There are a host of pains organizations inflict on themselves that present clear and present dangers to their very viability. Among those we often see are:

• Goals and objectives that are out of sync with job descriptions and employee expectations

• Compensation plans that don’t reflect the will of the organizations executive leadership

• Management who believes it is their prerogative to manipulate sales compensation plans, changing quotas, territories and commission schedules mid-stream

• Sales automation/CRM systems that are installed to provide management reporting with sales productivity as a by product

• Few understand the complicated nature of channels, how to avoid conflict, and how to motivate organizations they don’t own, yet many businesses just can’t grow organically fast enough. Effective committed channels are a necessity.

So what can companies do?

• They must learn to hire for a season. Recognize that a significant percentage of employees will move on within a few years. Call it out confront it and embrace by designing the job description accordingly, and eliminate confusion and contention. Hire the very best for the tasks at hand. It’ll require a bit more thought and planning, but it’ll be worth it.

• Dedicate themselves to serving their employees and to making them successful; not managing them for compliance, rather leading them for significance; leading them rather than directing them

• Embrace technology. Many managers are digital immigrants leading digital natives. They resist it and demean it with comments like “I’ll never text”. We must immerse ourselves in it, admit our fears and frustrations, and join the ranks of the next generation who takes all this technology as a matter of fact and can’t understand why their management doesn’t.

• When we employ systems we must think first of the impact on the employee. Implement a CRM to make the sales people more productive, and have management reports as a byproduct. It’s the only way they will embrace it and the data will be accurate and timely.

• Hire scientifically. Success at a previous company is no guarantee of success with the next. It can no longer be acceptable to give an employee 9 months or longer to see if they will succeed. Thai’s as much as 1/3 of their tenure. They must be positioned to contribute much quicker.

• Build support tools like the company web site that personalize the web experience, allowing the inquirer to truly understand how your products and services can met his unique needs, and build it a way that leaves a thumb print behind so more and more can be turned into customers. It’s not the number of web hits that counts, it’s the number of customers that are generated.

• Have a mission statement that is meaningful, measure ideas against it, reward innovation, and create the opportunities that demand transformation versus incremental improvement.

• A soft economy can be the best time to gain market share. It’ll take a non-traditional approach, but embracing a win/win mentality, a servants heart for employees success, an acceptance that each employee really wants to make the best decisions possible, combined with an ability to accept effort and failure will help turn a business, even where the economy is having a negative impact, into a consistent winner.

Michael Pearce is an experienced interim management executive and has worked with several leading companies such as Citicorp, Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, Singer and EMC. His expertise is in building high performance sales teams and generating revenue and margins with repeatable, dependable, and predictable results. You can contact Mr. Pearce at michael.pearce@oneaccordpartners.com or at 425.830.4156. He also blogs at http://michael-pearce.blogspot.com/.

Photo by papalars

Bottom Line – Don’t rely on consumers to revert back to their old buying habits because by the time the option exist, they’ll probably forget what those “old” buying habits were. Will people start buying houses again, certainly. Will new house designs and sales strategies be different from where they were 18 months ago. You bet. Will consumers in conjunction with government watch dogs take a more conservative approach to credit card debt? I think so.

Max Clough
Interim Management Executive
seattle@oneaccordpartners.com

From an investment perspective… I hear deal makers speak as though the recession is episodic and therefore that we’ll revert to previous approaches to buying/selling companies.

The fundamentals got distorted the last 10 years and the norm going forward for consumers to business leaders alike will be to create and consume goods and services of value that produce tangible benefits.

Peter Klinge
Interim Management Executive
peter.klinge@oneaccordpartners.com
801.755.6820

Our basic economic order is built on a Keynsian Economic model – basically a “debt mentality”. As long as our economy has access to capital…it will spend. Yet, given the radical financial changes, a conservative approach will likely influence consumers, and more importantly businesses, for years to come. Ultimately – debt, yes, same old habits…not for a long time.

Jeff Rogers
Interim Management Executive
jeff.rogers@oneaccordpartners.com

This economic downturn is termed a “recession” but there are structural changes that make the “recession” different. There are some fundamental & dramatic shifts in banking practices (% equity to credit) that will change real estate and purchasing requiring loans. Also credit card companies are actually losing money due to non-payment so expect a tightening on credit applications, more discipline on payment dates & higher interest rates to offset non-payment losses. So bottom line as people go back to work & their disposable income recovers they will go back to previous low dollar consumer habits, but on higher dollar purchases requiring credit there are structural shifts in the credit providers that will ultimately restrict demand on goods and services permanently changing their habits. What we will not know for awhile is the degree of negative affect this structural shift will have.

Dale Hintz
Interim Management Executive
dale.hintz@oneaccordpartners.com
972-824-6923

Consumers have changed. They’ve been shocked by the reality of their situation – trees don’t grow through the sky…everything has a topping out and consumers now see that they are broke!

Consumption will be less conspicuous and savings will continue to grow as a percentage of GDP.

Jackson Weaver
Interim Management Executive
seattle@oneaccordpartners.com

I am working with companies that are both forward-thinking and courageous to change around their economy rather than waiting for the rest of the water to float all the other boats.

• Look at how much time people are spending today keeping up with their own personal technology. Those who value their time/sanity/priorities will get help – not by wasting time going down to Geek Squad but with progressive personalized service like www.BluePhone.com which I helped launch for my client last year. This service is going to eclipse their first line of business, just watch.

• I wrote yesterday in my blog (www.60-Second-Marketing.com) about a deal automaker Hyundai just came out with: return your car within 12 months if you lose your job. They’re putting the ear to the ground, listening to the market conditions, and being more creative about serving the customer than any of our Big Three.

• NPR just featured a toy company that had 100 SKU’s (product offerings) at the $3.99 level. Their sales are up 60% over last year because, in this challenged economy, most everyone can still afford a few bucks for some fun!

Oh, your question was “when”. My current perspective is that everyone’s economy will change when they are ready.

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.