 80% of employees have done at least 40 hours in classes. The chairman said, 'Congratulations.' I said, 'You're talking about the activities you're doing. The question is, What are you delivering?' "
That sort of stuff drives Ulrich nuts. Over 20 years, he has become the HR trade's best-known guru (see "The Once and Future Consultant," page 48) and a leading proponent of the push to take on more-strategic roles within corporations. But human-resources managers, he acknowledges, typically undermine that effort by investing more importance in activities than in outcomes. "You're only effective if you add value," Ulrich says. "That means you're not measured by what you do but by what you deliver." By that, he refers not just to the value delivered to employees and line managers, but the benefits that accrue to investors and customers, as well.
So here's a true story: A talented young marketing exec accepts a job offer with Time Warner out of business school. She interviews for openings in several departments -- then is told by HR that only one is interested in her. In fact, she learns later, they all had been. She had been railroaded into the job, under the supervision of a widely reviled manager, because no one inside the company would take it.
You make the call: Did HR do its job? On the one hand, it filled the empty slot. "It did what was organizationally expedient," says the woman now. "Getting someone who wouldn't kick and scream about this role probably made sense to them. But I just felt angry." She left Time Warner after just a year. (A Time Warner spokesperson declined to comment on the incident.)
Part of the problem is that Time Warner's metrics likely will never catch the real cost of its HR department's action. Human resources can readily provide the number of people it hired, the percentage of performance evaluations completed, and the extent to which employees are satisfied or not with their benefits. But only rarely does it link any of those metrics to business performance.
John W. Boudreau, a professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations, likens the failing to shortcomings of the finance function before DuPont figured out how to calculate return on investment in 1912. In HR, he says, "we don't have anywhere near that kind of logical sophistication in the way of people or talent. So the decisions that get made about that resource are far less sophisticated, reliable, and consistent."
Cardinal Health's Rucci is trying to fix that. Cardinal regularly asks its employees 12 questions designed to measure engagement. Among them: Do they understand the company's strategy? Do they see the connection between that and their jobs? Are they proud to tell people where they work? Rucci correlates the results to those of a survey of 2,000 customers, as well as monthly sales data and brand-awareness scores.
"So I don't know if our HR processes are having an impact" per se, Rucci says. "But I know absolutely that employee-engagement scores have an impact on our business," accounting for between 1% and 10% of earnings, depending on the business and the employee's role. "Cardinal may not anytime soon get invited by the Conference Board to explain our world-class best practices in any area of HR -- and I couldn't care less. The real question is, Is the business effective and successful?"
3. HR isn't working for you. Want to know why you go through that asinine performance appraisal every year, really? Markle, who admits to having administered countless numbers of them over the years, is pleased to confirm your suspicions. Companies, he says "are doing it to protect themselves against their own employees," he says. "They put a piece of paper between you and employees, so if you ever have a confrontation, you can go to the file and say, 'Here, I've documented this problem.' "
There's a good reason for this defensive stance, of course. In the last two generations, government has created an immense thicket of labor regulations. Equal Employment Opportunity; Fair Labor Standards; Occupational Safety and Health; Family and Medical Leave; and the ever-popular ERISA. These are complex, serious issues requiring technical expertise, and HR has to apply reasonable caution.
But "it's easy to get sucked down into that," says Mark Royal, a senior consultant with Hay Group. "There's a tension created by HR's role as protector of corporate assets -- making sure it doesn't run afoul of the rules. That puts you in the position of saying no a lot, of playing the bad cop. You have to step out of that, see the broad possibilities, and take a more open-minded approach. You need to understand where the exceptions to broad policies can be made."
Typically, HR people can't, or won't. Instead, they pursue standardization and uniformity in the face of a workforce that is heterogeneous and complex. A manager at a large capital leasing company complains that corporate HR is trying to eliminate most vice-president titles there -- even though veeps are a dime a dozen in the finance industry. Why? Because in the company's commercial business, vice president is a rank reserved for the top officers. In its drive for bureaucratic "fairness," HR is actually threatening the reputation, and so the effectiveness, of the company's finance professionals.
The urge for one-size-fits-all, says one professor who studies the field, "is partly about compliance, but mostly because it's just easier." Bureaucrats everywhere abhor exceptions -- not just because they open up the company to charges of bias but because they require more than rote solutions. They're time-consuming and expensive to manage. Make one exception, HR fears, and the floodgates will open.
There's a contradiction here, of course: Making exceptions should be exactly what human resources does, all the time -- not because it's nice for employees, but because it drives the business. Employers keep their best people by acknowledging and rewarding their distinctive performance, not by treating them the same as everyone else. "If I'm running a business, I can tell you who's really helping to drive the business forward," says Dennis Ackley, an employee communication consultant. "HR should have the same view. We should send the message that we value our high-performing employees and we're focused on rewarding and retaining them."
Instead, human-resources departments benchmark salaries, function by function and job by job, against industry standards, keeping pay -- even that of the stars -- within a narrow band determined by competitors. They bounce performance appraisals back to managers who rate their employees too highly, unwilling to acknowledge accomplishments that would merit much more than the 4% companywide increase.
Human resources, in other words, forfeits long-term value for short-term cost efficiency. A simple test: Who does your company's vice president of human resources report to? If it's the CFO -- and chances are good it is -- then HR is headed in the wrong direction. "That's a model that cannot work," says one top HR exec who has been there. "A financial person is concerned with taking money out of the organization. HR should be concerned with putting investments in."
4. The corner office doesn't get HR (and vice versa). I'm at another rockin' party: a few dozen midlevel human-resources managers at a hotel restaurant in Mahwah, New Jersey. It is not glam in any way. (I've got to get a better travel agent.) But it is telling, in a hopeful way. Hunter Douglas, a $2.1 billion manufacturer of window coverings, has brought its HR staff here from across the United States to celebrate their accomplishments.
The company's top brass is on hand. Marvin B. Hopkins, president and CEO of North American operations, lays on the praise: "I feel fantastic about your achievements," he says. "Our business is about people. Hiring, training, and empathizing with employees is extremely important. When someone is fired or leaves, we've failed in some way. People have to feel they have a place at the company, a sense of ownership."
So, yeah, it's corporate-speak in a drab exurban office park. But you know what? The human-resources managers from Tupelo and Dallas are totally pumped up. They've been flown into headquarters, they've had their picture taken with the boss, and they're seeing Mamma Mia on Broadway that afternoon on the company's dime.
Can your HR department say it has the ear of top management? Probably not. "Sometimes," says Ulrich, "line managers just have this legacy of HR in their minds, and they can't get rid of it. I felt really badly for one HR guy. The chairman wanted someone to plan company picnics and manage the union, and every time this guy tried to be strategic, he got shot down."
Say what? Execs don't think HR matters? What about all that happy talk about employees being their most important asset? Well, that turns out to have been a small misunderstanding. In the 1990s, a group of British academics examined the relationship between what companies (among them, the UK units of Hewlett-Packard and Citibank) said about their human assets and how they actually behaved. The results were, perhaps, inevitable.
In their rhetoric, human-resources organizations embraced the language of a "soft" approach, speaking of training, development, and commitment. But "the underlying principle was invariably restricted to the improvements of bottom-line performance," the authors wrote in the resulting book, Strategic Human Resource Management (Oxford University Press, 1999). "Even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is almost always 'hard,' with the interests of the organization prevailing over those of the individual."
In the best of worlds, says London Business School professor Lynda Gratton, one of the study's authors, "the reality should be some combination of hard and soft." That's what's going on at Hunter Douglas. Human resources can address the needs of employees because it has proven its business mettle -- and vice versa. Betty Lou Smith, the company's vice president of corporate HR, began investigating the connection between employee turnover and product quality. Divisions with the highest turnover rates, she found, were also those with damaged-goods rates of 5% or higher. And extraordinarily, 70% of employees were leaving the company within six months of being hired.
Smith's staffers learned that new employees were leaving for a variety of reasons: They didn't feel respected, they didn't have input in decisions, but mostly, they felt a lack of connection when they were first hired. "We gave them a 10-minute orientation, then they were out on the floor," Smith says. She addressed the weakness by creating a mentoring program that matched new hires with experienced workers. The latter were suspicious at first, but eventually, the mentor positions (with spiffy shirts and caps) came to be seen as prestigious. The six-month turnover rate dropped dramatically, to 16%. Attendance and productivity -- and the damaged-goods rate -- improved.
"We don't wait to hear from top management," Smith says. "You can't just sit in the corner and look at benefits. We have to know what the issues in our business are. HR has to step up and assume responsibility, not wait for management to knock on our door."
But most HR people do.
Hunter Douglas gives us a glimmer of hope -- of the possibility that HR can be done right. And surely, even within ineffective human-resources organizations, there are great individual HR managers -- trustworthy, caring people with their ears to the ground, who are sensitive to cultural nuance yet also understand the business and how people fit in. Professionals who move voluntarily into HR from line positions can prove especially adroit, bringing a profit-and-loss sensibility and strong management skills.
At Yahoo, Libby Sartain, chief people officer, is building a group that may prove to be the truly effective human-resources department that employees and executives imagine. In this, Sartain enjoys two advantages. First, she arrived with a reputation as a creative maverick, won in her 13 years running HR at Southwest Airlines. And second, she had license from the top to do whatever it took to create a world-class organization.
Sartain doesn't just have a "seat at the table" at Yahoo; she actually helped build the table, instituting a weekly operations meeting that she coordinates with COO Dan Rosensweig. Talent is always at the top of the agenda -- and at the end of each meeting, the executive team mulls individual development decisions on key staffers.
That meeting, Sartain says, "sends a strong message to everyone at Yahoo that we can't do anything without HR." It also signals to HR staffers that they're responsible for more than shuffling papers and getting in the way. "We view human resources as the caretaker of the largest investment of the company," Sartain says. "If you're not nurturing that investment and watching it grow, you're not doing your job."
Yahoo, say some experts and peers at other organizations, is among a few companies -- among them Cardinal Health, Procter & Gamble, Pitney Bowes, Goldman Sachs, and General Electric -- that truly are bringing human resources into the realm of business strategy. But they are indeed the few. USC professor Edward E. Lawler III says that last year HR professionals reported spending 23% of their time "being a strategic business partner" -- no more than they reported in 1995. And line managers, he found, said HR is far less involved in strategy than HR thinks it is. "Despite great huffing and puffing about strategy," Lawler says, "there's still a long way to go." (Indeed. When I asked one midlevel HR person exactly how she was involved in business strategy for her division, she excitedly described organizing a monthly lunch for her vice president with employees.)
