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Networking

[PRESS RELEASE] C-Suite Network™ Expands to Dallas and Announces Game-Changing Partnership with Flex Workspace Solutions

 

C-Suite Network™ Expands to Dallas and Announces Game-Changing Partnership with Flex Workspace Solutions

 

Partnership redefines the future of executive workspaces with access to marketing tools and a trusted network to propel business leadership success into the future

 

New York, NY – January 9, 2024 — The C-Suite Network™, the world’s most trusted network of C-Suite leaders, is announcing a strategic partnership with Flex Workspace Solutions that provides the Dallas-Fort Worth business community with networking opportunities and a collaborative environment. This ultimate live-work-play environment and cutting-edge workspace provider is committed to fostering innovation and collaboration, marking a significant step towards enhancing the professional environment for executives and entrepreneurs.

By combining vast resources and exclusive networking opportunities, this partnership aims to create a dynamic ecosystem that facilitates executive connectivity, collaboration, and growth. With community being at the epicenter of the C-Suite Network™, this creates a unique opportunity to collaborate with an entity that prides itself in being a critical part of the workplace of the future. This partnership is the perfect complement for the vision of the C-Suite Network™ — counsel, content, commerce, and of course, community.

The collaboration ushers in a revolutionary phase in this massive industry shift. As the workplace continues to transform itself and evolve to meet the demands of an ever-changing workforce, this partnership plays a critical role of high-level business executives and delivers the value that our partners, investors, and members have come to expect from the C-Suite Network™.

“No question that the nature of corporate and business space is changing and being driven by a number of factors. From startups to publicly-traded companies, everyone is moving to alternative workspaces and wanting more opportunities for collaboration, useful tools, and multiple options for their businesses and employees,” said Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and Founder, C-Suite Network™. “Having world-class options with Flex Workspace Solutions, combined with a thriving business community, is the perfect scenario that elevates this high-end experience, worthy of our C-Suite community.”

Business is constantly evolving and it’s critical that organizations keep up that pace if they are to truly be successful.

“This partnership plays a critical role in the success of high-level business executives in delivering incredible value to our partners, investors, and members alike. The platform and reach of the C-Suite Network™, which now includes their C-Suite Marketing Cloud software, it’s a game-changer for any business. That level of expertise is unmatched and we couldn’t be more excited for this opportunity to continue scaling and exceeding the demands and needs of senior business leaders and executives,” said Mark Burge, president of Flex Workspace Solutions.

Having the right tools to be successful in the overly demanding business landscape is a critical component for any organization. This partnership will create opportunities for meaningful connections, shared insights and valuable relationships in a collaborative environment.

“This announcement in Dallas is the first of many. As a values-based community, partnering with Flex Workspace Solutions is the perfect opportunity to scale thriving business communities in the workspaces of the future, paving the way to see real outcomes and success that truly matters,” said Tricia Benn, CEO of the C-Suite Network™. “We’re all about creating environments where business leaders forge new relationships and synergies based on the power of great counsel, content, commerce and community. It’s always about delivering accelerated success and this partnership will facilitate those opportunities to create meaningful impact.”

Flex Workspace Solutions will play an integral role in multiple in-person events that the C-Suite Network™ will host during the upcoming year, such as the monthly executive mixers, executive fireside chats, and will serve as a stage for speakers who want to spread their message to an executive audience.

For more information, visit: https://www.flexworkspacesolutions.pro/

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About C-Suite Network™

C-Suite Network™ is the world’s most trusted network of C-Suite leaders, with a focus on providing growth, development, and networking opportunities for business executives with titles of vice president and above. The C-Suite Network’s mission is to provide a peer community, networking events, relevant content, and services to support c-level executives and other entrepreneurs achieve professional success.

C-Suite Network™ offers invitation-only events as well as custom-tailored content through all its entities: C-Suite TV™, C-Suite Radio™, C-Suite Book Club™, and C-Suite Network Advisors™. Learn more at www.c-suitenetwork.com, or connect on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

 

About Flex Workspaces Solution

Flex Workspace Solutions (FWS) is the go-to partner for workspace operators, and landlords looking to achieve greater success with their existing or new flex office and coworking space.

FWS provides a wide range of services from fully managed options to sales boost services to consulting, to help promote and assist flex and coworking spaces. We assess every area of the business, determining which are strong and which need growth and support. From providing suitable office space, consultation for teams, strategic marketing plans, and more, our goal is to produce measurable results. We provide a vision and blueprint featuring the industry’s current innovations and customized solutions. With FWS, you’ll be able to leverage your team’s potential, optimize your revenue, productivity, and overall performance.

