The Digital Dealership, Your Audience: Strategic Segmentation Part 1
In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Mets Kramer continues his exploration of the digital dealership. Part 1 of a series, tonight we look at strategic segmentation of your audience.
You customers are only a small part of your Audience
All of us have heard the term “audience” over the last few years. Long gone is the past association of audience with something the queen granted or with sitcom television. An audience is no longer a small group of people because the internet has grown everyone’s audience.
Yet, even with the automatic growth of everyone’s audience, many dealers don’t think about their audience as they build their digital dealership. Many of us think about our customers as audience. Customers come through the door, call our phones and send us emails. Our customers work with us daily, weekly or monthly as they use the equipment they purchased, or are looking for newer equipment. Still, our customers are only part of our audience, even if they are a small and important subgroup.
The broader concept of audience is important for us to consider in several ways. It’s important first when planning our marketing, second in designing operations and finally in developing our strategy. For this article let’s start with Strategy, since it lays the groundwork for the rest.
The first thing to think about is how will you define or identify your audience. What groups of people and companies will you want to draw in and communicate with? This will vary depending on the type of dealership you have, and will need to be adjusted, as you reconsider who your audience is. This is called segmentation.
For example, for a few large, well-established dealers the audience tends to be fairly set. It typically consists of all the users of their brand of equipment, in their territory. Potentially it might only include those customers with accounts in the dealer’s business system. Another example is a smaller farm and yard equipment dealership. Here the number of interactions with each customer will be lower, and the dealership needs to find new customers constantly. A strategic approach to audience segmentation will be different for both these example dealers, but for both, clearly defining it lays the ground work for their business.
To define a dealership’s focus audience, we need to determine what audience segments fit into your strategy. Start with these 3 audience segments or categories. How important is each to your business?
- Repeat or Existing Customers
- Prospect Customers
- Unknown Audience (This is typically where your new leads come from)
Next, consider where your audience members are.
Are they: Local, Regional, National or even farther? How far do you want to reach? How will your strategy differ for those near you and those far away?
With all the audience segments identified, and priority segments selected, we can create a strategy for each of them.
For each segment the dealership wants to reach, 4 main things must be considered. First the message, next the communication channels and third the response method. The final item to be considered is an important part of what makes your dealership the Digital Dealership, it is the integration of known audience information with each strategy.
In creating the strategy dealers need to think about the message. This is often the product they want to communicate to each audience segment. Is the product the machine, the dealer’s experience or something else? Many dealers think they are selling equipment when a significant aspect of value is the dealership. When communicating to unknown audience members, they merely provide the details of a machine in inventory, they forget to include the more important value the dealership brings.
The strategy should consider the channel for communication. Dealers should understand what digital channels and platforms their target audience segments are on, where the audience will see or receive the message. Channels include traditional communications, social media, email etc. Depending on the product and the audience segment, different channels should be used. Don’t use the same channel for everything and assume your message reaches the audience.
An often-forgotten aspect of communicating with the audience is the response method. Typically, the faster the response from the dealer is the better. Also, the response method should more closely matched the original communication method. For example, if people are reading your email, they likely want to respond the same way. We often see dealers mismatching the channel and the response method and seeing poor engagement.
Finally, before we can look at marketing and operations in the next article, we always need to consider the most important aspect of the Digital Dealership, the use of information. This starts by having clear strategies for each segment. By using the information already known about the audience to fine tune the strategy, we get a much more targeted strategy. For example, sending marketing campaigns to customers and prospect customers about a new backhoe, to customers known to have backhoes of a replacement age. Image if your next email campaign started with “Hi Mets, because you currently own a 2012 Case 580SN, we’d like to share information on this 2017 CAT 430F.
In my next article I’ll continue and look specifically at Marketing and advertising to segmented audiences. I’ll also post a work sheet for your dealership to work through to get started.
