Some firms still hesitate, but electronic commerce is the future of business
Electronic commerce is more than just ordering a book through amazon.com. “To me, electronic commerce is the automation of the buying and selling process through the Internet,” says Rick Saindon of Greenbrier & Russel, Inc., an information technology consulting firm.
As more businesses engage in electronic commerce, or e-commerce for short, others who will want to do business with those firms are also getting into the act.
“We’ve found in a number of cases, we start talking about the consumer to business (e-commerce), and they say, ‘Wait a minute. We have distributors, we have resellers, wholesalers,'” Saindon says. “And they get a little nervous when we begin to offer products directly from the manufacturer to the end-customers through them.”
In effect, many manufacturers are reluctant to cut off their wholesalers and distributors, key components of their sales force.
Reasons for hesitancy
Saindon listed several additional reasons why companies have hesitated to begin using e-commerce.
Formative years. Saindon readily admits that some of the companies that were pioneers of e-commerce as little as two years ago may have gotten burned by the high cost and relatively cumbersome operating platforms used. Few canned solutions were available, so most companies were forced to develop their own e-commerce systems. Because each system was highly proprietary, the individuals that developed them could command higher salaries elsewhere for having developed the system, leaving the original companies without skilled individuals to maintain their systems.
Not ready for mission critical. Issues such as reliability, availability and security had to be addressed before companies became confident that the system would work.
Evolution. Earlier proprietary e-commerce platforms were so complicated the cost of evolving the application to reflect changes in the business were not only very costly, but time consuming, Saindon says.
Support costs. If the company is selling to global markets, the site should be maintained 24 hours a day, seven days a week by professional technicians. “However, businesses that just sell in the United States can say, ‘We’re going to guarantee our e-commerce site is up from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.,’ so that reduces some of that support burden,” Marc Blazich, Milwaukee branch manager for Greenbrier & Russel, says.
Internet connection costs. Saindon estimates that an e-commerce site going full tilt would need wider bandwidth, costing a business between $2,000-$2,700 per month.
The wrong people are making the decisions. “The people who are interested aren’t the managers of Information Services or Technology Group, it’s the CEOs and the (big picture) people,” Blazich says. “They’re the people that are more concerned about what their competitors are doing, more than the head of IT.”
“To the guy in IT,” Saindon adds, “it’s a whole new technology and another project and more burden and more support.”
Y2K. Companies are racing to get their systems Year 2000 compliant, which leaves little time to invest in the technology required for a good e-commerce site. But Saindon thinks that companies should position themselves with e-commerce technology as a cheap insurance policy against the potentially crippling effects of the Year 2000 bug. “In other words,” Saindon says, “the traditional business-to-business interfaces may break down in which case this new mechanism could be sitting on the shelf waiting for establishing a quick link where those traditional, existing links have broken (down).”
Reasons to jump in
Of course, there are reasons why companies are eager to try e-commerce as well.
Target marketing and advertising. The site can change its look depending on who is accessing it (through log-on information). If distributor A buys 10 items consistently, the site can display those items up front, versus distributor B who purchases items on a more random basis and may need a browsing feature on his Web site view. That also enables the business to target its advertising efforts depending on who is accessing the site.
Beating your competition to the Web. As time goes on, more and more companies will sense their competition moving to the Web, forcing them to set up a site as well.
Streamlining the business and customer service. “They (customers) want to be empowered,” Saindon says. “They want the opportunity to take control of the situation themselves. They don’t want to wait in a queue, waiting for the next available representative to talk to. They can go out and find it (information) when they want it.” It also reduces overhead costs in providing customer service because less staff is needed due to the self-service element of e-commerce.
Managing growth and reducing overhead. “As you grow a company traditionally, you don’t want linear growth in the overhead mechanisms that it takes to support that growth,” Saindon says. “You want non-linear so you can grow the company with something less in terms of the overhead costs. Electronic commerce is a way to apply technology as a way to do that.”
