Friday, May 14, 2010

Members Share Ideas on Sales & Marketing, Operations & Personnel

Welcome back to “Good Ideas” from the 23rd MCAA Annual Meeting. If you missed Thursday’s session, you missed bright ideas from motivational speaker Mark Moses on “Leading in Turbulent Times” and the Courier Focus Groups, a pooling of knowledge from couriers whose experience went from first time attendees to MCAA veterans.

This edition of "Good Ideas" come from members of those groups whose experience ranged from those in business for eight months to 65 years. They came from Alaska to Florida and all states in-between.

Here are some of their Good Ideas from what one participant called “The Highlight of the Meeting”:

In sales & marketing:
• Update your website so it can be used as a tool for your customers.
• Understand the power of a good website. “The buying cycle today is either web-based or by referral – adapt of die,” said one participant.
• Realize that electronic invoicing is the way to go and that more customers than you think will accept it
• Serve more regionally based businesses and grow with them. It’s a great way to compete with the big guys. So, cultivate regional medical labs versus serving a Quest-type operation. You’ll get steady, incremental growth
• Look into non-traditional market segments. One focus group participant added the transportation of animals – specifically dogs and cats -- from the airport to their owners.

In Operations
• Reduce costs by joining forces with a competitor to serve geographic areas where you’re not making money. One participant talked about “moving in together” with a competitor so they share routes in low- populated areas. Both of them won by saving overhead.
• Reduce costs by moving customers to electronic billing and on-line order entries.
• Centralize call centers. So instead of having several branches that serve the state, send all calls to one. It not only saves money it standardizes the way customer calls are handled.
• Cultivate synergies with your customers.
• Develop a “killer team” of employees by treating them like family. One participant talked about having “zero turnover” which he said continues to drive up their quality.
• Change or die! As company leaders, it’s your job to get your employees more comfortable with change because it’s happening whether they like it or not. “We have to manage change and help our employees deal with it. Communications makes it happen,” said one participant. He said the key was “consistency of message” and telling your employees why the change is necessary.
• Look at change as a positive. “We call it an OFG – opportunity for growth,” added another
• Consider dropping customers who aren’t good for the bottom line, no matter how long they’ve been with you.
• Institutionalize “tribal knowledge” --the wisdom of your employees. This means gathering it all and bringing it into one centralized source so everyone can share in that knowledge.
• Customers can see the signature right on their mobile phones. It also helps you build efficiencies by getting true measures of performance.
• Ask the customer what they want and be ready to adapt to that.
• Reduce the use of paper with scanners, even for those customers who are wedded to paper. One participant told about a customer that used to insist they use their own forms. Gradually, they’ve even been able to switch them over to scanners.

Personnel
• Use psychological testing to put the right person in the right position.
• Hire only sales people with “the hunger”.
• Use Craiglist, Google, Facebook and Courier Board to recruit.
• Avoid hiring people who are overqualified.
• Consider hiring college students and moving them through the ranks. They work well and are flexible. One participant even starts the process earlier by mentoring high school students, essentially growing his own employees.
• Remember, “if it doesn’t get measured it doesn’t get done” so measure and incentivize employees to do what you want them to do.
• Make use of performance appraisals. These start with updating all standard operating procedure, training employees to them and using them as a guide to evaluate them.
• Set your expectations of employees up front “or you lose the ability to gripe about their performance,” said one participant.

Tune in tomorrow for Good Ideas from workshops on: hiring, using metrics to get results; 8 things you can do to improve your courier business and tips on becoming a pharmaceutical shipper.

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