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Why Can’t New PR People Write?

I’ve had PR employees work for me right out of college, and found most were woefully unprepared for the real-world new PR environment. Not because of any inherent deficiency in the school they came from, but more from the frenetic pace of change in the PR industry. Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts, Social Media, SEO, SEO PR, Tags, and on and on and on. The technology changes alone can be daunting or intimidating.

But the writing … the writing, that’s now part skill, part science and part art. It is the absolute foundation of being able to effectively use all the new technologies and communication tools. READ ON ,,,

Jeff Ross, a 16-year-old student at Princeton High School near Cincom Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, suffers from Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP). The disease claimed Jeff's grandfather when he was 32, and his father at just 31. Since undergoing a five-organ transplant, Jeff has been confined to his home for the past year.

However, Jeff and his family have come to find that there are many caring people in the area.

According to the Community Press, the Key Club at Princeton High School adopted Ross to sponsor him through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. That led to a laptop computer, printer, desk and chair from the foundation, along with Internet service from Cincinnati Bell.

Cincom CIO Bill Dyer and his family, who are all Princeton Alumni, also got involved.


Through Bill, Cincom provided Jeff with a desktop computer and color printer. To ensure that the Ross family had a bountiful Thanksgiving, the Dyer family donated a turkey and a gift card to a local grocery.

"We just want to give back," Dyer said.

Jeff's mom, Bobbie Ross, was overwhelmed.

"You know there are good people out there," she said, "but they went beyond."

Now, Jeff Ross can fill his days with video games, Internet research, and even homework. His teachers can assign his work directly, and he can e-mail any questions or concerns.

The generosity isn't lost on him.

"It makes me feel special," he said.

Question: We have serious organizational problems at my company. Everyone knows, it but no one speaks candidly to the boss. In fact, we have some slackers here who have honed the art of avoiding facing problems and run under the radar to avoid confronting or speaking about any problems. Are there suggestions from any of your experts about how to change things for the positive and how to get more people empowered and engaged to help our company be more successful?

Answer: The name for the symptom you describe is "Conflict Avoidance Principle;" it runs rampant in many businesses but is easily treatable.

by Joe Hubbard, VP of Business Insight Leadership Organization

When working with successful companies, over the years I have noticed there is a common denominator: awareness. These companies encourage their employees to notice what isn't working. They empower them to take action and correct any deficiencies.

On the other hand, I've worked with many companies where employees make flying under the radar an art. Ultimately this leads to a dysfunctional environment where an organization slows or even stops achieving its stated mission or goal.

In an effort to solve the problem, these companies spend thousands of dollars to engage a myriad of consultants who often have difficulty resolving the problem.

Why?

Because it's something no one wants to talk about.

Why employees are afraid to communicate organizational problems

For example, I recently worked with a large Neutraceutical Company whose products weren't being delivered on time. This greatly affected revenue and repeat business. The President was frustrated and couldn't seem to determine who or what was at fault.

Here's why:

1. Nobody was willing to speak up and courageously communicate the deficiencies they observed.

2. Employees, at all levels, closed their eyes, their ears and ultimately, their mouths.

3. They disengaged.

When I came in and began to have conversations with a number of people, I discovered there was a lot of fear that if they spoke up, there would be negative repercussions. There was also a group of employees who simply became too comfortable with mediocrity and didn't want to do anything that might create more work or expose their deficiencies.

Once we were able to uncover these core issues and make them tangible for the company's president, he immediately empowered his employees and actively recruited and hired proactive and courageous managers. Within a matter of months the company began to re-align with its mission and achieve all of its stated objectives. This is not a unique example.

How silence is costing your business

A study was done at Harvard University investigating the "Cost of Silence." They looked at both Enron and 9/11 and realized that, collectively, people had the information necessary that could possibly have averted what happened. But they were unwilling to communicate it.

They discovered that many people have a fear of speaking up because they think there will be consequences. Interestingly, what the Harvard researchers also found is that the consequences of avoiding communication are much greater than those for speaking out. The cost to your bottom line is much greater.

This conflict avoidance principle that is prevalent in Government and Corporate America right now is drastically impacting our effectiveness and our relevance. It has disabled so many of our corporations that people walk away from taking the courageous stance.

Now that I have empowered you with this information, I have a question for you %FFFD

Are you willing to put your heart on the line and take strategic, intuitive and educated actions that are in alignment with your company and for the greatest good for all concerned?

I ask this because the heart is the barometer by which one determines what their next best move is. When I use the term "heart" in this way it is not meant as a romantic idea. It is courage personified.

Vice President of Business and Leadership Development for Business Insight, Joe Hubbard, helps large corporations find direction, stay the course, realize goals and discover fulfillment. Now you can learn how to re-engage and empower your employees to better serve themselves, their clients and their company. Go to http://www.insightinbusiness.org and learn how to lead from the heart in the game of business and life.

When a recent CSO Insights survey reveals that 44% of sales reps fail to make quota and nearly a third of sales organizations fail to achieve their sales plan, there's a big question that falls in the CEO's office. 

What the hell is going wrong here?

The fingers begin pointing.

"IT's" ... A Bunch of Them 

It's our SFA system. It's our training. It's our sales leads. It's our website. It's our products. It's our pre-sales quality. It's our lack of brand identification. It's our competition. Plenty of places to point at. We're working hard but ...