Mets Kramer
Me*********@*****************ns.ca
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Building a New Skilled Talent Decade
Building a New Skilled Talent Decade
Edward E. Gordon, the founder and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago, has consulted with leaders in business, education, government, and non-profits for over 50 years. As a writer, researcher, speaker, and consultant he has helped shape policy and programs that advance talent development and regional economic growth. This week, he shares with us the history and the present needs involved in building a new skilled talent decade.
Gordon is the author or co-author of 20 books. His book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, is the culmination of his work as a visionary who applies a multi-disciplinary approach to today’s complex workforce needs and economic development issues. It won a 2015 Independent Publishers Award. An updated paperback edition was published in 2018.
Recently I spoke at a forum on my White Paper, “Job Shock: Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Employment Meltdown to a New Skilled Talent Decade,” at the Cliff Dwellers Club in Chicago. My presentation and responses to it can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/gnLBrOiMSYA. In my remarks, I pointed out that history was now repeating itself as workplace technology change is again shifting education and skills requirements.
PAST LABOR HISTORY
During the first decades of the 20th century, a titanic shift in the U.S. economy destabilized society. An industrial revolution triggered by spread of electricity and the growth of factories and offices required workers with at least a basic education in reading and mathematics. Many violently opposed the expansion of public education. Who needs a universal school system? Why educate children, women, and immigrants? You will only cause anarchy by giving them dangerous ideas! Anyway, these people are not trainable. We need them for cheap labor in our factories or on our farms!
As this debate raged across America, more people were persuaded that the expansion of education would benefit society. Starting at the regional and state levels, enlightened community leaders spearheaded the expansion of compulsory tax-supported primary and secondary education. By 1918, all of the then 48 states mandated this standard of public schooling backed by tough truancy laws. The United States was the first nation to attempt to provide a general education to all its citizens. It was a major contributor to the rise of the United States as a world power.
A NEW SKILLED JOB ERA
Another major industrial revolution began in the 1970s as computers and information technology began to be adopted in workplaces. By the beginning of the 21st century, personal computers, smartphones and the internet were everywhere. Automaton has eliminated many low-skill jobs and increased the demand for workers with higher math and reading skills and specialized career training. The seminal 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” raised the first red flag that the U.S. education-to-employment system had become obsolete and warned that America needed to provide more students and workers with enhanced education and training for higher-skilled/higher-wage jobs.
However, continuing national testing by the U.S. Department of Education commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card reports low levels of proficiency in math and reading particularly at the 12th-grade-level. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused learning loses of up to a year particularly among lower-income students.
These deficiencies in our education-to employment system plus the 130 million American adults who the Barbara Bush foundation reported read at the 8th-grade level or less is building into a severe shortage of skilled labor. Surveys of employers are consistently reporting difficulties in finding qualified people to fill open positions. A September National Federation of Independent Business survey found that 51 percent of owners had job openings they could not fill, the third consecutive month in which record highs for unfilled jobs had been reached. Moreover, 62 percent of small employers seeking to hire had few or no qualified applicants. In July and August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported over 10 million job openings. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projected that the high number of unfilled jobs is costing U.S. businesses to lose $738 billion in revenue annually.
CAN WE DO IT AGAIN?
As the COVID-19 epidemic has severely disrupted schooling at all levels and caused labor market turmoil, there is the potential for forming broad coalitions to reform our nation’s education-to-employment pipeline. Parents and students are more aware of the importance of good educational preparation for the future, and many businesses are fighting for their very survival.
At present although the number of vacant jobs is high, there are millions of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed who do not precisely match the skills or experience companies are seeking for their open jobs and who therefore are excluded for consideration for them. A September Harvard/Accenture report estimates that there are over 27 million Americans whom they term “hidden workers.”
Our “Job Shock” research clearly shows that Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs) as public-private partnership hubs can effectively prepare more people for the higher-skilled/higher-wage jobs that are vacant across the United States. Their success hinges upon mobilizing a diversity of partners to engage in meaningful collaboration to close skills-jobs gaps. Cross sector coordination is key. The current barriers between businesses and educational institutions need to be broken down to allow the development of up-to-date career preparation options.