What's driving the strategy disconnect? London Business School's Gratton spends a lot of time training human-resources professionals to create more impact. She sees two problems: Many HR people, she says, bring strong technical expertise to the party but no "point of view about the future and how organizations are going to change." And second, "it's very difficult to align HR strategy to business strategy, because business strategy changes very fast, and it's hard to fiddle around with a compensation strategy or benefits to keep up." More than simply understanding strategy, Gratton says, truly effective executives "need to be operating out of a set of principles and personal values." And few actually do.
In the meantime, economic natural selection is, in a way, taking care of the problem for us. Some 94% of large employers surveyed this year by Hewitt Associates reported they were outsourcing at least one human-resources activity. By 2008, according to the survey, many plan to expand outsourcing to include activities such as learning and development, payroll, recruiting, health and welfare, and global mobility.
Which is to say, they will farm out pretty much everything HR does. The happy rhetoric from the HR world says this is all for the best: Outsourcing the administrative minutiae, after all, would allow human-resources professionals to focus on more important stuff that's central to the business. You know, being strategic partners.
The problem, if you're an HR person, is this: The tasks companies are outsourcing -- the administrivia -- tend to be what you're good at. And what's left isn't exactly your strong suit. Human resources is crippled by what Jay Jamrog, executive director of the Human Resource Institute, calls "educated incapacity: You're smart, and you know the way you're working today isn't going to hold 10 years from now. But you can't move to that level. You're stuck."
That's where human resources is today. Stuck. "This is a unique organization in the company," says USC's Boudreau. "It discovers things about the business through the lens of people and talent. That's an opportunity for competitive advantage." In most companies, that opportunity is utterly wasted.
And that's why I don't like HR.
Keith H. Hammonds is Fast Company's deputy editor.
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Fast Company, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195
From: Issue 97 August 2005 Page 40 By: Keith H. Hammonds
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Well, here's a rockin' party: a gathering of several hundred midlevel human-resources executives in Las Vegas. (Yo, Wayne Newton! How's the 401(k)?) They are here, ensconced for two days at faux-glam Caesars Palace, to confer on "strategic HR leadership," a conceit that sounds, to the lay observer, at once frightening and self-contradictory. If not plain laughable.
Because let's face it: After close to 20 years of hopeful rhetoric about becoming "strategic partners" with a "seat at the table" where the business decisions that matter are made, most human-resources professionals aren't nearly there. They have no seat, and the table is locked inside a conference room to which they have no key. HR people are, for most practical purposes, neither strategic nor leaders.
I don't care for Las Vegas. And if it's not clear already, I don't like HR, either, which is why I'm here. The human-resources trade long ago proved itself, at best, a necessary evil -- and at worst, a dark bureaucratic force that blindly enforces nonsensical rules, resists creativity, and impedes constructive change. HR is the corporate function with the greatest potential -- the key driver, in theory, of business performance -- and also the one that most consistently underdelivers. And I am here to find out why.
Why are annual performance appraisals so time-consuming -- and so routinely useless? Why is HR so often a henchman for the chief financial officer, finding ever-more ingenious ways to cut benefits and hack at payroll? Why do its communications -- when we can understand them at all -- so often flout reality? Why are so many people processes duplicative and wasteful, creating a forest of paperwork for every minor transaction? And why does HR insist on sameness as a proxy for equity?
It's no wonder that we hate HR. In a 2005 survey by consultancy Hay Group, just 40% of employees commended their companies for retaining high-quality workers. Just 41% agreed that performance evaluations were fair. Only 58% rated their job training as favorable. Most said they had few opportunities for advancement -- and that they didn't know, in any case, what was required to move up. Most telling, only about half of workers below the manager level believed their companies took a genuine interest in their well-being.
None of this is explained immediately in Vegas. These HR folks, from employers across the nation, are neither evil courtiers nor thoughtless automatons. They are mostly smart, engaging people who seem genuinely interested in doing their jobs better. They speak convincingly about employee development and cultural transformation. And, over drinks, they spin some pretty funny yarns of employee weirdness. (Like the one about the guy who threatened to sue his wife's company for "enabling" her affair with a coworker. Then there was the mentally disabled worker and the hooker -- well, no, never mind. . . .)
But then the facade cracks. It happens at an afternoon presentation called "From Technicians to Consultants: How to Transform Your HR Staff into Strategic Business Partners." The speaker, Julie Muckler, is senior vice president of human resources at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. She is an enthusiastic woman with a broad smile and 20 years of experience at companies such as Johnson & Johnson and General Tire. She has degrees in consumer economics and human resources and organizational development.
And I have no idea what she's talking about. There is mention of "internal action learning" and "being more planful in my approach." PowerPoint slides outline Wells Fargo Home Mortgage's initiatives in performance management, organization design, and horizontal-solutions teams. Muckler describes leveraging internal resources and involving external resources -- and she leaves her audience dazed. That evening, even the human-resources pros confide they didn't understand much of it, either.
This, friends, is the trouble with HR. In a knowledge economy, companies that have the best talent win. We all know that. Human resources execs should be making the most of our, well, human resources -- finding the best hires, nurturing the stars, fostering a productive work environment -- just as IT runs the computers and finance minds the capital. HR should be joined to business strategy at the hip.
Instead, most HR organizations have ghettoized themselves literally to the brink of obsolescence. They are competent at the administrivia of pay, benefits, and retirement, but companies increasingly are farming those functions out to contractors who can handle such routine tasks at lower expense. What's left is the more important strategic role of raising the reputational and intellectual capital of the company -- but HR is, it turns out, uniquely unsuited for that.
Here's why.
1. HR people aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. We'll be blunt: If you are an ambitious young thing newly graduated from a top college or B-school with your eye on a rewarding career in business, your first instinct is not to join the human-resources dance. (At the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, which arguably boasts the nation's top faculty for organizational issues, just 1.2% of 2004 grads did so.) Says a management professor at one leading school: "The best and the brightest don't go into HR."
Who does? Intelligent people, sometimes -- but not businesspeople. "HR doesn't tend to hire a lot of independent thinkers or people who stand up as moral compasses," says Garold L. Markle, a longtime human-resources executive at Exxon and Shell Offshore who now runs his own consultancy. Some are exiles from the corporate mainstream: They've fared poorly in meatier roles -- but not poorly enough to be fired. For them, and for their employers, HR represents a relatively low-risk parking spot.
Others enter the field by choice and with the best of intentions, but for the wrong reasons. They like working with people, and they want to be helpful -- noble motives that thoroughly tick off some HR thinkers. "When people have come to me and said, 'I want to work with people,' I say, 'Good, go be a social worker,' " says Arnold Kanarick, who has headed human resources at the Limited and, until recently, at Bear Stearns. "HR isn't about being a do-gooder. It's about how do you get the best and brightest people and raise the value of the firm."
The really scary news is that the gulf between capabilities and job requirements appears to be widening. As business and legal demands on the function intensify, staffers' educational qualifications haven't kept pace. In fact, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a considerably smaller proportion of HR professionals today have some education beyond a bachelor's degree than in 1990.
And here's one more slice of telling SHRM data: When HR professionals were asked about the worth of various academic courses toward a "successful career in HR," 83% said that classes in interpersonal communications skills had "extremely high value." Employment law and business ethics followed, at 71% and 66%, respectively. Where was change management? At 35%. Strategic management? 32%. Finance? Um, that was just 2%.
The truth? Most human-resources managers aren't particularly interested in, or equipped for, doing business. And in a business, that's sort of a problem. As guardians of a company's talent, HR has to understand how people serve corporate objectives. Instead, "business acumen is the single biggest factor that HR professionals in the U.S. lack today," says Anthony J. Rucci, executive vice president at Cardinal Health Inc., a big health-care supply distributor.
Rucci is consistently mentioned by academics, consultants, and other HR leaders as an executive who actually does know business. At Baxter International, he ran both HR and corporate strategy. Before that, at Sears, he led a study of results at 800 stores over five years to assess the connection between employee commitment, customer loyalty, and profitability.
As far as Rucci is concerned, there are three questions that any decent HR person in the world should be able to answer. First, who is your company's core customer? "Have you talked to one lately? Do you know what challenges they face?" Second, who is the competition? "What do they do well and not well?" And most important, who are we? "What is a realistic assessment of what we do well and not so well vis a vis the customer and the competition?"
Does your HR pro know the answers?
2. HR pursues efficiency in lieu of value. Why? Because it's easier -- and easier to measure. Dave Ulrich, a professor at the University of Michigan, recalls meeting with the chairman and top HR people from a big bank. "The training person said that 80% of employees have done at least 40 hours in classes. The chairman said, 'Congratulations.' I said, 'You're talking about the activities you're doing. The question is, What are you delivering?' "
That sort of stuff drives Ulrich nuts. Over 20 years, he has become the HR trade's best-known guru (see "The Once and Future Consultant," page 48) and a leading proponent of the push to take on more-strategic roles within corporations. But human-resources managers, he acknowledges, typically undermine that effort by investing more importance in activities than in outcomes. "You're only effective if you add value," Ulrich says. "That means you're not measured by what you do but by what you deliver." By that, he refers not just to the value delivered to employees and line managers, but the benefits that accrue to investors and customers, as well.
So here's a true story: A talented young marketing exec accepts a job offer with Time Warner out of business school. She interviews for openings in several departments -- then is told by HR that only one is interested in her. In fact, she learns later, they all had been. She had been railroaded into the job, under the supervision of a widely reviled manager, because no one inside the company would take it.
You make the call: Did HR do its job? On the one hand, it filled the empty slot. "It did what was organizationally expedient," says the woman now. "Getting someone who wouldn't kick and scream about this role probably made sense to them. But I just felt angry." She left Time Warner after just a year. (A Time Warner spokesperson declined to comment on the incident.)
Part of the problem is that Time Warner's metrics likely will never catch the real cost of its HR department's action. Human resources can readily provide the number of people it hired, the percentage of performance evaluations completed, and the extent to which employees are satisfied or not with their benefits. But only rarely does it link any of those metrics to business performance.
John W. Boudreau, a professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations, likens the failing to shortcomings of the finance function before DuPont figured out how to calculate return on investment in 1912. In HR, he says, "we don't have anywhere near that kind of logical sophistication in the way of people or talent. So the decisions that get made about that resource are far less sophisticated, reliable, and consistent."
Cardinal Health's Rucci is trying to fix that. Cardinal regularly asks its employees 12 questions designed to measure engagement. Among them: Do they understand the company's strategy? Do they see the connection between that and their jobs? Are they proud to tell people where they work? Rucci correlates the results to those of a survey of 2,000 customers, as well as monthly sales data and brand-awareness scores.
