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Bob Metcalfe, 3Com
Make Everyone Sell
If you have engineers in your company, make them get up early and try some selling, too. They will be inspired by seeing their handiwork in the wild and motivated by customer appreciation, and maybe they will get feedback to make future products better matched to customer needs.
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Bert Jacobs, Life Is Good
Listen. Really Listen.
We randomly call our retailers and ask, "During this difficult time, is there anything we can do to help?" You would be surprised how many requests you can meet. For example, retailers have input about the upcoming season. They say, "I think you guys have gotten too far away from bright color palettes. Everything seems to be earth tones now." You hear 60 retailers mention that, and you make a change. Then, you give them a sneak preview. They are ecstatic that you listened to them.
On one call, a retailer in the Southeast said he was having trouble managing inventory. He wanted to know what was happening with other retailers: Was there information we could share? We shared a ton of information and encouraged dialogues among retailers all over the country. If we can afford it, in 2010 we would like to have a summit for dedicated retailers so they can share information. We are looking into setting up social networks for them. The calls have been so helpful that we are going to start budgeting them into people's schedules and including them in job descriptions.
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Brian Scudamore, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
Rally the Troops
This year, the housing crisis affected us more than we expected. For the first time in 19 years, we faced potentially not growing at all. So with our 300 franchisees, we organized what we called the 100 Day Plan, which ran from mid-June to mid-September. The plan included three simple goals: Own the neighborhood, own online, and own property management. Our partners parked their trucks at busy intersections to get the attention of drivers in rush-hour traffic. They asked customers to put signs on their lawns. On the Internet, they went after bloggers and Web directories, adding thousands of links to the company's site. They met with property managers to pitch our commercial property services. On our internal site, they posted videos, photos, and stories of their efforts, so everyone could see what others were doing. The key was to have a distinct period of 100 days -- not too long or short -- so that everyone stuck with it. We had meetings daily so that everyone focused on what he or she could do to make a difference. It was inexpensive, but it produced great results. Many of our franchises posted record business while the plan was in effect. We are projected to end 2008 with 4 percent year-over-year growth. That's less than what we originally projected, but to be actually growing now is an achievement, especially when so many companies aren't.
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Keith McFarland, McFarland Strategy Partners
Be Brutally Honest
Take an honest look at what revenue is likely to do over the next year. Then, reduce it by 10 percent and adjust your business plan to that revenue number. Don't take the coward's way out by making across-the-board cuts. Figure out where your core leverage points are in your business model and make sure these are adequately funded. Cut anything that is not in the 20 percent of the activities that generate 80 percent of the results. Once you have scoped the business, get your folks together and talk to them honestly about the environment ahead and what you are doing to address it. Show a sense of confidence. But if your business is likely to encounter turbulence ahead, signal that you fully grasp the situation and are taking action.
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Eric Ryan, Method
Piggyback on Someone Else's Efforts
You don't need big budgets or expensive promotions to get publicity. One of the most effective things you can do is to participate in established events. Here's an example: Last September, 70 cities across the nation celebrated Parking Day, an event to raise environmental awareness. We set up mini golf courses in San Francisco and Chicago. We didn't have to shell out money for a sponsorship. We did this ourselves and exposed our brand to thousands of consumers.
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Bernie Marcus, The Home Depot
Expand Employees' Minds
Training sometimes seems like a small thing, but it is actually the first step in empowering people to do their jobs well. Arthur [Blank, co-founder of the Home Depot] and I always wanted to share the wealth; no matter what an employee's position was within the company, we knew he or she could make a contribution by being creative or just working hard. Training combined with providing employees a sense of belonging and rewarding them for results were the keys to our success.
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Jenny Craig
Market More, Not Less
Rather than cut staff, we have gone against the conventional wisdom and advertised to bring in more business. While our competitors were hunkering down, we would spend a bit more than we had planned, which resulted in a huge competitive advantage.
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Jack Stack, SRC Holdings
Open Wide
Here's one example of leading your company through the woods. My daughter has a small clothing shop in Missouri. It could be struggling. Upscale clothes are not a necessity, especially in a recession. As a business owner, she can have one of two attitudes: the woe-is-me, the-markets-are-so-bad attitude. Or the what-can-I-do-to-get-people-into-my-store attitude. She chose the latter. Her answer was to make her seven employees financially literate. She now has seven people who think like her. Instead of telling them how to arrange skirts and bras, she is telling them about inventory turns and margins and the relationship between the two. Now it's the associates who are selling. It isn't the result of more money in advertising or marketing. It took me three years and a lot of persuading to get her to do this, but she finally has. In October 2007, the business did $55,000 in sales. In 2008, in this climate, it did $81,000. Those numbers say it all.