A favorite one points directly back to the sales organization. It's our sales managers. It's our sales reps. It's our compensation system. It's our inability to get a contract signed. It's our ... the fingers point north, south, east and west.

We all know the answer is that most likely, it's all of the above. This points back to the CEO's corner ... the proverbial response is "the buck stops here."

As a business consultant that has worked with hundreds of large and small companies, mostly from the marketing end, I have had the advantage of peering inside a lot or organizations. They're all looking for the silver bullet. Let's get more sales with this new silver bullet. I have come to see that there is a silver bullet -- sort of.

It is to become customer obsessed.

When we deliver a perfect customer experience, our customers reward us with repeat business and when we are really good we get rewarded with advocacy ... with customer cheerleaders.

But I say "sort of" because customer obsession for delivering a perfect customer experience is a thousand little components that must come together to produce the silver bullet. Another way of saying that is to admit there is no silver bullet. There is only hard work. And the reason 30-40% of sales organizations fail is that they are not willing to work hard enough.

Sure we can bring in a new CRM system.

HOW TO DO WRONG - Easier and Faster 

That will make it easier to do things (but it also makes it easier to do wrong things faster).  We can invest in sales training. In fact, we must invest in this training. But too many companies train on their products instead of on their customer issues and needs. There is a truthism: Sales reps get delegated to people at prospect companies who talk like the rep talks ... if you are going to sell to a senior level manager, you need to be trained on how to conduct this conversation.

We can invest in brand awareness so the prospect knows your name when the rep makes the call. Too often, though, the rep is not making the call.

Is that a marketing dude pointing the finger at the sales department? Maybe. I hope I am not seen that way because I absolutely believe that marketing's main customer is the sales department. Our job is to give them the right products, the powerful brand name, the steady stream of sales leads and to work daily as close with the sales reps as is possible. We're one team doing different parts of the process to attract and close more sales deals.

Forget the iPhone ... How About the Old Bold Cold Call Phone? 

But I hear a lot of professional sales managers who would confirm that sales reps do not make enough calls. Dan Barrett, a 30-year, highly successful sales person and sales manager, laments we just don't make enough calls. His sales support process has worked for hundreds of clients over ten years. His secret? "We pick up the phone and make the appointments for sales reps who see the phone as weighing about ten tons." Is picking up the phone and making more calls a silver bullet? No, it's just part of a total program -- albeit, one that cannot be left to chance. Just one more example of what some managers would see as a silver bullet -- the one tactical action that will cure things when sales stink. So far, we're not short of tactical things we can do when sales stinks.

But here's why I say it points to the CEO's office -- a successful sales and marketing organizationt is about culture, an insistence on information transparency so the entire marketing-to-sales, prospect-to-pipeline process is visible to all managers in the company.

Visibility eliminates hiding.

A culture that allows or enables hiding is a culture in trouble ... if I can pull a quote from the Christian Bible: "For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light so that their deeds will not be exposed." But exposure is what helps us get better every day and this is the way that transparency must be looked at ... it is not a punishment but instead is a critical component for discovering process issues and fixing them. Sales and marketing are two points on the same continuum. They must stop fighting with one another and start collaborating together -- and jointly taking the risk for succeeding or failing.

There must be a CEO business plan designed to show the vision and mission and the path to success.

The path must include every single individual in the company.

Everyone must know how they contribute to the sales success and customer success of the organization and then be measured and held accountable for achieving their part of the total story.

When this culture thing is fixed, then we can begin looking at the tactical plans and the supporting infrastructure: selling fundamentals must be sharpened, the market must be well understood, the customer value promise must be differentiated and consistently delivered. Roll up all this into one organizational fixation on sales obsession that is achieved by customer obsession and you will finally step back and see your silver bullet.

END:

Posted by Dale Wolf on November 08, 2007 in Marketing Managemen

Thanks Dale! 

Expert Access is a business e-zine for senior-level corporate executives, IT and operations managers and technology buyer committees. This is the Expert Access Blog. Click here for the current issue of the Expert Access E-zine

Each issue of Expert Access contains about 16 articles, the most popular of which are the feature articles (on a variety of topics) and the 'Ask the Expert' section where readers' questions are answered by an expert in the particular subject area.

Because Expert Access spans a range of job titles and industries, it must deliver value by presenting the business benefits of the latest technology advances to corporate and operations managers while at the same time getting under the covers of the latest business and production applications for the IT managers and users.

Markets

Expert Access focuses on the following vertical industries: Insurance, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Government and Non-profit.

Mission

The mission of Expert Access is to become a trusted and valued resource of objective expert advice to readers, customers and prospects worldwide.

Beginning with no (zero) readers, Expert Access now reaches 135,000 people all over the world. Expert Access provides relevant, concise, objective information, sometimes in an irreverent, humorous manner, to help readers do their jobs better, become aware of new ideas, products and services or to occasionally have a B2B laugh.

What Makes Expert Access Different?