Learn more at www.flexworkspacesolutions.pro or email info@flexworkspacesolutions.pro to speak directly with a team member!

 

Categories
Growth Personal Development

Ushering in the Future 500 – White Paper

Greetings, C-Suite members.

Exciting news! Navalent, producer of inventive and gainful business, has collaborated with us and published a white paper for c-level leaders on helpful, groundbreaking research on leadership. The truly innovative logic behind the brand is revealed in this publication, entitled: Ushering in the Future 500: How Mid-cap Executives are helping their Organizations Build for Sustainable Growth and Win.

An exciting opportunity for growth is plentiful within mid-cap companies, but oftentimes leaders find themselves constricted by their work environments. The potential for balance within pattern shifts is revealed within Navelent’s publication. Organizational and strategic patterns are investigated and specifically assessed.

The downloadable white paper is available to our C-Level leaders. Please find the offer through this unique link: Download Here

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Make Candor a Priority

by Judith Glaser

When Bayer, a $7 billion multinational pharmaceutical company, acquired a smaller $300 million diagnostic company, Rolf Classon the CEO, chose to call it a “merger.”

Power-with Others
He wanted to immediately establish a “power-with others” relationship with the new organization. I was part of a consulting team who facilitated a multi-day vision, values, and leadership session to help the leadership team create the new direction for the culture and the business.

“We are becoming one company,” Rolf told the top hundred people from both companies at their kickoff meeting. He went on to convey that he wanted to set new ground rules for working collaboratively in a new environment in which “together we can create something that never existed before.”

The executives discussed changes that needed to be made in the organization to maximize the new partnership. Then they broke into smaller teams to craft the new vision and values, with the intent of reporting their insights to the larger executive team.

When the executives reconvened, a spirit of trust and collaboration had clearly emerged. They had worked together to create a vision of shared success and in doing so released a new sense of hope for the future.   

Rolf once again stood before the group and asked, “How many of you have been through a visioning session before?” Everyone raised his or her hand.

“How many of you have left those sessions and returned to the workplace, only to find that nothing had changed?” Mostly everyone raised his or hand. He then declared, “For us to be successful as an organization, we need to realize that we can’t create the organization we want without making fundamental changes in ourselves.”

Candor Opens a New Door to the Future
As the event unfolded, something magical occurred. Rolf, by his example, taught the executives the true meaning of leadership. “Change begins inside each person. So I want to let you know that over the past few days I have been looking at what I’ve been doing to unknowingly prevent change from taking place.

“I’ve discovered at least sixteen things I want to change about myself! Here are my top three: my arrogance, my control, and my lack of trust.

“At lunch I want you each to think about what change means to you, and what you can do personally to inspire your own growth. After lunch I want to hear from my top executives — from the podium — expressing their personal insights.”

The CEO allowed himself to be as transparent and vulnerable as he had ever been in his life when he acknowledged the personal work he needed to do to make this merger a success. As he left behind his flaws so did the other executives, which made room for cooperation and partnership to grow.

Rolf continued his talk about the future. He engaged others in conversations about the “big challenges” and the “big picture.” The key was creating a shared context for change. By setting the stage in this way, he enabled others to find a common ground on which to build the future.  The Bayer merger became the most successful in the company’s history. 

Candor Unlocks Culture Change and Transformation in Organizations

Through our research and client projects over the past decade, we have identified that candor is the behavior that best predicts high performing teams and the single most important success factor in transformation and change. Organizations that exhibit high levels of candor produce the highest and most successful performing teams.

Here are 5 ways to elevate every day – and experience a release in the capacity to create and sustain change, growth and transformation: 

By setting the context for candor throughout all of your leadership interactions, you level the playing field. You set the tone for people to be candid with each other – and candor leader to trust. I trust you have my back – I trust your intentions – I trust you care. Power and hierarchy become less important than the results colleagues can create together through trust, honesty and teamwork. 

Neuro-tip: Candor, truth and trust
While the words – candor, trust and trust – are different, the meaning of these words activate the same networks in our brain. When we display the Prefrontal Cortex, our Executive Brain. This network opens the power of the Executive functions, such as strategic thinking, empathy, foresight, intuition, good judgment and handling uncertainty with less fear. So candor plays a role in elevating our capacity to work through difficult challenges with others – a core activity for change and transformation in organizations.

Candor is a door to tapping wisdom and for discovering new ways to handle the challenges we face when stakes are high and uncertainty abounds. As Rolf Classon discovered – by setting the stage for candor with his top 200 executives – he created a comfort zone for others in his team to lead with candor – elevating trust and the organizational potential for higher levels of personal, team and organizational success during the biggest transformation Bayer ever embarked upon.