"So I don't know if our HR processes are having an impact" per se, Rucci says. "But I know absolutely that employee-engagement scores have an impact on our business," accounting for between 1% and 10% of earnings, depending on the business and the employee's role. "Cardinal may not anytime soon get invited by the Conference Board to explain our world-class best practices in any area of HR -- and I couldn't care less. The real question is, Is the business effective and successful?"
3. HR isn't working for you. Want to know why you go through that asinine performance appraisal every year, really? Markle, who admits to having administered countless numbers of them over the years, is pleased to confirm your suspicions. Companies, he says "are doing it to protect themselves against their own employees," he says. "They put a piece of paper between you and employees, so if you ever have a confrontation, you can go to the file and say, 'Here, I've documented this problem.' "
There's a good reason for this defensive stance, of course. In the last two generations, government has created an immense thicket of labor regulations. Equal Employment Opportunity; Fair Labor Standards; Occupational Safety and Health; Family and Medical Leave; and the ever-popular ERISA. These are complex, serious issues requiring technical expertise, and HR has to apply reasonable caution.
But "it's easy to get sucked down into that," says Mark Royal, a senior consultant with Hay Group. "There's a tension created by HR's role as protector of corporate assets -- making sure it doesn't run afoul of the rules. That puts you in the position of saying no a lot, of playing the bad cop. You have to step out of that, see the broad possibilities, and take a more open-minded approach. You need to understand where the exceptions to broad policies can be made."
Typically, HR people can't, or won't. Instead, they pursue standardization and uniformity in the face of a workforce that is heterogeneous and complex. A manager at a large capital leasing company complains that corporate HR is trying to eliminate most vice-president titles there -- even though veeps are a dime a dozen in the finance industry. Why? Because in the company's commercial business, vice president is a rank reserved for the top officers. In its drive for bureaucratic "fairness," HR is actually threatening the reputation, and so the effectiveness, of the company's finance professionals.
The urge for one-size-fits-all, says one professor who studies the field, "is partly about compliance, but mostly because it's just easier." Bureaucrats everywhere abhor exceptions -- not just because they open up the company to charges of bias but because they require more than rote solutions. They're time-consuming and expensive to manage. Make one exception, HR fears, and the floodgates will open.
There's a contradiction here, of course: Making exceptions should be exactly what human resources does, all the time -- not because it's nice for employees, but because it drives the business. Employers keep their best people by acknowledging and rewarding their distinctive performance, not by treating them the same as everyone else. "If I'm running a business, I can tell you who's really helping to drive the business forward," says Dennis Ackley, an employee communication consultant. "HR should have the same view. We should send the message that we value our high-performing employees and we're focused on rewarding and retaining them."
Instead, human-resources departments benchmark salaries, function by function and job by job, against industry standards, keeping pay -- even that of the stars -- within a narrow band determined by competitors. They bounce performance appraisals back to managers who rate their employees too highly, unwilling to acknowledge accomplishments that would merit much more than the 4% companywide increase.
Human resources, in other words, forfeits long-term value for short-term cost efficiency. A simple test: Who does your company's vice president of human resources report to? If it's the CFO -- and chances are good it is -- then HR is headed in the wrong direction. "That's a model that cannot work," says one top HR exec who has been there. "A financial person is concerned with taking money out of the organization. HR should be concerned with putting investments in."
4. The corner office doesn't get HR (and vice versa). I'm at another rockin' party: a few dozen midlevel human-resources managers at a hotel restaurant in Mahwah, New Jersey. It is not glam in any way. (I've got to get a better travel agent.) But it is telling, in a hopeful way. Hunter Douglas, a $2.1 billion manufacturer of window coverings, has brought its HR staff here from across the United States to celebrate their accomplishments.
The company's top brass is on hand. Marvin B. Hopkins, president and CEO of North American operations, lays on the praise: "I feel fantastic about your achievements," he says. "Our business is about people. Hiring, training, and empathizing with employees is extremely important. When someone is fired or leaves, we've failed in some way. People have to feel they have a place at the company, a sense of ownership."
So, yeah, it's corporate-speak in a drab exurban office park. But you know what? The human-resources managers from Tupelo and Dallas are totally pumped up. They've been flown into headquarters, they've had their picture taken with the boss, and they're seeing Mamma Mia on Broadway that afternoon on the company's dime.
Can your HR department say it has the ear of top management? Probably not. "Sometimes," says Ulrich, "line managers just have this legacy of HR in their minds, and they can't get rid of it. I felt really badly for one HR guy. The chairman wanted someone to plan company picnics and manage the union, and every time this guy tried to be strategic, he got shot down."
Say what? Execs don't think HR matters? What about all that happy talk about employees being their most important asset? Well, that turns out to have been a small misunderstanding. In the 1990s, a group of British academics examined the relationship between what companies (among them, the UK units of Hewlett-Packard and Citibank) said about their human assets and how they actually behaved. The results were, perhaps, inevitable.
In their rhetoric, human-resources organizations embraced the language of a "soft" approach, speaking of training, development, and commitment. But "the underlying principle was invariably restricted to the improvements of bottom-line performance," the authors wrote in the resulting book, Strategic Human Resource Management (Oxford University Press, 1999). "Even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is almost always 'hard,' with the interests of the organization prevailing over those of the individual."
In the best of worlds, says London Business School professor Lynda Gratton, one of the study's authors, "the reality should be some combination of hard and soft." That's what's going on at Hunter Douglas. Human resources can address the needs of employees because it has proven its business mettle -- and vice versa. Betty Lou Smith, the company's vice president of corporate HR, began investigating the connection between employee turnover and product quality. Divisions with the highest turnover rates, she found, were also those with damaged-goods rates of 5% or higher. And extraordinarily, 70% of employees were leaving the company within six months of being hired.
Smith's staffers learned that new employees were leaving for a variety of reasons: They didn't feel respected, they didn't have input in decisions, but mostly, they felt a lack of connection when they were first hired. "We gave them a 10-minute orientation, then they were out on the floor," Smith says. She addressed the weakness by creating a mentoring program that matched new hires with experienced workers. The latter were suspicious at first, but eventually, the mentor positions (with spiffy shirts and caps) came to be seen as prestigious. The six-month turnover rate dropped dramatically, to 16%. Attendance and productivity -- and the damaged-goods rate -- improved.
"We don't wait to hear from top management," Smith says. "You can't just sit in the corner and look at benefits. We have to know what the issues in our business are. HR has to step up and assume responsibility, not wait for management to knock on our door."
But most HR people do.
Hunter Douglas gives us a glimmer of hope -- of the possibility that HR can be done right. And surely, even within ineffective human-resources organizations, there are great individual HR managers -- trustworthy, caring people with their ears to the ground, who are sensitive to cultural nuance yet also understand the business and how people fit in. Professionals who move voluntarily into HR from line positions can prove especially adroit, bringing a profit-and-loss sensibility and strong management skills.
At Yahoo, Libby Sartain, chief people officer, is building a group that may prove to be the truly effective human-resources department that employees and executives imagine. In this, Sartain enjoys two advantages. First, she arrived with a reputation as a creative maverick, won in her 13 years running HR at Southwest Airlines. And second, she had license from the top to do whatever it took to create a world-class organization.
Sartain doesn't just have a "seat at the table" at Yahoo; she actually helped build the table, instituting a weekly operations meeting that she coordinates with COO Dan Rosensweig. Talent is always at the top of the agenda -- and at the end of each meeting, the executive team mulls individual development decisions on key staffers.
That meeting, Sartain says, "sends a strong message to everyone at Yahoo that we can't do anything without HR." It also signals to HR staffers that they're responsible for more than shuffling papers and getting in the way. "We view human resources as the caretaker of the largest investment of the company," Sartain says. "If you're not nurturing that investment and watching it grow, you're not doing your job."
Yahoo, say some experts and peers at other organizations, is among a few companies -- among them Cardinal Health, Procter & Gamble, Pitney Bowes, Goldman Sachs, and General Electric -- that truly are bringing human resources into the realm of business strategy. But they are indeed the few. USC professor Edward E. Lawler III says that last year HR professionals reported spending 23% of their time "being a strategic business partner" -- no more than they reported in 1995. And line managers, he found, said HR is far less involved in strategy than HR thinks it is. "Despite great huffing and puffing about strategy," Lawler says, "there's still a long way to go." (Indeed. When I asked one midlevel HR person exactly how she was involved in business strategy for her division, she excitedly described organizing a monthly lunch for her vice president with employees.)
What's driving the strategy disconnect? London Business School's Gratton spends a lot of time training human-resources professionals to create more impact. She sees two problems: Many HR people, she says, bring strong technical expertise to the party but no "point of view about the future and how organizations are going to change." And second, "it's very difficult to align HR strategy to business strategy, because business strategy changes very fast, and it's hard to fiddle around with a compensation strategy or benefits to keep up." More than simply understanding strategy, Gratton says, truly effective executives "need to be operating out of a set of principles and personal values." And few actually do.
In the meantime, economic natural selection is, in a way, taking care of the problem for us. Some 94% of large employers surveyed this year by Hewitt Associates reported they were outsourcing at least one human-resources activity. By 2008, according to the survey, many plan to expand outsourcing to include activities such as learning and development, payroll, recruiting, health and welfare, and global mobility.
Which is to say, they will farm out pretty much everything HR does. The happy rhetoric from the HR world says this is all for the best: Outsourcing the administrative minutiae, after all, would allow human-resources professionals to focus on more important stuff that's central to the business. You know, being strategic partners.
The problem, if you're an HR person, is this: The tasks companies are outsourcing -- the administrivia -- tend to be what you're good at. And what's left isn't exactly your strong suit. Human resources is crippled by what Jay Jamrog, executive director of the Human Resource Institute, calls "educated incapacity: You're smart, and you know the way you're working today isn't going to hold 10 years from now. But you can't move to that level. You're stuck."
That's where human resources is today. Stuck. "This is a unique organization in the company," says USC's Boudreau. "It discovers things about the business through the lens of people and talent. That's an opportunity for competitive advantage." In most companies, that opportunity is utterly wasted.
And that's why I don't like HR.
Keith H. Hammonds is Fast Company's deputy editor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2007 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
Fast Company, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Avoid Year-end Panic: Dealing with renewals and upsells at the end of the year
The fiscal year-end can be one of the most trying times of the year for sales professionals as they evaluate their ability to hit their numbers in the remaining months. If you're scrambling to make those forecasted numbers, take a deep breath - meeting those goals does not have to put you in a panic.
There are several factors to consider when looking at the remaining months and planning where to spend your time. The first is to keep the bigger picture in mind. Customers need you to fix a problem, avoid a crisis, or accomplish a larger goal. Staying focused on their issues, rather than your need to close the deal, enables you to examine your deals closely and uncover areas you can potentially work with. This gives you the ability to identify deals with the best potential and then prioritize based on which are most likely to close soonest.