• Al Ries, author of 'The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR';
• Steven Pressfield, author of 'The Legend of Bagger Vance'
• Dr. David Abshire, Center for the Presidency, author of 'Saving the Reagan Presidency'
• Dave Stein, best-selling business author of 'How Winners Sell', CEO and founder of ES Research Group, The Sales Training Authority.
• Tom Nies, Cincom CEO hailed as "the epitome of the entrepreneurial spirit of American business." - Former President Ronald Reagan.
• Bo Burlingham, author of 'Small Giants:Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big';
• Sam Horn, author of 'POP! How To Stand Out in any Crowd';
• Lynne McTaggert, author of 'The Field' and 'The Intention Experiment';
• Stephanie Palmer, author of 'Good in a Room';
• Lisa Nirell, founder 'Energize Growth';
• Nettie Hartsock, author of 'Start the Press!';
• Marc Seifer, author of 'Wizard; The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla';
• Elliot McGucken, author, poet, artistic entrepreneur and founder of the 'Jolly Roger,' a Web portal hailed as the 'Flagship of the Renaissance';
• Skip Press, author of more than 20 books including 'How to Write What You Want and Sell What You Write';
• Donald Sull, Harvard Business Scool author of "REVIVAL OF THE FITTEST"
• Betty Forbes, Vice President, Christian Children's Fund;
• Dr. Paul Pearsall, international best-selling author of "The Beethoven Factor'"
• Jeff Thull, author of "Mastering the Complex Sale," CEO of Prime Resource Group.
• Marsha Friedman, President Event-Management Services & Talk Radio Guru-ess
• David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing & PR"
• JoAnna Brandi, customer loyalty expert and customer retention maven.
• Ken Sutherland, creative impresario and the music behind the film "Savannah Smiles".
• Robert McKee, Screenwriting guru and author of the best-seller "STORY."

Metrics

In a recent six-month survey, Expert Access readers were asked to rate story selection, usefulness to their daily jobs, content categories, graphic look, responsiveness, professionalism and overall impression.

The survey received responses from all over the world including: China, the UK, Latvia, Brazil, Belgium, Scotland, India, the Philippines, France, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Zambia, the Middle East, Finland, Colombia, Eastern Europe, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States.

• 93% of readers rated Expert Access as 'excellent' or 'good
• 7% rated the newsletter as 'average
• Less than 4/10 of 1% (.004) opt-out rate. - (A true measure of the popularity of a newsletter is how many recipients opt out.)
• Over 500 readers respond to a call to action or visit Cincom's website to learn more about its products and services with each issue.

Voice of the Reader

Some of the reader quotes collected from the survey:

Inspiring business and customer-focused articles mixed with true leadership qualities.

Articles are insightful and useful. The humor is a welcome change from many other industry newsletters. Excellent job!'

I like the stories with motivational content, the interactive nature, the humorous writing style of the editor and the varied selection of content from diverse sources.'

Expert Access provides up-to-date information on a multitude of levels; one-stop shopping for information from business management to technology.

I really enjoy the Ask the Experts feature.

For an academic, Expert Access is of great value as a snapshot of current business trends and demands. The well-selected articles guarantee that your publication is always welcome in my inbox!'

From all the newsletters I receive, this is the only one I keep for future reading.'

Lots of knowledge, which we can use to profit from instantly.'

I've really enjoyed and found most valuable the 'Shoot the Donkey' interviews I've read lately.

They have lots of insights and humor, and the way they're presented is great (broken up with the insight summary and a donkey graphic).'

"I receive a lot of newsletters via email. Even though I subscribed to all of them, more and more they seem like SPAM. Not so for Cincom's Expert Access. I really look forward to Steve Kayser's "Shoot the Donkey" series. Who wouldn't get drawn in by the title "Shooting the Donkey in the Complex Sales Process ... Hollywood Style" or "I came, I saw, I shot two donkeys." But it's not just the creative title, the articles follow through with the same wry wit and humor. Then you realize they actually say something you can use to improve your business practices. I get to learn something useful and enjoy the process -- what a concept! Steve ought to write a book. I don't know if these are all published in one place, or you have to work your way back to last November's Expert Access, but in either case it's worth reading the whole series. Now, if I could just get rid of the real SPAM..."

Monty Williams
Director, Business Development
GemStone Systems, Inc.

"You are hitting the hot business topics that business leaders should be discussing today, regardless of what business they are in."

- Leading Edge Consulting

"As a non-profit organization, it gives us the opportunity to view new ideas and ways of maximizing without going to the expense of researching on our own."

Betty Forbes,
Vice President,
Christian Children's Fund

"Good value since it presents good information on relevant business topics. The topics provide pieces of information I can use right away and larger topics that are relevant to evaluate for implementing on a larger scale."

Application Development Supervisor
Swagelok

I believe that the setup of Expert Access allows me to catch up on the latest news at a quick glance. It keeps me informed on the latest developments in the CRM marketplace as well as providing me with relative documents. I really enjoy the "Ask the Experts" feature.- Magazine Editor

Inspiring ideas to get me out of my content creation routine. Web Editor

For an academic your Newsletter is of great value as a snapshot of current business trends and demands in CRM and ECM. The well selected articles guarantee that your newsletter is always welcome in my inbox! – Senior Lecturer

Excellent value. I like the stories with motivational content, the interactive nature, the humorous writing style of the editor, the varied selection of content from diverse sources.

What encourages me more is the fact that it keeps me busy, I always have something new and interesting to learn about. Expert Access is very informative.