CANDOR AND TRUST Are the Fabric of a Healthy Culture

Here are 5 things you can do, as a Leader of Change, to elevate candor and TRUST as the foundation for healthy conversations in your organization.

Success Factor #1: Elevate Candor and elevate Transparency and Trust 

Our brain is highly sensitive to reading signals of friend or foe as we interact. In .07 seconds we can tell if someone is telling us the truth and when they do we label them friend and our whole mindset reconfigures to allow us to engage more deeply. Being candid sends signal we will be open transparent in our conversations, and therefore we can trust each other to had our back. These decisions are built into our hardwiring and take place in Nano-seconds and elevate the quality of our conversations.

Success Factor #2: Elevate Candor and Deepen Relationships 

When we learn how to be candid with others, we engage at a deeper level of connectivity. Our brain radiates energy, and the energy of connection is more powerful than any other, yet we can’t access this unless we feel safe. Being candid and focusing our candor on enhancing our relationship – such as telling the truth about who we are, or helping build relationships before focusing on task – shows we value others and want to build on each others strengthens. These decisions take place in Nano-seconds and elevate the quality of our conversations and our relationships.

Success Factor #3: Elevate Candor and Deepen Understanding 

When we learn how to be candid, we are able to step into each other’s world, and understand each other’s perspectives rather than feeling we need to defend our own. The need to be right is and addiction which gets stronger when we are uncertain of where we stand. When we learn to deepen our connectivity by focusing on understanding others intentions, dreams, and aspirations – we communicate we have their best interest at heart. Our Prefrontal Cortex and Heart connection actually strengthen physiologically – and the quality of our conversations escalates – magnifying our ability to achieve greater results with others.

Success Factor #4: Elevate Candor and Build Shared Success 

When we learn how to be candid, we are able to spend more time exploring what success looks like with others – not just my success – our shared success. Rather than focusing on ‘my needs’ – I am able to build a new world view that combines yours and mine in ways we would never have thought about it before. We know that our Executive Brain – our Prefrontal Cortex – has the capacity to literally build holograms of the future – when we are open enough to access this human capacity – we join our best thinking into one new world view with Shared Success as the outcome. 

Success Factor #5: Elevate Candor and Elevate Courage to tell the truth 

When we learn how to be candid, we elevate our courage to step up, and speak out. Human beings need to share what is on their mind. When we mask the truth, or avoid the truth, or when we avoid difficult conversations our body chemistry shifts. The word disease is ‘dis-ease’ and it’s a chemical discomfort that blocks the vital instincts for growth. Finding ways to be candid and caring at the same creates the healthy space for truth telling while strengthening relationships with others.

Candor is One Act that Changes Everything

Learning to have healthy conversations is the most fundamental and vital skills of a transformational leader. As Rolf Classon learned when he stepped up and stepped out of his own fear, and stepped forward to connect with his team through candor. Make candor a priority and open the door to business success.  On some levels, we human beings are very simple. We turn to those who make us feel good and we turn away from those who make us feel bad. Finding comfort from people who care about us is a healthy strategy. Learning to down-regulate fear at work and up-regulate the factors that stimulate growth is a winning strategy for success is a game changer.

Judith E. Glaser is the CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc. and the Chairman of The Creating WE Institute. She is the author of the best selling book, “Conversational Intelligence” (Bibliomotion, 2013), an Organizational Anthropologist and a consultant to Fortune 500 companies.Visit her at creatingwe.com; conversationalintelligence.com or contact her at jeglaser@creatingwe.com. Follow Judith on Twitter @CreatingWE or connect with her on Facebook.

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Creating Personal Power Through Increased Adaptability

Creating Personal Power Through Increased Adaptability by Dr. Tony Alessandra
A wise person once commented, “A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” That is, as people begin to learn about a new topic, they tend to jump to oversimplified and incomplete conclusions. When that happens, they are often less successful than is possible. But with continuing effort, thought, and increased study, they eventually graduate to a higher level of excellence. In terms of adaptability, this means it is essential for us to understand the following principles:
 
1.           Adaptability is not a goal in and of itself, but a means to the end of increased personal effectiveness and success.
2.           A key to effectiveness is to realize what level and type of adaptability component(s) are the critical factors in achieving a targeted goal.
3.      Being adaptable also means assessing the other available resources that can allow you to get your desired outcomes by acting smarter.
 