Prioritizing those deals is best done based on your knowledge of what customers need and when they need it. It does no good to pressure them to close if your solution doesn't answer a need they feel is urgent. This type of knowledge is part of identifying opportunities that meet the criteria for your ideal customer. Knowing how closely your deals match your criteria gives you a better idea of the likelihood that they will welcome your solution and see you as a valuable partner in achieving their goals.
The next step is to review the list and evaluate the potential of closing those deals by year end. Focus on where they are today and what it will take to advance them. Use this information to develop an action plan to meet your end-of-year goals. Consider the following aspects of each opportunity:
There are several factors to consider when looking at the remaining months and planning where to spend your time. The first is to keep the bigger picture in mind. Customers need you to fix a problem, avoid a crisis, or accomplish a larger goal. Staying focused on their issues, rather than your need to close the deal, enables you to examine your deals closely and uncover areas you can potentially work with. This gives you the ability to identify deals with the best potential and then prioritize based on which are most likely to close soonest.
Prioritizing those deals is best done based on your knowledge of what customers need and when they need it. It does no good to pressure them to close if your solution doesn't answer a need they feel is urgent. This type of knowledge is part of identifying opportunities that meet the criteria for your ideal customer. Knowing how closely your deals match your criteria gives you a better idea of the likelihood that they will welcome your solution and see you as a valuable partner in achieving their goals.
The next step is to review the list and evaluate the potential of closing those deals by year end. Focus on where they are today and what it will take to advance them. Use this information to develop an action plan to meet your end-of-year goals. Consider the following aspects of each opportunity:
- The customer's needs and the specific business issues s/he wants to address
- Your ability to provide business solutions and value rather than pushing an individual product
- The customer's timetable
- Who is involved in the decision-making process, their roles, and who makes the final call
Keeping these aspects in mind during your review provides a guideline for evaluating a deal's true potential for close. Focusing on your customers, understanding their issues, and knowing their sense of urgency will allow you to pinpoint the best opportunities in your funnel for year-end focus, and allow you to craft a plan to move those opportunities forward based on the customer's expectations rather than your own.
Prospecting and Qualifying
Hey Ya'll,
Here is another article published by Miller Heiman Inc entitled "Win Fast: Never, Ever Lose Slowly." Again this is something to put under the 411 when you have time category but even if you don't have time to read the entire article (10 pages) then check out the last page where it gives you "The Top 10 Must-Do List for Prospecting and Qualifying."
You can download the PDF here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dmtz3ni1z1n
Happy Selling!
Matt
Here is another article published by Miller Heiman Inc entitled "Win Fast: Never, Ever Lose Slowly." Again this is something to put under the 411 when you have time category but even if you don't have time to read the entire article (10 pages) then check out the last page where it gives you "The Top 10 Must-Do List for Prospecting and Qualifying."
You can download the PDF here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dmtz3ni1z1n
Happy Selling!
Matt
Selling to C-Level Executives
Some of you have seen this article. If you haven't, it's a quick read and definitely worth your time.
High tech has to speak C level language
By Peta G. Penson
Charleston Regional Business Journal 03/12/2001
A friendly chief executive officer told me the other day she figures top executives listen to about 50 dot-com sales presentations a month. “How do the good ones cut through the noise?” I asked.
“It’s all noise,” she replied.
With all the current sparks flying about dot-coms — who will and won’t make it — I found myself wondering if dot-coms have moved so fast selling their cutting edge ideas that they haven’t realized the market is not on the same pace. Just because they are jazzed about their technology and innovations, they assume the market will start buying as fast as they would like to sell. That’s a pretty big leap of faith when you are asking people to do something they hate to do -- change.
It’s relatively easy to make the first sale when you’ve got the first-ever of something. What’s more difficult, as dot-com’ers are discovering, is making the 100th, 1,000th or millionth sale when you have to penetrate deeper and convince the higher echelon to invest in your products.
I tracked down a sales training expert, Skip Miller, president of M3 Learning in Silicon Valley and author of ProActive Sales Management, and asked him what we can learn from the experience of dot-coms in selling new ideas. I got an earful.
The biggest problem, according to Miller, is that marketing and sales people are not taught that there are multiple languages spoken in an organization — it’s different for managers, vice presidents and the “C” level of chief executive officers, chief information officers, chief financial officers, etc.
“Too often the emphasis in sales strategy is on product knowledge,” Miller says. “When the salesperson has the features/functions down pat, they think they are ready to go out to sell it by talking about how it is quicker, smaller, bigger or cheaper. That’s appropriate if you are talking to a prospect who is a manager whose main concern is how the product is going to make their lives easier, but it’s not the right message if you are at a higher level.”
Give that sales pitch to vice presidents, Miller says, and you are likely to get a response like “Wow that’s great, but if it doesn’t boost revenue or lower cost why am I talking to you?”
If the salesperson is lucky enough to get the ear of someone in the top tier — the C-level — then the message has to be entirely different. C-level folks don’t care about features and functions benefits like managers do, and they only have a passing interest in keeping within a budget. What captures their interest are products and services that bring about market share gains. They speak the language of value.
“Top sales people must learn to speak all three languages to be effective,” Miller says. “It’s like learning to speak the right language to the right person in the right country. If you are fluent in Chinese, you are not going to understand Russian. If Russian is how you communicate, you are not going to understand Greek. You have to master all three if you want to be heard and understood by each.”
Miller, who teaches seminars throughout the U.S. for the American Management Association, as well as his own sales school in California, has identified five ways a sales person can convince a prospect at the C-level that a product or service will create lasting value:
Return on their investment: It’s trendy to talk about selling “solutions” and it may be effective at the management level, but at the C level they want to know the money they spend will come back as increased revenue and profits.
Time: As in time to market. Uptime, downtime, overtime – people will always pay for time.
Risk: This is by far the most viable language to use with the C level, according to Miller. Make the customer’s decision less risky and they’ll pay for it.
Motivation: Also known in the sales biz as “pain and pleasure.” Find out their motivational direction. Is it towards pleasure or away from pain? Talk in those terms and they will hear you.
Brand: How it will make them look better to be associated with it. People will always pay more for little horses on their shirts or a Mercedes Benz symbol on their cars.
Dot-coms, like many companies that have come before them offering whiz-bang products, have quickly run through the early adopters at the manager and VP levels. If they are going to sustain their sales and grow, they are going to need to talk effectively with the C-level about their products and services.
“Remember, C-level executives have promised to grow the market or they lose their jobs,” says Miller. “What they need to hear in a sales presentation is what value this purchase will provide in getting to this end result. Delivering anything other than a value message is a waste of the sales person’s time.”
So, what is the message to all of us, whether we are selling for a dot-com or a bricks-and-mortar company?
“We all want to close business fast, at Internet speed,” Miller advises. “We need to make sales as quickly as possible, while the window for our products and services is still open, and the only way to do that is to know how to speak the language of the decision-maker at each level of the customer’s organization.”
High tech has to speak C level language
By Peta G. Penson
Charleston Regional Business Journal 03/12/2001
A friendly chief executive officer told me the other day she figures top executives listen to about 50 dot-com sales presentations a month. “How do the good ones cut through the noise?” I asked.
“It’s all noise,” she replied.
With all the current sparks flying about dot-coms — who will and won’t make it — I found myself wondering if dot-coms have moved so fast selling their cutting edge ideas that they haven’t realized the market is not on the same pace. Just because they are jazzed about their technology and innovations, they assume the market will start buying as fast as they would like to sell. That’s a pretty big leap of faith when you are asking people to do something they hate to do -- change.
It’s relatively easy to make the first sale when you’ve got the first-ever of something. What’s more difficult, as dot-com’ers are discovering, is making the 100th, 1,000th or millionth sale when you have to penetrate deeper and convince the higher echelon to invest in your products.
I tracked down a sales training expert, Skip Miller, president of M3 Learning in Silicon Valley and author of ProActive Sales Management, and asked him what we can learn from the experience of dot-coms in selling new ideas. I got an earful.
The biggest problem, according to Miller, is that marketing and sales people are not taught that there are multiple languages spoken in an organization — it’s different for managers, vice presidents and the “C” level of chief executive officers, chief information officers, chief financial officers, etc.
“Too often the emphasis in sales strategy is on product knowledge,” Miller says. “When the salesperson has the features/functions down pat, they think they are ready to go out to sell it by talking about how it is quicker, smaller, bigger or cheaper. That’s appropriate if you are talking to a prospect who is a manager whose main concern is how the product is going to make their lives easier, but it’s not the right message if you are at a higher level.”
Give that sales pitch to vice presidents, Miller says, and you are likely to get a response like “Wow that’s great, but if it doesn’t boost revenue or lower cost why am I talking to you?”
If the salesperson is lucky enough to get the ear of someone in the top tier — the C-level — then the message has to be entirely different. C-level folks don’t care about features and functions benefits like managers do, and they only have a passing interest in keeping within a budget. What captures their interest are products and services that bring about market share gains. They speak the language of value.
“Top sales people must learn to speak all three languages to be effective,” Miller says. “It’s like learning to speak the right language to the right person in the right country. If you are fluent in Chinese, you are not going to understand Russian. If Russian is how you communicate, you are not going to understand Greek. You have to master all three if you want to be heard and understood by each.”
Miller, who teaches seminars throughout the U.S. for the American Management Association, as well as his own sales school in California, has identified five ways a sales person can convince a prospect at the C-level that a product or service will create lasting value:
Return on their investment: It’s trendy to talk about selling “solutions” and it may be effective at the management level, but at the C level they want to know the money they spend will come back as increased revenue and profits.
Time: As in time to market. Uptime, downtime, overtime – people will always pay for time.
Risk: This is by far the most viable language to use with the C level, according to Miller. Make the customer’s decision less risky and they’ll pay for it.
Motivation: Also known in the sales biz as “pain and pleasure.” Find out their motivational direction. Is it towards pleasure or away from pain? Talk in those terms and they will hear you.
Brand: How it will make them look better to be associated with it. People will always pay more for little horses on their shirts or a Mercedes Benz symbol on their cars.
Dot-coms, like many companies that have come before them offering whiz-bang products, have quickly run through the early adopters at the manager and VP levels. If they are going to sustain their sales and grow, they are going to need to talk effectively with the C-level about their products and services.
“Remember, C-level executives have promised to grow the market or they lose their jobs,” says Miller. “What they need to hear in a sales presentation is what value this purchase will provide in getting to this end result. Delivering anything other than a value message is a waste of the sales person’s time.”
So, what is the message to all of us, whether we are selling for a dot-com or a bricks-and-mortar company?