I really like the Customer Service articles and suggestions. Newsletter is formatted well and easy to read. –

I've really enjoyed and found most valuable the two "Shoot the Donkey" interviews I've read lately. They have lots of insights and humour, and the way they're presented is great (broken up with the insight summary and donkey graphic). - Project Officer - Australia

Excellent overall look and content. Continue the good work. - EDV-Beratung Rsgen – Germany

Helps me to keep in touch with what the industry is doing. - Systems Application Manager

I find the newsletter to be humorous (something very much needed in an intense work place) yet informative. Keep up the good work! - Business Manager -

Seeing through the fog of detail to the required decisive actions is refreshing -Group IT Contract Manager - Scotland

Sometimes see material here I haven't found elsewhere. – Editor,

Good Value – BPM section – Headlines and Summaries - Managing Director - Turkey

The value is that it makes me look at what we are doing. Not letting things become old. - President – Marketing Group

Customer relationship is key, so anything on that is of great value. - Founder/ Editor in Chief -

Gives me ideas on how to manage – Team Manager –

I benefit most from Featured Stories and ask the expert. Keep up the good work. - Warehouse & Distribution Manager –

The chosen articles under the category of "Customer Relationship Strategies" are superb in nature. Thanks a lot and keep up the good job. Would also appreciate it if you could include expert articles on different operational areas of managing a successful contact center. These may include Call Quality Monitoring, Strategic Planning, Performance Management, Contact Center Recruitment Methodologies and Strategies etc. Thanks.

Congratulations for the mixture of your stories. – CRM Manager Finland

Excellent story selection - Project Manager – University of Colorado

It is interesting to see more of a business perspective. – Professor - University of Vermont

Excellent value – Feature- CRS- BPM sections – CRM project manager - Scania Latvia

The newsletter layout is very good and contents especially on expert profile is fantastic. R & D - Zambia State Insurance Corp.

In information and advice in your articles have proved practically valuable in assisting me and my colleagues (who I forward the articles to)in achieving our organizations objectives. Keep up the good work! - Sr. Program Manager Global Ops -

Contact information:

Steve Kayser - skayser@cincom.com

ReThink Your Eligibility Process

In today's tumultuous healthcare climate, establishing responsibility for payment, accurately billing and collecting on services rendered, and maintaining a patient-friendly billing environment while increasing the hospital's bottom line is difficult. The majority of hospitals have gaps in their revenue-cycle processes. A high-performing revenue-cycle strategy is necessary to drive top performance at the front-end, while reducing back-end rework. To continue reading this article, go here. To send your comments or inquiries, please email Kari Kemper or visit www.revenue360.net

Finding Your Way Through the Registration Maze

It always amazes me just how much information must be gathered and processed at patient registration time; information such as insurance plan code, insurance eligibility, demographics, credit risk, charity availability, deductible amount and much more. Patient registration not only involves the creation of the patient's medical record, which must be accurate in order to provide appropriate treatment and care, but, in addition, a healthcare provider's ability to collect payments directly correlates to an efficient and accurate registration process...... To continue reading this article, go here. To send your comments or inquiries, please email Chris Woodhead or visit www.revenue360.net

Question:  "There's increasing buzz about Software as a Service (SaaS). Lots of hype and supposed exponential growth. A million new companies profess specialties in it. Lots of rushing to port applications to it. Any of your experts have any insights into what’s up?"

Answer: "Yes. Really you're asking what may be 'great' about SaaS. To do that, you must first be able to understand and work in dog years," says Louis Columbus, Enterprise Compliance & Quality Management Practice Senior Analyst.
 

by Louis Columbus, Enterprise Compliance &
Quality Management Practice Senior Analyst

What remains to be seen from the SaaS gold rush going on for VC funding today is which start-ups will be able to set a strong enough set of business processes and supporting systems in place, hiring the right talent who can survive in a sped-up product development and launch environment, and be financially focused to make sure contracts don't attempt to gain customers on price alone.

Let's face it; SaaS is sexy these days. Nearly everybody is either starting entirely new companies to capitalize on the benefits of SaaS or madly rushing to get their applications ported to it.  At a recent conference, I presented at in the Bay Area, this became abundantly clear. Every session hosted by venture capitalists who talked about the exponential growth of SaaS was packed, and sessions where CEOs of successful SaaS start-ups had standing-room-only crowds.

All of this passion for SaaS would make anyone stop and wonder, "So, what does make a great SaaS start-up?"

Top Take-Aways

From the presentations given and from the discussions with attendees and presenters, the following take-aways were gained:

Passion for serving customers is more important than a passion for VC cash. This became abundantly clear when the founder and CEO of Brainshark, Joe Gustafson, spoke. He talked about best practices in starting a SaaS-based software company and had a great quote about turning customers into your best salespeople.

Earning the annuity is more important than churning the sale. What was striking in many of the presentations given was the accentuating of underlying systems and processes necessary to scale the business versus just getting a kick-butt prototype out the door and sold. VCs and successful CEOs both stressed the need to have pricing, automated services for both partners and customers, and service level agreements (SLA) that were real, not just promises of future performance from hosting providers. The message from VCs was that the app itself was secondary to making sure customers, once gained, would not be lost. Customer acquisition through exceptional execution of providing the app and service (if needed) was by far more critical.