Adaptability, then, is important because it directly relates to your degree of achieved success in relationships with other people, to coping with changing conditions around you, to managing different types of situations.
 
Extreme behavior can raise others’ tensions
At times people may perceive extreme adaptability as acting wishy-washy, sashaying back and forth across the fence line, or acting two-faced. Additionally, a person who maintains high adaptability in all situations and relationships may not be able to avoid personal stress. This is usually temporary and may in fact be worth it if you gain rapport with the other person.
The other extreme of the continuum is little or no behavioral adaptability. This causes people to view someone as rigid and uncompromising – on behaving at his own pace and priority.
Adaptability is important to successful relationships of all kinds. People often adopt at least a partially different role in their professional lives than they do in their social and personal lives. This is to successfully manage the professional requirements of their jobs. Interestingly, many people tend to be more adaptable at work with people they know less and less adaptable at home with people they know better. Why? People generally want to create a good impression at work, but at home may relax and act themselves to the point of unintentionally stepping on other family members’ toes. Not an attractive family portrait, but often an accurate one.
 
Adaptability works
Effectively adaptable people meet the key expectations of others in specific situations—whether it’s in personal or business relationships. Through attention and practice, you can achieve a balance of strategically managing your adaptability by recognizing when a modest compromise is appropriate. You’ll also understand when it’s necessary to adapt to the other person’s behavioral style.
Practice managing relationships in a way that allows everyone to win. Be tactful, reasonable, understanding, non-judgmental, and comfortable to talk to. This results in a moderate position between the two extremes. You’re able to better meet the needs of the other person as well as your own. Adapt your pace and priority. Work at relationships so everybody wins at work, with friends, on dates, and with family.
When you try to accommodate the other person’s expectations and tendencies, you automatically decrease tension and increase trust. Adaptability enables you to interact more productively with difficult people, helps you in strained situations, and assists you in establishing rapport and credibility. It can make the difference between a productive or an ineffective interpersonal relationship. And your adaptability level also influences how others judge their relationships with you. Raise your adaptability level—trust and credibility soar; lower your adaptability level—trust and credibility plummet.
Another way of looking at this whole matter is from the perspective of maturity. Mature persons know who they are. They understand their basic DISC behavioral type and freely express their core patterns. However, when problems or opportunities arise, they readily and deliberately make whatever adjustments are necessary in their core patterns to meet the needs of the situation or relationship. Immature persons, on the other hand, lose effectiveness in dealing with the real world when they lock into their own style. By disregarding the needs of others, they end up causing conflict and tension that lead to less satisfaction and fulfillment in their life environments.
Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

My People-Centric Journey to CFO

By Nintex CFO, Eric Johnson

Growing up, I was always interested in business.  My dad spent his career in the corporate world, eventually becoming the CIO for a Fortune 500 transportation company.  I learned a lot from my father and became interested in business very early.  From my dad I vividly learned a few key lessons:

  • Deliver on your commitments
  • Have passion for your trade
  • Treat people right

I was fortunate to have a great role model who laid a strong foundation for me.  My dad advised that I study finance and accounting as he told me it is the language of business—that in the board room having this knowledge would be invaluable.  He was right. Since my first job, every single role that followed has come from a referral of someone I had worked with before.  I am eternally grateful for the help I received from these individuals and know that it was based on the fact, that in the prior roles, I had delivered on commitments and was viewed as a strong teammate.   

In my early roles, as a financial analyst and then as a finance manager, I focused like a laser on delivering on my commitments and making great relationships at work.  My bosses and other leaders quickly appreciated my execution and because of this I often was given the opportunity to take on extra roles.  At Merant as a Finance Manager, in a turn-around situation, I was part of a team that tripled the value of the company in about two years.  This experience led me to receive a large promotion to the Director of Finance and Accounting for the acquiring company, Serena Software, at age 27.  I quickly went from leading a two person team to a 30 person team.  The pressure was high with several critical projects.  I was fortunate to be able to lead a high performing team and was recognized with the Employee of the Year award in my first year. 

About three years later Serena needed an executive to lead WW Sales Operations.  Given my knowledge of the sales organization and working relationships with key sales leaders I was promoted to VP of WW Sales Ops.  In this role, I learned a ton about selling having the opportunity to spend time with prospects, customers, and our sales teams.  After four years in this role I was ready for a new challenge and joined Jive from a co-worker referral as the VP of Finance and Sales Ops.  We had an outstanding team, took the company public eight months later, and in the two and a half years I was there grew revenue from under $50 million to $150 million.