America has a long history of community civic engagement. Enlightened local leaders have periodically stepped forward to bolster our republic during times of crisis. Community engagement is again essential to move the United States forward into a new skilled talent decade.
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Quality of Communication Channel
Quality of Communication Channel
In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Ryszard Chciuk walks us through the information our customers need and want to know. The quality of the communication channel directly impacts your customer’s purchases, especially as they move through the research phase before buying.
Ron Slee reminded us (see From Paper to Glass) what he had talked perhaps for decades about the three questions that a customer asks when they need to purchase parts from a dealer:
These are the same questions customers have when they want to purchase something else or they are looking for any information regarding their equipment.
So, what does your customer do when:
Your customer is doing the research.
Mets Kramer in Candid Conversation with Ron Slee (The Digital Dealership) said:
Seven years ago Acquity Group, part of Accenture Interactive made a survey of 500 procurement officers (B2B) with annual purchasing budgets in excess of $100,000. What did they find?
In the 2014 Acquity Group State of B2B Procurement study they also stated:
I am afraid a majority of dealerships are not able to interact with their modern customers in a new way. As a born realist, I think nobody in the construction industry is ready for that, despite everybody is having at his disposal proper technology.
Your existing and, even more important, potential customers changed their search behavior, within the last several years, but you have not noticed that. If you are going to neglect that fact, your company goes into dire straits. Be aware that:
Your company, like most dealerships, from time to time is running sales campaigns. Usually, it is done with the use of an electronic channel. Are you aware, it has no advantages over the 20th-century traditional campaign (with the use of a phone or snail mail)? It is because you present your offer on your static website and it contains extremely exciting form “Please contact us for the price or additional information”. How many times a year do you receive back that form filled in?
You fail because you stubbornly stick to so-called Billboard Marketing. If you want to change that, please read about Digital Marketing. Mets Kramer presented there his view on today’s marketing. Mets differentiates Billboard Marketing from the more 21st-century alike Engagement Marketing.
In fact, it does not matter whether the campaign is run with help of any e-mail platform (newsletters), Google, Facebook, or others. A successful campaign brings your potential customer to your dealership, to have a look at your yard, warehouse, service vans, and workshop. This is the way you can easily initiate customer’s thinking about starting or strengthening friendly relations with your staff. The physical presence of a customer on your street is not necessary. In the 21st century, your website is the main place where this can happen. Does it? Be aware that:
Of course, your IT provider can change static pages into dynamic ones, they can use new software for generating modern layouts with nicer pictures or even short videos, etc. Everything looks wonderful, but it is only face lifting. The question is if you provide your customers with the information they are online looking for.
Mets Kramer, in the series of articles about Digital Dealership (search for “digital dealership” on the blog), reminded me of my dreams about a “digital” after-sales department. I began to think about it at the end of the 20th century and it never became real. In the next article, I am going to present to you some obstacles which I had to struggle with. It’s a pity, I’m certain that after a quarter of the century later, your road is cobbled with similar or the same problems.
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Friday Filosophy v.10.22.2021
Friday Filosophy v.10.22.2021
Aesop 620–564 BCE was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.
Scattered details of Aesop’s life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states.
The Time is Now.
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The Digital Dealership, Your Audience: Strategic Segmentation Part 1
The Digital Dealership, Your Audience: Strategic Segmentation Part 1
In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Mets Kramer continues his exploration of the digital dealership. Part 1 of a series, tonight we look at strategic segmentation of your audience.
You customers are only a small part of your Audience
All of us have heard the term “audience” over the last few years. Long gone is the past association of audience with something the queen granted or with sitcom television. An audience is no longer a small group of people because the internet has grown everyone’s audience.