The myth of SaaS companies being exceptional Internet marketers was often questioned. Far from a criticism, a few of the CEOs remarked that it was much more difficult than they had anticipated to build any awareness at all for their companies online, and that when they did, lead generation was the toughest process of all.  Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords is where the majority of the start-ups are spending their marketing dollars, with one estimating as high as 65 percent to 70 percent of total marketing spending going into AdWords campaigns. Search engine optimization (SEO) was successful to a point, yet many of these CEOs say that it takes a good year of constant effort to get known in their markets.

Communicating with customers about downtime, maintenance schedules and new releases is critical. Several presenters talked about how they spent in inordinate amount of time and resources to make sure customers understood when services would be interrupted for maintenance in addition to the delivery schedule for new updates.

Part of best practices in running an SaaS start-up is making this a major focus. The approach Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) took with trust.salesforce.com was pointed out as a best practice at striving for transparency with customers regarding the status of systems globally. None of the companies presenting had gone to the trouble of setting up trust.mysaas.com, but it is no doubt in the works for many SaaS start-ups as this is an issue they continually face.

Turning transactions into relationships. This CRM mantra gets its reality test in SaaS start-ups, as the need for getting away from a minimum lease to a long-term one is essential for an SaaS start-up to survive. What became apparent from the presentations, however, is that there is little price elasticity in SaaS services pricing; instead the expectation of apps being able to eventually supersede minimum expectations was far more prevalent.

The essence of this take-away was that despite SaaS being considered a low-cost option for enterprise apps, the expectations of added functionality over time were very high. Earning customers for the long term required a near-constant attention to how to fine-tune the application version currently active.

Making usage reporting and analytics a strength. The fact that SaaS applications can be monitored in real time delivers exceptional insights and also trending of which products need more functionality to increase their use.

It became clear from the presentations that, despite how intuitive this is as a requirement from hosting providers, many of these services companies cannot provide real-time measurement of application usage. The SLAs mentioned earlier were critical in making real-time dashboards of application use become a reality for start-ups.

Continual Improvement

SaaS puts organizational strains on companies that are more acute than traditional software delivery models. The level of cross-functional coordination and project management required in a start-up to make SaaS work as a product strategy actually speeds up all processes, from engineering, to quality assurance, to marketing.

Every process that is related to a new release is sped up, with little time for doing tasks over again if not done well the first time. Once a commitment date for a new release is made, every department must figure out how to make their part of the launch work with everyone else's contribution.

The day a new release goes live, there is no going back, as customers will begin using the new features of the most interest to them immediately. The stress, conflicts and need for coordination is so great that one start-up CEO remarked that in "dog years," his firm was 49, and in chronological years, seven.

What remains to be seen from the SaaS gold rush going on for VC funding today is what start-ups will be able to set a strong enough set of business processes and supporting systems in place, hiring the right talent who can survive in a sped-up product development and launch environment, and be financially focused to make sure contracts don't attempt to gain customers on price alone. SaaS customers expect continual improvement of their apps at the same or lower prices; by meeting that expectation continually will these start-ups grow.

Louis Columbus, Enterprise Compliance & Quality Management Practice Analyst, is a former senior analyst with AMR Research. He has worked with enterprise clients on defining solutions to their channel management, order management and service lifecycle management strategies. He also teaches graduate-level international business and marketing courses at Webster-Loyola Marymount University and University of California Irvine. He is the author of fifteen books on technology and two books on analyst relations. Louis can be reached at Lcolumbus@cincom.com

Start by growing great employees

Interview by Nettie Hartsock

This interview features Erika Andersen, Founder of Proteus International -- www.proteus-international.com and author of the much-lauded "Growing Great Employees."

Since 1980, Erika Andersen has become known for her ability to create learning solutions uniquely tailored to her clients' challenges, goals, and culture. Some of the clients for whom she has designed programs include PepsiCo, MTV Networks, Simon and Schuster, Reader's Digest, Taco Bell, and Lifetime Television.

Much of Erika's recent work has focused on organizational visioning and development, executive coaching, and collaborative change and learning. In these capacities, she has served as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and top executives of a number of corporations, including Coors Brewing Company, Regeneration Technologies, Inc., the French Culinary Institute, Bravo Networks, Union Square Hospitality Group, Emerson College, and Comedy Central.

It Starts by Growing Great Employees:

Nettie: Tell us about your work briefly and what inspires you in terms of "growing great employees."

Erika: I'm the founding partner of a company called Proteus International. We focus on helping our clients -- organizations and individuals -- clarify and then move toward their hoped-for future. We work in three ways to do that: the first is through "strengthening leaders," which includes doing one-on-one executive coaching, as well as working with senior teams to support them in being as effective as possible. Our second practice area is "clarifying vision and strategy" -- we help our client organizations create an accurate picture of their current state, then envision the future they want to create for themselves as an organization, look at what's in their way, and then craft strategies and tactics for getting there. In our third area -- "building skills and knowledge" -- we offer learning programs to support our clients in making sure that their employees are capable of creating the kind of organization they envision.

Through the years, in working with many different organizations -- different sizes, industries, places in their growth cycles -- I've noticed over and over that, while companies say things like "our people are critical to our success," they don't actually behave like that. I've seen especially that managers -- even senior managers -- are most often not provided with the skills and understanding to manage well; and that they, their employees, and the organization all suffer as a result. I've realized that helping our clients to "grow great employees," by offering needed skills and understanding to managers and leaders, could yield enormous benefit -- both in terms of better business results and more enjoyment and satisfaction in the workplace.

