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Cross Link Consulting, LLC |
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Transforming Businesses through Top-line Growth and Process Innovation |
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The Cross Link Communicator |
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Having a dream for your company and where it can go doesn’t mean it has to be big. Yet, often, business owners and executives fall into the trap of thinking one of two things: either their dreams are too big to get their arms around, or not big enough to need to worry about writing anything down. Strategic planning is about putting meat on your company’s mission statement or purpose for being in |
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K. Keith Drew, Executive Consultant |
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“Strategic” Does Not Mean Big |
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Vol. 1, Issue 3, September, 2008 |
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Book Review: The Ultimate Question |
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What’s the difference between true growth and simply looking good in the short-term? This is where Fred Reichheld begins the discussion in his book, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. 1 For many sales people, any sale is a good sale that pays a commission. Yet anyone who has been around long enough knows how hard it is to find new prospects, versus mining satisfied customers. The issue is how to determine whether you are generating Promoters or Detractors. After much research, Fred and his colleagues have determined that one simple question stands above the |
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Does your business create Good Profits or Bad Ones? |
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Getting eye glasses early in life can be a real pain. Messy hands tend to lead to messy glasses. Yet having been one of those children, I know from experience that when other people see your glasses as dirty, you often don’t even notice. We get so accustomed to the gradual deterioration of visibility, that we don’t even notice how bad it’s gotten. The same is true for businesses. Often, the vision we have for our company seems clear to us, but is murky, at best, to those around us. That vision often gets worse the further |
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Clear Visions Make for Clear Direction |
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rest in determining this. “And the question was, “How likely is it that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?”” 2 Fred goes on to discuss how to use this question in lieu of traditional customer satisfaction surveys to determine what he defines as the Net Promoter Score (NPS). 3 The concept is simple: people who truly like the product or service they receive will talk positively about it and not only buy more, but encourage others to buy it. These are the people he calls the Promoters, and answer the Ultimate Question with a 9 or 10 on a scale of 0-10. Conversely, people who dislike a product or service not only won’t buy again, but will speak negatively about it...discouraging others from buying. These are the Detractors and range from 0-6 on the scale. While these customers may look good as a sale to an accountant, “They suck the life out of a firm.”4 Research shows this to be directly related to sales—“On average, customers reported that it required at least five positive comments to neutralize one negative.”5 Reichheld divides the book into 3 parts with lots of real-life examples from the business world. He provides humor in the form of a Top Ten list of why customer satisfaction surveys are a joke. Having known and worked with several of the companies exampled in the books, it was easy to verify the issues presented and the ways companies worked through those issues. One of my favorite sections had to do with this very topic—the fallacies of satisfaction surveys. I once worked with a company who touted their 90+ ratings in their satisfaction surveys, even though the average employee in the field knew that customers were getting less and less satisfied due to the decisions being made by the leaders of the company. When asked, the representative of the company admitted that the return rate on the surveys was less than 20% and included all positive responses, not just the “Promoters,” as Reichheld would call them. When adding the 80% no-replies, even the positive responses would have been more like 18%--closer to what the front-line employees were experiencing in the field. At Cross Link Consulting, we offer consulting services for business owners who need an outside source of evaluation and resources to grow your business to take it to the next level. We work with you to evaluate the effectiveness of your company as an agent for growth, not just sales. To learn more, visit www.crosslinkconsulting.com, or call us at 770-378-6904. ______________________ 1 (Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation), 2006 2 Ibid, p. 28 3 Ibid, p.39 4 Ibid, p.30 5 Ibid, p. 53 |
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business. As a professor of mine used to say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.” What she meant is that while it’s one thing to have an idea or vision for where you want to go, if you don’t get it down on paper (or in a computer, today), you probably haven’t spent the time thinking through the steps, the milestones, to making those visions become reality. With the pressures of the modern business world, that means we often find ourselves blown by the winds of the immediate demands of our days, instead of the important goals of our vision. A simple way to look at this is the way teachers make lesson plans. There are 3 basic elements to lesson plans: Purpose, Goals, and Objectives. Let’s look at these in relation to building a business plan. The purpose is the overarching reason for a lesson, much like the mission statement of a company is the reason it is in business. The goals are the primary ways in which the purpose is going to be achieved. In business, these are the strategic goals and plans of a company. They can include definitions of the product lines, marketing approaches, sales strategies, as well as the structure of the company, financial goals, and its corporate social responsibility. While many businesses will go this far in their planning, the next step is crucial. In lesson plans, the Objectives are the measurable, quantifiable elements of the overall plan which are designed to meet the goals and purpose. They usually include defined results and a timeline for the results. In project management we call these objectives milestones. In strategic planning, these are the tactical, frontline targets by which a company’s progress is measured. It is these objectives, or milestones, which “flesh out” the plan so a business owner or executive can know whether or not they are truly headed in the “right” direction. How about you? Do you know where you and your company are going? Have you taken the time to define obtainable goals? The last thing a teacher does after putting the plan together is identify the resources necessary to carry out the lesson. Do you have the right resources to carry out your plan? It’s practically impossible to know unless you have truly “done the homework.” A good business coach or consultant is a vital part in assisting a company to not only develop the plan, but also assist in the follow through and hold you accountable in the process. If you don’t have one, maybe today is the day to begin. After all, strategic doesn’t mean big, but it does mean important. At Cross Link Consulting, we can work with you and your company to develop a business plan that was meant to grow your company toward your Purpose, Goals and Objectives. To learn more about business plans to run your business by, please contact us at info@CrossLinkConsulting.com, or call us at 770-378-6904. |
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“Strategic” Does Not Mean Big, cont. |
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Clear Visions Make for Clear Directions, cont. |
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down the chain within a company one goes—to the point where many front-line employees have no idea where the company is heading. Let’s take a common example. Many companies have taken the time to put together a vision or mission statement. This is the common purpose toward which all employees are working. But once these statements are created and distributed, the only place you often find them is in the waiting room! Successful companies are more concerned that their mission statements are located in the Break Room and the employee entrances! Having your customers onboard is nice…but having your employees and teammates onboard is much more important!! After all, those mission statements are often about how we are going to treat our customers! Unfortunately, new employee training assumes the interview process “covered” the mission statement, rather than explaining how a company’s mission statement is implemented and worked toward on a daily basis within a company. Another factor which often clouds the vision of a company from its employees is the trust factor. Certain employees within companies are known for their inability to “keep a secret.” Therefore, many companies are worried about competitive information being released. In companies with merger-mentalities, the next merger becomes more important than growing the company or even sales. This leads to companies not sharing any information that has to do with direction. Rumors and guesses become rampant. Energy and creativity is often lost as companies forget what it means to be a part of a true team. Imagine watching a football game where the quarterback never called the play. The lineman wouldn’t know what direction to block. The backs wouldn’t know whether to block, run, or prepare for receiving a pass. While every company needs to be flexible to the changing market and economy, it is important for everyone to at least start with the same goals—the same vision. Just like the person whose eye glasses get smudged and dirty, companies, too, need someone who can help both clarify the vision and improve the conveyance of the vision. At Cross Link Consulting, we provide that 3rd-person perspective which empowers a company to convey and implement their visions—both inside the company and to their customers. To learn more about how to get your company a Vision Checkup, contact us today at 770-378-6904, or email us at info@crosslinkconsulting.com. Don’t wait until you can’t see the vision, yourself! |
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