Throughout my career journey, I have learned to appreciate and fully understand the critical role of ensuring your team members know you care deeply about their personal success and the organization’s success.  Team members give their best when they have strong relationships with their boss, co-workers, and they are bought into the mission of the organization.  After Jive, I joined Nintex as CFO (of course, this too was based on a referral).  Nintex has an outstanding culture, combining innovation, collaboration and respect for the individual.  I am fortunate to be a CFO well before 40 at a successful high-growth software company. 

I credit my success to having had many great bosses and co-workers, combined with my commitment to execution and my concern for building great relationships.

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

Think You’re Ready for PR? Tips from Those Who Know

By Jennifer Fleming, President, TallGrass Public Relations

Whether you’re a newly formed start-up or a well-established brand or thought leader, you’ve probably thought about or dabbled in public relations.

No matter how great your marketing strategies are, there is nothing more credible than an effective PR campaign. So if you’re at the stage where you really want to build your business brand, then it’s time to start seriously considering hiring professional assistance.  

The TallGrass team consults with hundreds of clients each year in various phases of their marketing and PR strategy and programs. Some are at square one; others have worked with firms in their past or current companies.

But in order to make PR work, it boils down to three things: definitive goals, managed expectations and the right experts.

Know your goals and your bandwidth

Every new client at TallGrass participates in a strategic planning session – we won’t work with a client unless we do. Your PR firm should spend the time to understand your business. From your product roll-out schedule to growth opportunities, revenue models to target markets, asking the questions and understanding your business is critical to create messaging and stories that resonate. It drives the strategy to achieve your goals.

If you’re unclear about your goals, your mission and your 118/elevator pitch, get clear – fast. Without these guideposts, your PR team can’t begin to understand the parameters of what you’re trying to accomplish (and neither can your company!). A great firm should be able to ask the right questions, form a strategy and guide you in the right direction.

Not only do you need to be clear on your goals, but also your company needs to make PR an organizational commitment. Today, PR professionals outnumber journalists three to one. Requests for contributed content – content originated from your company or a “hired gun” content writer – are more and more common. PR will take time – yours and your firm’s. Are you prepared to drop everything for an interview or draft a thousand-word article?

“Make sure you know what to do with the results,” says Deane Barker, partner at Blend Interactive. “If you get a ton of speaking opportunities, can you fulfill them? How will you vet them? If sales leads come pouring in, do you have a process to manage them? Can you do anything with them? What results from PR is a raw asset that needs to be refined to have business value. Can you do this?”

If you want to be in the NYT, sleep with Paris Hilton

I’m kidding, sort of. Managing the expectations of our clients with the appropriate media outlets and journalists is an important part of what we do. Who wouldn’t love a placement in a major publication? But being everywhere is just as important. Having an arsenal of great coverage provides credibility and establishes you as a thought leader.

“It’s always nice to get a major media hit or article placement in a major national publication like USA Today. However, the real value is all of the smaller placements in industry magazines (print and digital) that focus on a target-specific audience,” says Shep Hyken, customer service expert, author and speaker. “While getting a spot on the ‘Today Show’ was great for my ego, the interviews and article placements in the industry publications were great for my business.”

Equally challenging and important in managing expectations is how to measure your ROI. Having a baseline of coverage from which to measure is great and can be helpful to define “we want X number of placements.” But PR is just part of the overall marketing mix.

“Don’t look at the ROI, it’s hard to measure and nearly impossible to see direct revenue,” says Mitchell Levy, Thought Leader Architect of THiNKaha. “What you are looking for is increased awareness leading to more opportunities for you and your team to engage with your future advocates. Those opportunities, if handled properly, will lead to significantly increased revenue.”

You’re hiring an expert for a reason

Companies can dabble with DIY public relations. But “it’s difficult to be consistent with pitching your business while you’re trying to run your company, too,” says Susan Solovic, small business expert, entrepreneur and author.

Just as you know your business inside and out, a PR professional can find the gems of your value proposition, messaging, product, service and company to tell your story.

But you have to be working with the right people. The ability to have open dialogue and to try a variety of tactics, to be flexible and agile creates a winning strategy.

“What worked in the past may not work in the future, and you want to be working with folks that you like, trust and are willing to try a number of techniques to be able to deliver the results you’re looking for,” Levy says.

A client once said to me, “Great PR is the ability to take chicken shit and make chicken salad.” Well said! You’ve hired an expert for a reason – now let them take the lead and let them do what they do best.

Jennifer Fleming is President of TallGrass PR, a global B2B public relations firm. She’s been known to follow shiny objects. Follow her at @jkfleming.

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Are Your Recruiters Making These Three Major Mistakes?

