So far in 2009 I’ve held workshops with 32 different companies from almost as many sectors and without exception every one is worried; even those businesses that are doing well. And who can blame them? There’s a media feeding frenzy for the negatives of business life with governments, banks and international corporations seemingly offering a daily menu from which to gorge. And in my opinion it won’t be these major players who will get us out of this mess – it’s the small and medium sized businesses, real businesses, which will be the drivers and leaders of the recovery. But it won’t be easy and there are no quick fixes.
My fellow columnist John Timpson and I both share the misfortune of having chosen to support the team in blue from Manchester and whilst we haven’t won anything in over 30 years we have learnt how to deal with adversity. And whilst the talk from “Middle-Eastlands” is all about Champions League football within two years, the reality is more to do with not slipping up at home to Sunderland on a cold March Saturday. And so it’s true with business. Now is not the time for many of us to be investing days of time on the exit plan, instead we should roll our sleeves up even higher and focus on the short term (by which I mean the immediate term) needs of sales and customer service. Metaphorically, business today is like playing the last game of the season where you need to score at least twice to stay up – (I know, something City has failed to do on more than one occasion).
Right now, I’m advising clients to all but abandon annual targets, even quarterly ones. Indeed, monthly goals are too long for some businesses – my advice for these times is to have weekly and daily objectives and to break down the sales process into bite-sized chunks. The things to measure will vary from one business to another but might include visits to your website, time spent on each visit, telephone enquiries, outgoing calls, visits to your outlets, new business calls, meetings with existing customers, proposals written, quotations, offers, tenders submitted and many more. My view is to identify the key components and focus all your efforts and incentives for your teams on these. I’d change the emphasis each day to create variety and maintain interest from the team and offer immediate cash or other incentives of value for the highest achievers – you know, even the most battle-hardened salesman can still be motivated by a daily target and prize. It’s also great for a company to see improvements, even small ones such as an increased number of website visitors or phone calls – winning is about a series of small victories rather than one big one. And you need your people to keep the faith, to believe that you will pull through; they must continue to deliver an excellent service ideally with a smile on their face, so give them something to smile about each day.
In order to maintain the focus and concentration I’m asking every one of my senior team the same question at the start of each day: “what are you going to get done today?” and then in the evening I ask them “what did you achieve today?” I also encourage them to ask the same of their teams and whilst some might think this is excessive, my sense is that creating daily opportunities for positive feedback is hugely rewarding in this climate. It also causes people to realise that there is no magic wand and that positive change will come as a consequence of focussed hard work.
Magic wands are my biggest worry at the moment. I’m seeing too many people naively holding out believing that something magical will fix this crisis and quickly too. Hope is not a strategy. You need to do things for your business to survive and battening down the hatches is not enough. This storm is going to last too long for people to be able to tough it out without doing something. If you’ve spent the last few months below decks, having made all the cuts possible and are still finding your results aren’t good enough then you need to get the team focussed on immediate actions which will yield immediate results. There will be some magic as a consequence though – your team will be better placed than ever before to capitalise when the economy improves and starts its next cycle.
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