Yet, even with the automatic growth of everyone’s audience, many dealers don’t think about their audience as they build their digital dealership. Many of us think about our customers as audience. Customers come through the door, call our phones and send us emails. Our customers work with us daily, weekly or monthly as they use the equipment they purchased, or are looking for newer equipment. Still, our customers are only part of our audience, even if they are a small and important subgroup.
The broader concept of audience is important for us to consider in several ways. It’s important first when planning our marketing, second in designing operations and finally in developing our strategy. For this article let’s start with Strategy, since it lays the groundwork for the rest.
The first thing to think about is how will you define or identify your audience. What groups of people and companies will you want to draw in and communicate with? This will vary depending on the type of dealership you have, and will need to be adjusted, as you reconsider who your audience is. This is called segmentation.
For example, for a few large, well-established dealers the audience tends to be fairly set. It typically consists of all the users of their brand of equipment, in their territory. Potentially it might only include those customers with accounts in the dealer’s business system. Another example is a smaller farm and yard equipment dealership. Here the number of interactions with each customer will be lower, and the dealership needs to find new customers constantly. A strategic approach to audience segmentation will be different for both these example dealers, but for both, clearly defining it lays the ground work for their business.
To define a dealership’s focus audience, we need to determine what audience segments fit into your strategy. Start with these 3 audience segments or categories. How important is each to your business?
Next, consider where your audience members are.
Are they: Local, Regional, National or even farther? How far do you want to reach? How will your strategy differ for those near you and those far away?
With all the audience segments identified, and priority segments selected, we can create a strategy for each of them.
For each segment the dealership wants to reach, 4 main things must be considered. First the message, next the communication channels and third the response method. The final item to be considered is an important part of what makes your dealership the Digital Dealership, it is the integration of known audience information with each strategy.
In creating the strategy dealers need to think about the message. This is often the product they want to communicate to each audience segment. Is the product the machine, the dealer’s experience or something else? Many dealers think they are selling equipment when a significant aspect of value is the dealership. When communicating to unknown audience members, they merely provide the details of a machine in inventory, they forget to include the more important value the dealership brings.
The strategy should consider the channel for communication. Dealers should understand what digital channels and platforms their target audience segments are on, where the audience will see or receive the message. Channels include traditional communications, social media, email etc. Depending on the product and the audience segment, different channels should be used. Don’t use the same channel for everything and assume your message reaches the audience.
An often-forgotten aspect of communicating with the audience is the response method. Typically, the faster the response from the dealer is the better. Also, the response method should more closely matched the original communication method. For example, if people are reading your email, they likely want to respond the same way. We often see dealers mismatching the channel and the response method and seeing poor engagement.
Finally, before we can look at marketing and operations in the next article, we always need to consider the most important aspect of the Digital Dealership, the use of information. This starts by having clear strategies for each segment. By using the information already known about the audience to fine tune the strategy, we get a much more targeted strategy. For example, sending marketing campaigns to customers and prospect customers about a new backhoe, to customers known to have backhoes of a replacement age. Image if your next email campaign started with “Hi Mets, because you currently own a 2012 Case 580SN, we’d like to share information on this 2017 CAT 430F.
In my next article I’ll continue and look specifically at Marketing and advertising to segmented audiences. I’ll also post a work sheet for your dealership to work through to get started.
Mets Kramer
Me*********@*****************ns.ca
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
From Paper to Glass
From Paper to Glass
In a recent Podcast with Alex Schuessler, we were talking about technology and the changes that have taken place in the marketplace within our Industry. I have long used the example of the Steam Engine being replaced by the Electric Engine of how we resist changes. Yes, the tool was changed – the engine – but the methods and procedures did not change for a generation. Changing the tool was traumatic enough for the leadership of the day. They couldn’t handle that much change in their lives.