“We all want to close business fast, at Internet speed,” Miller advises. “We need to make sales as quickly as possible, while the window for our products and services is still open, and the only way to do that is to know how to speak the language of the decision-maker at each level of the customer’s organization.”
Strategies for Complex, Business-to-Business Selling
Hi Ya'll
Here is an executive summary from a 2007 Miller Heiman (a sales training organization) report entitled "Strategies for Complex, Business-to-Business Selling." Put this under the 411 reading category when you have time but I thought it was worth posting.
There are a few particular points of interest such as understanding discounting and value selling at the executive level as well as an organizations perception of HR in the sales process.
Download the PDF here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2sm1exdg1of
Happy Selling!
Matt
Here is an executive summary from a 2007 Miller Heiman (a sales training organization) report entitled "Strategies for Complex, Business-to-Business Selling." Put this under the 411 reading category when you have time but I thought it was worth posting.
There are a few particular points of interest such as understanding discounting and value selling at the executive level as well as an organizations perception of HR in the sales process.
Download the PDF here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2sm1exdg1of
Happy Selling!
Matt
Linkedin.com: A professional networking site and a great tool for blueprinting
Hi Ya'll,
A colleague introduced me to this site. It's a professional networking site; sort of a myspace for grown-ups. :)
I've found it to be a fantastic tool for blueprinting. You simply type in a company name into the search box on the homepage and you can immediately uncover 30+ new contacts for your clients/prospects.
They also give a little fun fact on the site that more than 3,000 CEO's use the site everyday. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.
http://www.linkedin.com/
Happy Selling!
Matt
A colleague introduced me to this site. It's a professional networking site; sort of a myspace for grown-ups. :)
I've found it to be a fantastic tool for blueprinting. You simply type in a company name into the search box on the homepage and you can immediately uncover 30+ new contacts for your clients/prospects.
They also give a little fun fact on the site that more than 3,000 CEO's use the site everyday. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.
http://www.linkedin.com/
Happy Selling!
Matt
Friday, September 14, 2007
Negotiations by David DiStefano of Richardson Inc
http://www.sellingpower.com/video/index.asp?date=9/13/2007
He makes a great point about not succumbing to a demand in negotiation. You have to understand what the true needs are underneath the deamand and reposition your value to meet that need.
He makes a great point about not succumbing to a demand in negotiation. You have to understand what the true needs are underneath the deamand and reposition your value to meet that need.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Win the War for Young Talent
"We offer a great career path." "We are a fun place to work." "This is an exciting place to work." Blah, blah, blah. To top college recruits being wooed by many companies, all these statements start sounding alike after a while. What can you do to differentiate yourself? In their book, Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent (Penguin, August 2007), authors Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra, and Ramit Sethi offer 12 assessment questions for companies to ask themselves before they talk with top talent. These questions are designed to help all companies – big and small – recognize what they have to offer students.
1. What do your organization's youngest employees brag about to their friends?
2. What do your youngest employees complain about?
3. What are your organization's core values?
4. If your own child were a new college graduate, would you recommend he or she work for your organization? Why? Why not?
5. What's the best thing your organization does for employees' career growth?
6. What are your recruits doing one, three, and five years down the road? Is this what you want them to be doing?
7. What's the most common reason people give for leaving your organization?
8. What percentage of your organization's employees spend time with coworkers outside of work?
9. What about your work environment makes it better than the one in the movie, Office Space?10. Do the work experiences you provide to interns and entry-level hires actually match what you've promised in the past?
11. How often do your new hires change projects?
12. How much do new hires really contribute to the critical decisions affecting the manufacture of your products or the delivery of your services?
Once you answer these questions, you should know exactly what you have to offer to new hires and how to prospect them. "Knowing yourself well will also help you more effectively focus your recruiting efforts, wasting less time struggling with students who probably won't work out as valuable long-term employees," say the authors.
1. What do your organization's youngest employees brag about to their friends?
2. What do your youngest employees complain about?
3. What are your organization's core values?
4. If your own child were a new college graduate, would you recommend he or she work for your organization? Why? Why not?
5. What's the best thing your organization does for employees' career growth?
6. What are your recruits doing one, three, and five years down the road? Is this what you want them to be doing?
7. What's the most common reason people give for leaving your organization?
8. What percentage of your organization's employees spend time with coworkers outside of work?
9. What about your work environment makes it better than the one in the movie, Office Space?10. Do the work experiences you provide to interns and entry-level hires actually match what you've promised in the past?
11. How often do your new hires change projects?
12. How much do new hires really contribute to the critical decisions affecting the manufacture of your products or the delivery of your services?
Once you answer these questions, you should know exactly what you have to offer to new hires and how to prospect them. "Knowing yourself well will also help you more effectively focus your recruiting efforts, wasting less time struggling with students who probably won't work out as valuable long-term employees," say the authors.
Measuring Recruiting Effectiveness
No matter how you recruit – through Human Resources, referrals, or recruitment firms – measuring each source's effectiveness and efficiency is imperative if you want to streamline the process and save money (and who doesn't?). In the book, Investing in Your Company's Human Capital: Strategies to Avoid Spending Too Little – or Too Much (AMACOM, 2005), author Dr. Jack Phillips offers some strategies to carefully and proactively manage and measure your recruiting techniques.
"Monitoring recruitment sources enables HR to track candidates to the original person, place, ad, or Web site," says Phillips. "The recruiting source or channel can be connected to the hire ratio." When tracking a source, says the author, you also need to reflect carefully on the source's effectiveness. You can also use the hire ratio – the percentage of candidates flowing through a source divided by those being hired – to measure how well the source provides qualified candidates. It's also just as important to compare the turnover in the first year of employment by each recruiting source (called the churn rate), says Phillips.
Of course, quality, a more subjective measure, is equally important in measuring recruiting source effectiveness. Phillips suggests administering surveys 30 to 60 days after employment start date to assess quality.
Lastly, it's important to measure the efficiency – the time it takes to fill the job – of the source. To measure this, Phillips suggests beginning at the time the request for a new employee is submitted and continuing to the time when the candidate actually begins the job. "In organizations where job growth is necessary or there is high turnover, time to recruit is an important consideration," he says. "The faster the response, the better – as long as quality is there."
"Monitoring recruitment sources enables HR to track candidates to the original person, place, ad, or Web site," says Phillips. "The recruiting source or channel can be connected to the hire ratio." When tracking a source, says the author, you also need to reflect carefully on the source's effectiveness. You can also use the hire ratio – the percentage of candidates flowing through a source divided by those being hired – to measure how well the source provides qualified candidates. It's also just as important to compare the turnover in the first year of employment by each recruiting source (called the churn rate), says Phillips.
Of course, quality, a more subjective measure, is equally important in measuring recruiting source effectiveness. Phillips suggests administering surveys 30 to 60 days after employment start date to assess quality.
Lastly, it's important to measure the efficiency – the time it takes to fill the job – of the source. To measure this, Phillips suggests beginning at the time the request for a new employee is submitted and continuing to the time when the candidate actually begins the job. "In organizations where job growth is necessary or there is high turnover, time to recruit is an important consideration," he says. "The faster the response, the better – as long as quality is there."
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
UniFirst partners with CareerBuilder.com for rebranding
"Partnering with CareerBuilder.com to assist us with our employment branding and recruitment has been tremendously successful for us. Through our e-mail campaigns, we are able to push higher quality traffic to the website where candidates can learn more about UniFirst, our culture, and our opportunities."Eric Fournier, Recruiting
As the unemployment rate continues to drop across the nation, organizations face tougher challenges in the recruitment and retention of employees. To counter this challenge, some executives are looking to strengthen their company's employment brand to highlight the unseen but positive benefits of working for their organization. At UniFirst, one of the nation's leading workwear and textile services companies, management brands their organization as an "employer of choice" by implementing some of the industry's best practices. In so doing, UniFirst helps to create a more positive perception of its company and—in the process—its entire industry.
Company Background
UniFirst competes in the industrial laundry and garment rental services industry—an arena that can mistakenly be viewed as non-glamorous—particularly when it comes to a career in sales. UniFirst competes with Aramark, Cintas and G&K Services for its clients; it contends with companies like Waste Management, Paychecks, Yellowbook, Nextel, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson for its employee talent. Contrary to general belief that its industry offers less in the way of finances, training, infrastructure, and professional opportunity, UniFirst invests heavily in the career growth of all its Team Partners. In fact, this factor is largely responsible for UniFirst's ability to boast more than 70 consecutive years of revenue growth. That is an admirable feat for any type of company.
Best Practices in Employment Branding Strategy:
1. Senior Leaders should establish the employment brand and strategy:
Successful employment branding campaigns are initiated at the top. UniFirst's President and CEO Ronald Croatti explains, "A large part of our employment branding initiative deals with our familial work environment, which allows all Team Partners the opportunity to better themselves with ongoing education, training, and recognition programs." Croatti adds, "At the same time, we foster an environment where everyone innately treats each other as they would like to be treated—all of which, in turn, ultimately helps to ensure that our customers always receive the best quality services possible."
2. Promote the brand internally:
After senior leadership has established the message, organizations should broadcast that brand internally. As part of UniFirst's branding efforts, its employees (called Team Partners) are asked to continually keep the company's founding "family-like" values in mind. All of which are reaffirmed each year at company-wide "Founders Day" celebrations—a North American tradition held on or around July 12, the date in 1936 when UniFirst began its business.
3. Ensure that the employment brand supports the consumer brand:
Another element organizations should consider in establishing the message is the employment brand should support the consumer-targeted brand. To compete effectively in today's increasing competition for talent, organizations must get their internal cultural branding messages out as effectively as they do their overall business branding messages. UniFirst leads its competition in this arena by incorporating a focused "great place to work" message within its comprehensive branding strategy. For UniFirst, this process involved the re-branding of its organization's image from one that appeared product driven to one that is now more service focused. Prior to this effort, much of the public knew the name "U1st," but not "UniFirst" which diluted the overall brand identity. The company outlined in detail how the more clearly defined name would be incorporated within all its employment and recruitment efforts.
4. Disseminate the brand externally:
Once the employment brand is established organizations should invest in the external branding strategy. Part of UniFirst's overall strategy involves building on their long and successful partnership with CareerBuilder.com.
UniFirst realized the bottom line value of CareerBuilder.com and has taken its program from the core product usage of job postings and resume database to branding tools like in the weeks following each e-mail program. It's important to note that UniFirst's e-mail campaigns were particularly successful because they were launched in conjunction with the company's job posting strategies. Combined, these two initiatives had a positive impact on job seekers searching the internet. (See graphs)
UniFirst also invested in Job Branding with CareerBuilder.com. It worked to ensure each of its postings on CareerBuilder.com effectively portrayed the culture of UniFirst. UniFirst saw a 15% increase in applicant flow immediately after this tool launched.
