To Survive The Crisis

I was posted to a town where business was quite tough. Yearly sales targets were hardly achieved and morale of the staffs were not really on the high side. To certain extend the market has been saturated. In addition, there were no property developments to boost the market. The population of the district stands at 89,000. Save for the government servants serving governments departments and schools, 80% of the population are farmers.

Accompanying my move to the ‘dark alley’ was the restructuring of targets which was less favourable making our going got tough. In the first day of my 2nd week, I spoke to the staffs for 60 minutes on ‘Surviving The Crisis’. At the end of my presentation, the staffs realized that we are living in a world of change. The world was created for those who fits in.

My presentation, which was witnessed by my immediate boss, spelt out 8 strategies to bring the branch out of the crisis.

1. Targets To be driven by Team Power

• It is the quality and not quantity of staff that counts
• Appointment of Product-Champion and yet overlapping in duties
• Multi-tasking
• Staffs were reminded to be open-minded and strategic in their thinking. While they should retain some technical knowledge and skill for hands-on involvement, ones are primarily strategist, thus requiring him to be strong in conceptual skills.
• One must also be excellent in human skill such as PR and communication.
• In our pursuit to achieved our targets, we must not only co-exist but work harmoniously

2. Clear sense of Direction and Target

• Providing a strategic direction i.e. moving towards High Performance Culture
• Clearly defined Sales targets and Branch KPIs
• Tailoring Marketing Strategy to the local traits

3. Optimizing the staff

• I am a firm believer that a good people is most essential in surviving the crisis as their creativity and productivity could make all the different. These are the people who will exploit the situation and opportunities.
• Some people tend to look outside for solution when all the time such solution could be found in our own backyard.
• Steering away from Yes-Men Culture and all opinion and policies shall be contested. Usually the ‘parrots’ are not creative and innovative. Neither are they productive.
• Neither there is place for ‘deadwood’ in the branch.

4. Cost effective

• Cutting controllable cost cannot be avoided in order to survive the ordeal. We must be very selective in our sales and services. We will give less emphasis on products that are giving lesser returns and having no value for cross-selling. Some third-party products need to be internally reviewed.
• In this sense, speed is essential and avoid all form of dilly-dally “Success is the main objective, if it is long delayed, the morale will be dampened”.  I do not have sympathy for staff who procrastinate.

5. Empowerment

• Our way was to strike a balance between being kind and YET enforcing control when there is a need to and trusting the people under my charge to be capable of doing MORE. In simple definition is to get all staff involved.
• Either BM, respective head of sections or Product Champion advised to facilitate the staff to sit down and discuss the plan, strategies, requirements, barriers to dismantled, accountability and consequences.

6. Do not easily get hurt

• To survive the crisis, hurt and being hurt is part of the game albeit agreeing that culture, Religion and felling need to be taken care of. 
• There are bounds to be ‘rough road’ in the relationship but at the end of the day everybody are happy.
• Criticism is part of BM jobs. While I can overlook at the small faults, there are time I cannot be ignorant on some issues however trivial it may be.
• As much as possible I will avoid direct confrontation but where necessary and for the interest of sincerety, I will not hesitate to bulldoze

7. Wow! Service that Sell

• Excellent service makes all the different and facilitate sales.
• I am not lunatic to frantically exhort all staff to please all customers at all cost. My principle of customers service is simple: Smile, greet, offer help and speed. While the first 3 are under ‘Project SMILE’ - the later refers to the principle of ‘speeding-up without rushing’ when serving the customers.
• To me, customer service is more than developing complicated system. It is all about wanting to develop the staff attitude in wanting to serve. It is all about conditioning them to be one.
• (To be delivered on 16 March 2010)

8. Winning Sales Strategies

• If the situations offer victory, we must not forbid ourselves from fighting. Instead garb the opportunities as swift as possible.
• The strategies to be briefed on the next articles after the briefing on 22nd March 2010