Fast forward to the current situation and the area of technology. The Large Computers arrived in larger businesses sold by consultants for the most part. Thus, a new tool was introduced to the market. We wrote everything on our usual forms and sent the “paper” documents to what was then called “Data Processing.” The information on the paper was punched onto cards. These cards were then processed through readers and then passed on to the computer for processing. The computer was then used to print a report of what was punched into the cards and processed that was sent back to the originator or the document in the first place. This was a lot of extra work. It was justified in the speed with which it could be processed once it was corrected.
The computers changed and the need for punched cards was eliminated when we had the arrival of “Computer Terminals.” This is the beginning of what Alex dubbed the “Paper to Glass” transition. It is a beautiful description of what has happened in dealer business systems, we have taken the older processes and procedures and methods of writing things on a piece of paper and instead of writing them down we have typed the information into a computer screen, from writing on a piece of paper to typing on a screen of glass. Rather a good precise description. This is exactly the same as changing the Steam Engine to an Electric Engine.
Typically, a generation is described as twenty years. With the dates of the 1960’s as the starting point for computers to the 2020’s we are talking about taking three generations to adapt and adjust or methods compared to one generation in the 1800’s. How smart do we appear to be now?
I have talked for years, perhaps decades about the three questions that a customer asks when they need to purchase parts from a dealer. Have you got it? How much is it? How long do I have to wait to get it? I believe that is very straight forward. These are the same questions I have when I want to purchase something. BUT. The first question someone asks when a customer calls into a dealer to order parts or walks into the business is never one of those three questions listed above. No, the first question we ask is “Who are you?” We need to know that because the first thing we have to enter on the glass is the customer number. It is very similar to writing the customer number of the order parts sales order form. Does that sound like progress? Or have we simply gone from paper to glass? Can’t we do better than that?
If we look at the service department, we have similar issues. We need to conduct an inspection, either with telematics and sensors or a physical inspection, to determine what is wrong. Then create a quotation, which in most cases is an estimate. Then determine the time line for the repair, establish a schedule, assign the work and complete the work to fix the problem. Of course, it is more complicated than simply finding what part is required to compete a repair but that sounds like a paper to glass transition to me. What about standard times and flat rate pricing? What about understanding objectively the technical skills of each technician and assigning someone to complete the job who has those skills?
I can go on and on in this vein.
Today we have a smaller number of DMS providers in the industry; CDK, DIS, EBS, e-emphasis, Infor, JD Edwards, Oracle, SAP, XAPT and others. (I am sure I missed a few) Each of them is based on the Paper to Glass process.
The real dilemma in all of this to me is that when you change your DMS it is not the cost of the hardware or even of the software that is the real expense. No, it is the retraining of all of your employees in the new methods that are being introduced. Then you go through the curtain on never wanting to go through that change again. It was so painful.
So, Alex called this “Paper to Glass” and he is in the Technology aspect of the industry. I think he is on to something very important and we will talk about this more as time passes.
The Time is Now.
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Friday Filosophy v.10.15.2021
FRIDAY FILOSOPHY v.10.15.2021
In the last two decades with the arrival of social media and their platforms we have started to see various new challenges to one of our most fundamental rights; the Freedom of Speech. These quotations and thoughts should provoke some thinking on this subject. It is very critical to our lives and our future that we protect our rights.
The Time is Now.
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The Future Work Place
The Future Work Place
The Future Work Place – What Will it Look Like?
The Pandemic has had a devastating impact on life around the world. Many of us have lost close friends, co-workers, associates and family members. It has been very personal. On top of that many of us have had either short term or long-term changes in our jobs as well as in the nature of our work. And interestingly some of us have reevaluated our lives and how we live them. It has been a very dramatic change in almost all of what we got used to prior to the Pandemic.