Along with investments in internet partners like CareerBuilder.com, UniFirst also relies on college recruiting visits, employee and customer referrals, and constant networking by its Team Partners. Through a solid workforce management strategy, UniFirst will accomplish their stretch goal to enlighten the public-at-large that UniFirst and the industrial laundry industry are indeed a "glamorous arena" in which to pursue a satisfying and rewarding career.
As the unemployment rate continues to drop across the nation, organizations face tougher challenges in the recruitment and retention of employees. To counter this challenge, some executives are looking to strengthen their company's employment brand to highlight the unseen but positive benefits of working for their organization. At UniFirst, one of the nation's leading workwear and textile services companies, management brands their organization as an "employer of choice" by implementing some of the industry's best practices. In so doing, UniFirst helps to create a more positive perception of its company and—in the process—its entire industry.
Company Background
UniFirst competes in the industrial laundry and garment rental services industry—an arena that can mistakenly be viewed as non-glamorous—particularly when it comes to a career in sales. UniFirst competes with Aramark, Cintas and G&K Services for its clients; it contends with companies like Waste Management, Paychecks, Yellowbook, Nextel, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson for its employee talent. Contrary to general belief that its industry offers less in the way of finances, training, infrastructure, and professional opportunity, UniFirst invests heavily in the career growth of all its Team Partners. In fact, this factor is largely responsible for UniFirst's ability to boast more than 70 consecutive years of revenue growth. That is an admirable feat for any type of company.
Best Practices in Employment Branding Strategy:
1. Senior Leaders should establish the employment brand and strategy:
Successful employment branding campaigns are initiated at the top. UniFirst's President and CEO Ronald Croatti explains, "A large part of our employment branding initiative deals with our familial work environment, which allows all Team Partners the opportunity to better themselves with ongoing education, training, and recognition programs." Croatti adds, "At the same time, we foster an environment where everyone innately treats each other as they would like to be treated—all of which, in turn, ultimately helps to ensure that our customers always receive the best quality services possible."
2. Promote the brand internally:
After senior leadership has established the message, organizations should broadcast that brand internally. As part of UniFirst's branding efforts, its employees (called Team Partners) are asked to continually keep the company's founding "family-like" values in mind. All of which are reaffirmed each year at company-wide "Founders Day" celebrations—a North American tradition held on or around July 12, the date in 1936 when UniFirst began its business.
3. Ensure that the employment brand supports the consumer brand:
Another element organizations should consider in establishing the message is the employment brand should support the consumer-targeted brand. To compete effectively in today's increasing competition for talent, organizations must get their internal cultural branding messages out as effectively as they do their overall business branding messages. UniFirst leads its competition in this arena by incorporating a focused "great place to work" message within its comprehensive branding strategy. For UniFirst, this process involved the re-branding of its organization's image from one that appeared product driven to one that is now more service focused. Prior to this effort, much of the public knew the name "U1st," but not "UniFirst" which diluted the overall brand identity. The company outlined in detail how the more clearly defined name would be incorporated within all its employment and recruitment efforts.
4. Disseminate the brand externally:
Once the employment brand is established organizations should invest in the external branding strategy. Part of UniFirst's overall strategy involves building on their long and successful partnership with CareerBuilder.com.
UniFirst realized the bottom line value of CareerBuilder.com and has taken its program from the core product usage of job postings and resume database to branding tools like in the weeks following each e-mail program. It's important to note that UniFirst's e-mail campaigns were particularly successful because they were launched in conjunction with the company's job posting strategies. Combined, these two initiatives had a positive impact on job seekers searching the internet. (See graphs)
UniFirst also invested in Job Branding with CareerBuilder.com. It worked to ensure each of its postings on CareerBuilder.com effectively portrayed the culture of UniFirst. UniFirst saw a 15% increase in applicant flow immediately after this tool launched.
Along with investments in internet partners like CareerBuilder.com, UniFirst also relies on college recruiting visits, employee and customer referrals, and constant networking by its Team Partners. Through a solid workforce management strategy, UniFirst will accomplish their stretch goal to enlighten the public-at-large that UniFirst and the industrial laundry industry are indeed a "glamorous arena" in which to pursue a satisfying and rewarding career.
Robert Half International attracts the best by developing a great employment brand
"When we recruit, we specifically look for people who embody the core values of the company. These are the candidates best suited to help us grow."Paul F. Gentzkow, President and COO of staffing services
Hiring the best employees has never been easy. Companies often begin by promoting their top pay-and-benefits packages, then segue into perks like free massages on Fridays and the annual retreat in the Virgin Islands. However, the most critical factor some companies fail to focus on is the item that would truly set them apart: their employment brand.
"In this tightening labor market, companies have a real challenge recruiting and retaining great employees," says Matt Ferguson, president and CEO of CareerBuilder. com, the nation's top online job network. "An employment brand— the overall perception of an organization's culture and working environment—is a competitive differentiator for recruitment and an integral component of human capital management."
Company Background
One company that has mastered the art is Robert Half International, a global leader in professional services with $4 billion in annual revenues. Granted, the company has an advantage when it comes to recruiting: It pioneered specialized staffing services in 1948 and has built its business around finding outstanding talent in accounting, finance, technology, and related areas for worldwide clients.
"When we recruit, we specifically look for people who embody the core values of the company," says Paul F. Gentzkow, president and COO of staffing services for Robert Half. "These are the candidates best suited to help us grow." To help articulate its values and get the message out, Robert Half created an acronym, LEAD Principles, and now includes it in all recruitment materials. "This gives us an easy way to explain what we're about," says Gentzkow. "It stands for Leadership by example, Ethics first, An openness to new ideas, and Dedication to excellence." It helps attract applicants who share the company's values and discourages those who don't.
Expressing Company Culture Through Employment Branding
Since it's difficult to fully describe a culture in a job posting, Robert Half also works with CareerBuilder.com, which gets more than 23 million unique visitors a month. "We can link directly from our CareerBuilder.com posting to our website, where candidates can get a wealth of information about us and see if they're a good fit," says Gentzkow.
During the interview process, job seekers also meet with several Robert Half employees, who talk about specific aspects of the company's culture, so the candidate gets a full picture of the company and what it stands for. For example, Robert Half's culture is entrepreneurial, and that point is always stressed during the interviews. "We have a rich history and we emphasize that," says Gentzkow. "But we also have a start-up spirit, which means we need people who will thrive in a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment."
To ensure that the fit is really right, Robert Half also uses a technique called behavioral interviewing, in which candidates are asked how they handled particular situations at previous jobs. "By seeing how people tackled challenges, we can see if they truly embody our LEAD Principles," says Gentzkow.
More Efficient Recruiting
The result: By developing a strong employment brand, and getting out the message, Robert Half's recruitment process has become more efficient, and ultimately more successful. It not only experiences fewer hires that aren't the right fit, but lower turnover as well. Employment branding doesn't just help land candidates who work for the company, but who live it.
Hiring the best employees has never been easy. Companies often begin by promoting their top pay-and-benefits packages, then segue into perks like free massages on Fridays and the annual retreat in the Virgin Islands. However, the most critical factor some companies fail to focus on is the item that would truly set them apart: their employment brand.
"In this tightening labor market, companies have a real challenge recruiting and retaining great employees," says Matt Ferguson, president and CEO of CareerBuilder. com, the nation's top online job network. "An employment brand— the overall perception of an organization's culture and working environment—is a competitive differentiator for recruitment and an integral component of human capital management."
Company Background
One company that has mastered the art is Robert Half International, a global leader in professional services with $4 billion in annual revenues. Granted, the company has an advantage when it comes to recruiting: It pioneered specialized staffing services in 1948 and has built its business around finding outstanding talent in accounting, finance, technology, and related areas for worldwide clients.
"When we recruit, we specifically look for people who embody the core values of the company," says Paul F. Gentzkow, president and COO of staffing services for Robert Half. "These are the candidates best suited to help us grow." To help articulate its values and get the message out, Robert Half created an acronym, LEAD Principles, and now includes it in all recruitment materials. "This gives us an easy way to explain what we're about," says Gentzkow. "It stands for Leadership by example, Ethics first, An openness to new ideas, and Dedication to excellence." It helps attract applicants who share the company's values and discourages those who don't.
Expressing Company Culture Through Employment Branding
Since it's difficult to fully describe a culture in a job posting, Robert Half also works with CareerBuilder.com, which gets more than 23 million unique visitors a month. "We can link directly from our CareerBuilder.com posting to our website, where candidates can get a wealth of information about us and see if they're a good fit," says Gentzkow.
During the interview process, job seekers also meet with several Robert Half employees, who talk about specific aspects of the company's culture, so the candidate gets a full picture of the company and what it stands for. For example, Robert Half's culture is entrepreneurial, and that point is always stressed during the interviews. "We have a rich history and we emphasize that," says Gentzkow. "But we also have a start-up spirit, which means we need people who will thrive in a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment."
To ensure that the fit is really right, Robert Half also uses a technique called behavioral interviewing, in which candidates are asked how they handled particular situations at previous jobs. "By seeing how people tackled challenges, we can see if they truly embody our LEAD Principles," says Gentzkow.
More Efficient Recruiting
The result: By developing a strong employment brand, and getting out the message, Robert Half's recruitment process has become more efficient, and ultimately more successful. It not only experiences fewer hires that aren't the right fit, but lower turnover as well. Employment branding doesn't just help land candidates who work for the company, but who live it.
Are You Wasting Your Employment Branding Dollars?
Over the course of the last three years, employment branding has grown from a concept a few organizations were spending a little money on to a full-blown discipline that many large and small organizations alike are investing heavily in.
As of April 2007, more than 57% of the Fortune 200 and a growing percentage of the Global 500 had both dedicated headcount and budget working on employment branding. While the concept may have started in the United States, it is rapidly becoming a core practice among high-growth firms in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe.
While we could start a rant here about the differences between employment branding and recruitment marketing, we're not going to (instead, you can find that article here.)
Despite the current popularity of employment branding and the launch of numerous vendors offering related services, there is still a lot of inconsistency in how it is defined and, more important, executed.
As with many HR practices, employment branding can have a huge impact on the business with a relatively low investment if managed well. However, the reverse is also true.
Without a well-documented strategy and resources to execute it, an employment branding program can rapidly consume resources and seemingly offer nothing in return. With spending on the rise and competition for the best talent around the world increasing, the visibility of employment branding outside the HR function is growing quickly.
Simultaneously, poll after poll reveals that managers outside of HR are growing even more frustrated with the nature of our profession. Some studies show that nearly 79% of managers outside HR see HR as a barrier to the business. HR needs some success stories, some evidence that the profession is not full of clueless administrators intent on making life difficult via poorly defined processes and archaic policies, all of which seem not to align with the goals of the business.