Reducing operational costs with fewer steps. Saindon uses Microsoft’s MS Market, an e-commerce procurement tool, as an example of the cost-savings of e-commerce. The industry standard for processing purchase orders (POs) is $104 per PO. The cost for processing POs with MS Market is $5 per PO. After Microsoft implemented MS Market, it re-allocated 27 people from its procurement department to other areas within the company. Microsoft processes 291,000 transactions per year, for a net savings of $28,809,000 using MS Market. “And they’re running this whole thing on one server and one sequel server,” Saindon says. “So it’s not a huge platform to handle this volume of transactions, but they’re saving a ton of money.”
Increased revenues. Electronic commerce reaches out to the global market and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Trickle down mandates from large customers. Companies like General Motors or Sam’s Club require vendors to use e-commerce.
Built-in controls. E-commerce sites can be customized down to the individuals ordering from them. So if individual A is only authorized to buy $1,000 at a time or buy certain items, that’s all the site will allow him to do.
At minimum, a company needs a couple of PCs, an Internet connection and about $4,200 for Microsoft’s Site Server, Commerce Edition 3.0. It would also need Windows NT and some other basic operating software to get up and running. (Other programs available require more hardware and are more expensive according to Saindon and Blazich.)
For companies that are still hesitant in investing in an e-commerce experiment, there are hosting services available where companies can “test drive” an e-commerce site for as little as $500 a month. An Internet connection is the only thing required of the company testing the service.
Saindon recommends the Microsoft product for several reasons including cost, ease of use, support software companies and the Microsoft’s track record in developing new technologies. “I’m banking on (Bill) Gates because over time he’s proved again and again that he has the staying power and the resources – whether or not he’s the best product doesn’t matter to me – he has the vision and the ability to win the game,” Saindon says. “I’m going to ride him as far as he’ll take me.”

New corps guiding Waukesha into new millennium
A lifelong Waukesha resident. A La Crosse native and a Milwaukee native. A transplanted Californian.
They’re the new kids on the block, relatively speaking, in Waukesha government: the mayor, the superintendent of schools, the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce and the chief of police, respectively – and they’ve got big plans for the city.
But more than that, these new heads of their various departments within the city of Waukesha are working together to realize their goals for the city, which center around community-building and cultivating a sense of city pride.
Although Mayor Carol Lombardi took office just this past April, she’s been involved in some aspect of Waukesha government since 1954, when as a senior in high school at what was then Waukesha High School, she took a job as a secretary for then-Mayor C.C. Smith. Her post-high school hope was to become an elementary school teacher, but instead she stayed on as the mayor’s secretary for six years. Later on, she was able to get into the education field by working first as a reading aide at Whittier School and then as a counselor aide at Waukesha South High School. Lombardi held additional employment within the Waukesha School District as an administrative secretary to the superintendent of schools.
Five years ago, after retiring from the school system, Lombardi returned to City Hall, this time a member of the Waukesha Common Council. Today, she is Waukesha’s mayor.
“I love this city and I love the people who live here,” Lombardi says. “I want to be as involved as I can in making this city as great as it can be.”
Having lived her whole life in Waukesha, Lombardi knows quite well the history of Waukesha, going all the way back to the city’s founding in 1896, through the time when Waukesha was known as “Cow County, USA,” because its farms raised some of the world’s most prized cows, up to present times. She wants other Waukesha residents to be well-versed in the city’s history, too, and City Hall is the best place, in Lombardi’s opinion, to teach that history. She’s started a City Hall beautification project through which she hopes to turn Waukesha City Hall into a public museum of sorts – a welcoming place through which visitors can walk, taking in bits and pieces of Waukesha history, as well as the works of local artists and students.
In addition to the City Hall project, Lombardi and the Waukesha Common Council have created a city administrator position, with the goal of improving efficiency within the city government, Lombardi says. A city the size of Waukesha – 62,800 souls and growing – cannot be without a city administrator, Lombardi believes.