Now I have questions. What will be the future of our work? Will we work from home or in the office, or some hybrid? Obviously, technology will play a much larger role in our work and home lives. We can already see rather stark statistics. Ed Gordon has been publishing and providing us with blogs called Job Shock. He is pointing to the difficulties that the education work is having providing work ready people to the work place. Education has changed and is undergoing serious challenges where standardized testing is going away and not being used by universities for admission purposes in many cases. The value provided by the ACT and SAT tests and even Briggs-Myers are being challenged. Diversity issues have become much more important in the work place. Demographics are working against us as baby boomers are leaving the work force. Then we see an amazing fact: currently there are ten million job openings in the US, which is more than the total number of unemployed people looking for work. So yes, I do have questions.
Even before the pandemic things were changing but it was slow, as in most changes. Four-day work weeks were becoming more common. Second and even Third shifts were becoming more common in distribution and other Industries that had not seen much in the way of the shift world. The generational stress between the baby boomers who expected people working in the office was pitted against the Millennials and GenX who wanted the opportunity to work remotely.
A recent Gallup survey found that 40% of the US workforce was actively looking for a change in their jobs. The main reason being that the employees did not feel engaged. Into that mix comes the Society for Human Resource Management. They are suggesting that flexible work arrangement can provide several advantages.
Harvard Business School, in recent research, found that 81% of employees either didn’t want to go back to the office or would prefer a hybrid schedule going forward. So, we are going through another change where business will have to support employees who can and want to work at home.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s when the rate of change was slower employers were able to find the required skills outside the company and hire the skills required. That is no longer the case. Yet many companies are still in denial and refuse to spend money training their current employees.
Then the recent McKinsey Global Survey states that 69% of the reported respondents reported an increase in skill building. This pandemic has disrupted the skills foundation dramatically and companies are starting to acknowledge that they need to build new skills internally. Skills are lacking in empathy and leadership, adaptability and communications and problem solving. Critical thinking skills are seriously missing. According to Deloitte it can cost six times more to hire externally than to develop skills by training internally.
All of this is pointing to a serious challenge to our leaders. One that they have not had to face and deal with in their careers. The most important asset in any business is their employees. Yet this is the one asset that leadership has completely disregarded. They hire people and then leave them alone. If the skills required are no longer available, they get rid of the current worker and hire new people. It has been true and, in their minds, working for over three decades. This is no longer working. It should never have been the strategy. People are the most important asset in any way you look at it. And please don’t forget that this need for employee development is at every level in a business, from the owner to the least important job function.
I have advocated for years that we have skill sets tied to job functions. We put our assessment programs in place specifically to address this issue. We also wanted depth charts like in sports. Who is in line to follow the current leadership? We wanted succession planning. We also wanted annual performance reviews. These reviews allow positive discussions with each employee to determine the needs and wants of each employee. They provide an audience for discussions on continuous improvement. We have a lot of talent in our employees. Everyone of them. You all know I am interested in helping people identify their potential and then help everyone achieve that potential.
We must get going. Time is passing. And time is an element we don’t get back.
The Future Workplace will embrace new thinking. It will experiment more. We will try things. We have to make more progress in improving everything we do for our employees and our customers and our suppliers. We have to provide an environment where everyone wants to learn. We have to stop reacting and start innovating. We need to be able to adapt more readily. Some people call it agility. I call it basic common sense.
As a teacher I have always said common sense isn’t particularly common. Today we have a huge opportunity to turn the negativity since March 2020 into a positive response. Making the future of our desires and abilities. Are you ready?
The Time is Now.
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Friday Filosophy v.10.08.2021
FRIDAY FILOSOPHY v.10.08.2021
We have been focused on individuals in our Friday Filosophy. I am shifting this week to deal with personal issues, our lives. Over time there have been wonderful individuals who have made powerful statements regarding life. Perhaps some reflection on these people and these quotations is warranted. Enjoy
The Time is Now.
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The 6 Behaviours of Successful Business Owners
The 6-Behaviours of Successful Business Owners
In tonight’s blog post, guest writer Bruce Baker shares the 6 Behaviours of Successful Business Owners. These key behaviours can make the difference in keeping your business thriving.