By Anand Deshpande, WittyParrot

Are you guilty of committing these three recruiting no-nos?

Best practices for the hiring process have changed dramatically. Failure to acknowledge the evolving job market and adapt to the demands of 21st century job seekers can lead to lost opportunities…and revenue.

Here are three early recruiting mistakes, which may stand between your business and the best and the brightest job applicants.

1. Lack of a Recruitment Strategy

Social media offers an abundance of ways to connect with prospective candidates, but lack of a well-delineated recruiting plan can lead to wasted time and resources. Even when time is of the essence, it pays to stop and establish a “big picture” plan in order to determine strategic recruiting goals as well as targeted tactics for achieving them.

Implementing a recruitment plan is crucial to landing top talent – following are tips to create a recruitment strategy:

  • Understand the position, including everything from key criteria to core competencies to cultural fit. While general posts in non-specific outlets may yield some results, they will also produce a multitude of dead ends. The more specific the job description and recruiter’s understanding of the most desirable candidates, the more refined the results will be
  • Align recruitment goals with corporate goals and initiatives
  • Establish a recruitment process including high-level stages, handovers, descriptions and key deliverables for each process
  • Identify the best channels for recruitment such as employee referrals, available lists/sourcing partners, and most effective social media outlets for sourcing candidates based on actual data
  • Establish ‘Best Practice Resources’ and share with the team

2. Not Selling the Brand

Today’s job seekers, particularly the up and coming generation of millennials, aren’t just looking for any odd job; they’re looking for a shared vision. And in this rapidly moving digital age, job seekers will move on if your brand doesn’t hold their attention.

It’s critical for recruiters to catch — and maintain — a potential applicant’s interest by communicating an attractive, informative, and enticing message. Give candidates a reason to want to connect with your brand and strive to be part of it.

With mindful execution, social media becomes a recruitment and marketing tool for both active and passive candidate recruiting. Here are some tips to help sell your corporate brand to candidates:

  • Leverage existing proof points – share industry awards, videos of current employees, brand and culture messages on the site, and customer success stories describing how your organization has helped them. Have these ready to drop into an email, InMail post or present during a face-to-face meeting
  • Share personal stories that convey your corporate culture and insights about what it’s like to work for your company. These stories can be something that happened to you at work, sharing a story about a colleague who went above and beyond for you, etc. – ensuring your stories accurately reflects your culture and brand
  • Go beyond the requisition, which are often bland. Would you want to work for a company if all you saw was the requisition? Paint a picture of what it would be like working in that role – what the day looks like, what the projects are, and who you’re working with

3. Failure to Focus on the Relationship

Just because a job applicant isn’t the right fit for a particular job doesn’t mean there’s no long-term potential. The best recruiters know that relationship building is an essential part of the hiring process.

For example, failure to return phone calls or provide feedback to candidates during the application process is not only inconsiderate, but can have exponential effects, particularly if that candidate shares a negative experience via social media.

By creating and nurturing social connections, recruiters ensure that candidates are primed and ready should the right opportunity eventually arise. Talent management solutions offer invaluable help in tracking potential employees across an organization and throughout the comprehensive cycle.

So what can recruiters do to build long-term relationships with candidates who may not be a current fit?

  • Be honest. Let candidates know why they didn’t move on in the process, and why the role wasn’t a fit – and let them know promptly
  • Offer advice to the candidate. If you see mistakes or details that raise flags on their LinkedIn profile, let them know. Point them to additional sources for appropriate roles. Helping others comes back to you in spades, just like in most other areas of life
  • Keep in touch. Send an email periodically asking if they have a new role, are still looking, etc. and make note of the answers. If personal emails aren’t a possibility, send a useful article once a quarter as a way to reach out and continue to foster the relationship

It’s a brave new world when it comes to hiring practices, but unprecedented results are within reach for those who stick to winning strategies and avoid these potentially costly mistakes.

About the Guest Author:

Anand Deshpande is on the frontline of customer success at WittyParrot, working directly with clients to ensure smooth onboarding, ramp up and account management. He has an intimate knowledge of WittyParrot as a solution and uses that to help clients in strategy and implementation. Anand is a graduate of Emory University and has been with WittyParrot for over a year. His previous experience includes sustainability and brand consulting for a variety of companies including HRO and Oil and Gas companies. He has a history of working with diverse teams to create solutions to complex issues and enjoys bringing that background to the team.

Categories
Growth Personal Development

Big Data Conversations: Don’t Get Caught

 

By Judith Glaser

Why and How of Engaging Customers

Gallup’s State of the American Consumer report states, “Fully engaged customers are more loyal and profitable. Afully engaged customer represents a 23 percent premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth.”