Nettie: Why is it so vital for companies to learn how to grow great employees, and can you give an example of a company that has done this well and the resultant benefits?

Erika: People really are critical to a company's success -- it's not just the politically correct sentiment. Think about it: if your company is in an industry where success depends on service, who delivers that service? If your company's success depends on product, who makes, markets and sells that product? And if your company's success depends on having the latest technology or the best creative ideas -- whose thinking is going to keep you on the cutting edge? It always comes down to people. And so, if you don't have managers who are capable of finding, hiring, and developing the great employees, who will be the heart of your competitive advantage, you're in trouble!

One of our client companies, Union Square Hospitality Group, is a wonderful example of what happens when you do this well. They have a set of core principles called Enlightened Hospitality, and they focus on finding and developing managers who work according to these principles -- and then supporting them to hire, train and develop staff to do so, as well.

The results are quite impressive: USHG has grown from 1 to 15 food-related businesses over the past decade (including Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern, two of New York's favorite restaurants); they have the lowest staff turnover of any restaurant company in New York; and they have been invited by numerous partners to expand their restaurant and hospitality concepts around the world.

On Building Your Environment:

Nettie: What steps can a company take to create an environment that supports trust, engagement, and growth? Where does listening fit in?

Erika: Listening is the foundation of great management. I've never known a truly great manager and leader who was not also a skilled listener. In my experience, there's no better way to demonstrate respect and openness than by sincere and reasonably skillful listening.

For example, let's say an employee comes to you, the manager, with a problem. You can tell him you respect his point of view, and that you want to create an environment that supports trust, engagement, and growth. Lots of managers do this, and it's generally well-intended. And, most of the time, it has no impact whatsoever. The employee doesn't feel respected and trusted as a result of you telling him that you respect and trust him.

Contrast this with what happens if, instead, you simply listen carefully: suspend your judgments and advice for the moment, and really seek to understand the employee's situation, what she thinks and feels about it, how she's tried to resolve it. Right then, that employee is going to feel trusted and respected.

Of course, you need to follow listening with clear agreements, good delegation, consistent follow-through, etc. But listening well is almost always the best place to start if you're sincere about wanting to create a positive environment.

Nettie: Your work with Proteus is so diverse and wide in its reach. What do most successful companies have in common in terms of leadership?

Erika: We've found the core characteristics of good leaders are much the same across industries, from small companies to large, and even -- for the most part -- in different cultures. In fact, we've developed a leadership model, based on archetypes from folk tale themes found the world over. The six characteristics in our "chieftains" model are: Far-sighted, Passionate, Courageous, Wise, Generous and Trustworthy.

Here's a brief definition for each one. Far-sighted means being able to envision and articulate a positive and compelling future for the organization, and to do it in a way that invites others to work together with you to make it happen. Passionate is about depth of commitment: behaving so that others see and feel your unwavering commitment to the success of the endeavor and focus on the greater good (vs. being primarily focused on your own success). Courageous means not only courage in the traditional sense -- making tough decisions for the good of the organization -- but also having the courage to stretch; to do things that are personally difficult for you. Wise means reflecting on and learning from your experience, and sharing it with others in a way that strengthens them and helps them to grow. Generous means freely sharing important resources: time, knowledge, authority, credit, reward, praise, and opportunity. And Trustworthy means delivering on your commitments and being honorable -- telling the truth, admitting your mistakes, keeping confidences.

We've noticed that when leaders demonstrate all or most of these characteristics, people naturally give them permission to lead: it feels both safe and exciting to allow someone like this to be your leader.

Nettie: Why is it valuable for employers to be clear about what the company wants to achieve?

Erika: It's valuable for a lot of reasons. For one thing, most people like to feel that they're a part of something that's important to them and that's greater than them: they like to be part of a team, or group, or tribe. When this need isn't met at work, people tend to disengage -- they'll come to work, and do what's asked of them, but their hearts and minds are elsewhere. However, if an organization is clear about what it's trying to achieve and why, and lets people know that from day one, they can start to feel that "tribal" association, "This is MY company, and we're here to do ___."

Also, that clear statement becomes a powerful selection mechanism: people who are interested in achieving the stated goals of the organization are attracted to join, to stay, and to excel -- while those who don't resonate with those goals either won't want to work there, or, if they're already there, will eventually "select themselves out."

It's also important because people are better able to contribute to a result they understand. If employees know what the company is trying to achieve, and why, they're much more likely to be able to respond appropriately to changing circumstances; to come up with good and realistic new approaches; or to question efforts that don't move the company toward its stated goals.

On Changing Culture:

Nettie: How does a company go about changing its culture?

Erika: Wow, that's a big question. We have a process that we use, based on the tenets of a discipline called Social Marketing, to help companies shift their cultures. Here's the essence of it: Corporate culture consists of accepted behaviors and the beliefs and values that underlie and promote those behaviors. It's almost impossible to change values, and it's difficult to change beliefs. However, you can change people's behaviors, as long as behaving in the new ways isn't in conflict with their values and core beliefs, and if you can make the new behaviors easier, more rewarding and more "normal" than the old behaviors.

Here's an example of that. Let's say a company has just articulated a new vision for itself, one that will require that people perform at a much higher level of excellence than they've done in the past. Now, let's further say that an element of this current culture is that people really value their relationships, and they believe it's important to be nice to each other. One behavior that's resulted from this value and this belief is that managers don't give people tough feedback.

