Golden Practices

For Firms Thinking About Hiring a Salesperson on a Commission-Only Basis, Think Again

In response to someone asking about CPA firms' experiences with hiring a sales-person on a commission-only basis, Chris Perrino who is the long-time business development director for Barnes Dennig & Co. (a 10 partner, 75 employee firm in Cincinnati, Ohio) had some strong opinions to share on the subject today. With Chris' permission, I'm posting his excellent perspective:

My 10,000 foot view is it sounds like the partners want the best of both worlds: someone to develop business so they don't have to and they only have to pay on success not all the thankless front end work that's necessary.

If the partners will only commit to hiring with no risk (i.e. no bucks paid till bucks come in) then the firm is probably not ready for a business development (BD) person.

I think the partners need some skin in the game before they'll do their part to really make it successful. And, success might be 2 or 3 years off. The commission-only person will have starved to death by then. Hiring a BD person is a long term investment. Not a day trade.

Other thoughts...the partners want someone to think short-term by paying commission only but they probably won't like the kind of deals that are brought in with this approach (low quality or high risk). I like to think of it this way: If you want long term clients you have to have a long term BD approach. The commission only plan is short-term as mentioned above.

Also, with the economy doing better and more good jobs available, the only sales people who would accept a commission-only deal might be coming straight off the used car lot.

Chris has been in sales for 19 years (and in his CPA firm for nearly eight of those years). He is a well-regarded and frequent speaker and he consults nationally with firms on sales, selling, and aligning the sales/marketing functions to co-exist peacefully in firms.

I've known him for years and highly recommend him. Chris can be contacted at (513) 241-8313 or cperrino [at] barnesdennig [dot] com.   

Laptop Volume in Presentations

Came across this wonderful tip for presenters who use multimedia in their presentations. This solves the dilemma when facing volume problems and no sound person is around....

Purchase a tiny headphone volume control (under $7 from Radio Shack) and plug it into the output of your laptop. Then plug your output wire going to the sound system into the volume control. You can then adjust the volume of your multimedia clip quickly without the need to use the internal volume controls of the laptop which is usually a little bit of a hassle.

Many thanks to Tom Antion's Great Public Speaking blog for this (and many more) helpful tips. Check out his blog....

What Today's Best Marketers Must Know

According to Harry Joiner, "marketing managers who don’t have an analytical bias and a multichannel orientation are at a distinct disadvantage."

Joiner, a top marketing recruiter and recovering marketer himself (my words, not his...) is featured in MarketingSherpa's "Great Minds in Marketing" right now (here) in a fantastic look at what CEOs (and firms) consider imperative marketing skills. Joiner goes into some depth as to why.

Whether you're a marketer wondering which skills to sharpen or a firm leader looking for talent, this is a must-read article!

He elaborates on the top 5 skills in demand right now among marketers:

• Niche Market Development
• Analytical Bias
• Classic Direct Marketing Skills
• "Search" Marketing
• Humility (a healthy dose of skepticism or, in Joiner's words "channel agnostic")

Here are just a few of the excellent points he makes:

"Soft skills are out. Hard, analytical skills are in. This is a turbulent time for marketing VPs. There's a growing mentality among CEOs that 'there's nothing as devastating to an opinion as a number.'"

On accountability, he recommends to the marketer, "Don't feel threatened by the need to prove effectiveness. The simple solution is communication. Yes, a CMO is and should be accountable, but success should be accurately defined based on 'customer-centric forethought,' not on ROI from a single campaign."

For the firm, on keeping a good marketer once you have one, Joiner says, "Truly authentic marketers find growth life-affirming." It's not just about money, he says, they want "the three F's: fun, future, and finance."

Basically, if your firm doesn't celebrate increased earnings more than reduced expense, good marketers lose interest in you fast--it isn't the right mentality for them--you aren't helping them to help you.

Also, accounting marketers have been dismayed for years at the short tenure of marketers within firms. Well, fret no more. The short life-span of marketers in firms apparently isn't just an accounting industry dilemma. It is a marketing dilemma.

According to this article, "Top marketers stay in their jobs 18-24 months on average (depending on the industry). Some get fired, others are headhunted away."

Customer Service Experiences

Been a quiet week on the blog while I moved my office to a new location. Had some interesting dealings with AT&T and Southwestern Bell that inspire this post.

Most of the time, when you see "phone company" and "service" in the same sentence, you can predict what comes next: a horror story.

As a proponent of amazing service, I admit I'm pretty tough to please when I'm being 'dealt with' by major corporations. But out of 8 or so calls to business service and support, only one phone call was handled less than optimally. And that last call wasn't entirely bad.

Here are my take-aways:

Improvement is possible; reputations needn't be permanent. Even these companies, both with long-time poor service reputations (though AT&T has always been good to me, far better than SBC) can show improvement and evidence of caring and listening.