For Lombardi, team work is the only way she sees her goals being attained, and the most successful team, she says, is the one which operates according to a philosophy of mutual respect.
“We can do a lot in this city, but we have to do it as a team,” Lombardi says. “There’s a real sense of respect among the leaders in this city. I feel a very positive vibe here.”
Dave Schmidt understands the value of involving the community, parents and business in the education of a city’s children. Having spent nine years as the assistant superintendent of the Appleton school district, a district known for its decentralized structure and its commitment to the “Village Partnership” – a program in which schools connect with businesses and parents – Schmidt, a La Crosse native, came to Waukesha in July to begin his duties as the new superintendent of the Waukesha school system, with a plan that can be summarized in two words – decentralization and collaboration.
Schmidt and the school board are in the process of writing the parameters by which next year’s budget will be decentralized for participating schools. In Schmidt’s philosophy, individual schools can best educate their students if given more control to deal with the issues faced by that particular school.
From the collaboration end, in February the Waukesha Area Chamber of Commerce will facilitate tours and dialogue between Waukesha teachers and business people, and Schmidt says plans for mentoring and job shadowing programs are in the works. Additionally, Schmidt is working with the Waukesha Police Department to start a police-school liaison program.
“Public education and business need to learn more about each other,” says Schmidt. “The students are future employees for these businesses, and the businesses have the jobs that the students will need. Business people here are very open to working with the schools because they know that what and how the students learn will affect them.”
The community involvement ethics carries over to the Waukesha Police Department, where Chief Leslie Sharrock, the oldest of the new kids in terms of time in office – he’s been Waukesha’s police chief since March of 1997 – is working to install in Waukesha what he terms the “community policing concept.” It’s an idea Sharrock brings from Moorhead, Minn., where he was police chief before coming to Waukesha, and the basic premise centers around the idea that police must partner with the community in order to address issues and solve problems effectively.
To that end, in the summer of 1997 a police substation was opened in downtown Waukesha and a bike patrol was implemented to have police more visible and accessible in the downtown area and throughout the community, Sharrock says. In February of 1998, Waukesha received a $450,000 federal Community Policing Grant to be used over a three-year period. Starting in January, Sharrock will visit all the neighborhood block clubs in an attempt to raise their level of involvement in community policing.
“I surveyed our department and the community, and one of the main things I found was that both the police and the residents wanted more interaction between the community and police,” says Sharrock, whose career in law enforcement began 33 years ago in the San Francisco Bay area, where Sharrock was a police officer.
In March of 1998, the Waukesha Police Department started a 10-week Citizen Police Academy program, in which citizens come to the police department one night a week for three hours to learn about what police do.
“It’s good for people to get a realistic view of what police work involves,” says Sharrock. “It’s not like ‘NYPD Blue’ and we don’t solve homicides in 30 minutes.”
Like Schmidt and Lombardi, Sharrock believes in the need to collaborate with city leader in order to achieve his goals. He mentions the development of a police-school liaison program as one of his main goals for 1999, and Lombardi spent a day with Waukesha police officers learning what a day in their lives is like.
Ann Nischke has been active in the Waukesha Area Chamber of Commerce since 1990, when she came to Waukesha to be the CEO of the Waukesha YMCA. In 1994 she was elected president of the Chamber, and today she is the Chamber’s executive director.
“I’ve always known how dynamic this organization is,” says Nischke, who worked for 15 years with the Milwaukee and Waukesha YMCAs before becoming CEO of the Waukesha branch. “The genius is in the many councils and committees it has. It serves the smallest businesses up to large corporations such as G.E.”
Strategic planning focus groups have come together at the Chamber to determine what is needed in Waukesha to help businesses, says Nischke, and workforce development and employee retention are two issues she’s found to be very important to the community. As part of a plan to address these issues, Nischke is working with Waukesha’s Workforce Development Center and the Waukesha school board.