Avoiding Mediocrity
Via our roles as corporate advisors, we see how numerous organizations approach employment branding, how effective the various approaches are, and more important, what often gets overlooked. From that vantage point it is clear that nearly every major implementation of employment branding lacks direction and structure, both of which are needed to enable successful execution.
Many outside our function would argue that the same critique could be applied throughout HR and they wouldn't be that far off. The famous science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein noted something about human behavior that seems directly targeted at the HR profession.
He wrote:
"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it."
It is a behavior that nearly every business leader and consultant around the world has encountered in nearly every organization and one that can sink a branding program quickly. Organizations must focus their branding efforts, have a complete plan, and be able to communicate that plan among business leaders.
The Five Questions
While a lot more goes into crafting a strategy than answering five questions, the following
questions are a foundation that must be established before any other work takes place. If any one of these questions is not answered thoroughly, it will leave issues open to exploration later down the road that could derail even the best-intentioned effort.
The five questions include:
What current business conditions are driving the need for employment branding?
What does the organization hope to accomplish via employment branding?
What specific objectives will take advantage of or mitigate the impact of the driving business
conditions?
What will be both in- and out-of-bounds for the employment branding program?
What specific deliverables will the program produce?
These five questions seem simple enough, but they truly are loaded questions. There is a minefield of issues behind each question; any could render your investment a waste, or even worse, a liability!
Thinking About the Five Questions
As was stated earlier, a lot of issues are buried within the five questions that warrant attention during the planning phase of establishing an employment branding initiative. If you already have a program in place that isn't guided by a well-developed charter, start over.
The answers to the five questions should vary dramatically from organization to organization. If your responses seem generic enough that another organization could have developed them, you have dived deep enough.
Some of the sub issues for each question include:
What current business conditions are driving the need for employment branding?
Are the business conditions consistent across the enterprise or do they vary by region, product line, professional function, manager, etc?
How volatile are the business conditions? Can they change in a week, a month, a quarter, a year, etc?
How does each business condition impact the organization's capability or capacity to achieve its strategic objectives?
What possible labor types can be used to mitigate or leverage the business conditions?
The key in responding to this question is to determine not only how the program should be focused, but also to establish what segments of the labor market need to be targeted, and what the maximum cycle time can be to impact perception and drive action by requisite talent.
Many organizations erroneously assume that they have a single employment brand. In reality, employment brand can vary throughout the organization. While some attributes are specific to the organization as a whole, many are not.
What does the organization hope to accomplish via employment branding?
Does the employment branding program solely need to drive recruiting, or does it also need to impact retention and motivation/productivity?
What will be different down the road in terms of the capability and capacity of the organization to achieve its objectives as a result of employment branding?
The key in responding to this question is specifics. The branding program must specify who will be impacted, to what degree, and on what timeline. This question is simply about drawing a line in the sand and setting clear goals about accountability.
What specific objectives will take advantage of or mitigate the impact of the driving business conditions?
What is the optimal ratio of labor resources needed to mitigate or take advantage of the business conditions, and how will each segment of the labor resources need to be manipulated?
Can a single initiative drive the requisite talent to the organization, or will it take multiple initiatives to piece-meal the right composition of labor?
Is the labor market capable of allocating the optimal ratio of labor needed to the organization or are long-term, development-oriented impacts needed?
In responding to this question, organizations need to be specific about what will be done to bring each and every segment of labor needed to the organization. This isn't the shotgun "employer of choice" approach. Instead, this is really targeted work.
What will be both in- and out-of-bounds for the employment branding program?
Where does the employer branding program sit in terms of organizational power? Can it drive changes to the recruiting strategy, organizational design, budgets, etc?
How will the employer branding program ensure the organization's ability to deliver on any brand promise established?
How will the employer deal with barriers to establishing the brand?
This is the 10,000-pound gorilla in this set of questions. You could answer every other question to the nth degree of specificity, get it right, and still fail miserably if you don't get this question answered. Too many branding organizations are lame-duck organizations with no authority to manage the product being produced.
What specific deliverables will the program produce?
What methodologies and tools will the program design to assess the current brand perception; the ideal brand perception necessary to attract the requisite talent; communication channels and their ability to influence the target markets; and program performance?
How will the methodologies and tools be integrated into the business so that they do not become stand-alone HR activities?
What lifecycle will each deliverable possess?
All too often, branding programs bounce around from activity to activity, failing to produce any deliverables that can be evaluated, systematized, or even repeated. In responding to this question, branding organizations need to specify what will be produced, who will own the product, and what maintenance cycle will be needed to maintain the product.
Conclusion
While putting together a strategy is inherently more involved than answering these five questions, just getting these down will go a long way at putting some structure around employment branding, regardless of how you define it.
Throughout the process, it is essential that program leaders follow the cardinal rule in branding: never manage based on your own perceptions, but rather those of the parties you are trying to influence.
Branding is a long-term activity, and results rarely occur overnight. But that is no excuse for not making sure they occur at all. Jump off the bandwagon, get your camp in order, then jump back on and prepare to ride a wave of productive fun. Executed well, employment branding can touch nearly every aspect of the organization; executed poorly and it's just recruitment marketing with a different name!
As of April 2007, more than 57% of the Fortune 200 and a growing percentage of the Global 500 had both dedicated headcount and budget working on employment branding. While the concept may have started in the United States, it is rapidly becoming a core practice among high-growth firms in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe.
While we could start a rant here about the differences between employment branding and recruitment marketing, we're not going to (instead, you can find that article here.)
Despite the current popularity of employment branding and the launch of numerous vendors offering related services, there is still a lot of inconsistency in how it is defined and, more important, executed.
As with many HR practices, employment branding can have a huge impact on the business with a relatively low investment if managed well. However, the reverse is also true.
Without a well-documented strategy and resources to execute it, an employment branding program can rapidly consume resources and seemingly offer nothing in return. With spending on the rise and competition for the best talent around the world increasing, the visibility of employment branding outside the HR function is growing quickly.
Simultaneously, poll after poll reveals that managers outside of HR are growing even more frustrated with the nature of our profession. Some studies show that nearly 79% of managers outside HR see HR as a barrier to the business. HR needs some success stories, some evidence that the profession is not full of clueless administrators intent on making life difficult via poorly defined processes and archaic policies, all of which seem not to align with the goals of the business.
Avoiding Mediocrity
Via our roles as corporate advisors, we see how numerous organizations approach employment branding, how effective the various approaches are, and more important, what often gets overlooked. From that vantage point it is clear that nearly every major implementation of employment branding lacks direction and structure, both of which are needed to enable successful execution.
Many outside our function would argue that the same critique could be applied throughout HR and they wouldn't be that far off. The famous science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein noted something about human behavior that seems directly targeted at the HR profession.
He wrote:
"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it."
It is a behavior that nearly every business leader and consultant around the world has encountered in nearly every organization and one that can sink a branding program quickly. Organizations must focus their branding efforts, have a complete plan, and be able to communicate that plan among business leaders.
The Five Questions
While a lot more goes into crafting a strategy than answering five questions, the following
questions are a foundation that must be established before any other work takes place. If any one of these questions is not answered thoroughly, it will leave issues open to exploration later down the road that could derail even the best-intentioned effort.
The five questions include:
What current business conditions are driving the need for employment branding?
What does the organization hope to accomplish via employment branding?
What specific objectives will take advantage of or mitigate the impact of the driving business
conditions?
What will be both in- and out-of-bounds for the employment branding program?
What specific deliverables will the program produce?
These five questions seem simple enough, but they truly are loaded questions. There is a minefield of issues behind each question; any could render your investment a waste, or even worse, a liability!
Thinking About the Five Questions
As was stated earlier, a lot of issues are buried within the five questions that warrant attention during the planning phase of establishing an employment branding initiative. If you already have a program in place that isn't guided by a well-developed charter, start over.
The answers to the five questions should vary dramatically from organization to organization. If your responses seem generic enough that another organization could have developed them, you have dived deep enough.
Some of the sub issues for each question include:
What current business conditions are driving the need for employment branding?
Are the business conditions consistent across the enterprise or do they vary by region, product line, professional function, manager, etc?
How volatile are the business conditions? Can they change in a week, a month, a quarter, a year, etc?
How does each business condition impact the organization's capability or capacity to achieve its strategic objectives?
What possible labor types can be used to mitigate or leverage the business conditions?
The key in responding to this question is to determine not only how the program should be focused, but also to establish what segments of the labor market need to be targeted, and what the maximum cycle time can be to impact perception and drive action by requisite talent.
Many organizations erroneously assume that they have a single employment brand. In reality, employment brand can vary throughout the organization. While some attributes are specific to the organization as a whole, many are not.
What does the organization hope to accomplish via employment branding?
Does the employment branding program solely need to drive recruiting, or does it also need to impact retention and motivation/productivity?
What will be different down the road in terms of the capability and capacity of the organization to achieve its objectives as a result of employment branding?
The key in responding to this question is specifics. The branding program must specify who will be impacted, to what degree, and on what timeline. This question is simply about drawing a line in the sand and setting clear goals about accountability.
What specific objectives will take advantage of or mitigate the impact of the driving business conditions?
What is the optimal ratio of labor resources needed to mitigate or take advantage of the business conditions, and how will each segment of the labor resources need to be manipulated?
Can a single initiative drive the requisite talent to the organization, or will it take multiple initiatives to piece-meal the right composition of labor?
Is the labor market capable of allocating the optimal ratio of labor needed to the organization or are long-term, development-oriented impacts needed?
In responding to this question, organizations need to be specific about what will be done to bring each and every segment of labor needed to the organization. This isn't the shotgun "employer of choice" approach. Instead, this is really targeted work.
What will be both in- and out-of-bounds for the employment branding program?
Where does the employer branding program sit in terms of organizational power? Can it drive changes to the recruiting strategy, organizational design, budgets, etc?
How will the employer branding program ensure the organization's ability to deliver on any brand promise established?
How will the employer deal with barriers to establishing the brand?
This is the 10,000-pound gorilla in this set of questions. You could answer every other question to the nth degree of specificity, get it right, and still fail miserably if you don't get this question answered. Too many branding organizations are lame-duck organizations with no authority to manage the product being produced.
What specific deliverables will the program produce?
What methodologies and tools will the program design to assess the current brand perception; the ideal brand perception necessary to attract the requisite talent; communication channels and their ability to influence the target markets; and program performance?
How will the methodologies and tools be integrated into the business so that they do not become stand-alone HR activities?
What lifecycle will each deliverable possess?