Value your customers' business and make sure they know it. Both companies went out of their way to indicate they value my business. SBC, the company I dreaded and didn't want to have to talk to (thus I went with AT&T) still owns the lines AT&T uses, so I still had to work with them to solve a voicemail problem. Shockingly, SBC (who still has my residential service) was flawless in the way the dealt with the problem and they never seemed "bitter" that I went with AT&T. In fact, on a 3-way call with a technician from each company, I was embarrassed over the way the AT&T guy behaved to the SBC guy (interrupting, etc) who was the consummate professional.

Empower employees to care, as individuals, about your customers/clients. The people who answered the phones behaved as individuals who cared, not as "policy followers" or the voice of a higher source. They all went out of their way to assist me. One SBC rep gave me her personal e-mail since she wanted to follow the situation personally (since I couldn't get her directly by telephone) and assure I found resolution. An AT&T rep waived fees for me before I even knew fees were normally charged. And even the one AT&T rep who was least enjoyable to deal with (a tech who assured me repeatedly that the problem was on SBCs side, despite that logic said it was not) took the initiative to 3-way connect to SBCs rep right then and there.

Never badmouth the competition. Though each company was insistent that resolution was in the control of the other company, they were both careful not to dis the other company in any way, even if I did (hey, I was frustrated, what can I say!).

Perhaps it's a sad day when we can take away service examples from the phone companies, but surely if they can improve, anybody can!!

Do You Use Bad Consulting Approaches?

When advising your clients, there are some mistakes you can make that impact their satisfaction with the process and their willingness to consider you as an advisor/consultant going forward.

Mike McLaughlin of Guerrilla Consulting wrote here about his review of a pre-publication version of Consulting Mastery by Keith Merron.

According to McLaughlin, Merron opens with "Rules behind the Rules" -- some tactics he apparently feels are employed by consultants all too often:

1. Rather than offer unique solutions, listen to understand the problem in such a way that you can prove your predefined solution fits the client's problem
2. Proclaim specialized knowledge, even if it is not well developed nor unique
3. Convince clients that they are in trouble if they don't use you and come in like a hero to save the day
4. See change management as something you bolt on to the process, rather than the greatest challenge in the process
5. Leverage young talent at high margins to make a lot of money
6. Collect your fee, regardless of the outcome

I concur with McLaughlin that many consultants do not exhibit these traits. However, 2 and 6 occur regularly in professional service firms. Both are customer satisfaction nightmares.

Number 6 is the antithesis of value billing.

The fifth one (about leveraging young talent) would happen a lot in firms if partners/managers were better at letting go of work (perhaps if they didn't have those high billable hour requirements!). And I'm not sure I see number 5 as a terrible problem, anyway, as long as the client understands who is doing the work and has agreed to the price.

The first one is primarily the sales faux pas of an untrained advisor.

Think about these "don'ts" and consider how your firm's processes might be encouraging them as well as how your clients might feel as the recipients.

How to Develop a Tagline for Your Firm

A great article appeared yesterday in Business Week online called: Slogans That are the Real Thing.

Written by Smart Answers columninst, Karen Klein, the article is a Q&A with San Mateo based marketing and branding expert Eric Swartz. It covers what it is that makes a great tagline and includes some results from a study Swartz conducted to determine which taglines have stood the test of time and have helped companies increase their brand equity.

Swartz recommends taglines should be short: 7 words or fewer and must emphasize how your company or product is different from your competitors. He gives an example of that differentiation:

"For instance, there may be about five positions that toothpaste companies can stake out: tastes good, fights cavities, whitens teeth, freshens breath, etc. When Tom's of Maine entered the market very late, they had to pitch something different -- the environmental benefits of their brand.  Otherwise, they would have just encroached on what their competitors were doing and diluted their entry into the marketplace."

As to what makes a bad tagline, Swartz warns against making it too clever-sounding such that it calls unnecessary attention to itself "Look at me, I'm a clever tagline!" He says that a tagline that "comes across as pompous, nonsensical, meaningless, or confusing" misses the mark or can even backfire.

If your firm is thinking of creating a tagline, remember that a firm tagline can be good for big picture branding, but individual practice areas may merit their very own taglines.

Think about the difference of importance to you, at purchase time, between the Proctor & Gamble brand and tagline/mission "We will provide products of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world's consumers." verses their specific paper towel ("Bounty. The quilted quicker picker upper.") or deodorant ("Secret. Strong enough for a man, yet made for a woman.") brands and the product specific marketing they do.

If you have a Business Valuation niche or Retail practice group, your commitment to those specialized services is amplified when you take the time to brand them independently.

This article is a great read if you're going to go down the tagline path anytime soon.

What Clients Value Most

It seems everywhere I go, I become involved in conversations about what clients value most. (Hmmm, could it be that I cause these conversations??)

• Resolution of painful problems?
• Money saved?
• Someone else just "doing" it for them?
• Relevant, meaningful information that helps them manage better?

All of these, and more, can be argued as being of greatest value.

But Larry Anderson posted in his One Sentence Journal Blog, a gem that practitioners, especially technical people, should never forget:

"Kindness is more valued than wisdom."