The Briefcase Project

This post is a guest contribution brought to you by:

Robin Throckmorton, MA, SPHR
Executive HR Strategist, and President of strategicHR, inc.

Does your company have a succession plan for your key positions? Why not? What will it take to convince you that you need one? The unexpected loss of a key player in that critical position due to:

• Sudden resignation,
• A traumatic or terminal illness, or
• A catastrophic event …

Maybe you haven’t thought about it. May you think it won’t happen to you. But it can. It happened to the CEO / Owner of not one, but TWO of our clients. Both were very young, brilliant individuals that lost their lives in very unfortunate freak accidents. The families of both of these individuals had to pull together and figure out how to keep their respective businesses running without the intellectual capital and contacts of these magnificent individuals.

Who would have known or thought to create succession plans for a young owner of a company? A research study by Grant Thornton found that about 70% of family businesses never make it to the second generation because of lack of succession planning. I recommend that succession planning be a part of your business planning from the beginning for the CEO / Owner, as well as for any other key positions that you would have trouble “doing without.” This means any position in your organization that:

• Impacts the daily operations of the business,
• Has the most visibility to the customer,
• Is key to meeting business objectives / goals,
• Would be very difficult to replace in the current marketplace,
• Has vital information that is not readily known by others in the organization.

Once you’ve identified the positions, you’ll want to figure out how you could replace the position if you had to. This includes asking the questions,

• What knowledge and skills would be needed for the position?
• Is there anyone currently in the organization that could fill the position? If not, who outside the organization could possibly be a resource?
• What training, development and knowledge transfer may be needed?
• What HR implications might result from this succession plan (i.e. informing the potential replacement, losing the replacement too soon, or even filling the replacement’s position if they succeed)?

Like a strategic plan, your succession plan may change as the goals and needs of the company change.  As a small business, you will absolutely need to regularly revisit your succession plans and ensure the plans are accurate and up-to-date to ensure a plan is in place for those “what if” situations in case they happen. If you want your business to continue to succeed tomorrow, it is important to plan accordingly today!

For more details on succession planning visit our website library for the detailed articles Can Your Business Succeed Tomorrow? and Succession Planning – Your Operational Necessity.

Debbie Hatke, MA, SPHR - Talent Strategy Manager, strategic HR, inc. www.strategichrinc.com

Popularity: 9% [?]

As my contribution to this month’s theme, Leadership & Mentoring,  I would like to begin the discussion about Online Thought Leadership.  If you have been blogging, emailing or publishing whitepapers you may be participating in the strategy of Thought Leadership and you didn’t even know it.

What is a “Thought Leader”?

A Thought Leader is a “person who is recognized for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights”.  (See Wikipedia for the full definition. )

When I think of examples of thought leaders,  Seth Godin (I often use the phrase “Meatball Sundae” in conversations) or Guy Kawasaki come to mind.  I would also list John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame.  All of these examples come to mind because of their ability to teach what they know and their willingness to share their knowledge.

I think the key characteristic to becoming a Thought Leader is sharing.  I know there have been more than a few times this past quarter where I wondered if I had given away too much information during a sales consultation.  But if I don’t position myself as open to questions,  what happens when the question becomes “can your company do this”? I don’t want to shut down the conversation.

How do you practice “Thought Leadership”?

First of all,  to be successful at this, you need to take off your sales hat.  Your purpose is to teach what you know and help your target customers solve a problem.  To become an  Online Thought Leader,  you will need to master the online distribution channels.  Typical examples might be:

• E-mail newsletters
• Podcasts
• White papers
• Webinars
• Website Content – Downloads,  Interactive Features, Case Studies
• Wikis
• Video content, vodcasts, and vlogs

I would also add a Facebook page to this list if your Facebook page is an industry topic fan page and not just a page about you or your company.  Depending on how you are using them,  you could throw Linked In and Twitter into the mix too. And yes, you could publish a book, if you must (see last week’s post).

What are the benefits of Thought Leadership?

I think it boils down to, if you put yourself out as a resource, then when someone has a question or a problem to solve, they will go to the resource that first comes to mind.  You and your company want to be that resource.

From an online perspective,  all of this content you are creating is food for search engines.   You are creating more content which gives you more opportunities to rank for more keywords and show up in more search results.  The end result being more traffic to your website which should result in more business for your company.

Based on some of the discussions I have read online (I will re-tweet some of these articles to @briefcaseproj),  it is estimated that a return on this investment may take any where from a few months to at least one year.  Online Thought Leadership is a good online strategy,  but it is a long-term strategy.

We would like hear who you feel are great examples of thought leaders.   Respond to this post and give the link to their website or blog.

Carmen Krupar - Website Performance Architect - www.cyberviselimited.com

Popularity: 12% [?]

You count yourself among the fortunate – as a business owner, you have been flexible, maintained your staff without layoffs, but expansion has been on the back burner.  In some cases, your planning and flexibility, along with careful attention to your market may even mean that you business has grown a bit while riding the economic rollercoaster of the last two years.

Future Rate Increases

Recent state announcements have indicated that because of the large amount of unemployment claims that basic tax rates for state unemployment programs will be rising for everyone.