All too often, branding programs bounce around from activity to activity, failing to produce any deliverables that can be evaluated, systematized, or even repeated. In responding to this question, branding organizations need to specify what will be produced, who will own the product, and what maintenance cycle will be needed to maintain the product.
Conclusion
While putting together a strategy is inherently more involved than answering these five questions, just getting these down will go a long way at putting some structure around employment branding, regardless of how you define it.
Throughout the process, it is essential that program leaders follow the cardinal rule in branding: never manage based on your own perceptions, but rather those of the parties you are trying to influence.
Branding is a long-term activity, and results rarely occur overnight. But that is no excuse for not making sure they occur at all. Jump off the bandwagon, get your camp in order, then jump back on and prepare to ride a wave of productive fun. Executed well, employment branding can touch nearly every aspect of the organization; executed poorly and it's just recruitment marketing with a different name!
Great Definition of Branding...
Cartis Group President Speaks at AIGA Annual Meeting
AUSTIN, TX - April 5, 2006
Cartis Group President and Chief Creative Officer, Shannon Carter, hosted and spoke at the Austin chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts “Small Talk Series,” addressing the significance of branding. The audience was diverse, consisting of about 50 designers, paper reps, students and seasoned professionals, all of whom were in attendance to learn about what exactly branding is and how to successfully create and sustain a powerful brand.
Beginning by defining branding as “the process of instilling the core business culture, philosophy and strategy into every communication touch-point,” Carter explained branding from the perspective of how Cartis Group approaches every brand it creates. Anyone can design a great logo and claim it represents a company’s brand, but a truly great brand is the result of a great strategy, developed from intense consideration of the company’s needs and its core business strategy, producing a clear, solid reflection of the company’s essence. Carter fielded a diverse set of questions, answering how to approach branding from the perspective of a design agency, how to sell branding and what Cartis Group looks for in designers.
Carter, a frequent speaker on branding and advertising, and the Austin Ad Fed’s Ad Man of the Year for 2005, is also set to address the 7th District of the American Ad Fed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana this spring.
AUSTIN, TX - April 5, 2006
Cartis Group President and Chief Creative Officer, Shannon Carter, hosted and spoke at the Austin chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts “Small Talk Series,” addressing the significance of branding. The audience was diverse, consisting of about 50 designers, paper reps, students and seasoned professionals, all of whom were in attendance to learn about what exactly branding is and how to successfully create and sustain a powerful brand.
Beginning by defining branding as “the process of instilling the core business culture, philosophy and strategy into every communication touch-point,” Carter explained branding from the perspective of how Cartis Group approaches every brand it creates. Anyone can design a great logo and claim it represents a company’s brand, but a truly great brand is the result of a great strategy, developed from intense consideration of the company’s needs and its core business strategy, producing a clear, solid reflection of the company’s essence. Carter fielded a diverse set of questions, answering how to approach branding from the perspective of a design agency, how to sell branding and what Cartis Group looks for in designers.
Carter, a frequent speaker on branding and advertising, and the Austin Ad Fed’s Ad Man of the Year for 2005, is also set to address the 7th District of the American Ad Fed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana this spring.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Brand Metrics: Three Pathways to Measure ROI
Presented by: Don E. Schultz, Agora Inc. and Northwestern Unviersity. Marketing Profs Virtual Seminar, April 5th, 2007
https://admin.acrobat.com/_a204297457/p94866098/
https://admin.acrobat.com/_a204297457/p94866098/
Google Author Series: Seth Godin
All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294&q=seth+godin&total=77&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294&q=seth+godin&total=77&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Persuasive Communication
Six Tactics to Persuade Prospects
Persuasive Communication Successful communicators have three major strengths in common. They establish rapport, then build trust carefully and probe to discover their customers' needs and interests.Surprisingly, they do one more thing more often than their less-successful peers. Top communicators refer to the negatives of their product 30 percent more often than do average salespeople. This is a clever way to establish trust and it seems to work. So, the next time your prospect says that your price is too high, agree wholeheartedly and explain the reasons why.
Presentations are all about persuasion - persuading audience members to buy, moving to the next step in the competition, setting up a meeting with the CEO. Simple, right? Now consider that entire books have been written on the science of persuasion and that many psychologists devote their lives to studying persuasion. How can you, a sales professional, be expected to grasp the intricacies of influence and then use that knowledge to move prospects' opinions - all in a half-hour presentation?
That's where Dave Lakhani comes in. Lakhani, president of Bold Approach, Inc. (www.howtopersuade.com) and author of Persuasion (John Wiley, 2005), offers these six tactics you can apply now to help move your prospects to the decision you want.
1. Social matching. Also known as social proof, this concept states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. Present your audience with proof or examples of what other people are doing in relation to the idea you are presenting. You'll find this is a powerful way to get people to take some action when they are unsure what to do, says Lakhani.
2. Concurrence. Closely related to social matching, concurrence is simply an agreement in opinion. You need to show prospects that someone else like them or someone they respect shares their opinion. Start the presentation with a shared opinion and you'll find it much easier to move to a place of agreement on ideas that are new to prospects.
3. Inconsequence. Persuading prospects to accept one big idea in one big chunk is a near impossible task. Instead, focus on getting them to accept little ideas and small changes first. "Once they have accepted one or two small ideas, it's much easier to get them to agree on the next," says Lakhani. Keep in mind, however, that this isn’t about getting your prospects to say yes to a bunch of unrelated things and then throwing in your idea with the hopes their string of yeses will continue. It's about building up small, related ideas so that by the time you've created the whole big idea, it feels like an easy decision and logical next step.
4. Likeability. You'll never persuade anyone if they don't like you. People want to do business with people they like. The good news is that likeability is something you can learn. One trick Lakhani uses to boost his likeability with prospects is to pick up two or three of whatever all the celebrities who populate the trade shows he attends are signing. It doesn’t matter what it is. The reason is simple. "Imagine," he says, "what happens when you admit that you are a huge fan of the pro wrestler Goldberg and a couple days later I send you an autographed 8x10 color photo. You like me, probably a lot."
5. Giving to receive. If someone gives us something, we feel obligated to give something in return. What can you give your prospects during your presentation that takes advantage of this law of reciprocity? A product sample? Pads of paper with your logo on them for taking notes? It doesn't even have to be something concrete: How about making a concession? If you make a concession, it can lead to many good returns. Just don't make too many concessions or buyers will push for more. Also, don't be in a hurry to make them. Agonize for a bit before you make it and the concession will be more valuable to the recipient.
6. Accountability. The simple act of keeping your word, holding yourself accountable and holding your prospects accountable for actions can go a long way toward persuading people. "In virtually every persuasive transaction I complete I get solid next-action steps regardless of the level of commitment," explains Lakhani. "More importantly, I then follow up to let my prospects know I am paying attention to the next steps and keeping track." As a sales rep, Lakhani says his calls were taken by prospects with predictable regularity because he had a commitment to call at a certain time and the people with whom he dealt came to expect him to keep his word. So make sure your presentation concludes with some next steps and a timetable for them. Then stay on top of them for both you and your prospect. You'll go a long way toward persuading them to buy from you.
Persuasive Communication Successful communicators have three major strengths in common. They establish rapport, then build trust carefully and probe to discover their customers' needs and interests.Surprisingly, they do one more thing more often than their less-successful peers. Top communicators refer to the negatives of their product 30 percent more often than do average salespeople. This is a clever way to establish trust and it seems to work. So, the next time your prospect says that your price is too high, agree wholeheartedly and explain the reasons why.
Presentations are all about persuasion - persuading audience members to buy, moving to the next step in the competition, setting up a meeting with the CEO. Simple, right? Now consider that entire books have been written on the science of persuasion and that many psychologists devote their lives to studying persuasion. How can you, a sales professional, be expected to grasp the intricacies of influence and then use that knowledge to move prospects' opinions - all in a half-hour presentation?
That's where Dave Lakhani comes in. Lakhani, president of Bold Approach, Inc. (www.howtopersuade.com) and author of Persuasion (John Wiley, 2005), offers these six tactics you can apply now to help move your prospects to the decision you want.
1. Social matching. Also known as social proof, this concept states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. Present your audience with proof or examples of what other people are doing in relation to the idea you are presenting. You'll find this is a powerful way to get people to take some action when they are unsure what to do, says Lakhani.
2. Concurrence. Closely related to social matching, concurrence is simply an agreement in opinion. You need to show prospects that someone else like them or someone they respect shares their opinion. Start the presentation with a shared opinion and you'll find it much easier to move to a place of agreement on ideas that are new to prospects.
3. Inconsequence. Persuading prospects to accept one big idea in one big chunk is a near impossible task. Instead, focus on getting them to accept little ideas and small changes first. "Once they have accepted one or two small ideas, it's much easier to get them to agree on the next," says Lakhani. Keep in mind, however, that this isn’t about getting your prospects to say yes to a bunch of unrelated things and then throwing in your idea with the hopes their string of yeses will continue. It's about building up small, related ideas so that by the time you've created the whole big idea, it feels like an easy decision and logical next step.
4. Likeability. You'll never persuade anyone if they don't like you. People want to do business with people they like. The good news is that likeability is something you can learn. One trick Lakhani uses to boost his likeability with prospects is to pick up two or three of whatever all the celebrities who populate the trade shows he attends are signing. It doesn’t matter what it is. The reason is simple. "Imagine," he says, "what happens when you admit that you are a huge fan of the pro wrestler Goldberg and a couple days later I send you an autographed 8x10 color photo. You like me, probably a lot."
5. Giving to receive. If someone gives us something, we feel obligated to give something in return. What can you give your prospects during your presentation that takes advantage of this law of reciprocity? A product sample? Pads of paper with your logo on them for taking notes? It doesn't even have to be something concrete: How about making a concession? If you make a concession, it can lead to many good returns. Just don't make too many concessions or buyers will push for more. Also, don't be in a hurry to make them. Agonize for a bit before you make it and the concession will be more valuable to the recipient.
6. Accountability. The simple act of keeping your word, holding yourself accountable and holding your prospects accountable for actions can go a long way toward persuading people. "In virtually every persuasive transaction I complete I get solid next-action steps regardless of the level of commitment," explains Lakhani. "More importantly, I then follow up to let my prospects know I am paying attention to the next steps and keeping track." As a sales rep, Lakhani says his calls were taken by prospects with predictable regularity because he had a commitment to call at a certain time and the people with whom he dealt came to expect him to keep his word. So make sure your presentation concludes with some next steps and a timetable for them. Then stay on top of them for both you and your prospect. You'll go a long way toward persuading them to buy from you.
First Research Presentation
The link below is to a presentation on First Research and how to use it from a Sales and Marketing Alert.
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