“Many other leaders in this city are very progressive and want to see change happen,” Nischke says. “They understand that good change will only happen by working together.”

Staff needs training in dishing out, taking criticism
Roadblock: Marlene was completely frustrated by her co-worker, Jenny. As sales consultants, they had the same job responsibilities, each with her own group of assigned client accounts. In order to give the best service to the clients, the two salespeople had agreed to handle each other’s calls when one of them was out of the office. Jenny, however, was less conscientious than Marlene in taking care of the customers’ concerns and often failed to let Marlene know of the situations that came up with her accounts.
Marlene had vented her frustrations to everyone in the office – but not to Jenny. After yet another incident, Marlene finally “lost it” and told Jenny in no uncertain terms that she was inconsiderate and impossible to work with. Jenny retaliated with a verbal attack on Marlene, adding to the already tense atmosphere in the department.
Problem: Like many people, Marlene has no problem telling third parties what her complaints are about another person – yet she is unwilling to give the critical feedback directly to the individual involved. Not surprisingly, her stored-up emotions erupted in a personal attack.
The reason for her unwillingness to confront Jenny is one most people will identify with: she is afraid of the response she will get. And she has good reason to be concerned because she has not developed the skills for giving criticism in a manner that minimizes or avoids a defensive response.
This same “syndrome” often appears when managers or team leaders should be giving critical feedback to those people whose performance they manage, and when employees should be giving appropriate and needed feedback upward to their managers.
Solution: ll members of the organization should be expected to confront problem situations directly in a professional manner – both when giving criticism and when receiving it. And as with all job requirements, training should be provided to help people learn this necessary inter-personal skill.
A model for giving critical feedback should include these guidelines:

In today’s low unemployment environment, relying on traditional recruitment methods such as newspaper classified advertising is no longer enough. You need to make employee recruitment part of your overall strategic plan, says Jude Werra, a Brookfield executive search consultant. Here’s a few suggestions to develop a pipeline:

“We just put on four new people, and we are looking for six or seven more,” says the president of the family-owned firm. “It’s not easy to find them – it’s like pulling teeth. We need an office manager, an administrative assistant, and we are looking for professional salespeople. I think we’ve lost a lot of business because we simply cannot find the right people. Our hands are tied.”
In Sheboygan, INSpire Insurance Solutions can only address the absolute essential requirements of writing software for insurance companies because it does not have enough people to do the work. Says INSpire vice president Rick Gaumer:
“There’s pent-up demand. Our company could stand to hire 25 to 30 people right now. We are just kind of stringing out things and doing only that which is absolutely necessary.”
At Production Stamping Corp. on Teutonia Ave. on Milwaukee’s northwest side, owner Jeff Clark works with employees who have brushes with the law. If they have to spend a month in jail for committing a misdemeanor crime, that employee is granted leave and allowed to return to work. Those on work release are granted flexible hours to coincide with their jail time.
To Clark, this is more than a social experiment. It’s about retaining the employees he desperately needs to get the job done.
“We are growing, but the biggest limiting factor for us is not capital [equipment], it’s human capital,” Clark says.
According to Clark, in the past, you molded the employee to your business. But with unemployment hovering at an all-time low, employers such as Clark are catering to the people who are available and willing to do the job. To that end, he is moving the company in May to a new facility in the Riverworks Industrial Park in Milwaukee’s inner city because it is more accessible to the 40% of his employees who get to work by taking the bus.
“Our workforce is an inner city workforce,” says Clark. “So, that’s where we need to be, because that’s where the people are. We need to make it easier for them to get to work.”
According to a local study performed by BDO Seidman and UW-Whitewater, the single greatest challenge facing most company owners in southeastern Wisconsin today is recruiting and retaining quality employees.
But employers don’t need a study to tell them what they already know.