So why is your unemployment tax rate rising?

The Basics

Each state operates its own unemployment compensation program that is funded largely by taxes on employers, not money withheld from employees.

• The tax applies once your business pays an employee over a 20 week period or at least $1500 in a calendar quarter.

• Unemployment tax is paid in two pieces – there is a net Federal FUTA tax rate of .8% after offsetting state payments, and your local State rate.

• Each state has a maximum annual wage amount to which the tax applies – generally about $9000.

• Rates are individually assigned to each business each year, and every state uses an experience rating system which takes into account several factors, including the layoff rate for your business, and a so-called “experience rate” based on the overall unemployment benefits paid out during the year for your state.

• This “experience rate” is paid by all new businesses, until they can develop their own history of wages paid versus layoffs (usually 1-3 years), and is also a factor in setting annual rates for experienced businesses.

• The tax receipts are set aside in separate accounts by employer into an unemployment trust fund from which benefits are paid to laid off workers.  When funds run low in times of high unemployment, the states can borrow funds from the Federal Government to supplement the employer paid funds.

Saving Your Business Money

Keeping the number of unemployment insurance claims filed by former employees to a minimum can produce payroll tax savings and have a positive effect on your experience rating.  Monitor all claims – respond to correspondence from State Unemployment agencies and be prepared with good documentation to contest any claims you feel are improper. Unemployment benefits are intended for those who find themselves without work because of lack of work. Generally unemployment compensation should not be paid in cases where there was cause for dismissal.

A company’s experience rating can also be a valuable asset in the event you are purchasing a business.  Don’t overlook the potential savings of the possibility of transferring the state experience rate along with the positive balance in their trust fund account.

Linda Tracy Gill, CPA - Tax and Business Growth Strategist - www.transactbiz.com

Popularity: 14% [?]

In the series about value proposition development, let’s review the exercise.

A value proposition statement is intended to communicate what you offer, to whom, why, how you are different, and what the consumer values in your offering, more than the competition.

For                   (target customer)

Who                (statement of the need or opportunity)

Our Product    (product/service category)

That                 (statement of benefit)

Unlike              (primary competitive alternative)

Our product     (statement of primary differentiation)

In my last post, I talked about the customer. Let’s take a look at the next portion of the development of the value proposition statement, “statement of the need or opportunity.”

Have you deeply considered what you customer base “needs?” Have you done a proper market analysis regarding “opportunity?” That is to say, what may be missing in today’s market place as it relates to the products and/or services you offer? Can your company innovate and offer something entirely different, or unexpected? I am reminded of Starbucks using the Salesforce.com marketing platform to ask customers to bring ideas to them. One customer suggested that it might be a good idea to place a stir stick in the opening of the lid to keep the coffee warm, while using it as a stir stick. Starbucks incorporated the idea and created a small innovation based on what customers told them. How about other “innovations” we see in every day products? What about Cold Water Tide? Consumers told Tide, and P&G knows from studies they have done, that one of the most expensive propositions and energy uses in doing laundry, is the heating of water for hot or warm washes. They responded by offering a laundry detergent that works effectively in cold water.

May I suggest that by asking customers what they want, what they may be willing to pay for what they want, and doing some competitive intelligence and analysis, you can get a better grasp on what you can offer? Make sure that you know that what you offer will be truly differentiated and highly leveragable; and by doing this, you can justify your price and your brand’s value.

What is your company doing to innovate and differentiate?

Popularity: 15% [?]

Did anyone mark the date when all businesses suddenly became publishers?  Website content was always critical but since the rise of social media,  everyone now needs to be a great writer in addition to be being a great (insert your profession/business here).

This morning I saw a discussion posted on LinkedIn that made me stop and change my blog post for today.  The Discussion was posted on the LinkedIn Group, “On Startups – The Community For Entrepreneurs“.  The question posed was:

“Book or brochure? Which one will influence a client to say “yes” and become your next customer? A client is interviewing two consultants for a major contract. One consultant has a great looking brochure but the second consultant has a book about the company that contains lots of success stories. Which consultant will get the contract?”

I have to admit,  at that moment, I was just overwhelmed.  I had just spent the morning updating my website,  reading LinkedIn posts,  loading our Twitter Feed and now blogging.  Now I need a book published?  I just wanted to say, enough is enough.

Speaking for myself, this past year as I have met with potential new clients,  I haven’t noticed a lot of reading going on.  I am doing a lot more listening and teaching. There is a lot more discussion about price and the discussion on price happens earlier in the conversation than in the past.  Usually, I print out diagnostic reports on clients’ website before I meet with them, and lately I have been getting those back,  telling me “keep them in my file in case I need them later”.

So I ask,  if your clients don’t have time to read the reports on THEIR OWN WEBSITE then what is the likely hood they are going to read an entire book on your past glories? After all the newsletters, digests, feeds and tweets, do we really need to flood potential customers with our book projects?

What do you think?  Post your comments.

Carmen Krupar - Website Performance Architect - www.cyberviselimited.com

Popularity: 15% [?]