Business during a pandemic. Part 2

Today we will continue our conversation about successful solutions to business problems in a crisis (the first part of the article is here).

Often, when people talk about the success of an entrepreneur, they don’t mention the role of their team.

But during my work, I have never seen a really serious success achieved by a loner. Yes, always at the beginning of any project, including a business, lies the creative energy and workable idea of ​​a particular person, but there comes a time when there is not enough time in the day, strength, knowledge, and for the good of the cause it is simply necessary to involve other people.

If a person is not ready to share success, money, achievements, he gathers a circle of admirers around him who will look into his mouth and predict the wishes of his leader, but these are not like-minded people, not friends, not even fellow travelers. This option is not very close to me, although even now there are quite viable options.

But what’s interesting is that recently the example of large companies that devote time to the personal development of key employees is becoming quite common in small businesses.

When a founder is not afraid to gather around him people stronger than himself, professionals in their field and invests in their growth: both personal and work, then the real growth of the company can surprise anyone.

A few of the examples we’ll talk about today will be about just that.

Trucking Case

In one of the companies with which we have already worked, we were asked to conduct a personnel audit and develop a system for assessing and motivating staff. A small company that was engaged in cargo transportation within the region. With the beginning of quarantine, like many, they experienced a drop in turnover. Part of the contractors paused, the new ones were not sure about the continuation of the projects, and everything was very shaky. It was necessary to work with the effectiveness of the team and its indicators.

The task is not particularly difficult, given that the company was under 100 people. But at some point, a feeling began to appear that something was wrong when we saw several people with the same last name. In the next conversation with the director, we decided to joke about the fact that not namesakes work in the company, but only relatives.

What was our surprise when he confirmed our guess and said that we still did not consider a number of employees to be relatives, since they were brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, but with different surnames. By a strange coincidence (sarcasm), the performance of these particular employees was not up to par.

When we summed up our work, it was recommended to reduce the staff, recalculate the key indicators of positions and the motivational part of a number of employees. Among them, a fairly large part of the people, and those in key positions, were relatives of the director.

He told us that we must understand that he will not be able to impose sanctions on his loved ones. Since we were talking about risks for the company, we warned him that either he was doing something to the employees, or the performance of the company as a whole would only get worse.

One of my mentors used to say: don’t change people (don’t try to educate them at work), change people (find the right people for the job).

We parted not very warmly, because it was clear that the director was not going to apply our recommendations in full. But here’s the thing: when a comprehensive analysis of the company is carried out, the recommendations resemble a full-fledged recipe that must be used 100%.

When we take a recipe for borscht, but exclude the use of water, beets, potatoes, meat, we get anything but borscht. So it is here.

The director agreed to apply some of the recommendations in the field of motivation and indicators, but did not want to consider the situation in its entirety. Therefore, we were not surprised when, during the next call, we heard that the company was closing down due to debts to suppliers and the inability to do its job.

In normal times, perhaps the company could have survived for some time, because by the time it closed, it had almost 10 years of operation. But in a crisis, pandemic, remote work, when a lot of things are changing, the company did not want to treat itself in a new way.

A couple more thoughts.

You can work with friends and relatives. But without clearly defined boundaries of responsibility and obligations, this is fraught with a breakdown in relations or poor business performance. Unfortunately, I did not meet any exceptions.

The next case is also about the team

In one of the projects (language school), with which we worked for a very short time, the manager, who is also the owner of the company, was very intelligent, smart, greedy for knowledge.

The only feature of his that, in my opinion, prevented him from fully building the work of the company is his inability and unwillingness to delegate. During the project, I saw what a leader is – “I will do everything myself”, “if you want to get a result, do it yourself”.

He was in touch always and for everyone. I don’t know when he slept or if he slept at all.

He answered letters. Monitored chats. Conducted correspondence on the educational platform. Developed teaching aids. Checked our reports, delving into every detail.

The first signs that he did not have enough time and energy appeared when we worked with traffic and the statistics showed that half of the requests were not processed.

For all his education and broad outlook, he couldn’t know everything, so we were able to find a new portrait of his target audience who wanted results right now. This led to a sharp increase in incoming hits.

We drew attention to this, and he admitted that he did not have time. We insisted on hiring a couple of people for remote work to handle incoming messages and calls. He agreed, but then, for reasons clear to him, removed one of them, leaving the second. This is where our cooperation ended and what is happening there at the moment, I do not know. But hardly anything that improves the health of the leader.

The next case is related to the transfer of a team to a remote location.

Printing company

The case itself is a little curious. Our clients, for whom we had recently built systems for attracting and selling in business, asked for advice on what to do with the work of employees at a distance. Like everyone else, they suffered from quarantine and were forced to send part of the staff to work at home.

Sales figures fell three times. It seems the same people, the same products, the same advertising, but the performance is much worse. As always, we do analytics and manually check everything that requires increased attention. The easiest way to find out where the failure is is to look at conversions when a client moves from stage to stage within a transaction.

It’s simple:

• if there is a small flow of incoming requests, it means that there is no clear positioning of the company on the market, no hot offer, no clear portrait of the client to whom we can offer something useful;
• if a large flow of potential customers after visiting the site does not place an order or does not call, it means that the site is bad;
• if after the call the client is not ready to place an order, then during the conversation the manager was unable to identify the need and make an offer;
• if the same thing happens after a visit to the office, then the office itself is not in the form to earn the trust of the client and the customer service specialists in the office work poorly.

We saw a critical decline in performance at the stage of a telephone conversation.

We listened to several conversations. To say that we were surprised by what we heard is an understatement.

Apparently, while the employees were in the office and were under the direct influence of the management, both in the performance of duties and in terms of emotions, everything was not bad. At a distance, the person was left to himself.

The negative that he heard from every iron hung constantly in his heart. Negative news, negative chats in which they sent all sorts of strange things, negative relatives and neighbors.

And his conversation with a potential client, both in form and in execution, was similar to a conversation from a death cell. The man was neither ready to accept the order nor to count it. He was not sure that the company itself would exist tomorrow.

How it sounded in our case:

Thus, the specialist literally drove the potential client away from the order by all available means. Starting from the tone of the conversation (the ancient Chinese said – a person without a smile should not open a store) and ending with the unprofessional conduct of the conversation itself.

And most of the three specialists have such conversations during the day. As a result, the problem was solved by the fact that the dull employees were transferred to another direction, and young girls with minimal experience, but a desire to work, were put to receive calls, who received calls with a pleasant voice and simply guided the customer through the script. The fall in sales was won back in less than a month.

To be continued.