“We haven’t had a layoff here, ever,” Stangl says of his 55-employee firm. “We’re a private company, and we’re looking for people to stay with us for the long haul. We’d rather wait than hire someone who is wrong. Trying to find them is the hard part. It’s at an epidemic stage.”
A shrinking workforce
The shortage of qualified, able-bodied workers is national in scope. The problem will grow more acute as the Baby Boom ages and fewer workers are available to take their place, says Julie Peck, who runs a Thiensville executive search firm.
The US birth rate peaked in 1947, at 26.6 million, and today those people are 51 years old. By 1972, the birth rate for people who are now age 26 had dropped down to 14 million. Working age people (25 to 64) currently outnumber probable retirees (65 and over) by a ratio of four-to-one. Based on census trends, that ratio will drop down to three-to-one by 2020, and nearly two-to-one in 2030.
In other words, the numbers suggest that the shortage of qualified workers is not temporary. It’s here to stay, Peck says. Employers who recognize that and make hiring and retaining a part of their overall strategic plan will be the ones who win out. The underlying message from executive recruiters and personnel experts is that employers who continue to approach hiring the way they have in the past are in for a rude awakening.
“There’s going to be fewer people to choose from,” Peck says. “It’s going to be a seller’s market. They [employees] are going to be able to say ‘I won’t work weekends, and I won’t work overtime.'”
The good news is, small companies are in a much better position to respond, to change and be flexible in ways that large companies cannot due to their size and organizational rigidity, Peck says. Small companies need to exploit that advantage in the never-ending search for employees.
Six years from now, ethnic minorities will comprise 28% of the workforce, up from 20% in 1990, Peck says. Hispanic and Asian populations are growing at the fastest rate in the US Peck says. As an employer, you must make yourself attractive to those groups by establishing a track record of minorities succeeding within your company, Peck says.
One area company making strides in terms of diversity and inclusiveness is Deluxe Electronic Payment Systems of Glendale. As part of a change in leadership, the company now recruits minorities and offers domestic partner benefits. Worker-friendly policies like that have helped the company reverse an attrition rate that threatened the continuity of Deluxe’s workforce less than two years ago.
Establish a pipeline
Most people view management of their career as something they choose to avoid, says Brookfield executive search consultant Jude Werra. And employers are the same way, Werra says, as they tend to look at staffing in a reactive mode, rather than in a planful, proactive way.
Employers who take a continuous, long-range approach to staffing are in a better position when a key employee leaves the firm, Werra says. Thus, by establishing a network and developing a pipeline of potential candidates, an owner or manager is not starting from scratch in his search for a replacement, but already has a group of potential successors lined up.
“The roots of a hiring decision may well have been set months or years earlier by one of your executives becoming active in your principal trade organization,” Werra says. “When a vacancy occurs, you know who you are likely to call because you know what’s going on in other firms.”
Employers who establish good working relationships with colleges and technical schools are in a better position to court graduates than an employer who just walks in cold. It’s all about building relationships and networks which will bring qualified people to your doorstep.
“Why would a certain professor recommend his best graduate to someone who is a stranger versus [an employer] who has been offering internships?” Werra says. “People tend to go with somebody who is familiar … they pick the low-hanging fruit.”
Another tried-and-true method is developing your own “farm team” of college interns, says Paul Pagenkopf of Meyers Consulting, in Milwaukee. Pagenkopf recalls the example of a company which put graduate students on projects that fit their skills. Ultimately, those people were hired into full-time positions and eventually became managers, directors and vice presidents at the company, he says.
Training students within your company’s culture before they formally apply for the position gives you a competitive advantage over other companies who might be recruiting your candidate, the BDO survey says.
Hiring as marketing
Bill Lowell, of Business Development Directives in Mequon, recommends that employers view hiring from a marketing perspective. Business owners need to approach recruiting and retaining employees the way they would the marketing of their business.
The objective is to find new customers/employees, or keep existing employees. Just as you would in marketing, you accomplish that by profiling your customer/employee, says Lowell, who helped compile the BDO/UW-Whitewater study.