So, the senior leaders decide that it's essential to change this behavior in order to establish the high performance organization they envision: they realize it's essential for managers to be honest and direct with people about whether or not they're performing well.

First they need to check if this new behavior is in conflict with the existing values and beliefs. Is giving accurate performance feedback incompatible with having good relationships, or with being nice to each other? No. In fact, it could be argued that being honest with people about their strengths and weaknesses is, ultimately, a better basis for good relationships!

So, how would the company make that new behavior -- giving balanced performance feedback -- easier, more rewarding, and more normal for people? Well, they could make it easier by providing skill training to managers so that they actually knew how to do it reasonably well. They could make it more rewarding by, for instance, connecting managers' bonuses to their effectiveness in managing people's performance. And they could make it more "normal" by publicizing examples of respected people in the organization giving and receiving feedback and benefiting from it.

It's a simplistic example, but it gives you the "shape" of culture change: identifying key behaviors that need to be altered in order to shift the culture; making sure they're not in conflict with existing core values and beliefs in the culture; making those new behaviors easy, rewarding, and normal.

Nettie: If you could give one piece of advice to a company that's trying to clarify its vision and strategy, what would it be?

Erika: Make sure that the senior people have the will to follow through. There's nothing more demoralizing for people than spending the time and energy to create a common vision of the future, and agree on a path to get there, and then have the senior people drop the ball. Because when a company does this process, which we call Strategic Visioning, the senior leaders -- and especially the CEO or President -- have to be the "keepers of the flame." That is, they need to consistently support the effort needed to move toward the hoped-for future -- not only in their words, but also in their actions.

It takes far-sightedness, passion, courage, wisdom, generosity and trustworthiness to both support and require the members of an organization to behave in ways that will make that envisioned future a reality. In other words: strong leadership.

Nettie: What is the first question you ask any potential client in order to decide whether they'll be able to take advantage of what you have to offer?

Erika: The literal first question I almost invariably ask a potential client is, "What are you trying to accomplish?" In asking this question, then really listening deeply to whatever the person wants to say in response to it, I learn a lot about how the person thinks; how they're looking at their company's or department's current state; how strategically or tactically they're approaching their business; their attitude toward employees; what they think of as their key challenges; their curiosity and openness to new ideas and information; and how they view their job. And that allows me to know whether or not we could be helpful to them.

Nettie: And finally, what do you most wish companies would do differently relative to their employees?

Erika: I wish companies would make more of a distinction between good performers and poor performers. In too many companies, if you're doing a fantastic job, you don't get treated or rewarded that much differently from someone who's doing a lousy job. Especially at junior levels: the compensation tends to be exactly the same; and poor performers tend not to get fired, or even reprimanded, unless they do something really egregious. The result is that great performers get disheartened and stop trying, or go someplace else -- and poor performers just keep on being poor performers.

If companies would teach their managers to set clear parameters of success and hold people accountable for achieving them, and if performance management systems were better set up to truly reward individual success, it would be very different. Excellent employees would get appreciation, challenge, promotions, money, and autonomy (the things that most people find valuable), and would continue to benefit the company as they continued to develop and contribute their skills and talents. Poor performers would be given a clear understanding of how they were expected to improve, and, if they continued to perform poorly, they would be terminated.

Not only would it create much better business results, but it would go a long way to creating that environment of trust, engagement, and growth you asked about earlier.

Sometimes, people talk as though businesses have to make a choice: that they can either go for great results, or be supportive of the human beings that work for them. My strong belief -- as I'm sure you can tell by now -- is that businesses need to do both in order to succeed. Great businesses set the bar high -- envisioning and requiring great results -- and they support their good people by giving them the tools, the skills, the understanding and the trust they need in order to clear that bar with room to spare.

Nettie Hartsock helps individuals, authors, and companies focus on creating, conveying, and connecting their message to the world and creates actionable how-to-programs that establish a powerful base for attracting both blogger and journalists attention.

Nettie is a veteran e-business journalist and PR Marathoner. Her name can even be Googled with some notable results. Nettie has lived many more than nine lives as a journalist contributing regularly to leading online and offline publications including eWeek, PC Magazine, Software CEO, Publish, PDFZone, PlanetPDF and others.

She is highly regarded for her interviews with some of the most respected e-business and Internet visionaries including Dr. Peter Sealey, Andrew Goodman, Jon Nordmark, Zach Nelson, Dr. Larry Ponemon, Steve Rubel and Royal P. Farros.

Her e-book, Start the Press! has helped countless companies increase their media and customer exposure. Her PR seminars are highly lauded for both their content and humor.

Nettie is the Business Advisor for all things PR with her Professional PR blog for allbusiness.com, and she is also a very active and devoted business book journalist and publishing commentator as the Senior Blog Editor for Must Read Business Books blog with allbusiness.com.

Nettie is a highly recognized case study writer focusing on "storytelling" inclusive in the case studies and has written case studies for companies including NetSuite, Digital Railroad, NavTrak, Software CEO, and others.

She hails near Austin, Texas in the Hill Country where folks still wear larger-than-life hats, and some are still hunting for the elusive jackalope.