How can you effectively engage with your customers who operate at warp speed? We live in a world of right now, and the demand for instant results is seeping into every corner of our lives. Instant gratification is no longer a desire—it is an expectation.

In what Qualtrics calls the “era of immediacy,” we now operate in real-time and expect everything instantly. To engage with their customers and satisfy their need for speed, businesses must re-engineer their approach. Today, it’s about giving the customer what they want, when they want it and how they want it—or they’ll go someplace else. 

Fast data is gathered quickly and shared and acted on quickly, before its shelf life expires. Fast data delivers the information needed to help address specific issues, drive results and propel innovation in the moment. Fast data helps enterprises gather real-time insights into what customer are thinking so they can address issues in the now and keep customers happy. Enterprises need to catch customers and employees when they’re thinking it. Forrester Research predicts: “In the age of the customer, the race will be won or lost based on your firm’s ability to know your customers and react faster and better.”

For example, the Viceroy Hotel Group used fast data to uncover valuable insights about potential customers that boosted the hotel’s bottom line. Using Qualtrics Site Intercept product, the VHG experienced a sudden surge in local web traffic. Managers scratched their heads. The locals weren’t planning to stay there, so what was up with all the traffic? In less than an hour, the LA-based hotel set up an online survey using Site Intercept that asked local visitors what they were looking for. It turned out they wanted a happy hour menu. A quick fix allowed the hotel to make the happy hour menu available to anyone from the LA area who visited the website. With fast data, the VHG delivered potential customers exactly what they wanted, which boosted the hotel’s bottom line.

Meet the Voice of the Customer

Enterprises struggle with having access to the right information at the right time and place in order to interact with customers, build new products, and improve service. This is why most leaders are investing resources to strengthen their customer engagement programs. This renewed commitment to customer engagement impacts how enterprises approach their Voice of Customer (VoC) initiatives. VoC is now a strategic initiative for better understanding customers and responding to their specific needs.

For example, JetBlue, another Qualtrics’ customer, noticed that their NPS score at a Philadelphia airport was very low for an early morning flight. By focusing on this insight, JetBlue could trace customer dissatisfaction to the fact that the shops and amenities in the terminal were not open when customers were looking for coffee and refreshments before their flight, making them grumpy. With this insight, JetBlue responded quickly by passing out water, juice and coffee at the gate in the morning to boost customer morale. This made a tremendous change in JetBlue’s satisfaction scores.

Customers now expect to give feedback, and to have that feedback acted on. This expectation is driving the demand for VoC. Organizations are looking to technology to address the new rules of customer engagement.

Today, anybody can gather data on nearly anything. The challenge isn’t in finding the right solution to help you gather data—it is in finding the right solution to allow you to access, and act upon those insights quickly and effectively. Otherwise, customers will go someplace else. Adapt or vanish, the old adage goes.

We can now collect insights faster than ever before, enabling us to make timelier and better business decisions, improve business results and create happier, engaged customers. This means more revenue and profits. In the era of immediacy,” actionable data enables us to give our customer what they want, when and how they want it.

Judith Glaser COLOR copy

Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc., Chairman of The Creating WE Institute, an Organizational Anthropologist, consultant to Fortune 500 Companies, and author of four best selling business books, includingConversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion, 2013) Visit www.creatingwe.com orwww.conversationalingelligence.com; email jeglaser@creatingwe.com or call 212-307-4386.

 

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Growth Personal Development

Power Shift: Attracting Today’s Empowered Buyer – Get the Report now!

 

“The opposite of an impulse buy, a considered purchase is a complex buying decision with a high degree of financial and emotional risk and reward, requiring meaningful deliberation prior to purchase. Considered purchase marketing is a focused strategy that involves intimate understanding of the mindset of your customer, throughout the decision-making process.”

TODAY’S BUYER IS IN CONTROL.

Changing market dynamics, new channels, information and technology requires marketers to redefine how we reach and influence the brand choice of customers. Labeling buyers either as business-to-business or business-to-consumer is no longer a relevant starting point.

The now-outdated ways of marketing communications forced buyers through the traditional sales funnel. But today’s buyer is in control of the information they consume, and can therefore create their own journey. As marketers are ever more challenged to be effective and efficient with our investment, we need new thinking and approaches to intersect with our customer’s purchase journey.

A BETTER WAY — CONSIDERED PURCHASE MARKETING.