You have undoubtedly heard the depressing statistics of how many businesses fail within their first few years. I am one of the many who talk about the causes of failure and what to do about it and have the privilege of looking from the outside-in and the inside-out. I to have and continue to have my own experiences and understand why some business owners succeed and others fail repeatedly. Business owners only succeed because once they know what they want, they:
Human beings only make progress because of adversity and their insistence and commitment to execution – nothing more, nothing less. I wrote an article several years ago trying to explain (and justify, I suppose) how business owners fall in love with their goals but out of love with the actions that make these goals a reality.
The notion that business owners/CEOs would not grab what was staring them in the face to ensure success was mind-boggling. I asked myself, “are people lazy?”; “are people this complacent?”. Many are guilty of laziness and complacency when they don’t execute and fail as a result. Still, many also act out like a “wounded animal,” blaming everything they can other than themselves. Why? Because they become driven by their goals first instead of being aware and committing to the concessions they will have to make as part of achieving success.
Business owners I work with achieve their success because they choose to think and behave differently in the following six ways:
I would love to take credit for their success, but realistically, I can’t. I provide business owners guidance and best-in-class business practices, but only they can decide if they want to succeed. I experience their successes and failures with them, but the successful ones see their failures as building blocks, not obstacles to their achievements.
You don’t need to be an expert Accountant or have a post-graduate degree in business to be successful. What you need is resilience, drive and a sense of humour!
Do you truly understand yourself?
If any of these questions resonate for you, send me an email at bb****@*********es.com letting me know why they resonate with you. I’ll send you a complimentary assessment to complete so you can start discovering what you are not aware of about “you”! Once you become aware, your world opens and your mind is officially blown!
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How Do You Build Trust with Your Employees?
How do you build trust with your employees?
This week, guest writer Sonya Law walks us through the critical importance of the employee performance review in part two of her series. In “How do you build trust with your employees,” Sonya shares the methods of trust building we can all use in our businesses.
The irregularity of the sometimes twice a year Performance Review at mid-year and End of Year (EOY) does not lend itself to building trusted relationships.
What is going to build trust is:
As human beings we are wired to detect if people or situations are threatening and are constantly picking up on cues in our environment and behaviors of others. To assess whether a person or situation is psychologically safe, the workplace is no different. When we build an organisation that is built on trust and it’s not just a token value but a lived experience, we experience greater levels of:
Some organisations value technical skills the hard skills; over leaders who are more approachable and collaborative as these are seen as soft skills.
48% of employees in workforce in USA are looking to change jobs, for more flexibility, to align with cultures and leaders who display these soft skills and clarity of purpose. Cultures who truly engage with their people in an authentic way. Leaders who are self-aware, open, transparent in their communication and vulnerable, win the hearts and minds of employees and extract the discretionary effort that hits the bottom-line time and time again.
Most organisations know what they do, how they do it but not why, these workplaces are stuck in fire fighter mode, directionless and leaking talent, innovation and in most cases money.
So where do we go from here?
Make feedback and performance reviews a habit, stack it with best practice:
The business landscape is rapidly changing and the nature of work and skills required are different.
Businesses need to reflect back to inform their strategy of what is needed to achieve business growth in the following areas:
In effect how are we building a culture of feedback, performance and innovation, that is engaged and with a common purpose and a spirit of connection, belonging and community.
Humans are the greatest adapters:
In an article titled, Humans May Be the Most Adaptive Species, Scientific American:
“Constant climate change may have given Homo sapiens their flexibility. Man had two key advantages: our brains and our capacity for culture. Our brains are essentially social brains. We share information, we create and pass on knowledge. That’s the means by which humans are able to adjust to new situations, and it’s what differentiates humans from our earlier ancestors, and our earlier ancestors from primates”.
If we take care of the people we work with they will share knowledge, pass down knowledge and innovate and be agile, our role as leaders is to provide an environment that fosters trust for them to thrive.
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