Nettie is also a nationally published essayist and short-story writer. In her years of interviewing, Nettie has been to the moon with Buzz Aldrin, visited "FutureNet" with Sally Richards, felt unbelievably under-designed interviewing usability guru Dr. Jakob Nielsen and even paddled down " Whiskey River " with Willie Nelson.

What remains to be seen from the SaaS gold rush going on for VC funding today is which start-ups will be able to set a strong enough set of business processes and supporting systems in place, hiring the right talent who can survive in a sped-up product development and launch environment, and be financially focused to make sure contracts don't attempt to gain customers on price alone.

Let's face it; SaaS is sexy these days. Nearly everybody is either starting entirely new companies to capitalize on the benefits of SaaS or madly rushing to get their applications ported to it.  At a recent conference, I presented at in the Bay Area, this became abundantly clear. Every session hosted by venture capitalists who talked about the exponential growth of SaaS was packed, and sessions where CEOs of successful SaaS start-ups had standing-room-only crowds.

All of this passion for SaaS would make anyone stop and wonder, "So, what does make a great SaaS start-up?"

Top Take-Aways

From the presentations given and from the discussions with attendees and presenters, the following take-aways were gained:

Passion for serving customers is more important than a passion for VC cash. This became abundantly clear when the founder and CEO of Brainshark, Joe Gustafson, spoke. He talked about best practices in starting a SaaS-based software company and had a great quote about turning customers into your best salespeople.

Earning the annuity is more important than churning the sale. What was striking in many of the presentations given was the accentuating of underlying systems and processes necessary to scale the business versus just getting a kick-butt prototype out the door and sold. VCs and successful CEOs both stressed the need to have pricing, automated services for both partners and customers, and service level agreements (SLA) that were real, not just promises of future performance from hosting providers. The message from VCs was that the app itself was secondary to making sure customers, once gained, would not be lost. Customer acquisition through exceptional execution of providing the app and service (if needed) was by far more critical.

The myth of SaaS companies being exceptional Internet marketers was often questioned. Far from a criticism, a few of the CEOs remarked that it was much more difficult than they had anticipated to build any awareness at all for their companies online, and that when they did, lead generation was the toughest process of all.  Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords is where the majority of the start-ups are spending their marketing dollars, with one estimating as high as 65 percent to 70 percent of total marketing spending going into AdWords campaigns. Search engine optimization (SEO) was successful to a point, yet many of these CEOs say that it takes a good year of constant effort to get known in their markets.

Communicating with customers about downtime, maintenance schedules and new releases is critical. Several presenters talked about how they spent in inordinate amount of time and resources to make sure customers understood when services would be interrupted for maintenance in addition to the delivery schedule for new updates.

Part of best practices in running an SaaS start-up is making this a major focus. The approach Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) took with trust.salesforce.com was pointed out as a best practice at striving for transparency with customers regarding the status of systems globally. None of the companies presenting had gone to the trouble of setting up trust.mysaas.com, but it is no doubt in the works for many SaaS start-ups as this is an issue they continually face.

Turning transactions into relationships. This CRM mantra gets its reality test in SaaS start-ups, as the need for getting away from a minimum lease to a long-term one is essential for an SaaS start-up to survive. What became apparent from the presentations, however, is that there is little price elasticity in SaaS services pricing; instead the expectation of apps being able to eventually supersede minimum expectations was far more prevalent.

The essence of this take-away was that despite SaaS being considered a low-cost option for enterprise apps, the expectations of added functionality over time were very high. Earning customers for the long term required a near-constant attention to how to fine-tune the application version currently active.

Making usage reporting and analytics a strength. The fact that SaaS applications can be monitored in real time delivers exceptional insights and also trending of which products need more functionality to increase their use.

It became clear from the presentations that, despite how intuitive this is as a requirement from hosting providers, many of these services companies cannot provide real-time measurement of application usage. The SLAs mentioned earlier were critical in making real-time dashboards of application use become a reality for start-ups.

Continual Improvement

SaaS puts organizational strains on companies that are more acute than traditional software delivery models. The level of cross-functional coordination and project management required in a start-up to make SaaS work as a product strategy actually speeds up all processes, from engineering, to quality assurance, to marketing.

Every process that is related to a new release is sped up, with little time for doing tasks over again if not done well the first time. Once a commitment date for a new release is made, every department must figure out how to make their part of the launch work with everyone else's contribution.

The day a new release goes live, there is no going back, as customers will begin using the new features of the most interest to them immediately. The stress, conflicts and need for coordination is so great that one start-up CEO remarked that in "dog years," his firm was 49, and in chronological years, seven.

What remains to be seen from the SaaS gold rush going on for VC funding today is what start-ups will be able to set a strong enough set of business processes and supporting systems in place, hiring the right talent who can survive in a sped-up product development and launch environment, and be financially focused to make sure contracts don't attempt to gain customers on price alone. SaaS customers expect continual improvement of their apps at the same or lower prices; by meeting that expectation continually will these start-ups grow.

by Louis Columbus, Enterprise Compliance & uality Management Practice Senior Analyst

How to sell to executives

by Jeff Thull, CEO and President of Prime Resource Group

Salespeople say, "Executives won't pay attention. They're indifferent and won't take the time to see us." Executives say, "Salespeople all sound the same. They're well versed about their products, but they don't take the time to understand my business. I'll see anyone that can show me a solid business case, but they shouldn't whine if I won't waste my time to ‘learn' about their solutions." Read more ...