Instead of business-to-business and business-to-consumer, we must focus on the end-customer journey and understand where, as marketers, we can directly and indirectly influence their purchase decision through every available channel.

Now is your time to learn key business trends in the latest Nelson Schmidt Trend Briefing! Download by clicking HERE!

Using the NS MetricsTM methodology to discover, formulate, execute and measure our plans and programs they ensure strategy is brought to life and put into action in a way that delivers maximum impact. For more information visit NelsonSchmidt.com.
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Growth Personal Development

Does Your Company Have a Chief Localization Officer?

By Scott Yancey

A company’s success overseas is directly related to the number of languages the company ‘speaks,’ and how well its marketing team is able to localize and deliver content to target markets and regional sales teams. In order to reach 80% of the world’s economically active online audience, a company needs to deliver content in 14 different languages. That’s a lot of languages to reach a significant percentage of the buying audience. How will you maximize your product development, marketing and staffing dollars to effectively engage and sell overseas?

That’s where the Chief Localization Office comes in. To be clear, I’m not necessarily suggesting this as an actual C-Suite role; however, the need for a new kind of ‘lightning-rod’ leader or group that is able to influence the C-suite and advise them on the importance of an enterprise wide global roll out strategy is critical in today’s economy. Companies are spending more on translation and localization than ever before, and the numbers continue to grow – the global market for outsourced language services and supporting technology is expected to grow to $49.8 billion by 2019. Global organizations need a high-level authority responsible for global execution that includes localization as a strategic, revenue-generating process that affects:

  • Product launches and updates
  • Marketing campaigns, Websites and content
  • Social audience engagement
  • Sales enablement and channel support
  • Human resources and legal resources
  • Customer support and training

In order to up-level the importance and impact content localization has on audience reach and revenue, the Chief Localization Officer will ensure it is not only on the C-Suite’s radar, but a key revenue driving performance indicator (KPI) used to measure the success of the company’s go-to-market efforts.

The Chief Localization Officer’s responsibilities might include:

  • Responding to the Company Revenue plan by clearly understanding where each product, along with all the supporting company functions, can be effectively monetized.
  • Setting objectives and prioritizing cross company budgets to meet the required number of languages and dialects needed to address both existing and target markets.
  • Managing and leveraging the company’s multilingual assets, including translation memory, style guides, and corporate glossaries, so they are leveraged across ALL divisions, functional teams and regions for brand and message consistency.
  • Researching and identifying the best translation automation technology for the company’s needs and ensure it has the ability to integrate with the existing technology the company already uses (CMS, Web CMS, marketing automation, file-sharing service, etc.).
  • Overseeing the localization process to ensure bottlenecks are avoided, go-to-market timelines are met, and workflow is automated to maximize team productivity.
  • Utilizing analytics to monitor translation spend.
  • Analyzing ROI to ensure localization efforts are meeting objectives, whether they are sales, marketing or demand gen.

Managing multilingual communications on a global scale is increasingly challenging, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every company, but a well managed, efficient localization process is critical to the success of any global launch process, day-to-day marketing, and training or support effort. It now deserves to be recognized as a business process in need of optimization with an elevated level of oversight and strategic intent. Typically, second and third tier target markets receive localized product and content many months after the English ‘launch’, and every day you can’t launch in those markets because localization wasn’t finished, inevitably leads to lost revenue and market share.

Does your company have a Chief Localization Officer? You might consider whether your competition already does.

Scott Yancey

CEO and Founder at Cloudwords, Inc.
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As the co-founder and chief executive office of Cloudwords, Scott Yancey runs the premier cloud-based software company that has revolutionized how businesses manage their global communications and localization processes.
In today’s increasingly connected world, selling and supporting customers in their local languages often means the difference between success and failure. Yancey developed Cloudwords’s end-to-end SaaS platform to enable companies to deliver global content to market faster by slashing the cost, complexity and time associated with localization projects.
Scott Yancey was a key architect on the salesforce.com platform and applications, and his technical leadership and expertise helped grow salesforce.com from 2,000 customers to an industry titan with 77,000 customers and $1.5 billion in annual revenue. His experience on the R&D frontlines during both the earliest and most explosive growth phases of salesforce.com forged a unique set of technical skills, best practices and historical knowledge. His roles included architecting and delivering mission critical areas of the salesforce.com service and he provided technical leadership at both the team and organizational level. He has 9 patents pending from his tenure at salesforce.com.
Scott graduated cum laude from Santa Clara University in 1999 with a degree in Psychology with an emphasis in Neuroscience. Prior to joining salesforce.com in 2001 Scott performed functional MRI research for a Neuroscience lab at New York University.