Look at where your potential or existing employees are in their career cycle, Lowell says. Recent college graduates are interested in things such as having enough money to pay off their student loans and having the right technology to perform their jobs. Mid-career people are interested in things like day-care, flexible hours and 401-k plans. Older workers are interested in the transferability of their retirement plans, and the ability to take off large blocks of time.
“You’ve got to profile your employee the same way you would your customer,” Lowell says. “Don’t look at shooting all over the place and hoping somebody is going to land.
“Small business owners are busy,” Lowell adds. They’re running and gunning, and trying to go out and find someone, that’s one more headache they don’t need. If they would just step back and look at this from a marketing perspective, they would be a lot better off.”
Another way to profile and match is to ask your existing employees what it is they really like about working for your company. Then go out and try to find someone to match that profile, Lowell suggests.
It’s important that your marketing/hiring efforts are reaching the intended audience. Lowell cites a “beautiful” brochure that was developed for Family Health Plan to recruit physicians into the HMO. But when the brochure was test-marketed to doctors, it fell flat. With the aid of market research, the brochure was reformulated and it succeeded in helping attract physicians to the HMO, Lowell says.
The lesson there is, find out who you are trying to reach, then shape your message to reach them, whether it’s doctors to your HMO or factory workers to fill vacancies at a growing manufacturing firm. But be true to your own company’s culture in seeking out a potential employee. If you’re like Weimer Bearing’s Stangl, you’re looking for the right fit.
“In the sales area, we’re looking for an ’11’ on a scale of one to 10,” Stangl says. “We are picky.”
Creative approaches
Classified advertising still has its place in finding employees, but is no longer a guaranteed method, Pagenkopf says.
Holding open houses, participating in job fairs and on-campus recruiting are successful strategies. So is recruiting via radio and television advertising, which area firms like Generac Power Systems Inc. have used to their advantage.
Because the Waukesha-based manufacturer of generators and industrial systems was growing at a rate of 20 to 40%, Generac had to find a way to reach the masses, as it was hiring up to 50 people at a time. So it started advertising on radio and cable television, and also used billboard advertising in addition to traditional newspaper ads.
“All of a sudden, there was this awareness of Generac, that we were growing,” says Generac human resources director Stephanie Borowski.
The company, which now numbers more than 1,000 employees, also instituted a 24-hour job hotline which details current openings and job fairs. Callers can leave a message and a company representative will call them back.
One of the more innovative approaches to finding people is the use of direct mail. Lowell cites the example of a company that bought a list of people living in the immediate area, then sent out a company brochure along with a letter soliciting employment applications.
Others have used churches as a resource, by contacting pastors and asking if they know of anyone who is new to the area or who has last his or her job, says Marlene Haigh of Project Management Associates in Racine.
“Anything you can do to set yourself apart,” Haigh says. “Today’s workers are like independent contractors. They interview the company as much as the company interviews them. It’s a two-way street. I think people are shopping around more than ever to find the right opportunity. I think managers really have to adopt this mindset that things have changed.”
If you are looking for supervisory or management people, Internet recruiting is growing in popularity, Haigh says, as technologically-savvy management level types are more likely to scour the Internet for employment opportunities.
United Parcel Service has a 31-foot mobile recruiting van it takes to high schools and college campuses in the Chicago area, says UPS recruitment manager Dave Chisholm. Inside the van, a video monitor plays a recruiting tape which sells the package delivery service as a good place to work. Recruiters hand out t-shirts and stage cookouts in order to pull in potential recruits. So far it’s working. In the first nine months of 1998, UPS had 473 calls as a result of the recruiting van. Out of that, 42 people were hired. In November, the mobile recruiting van was responsible for rounding up 90 people who interviewed for driver positions.
“There is so much you’ve got to do out there today, it’s unreal,” Chisholm says. “We try not to think outside the box, but outside the galaxy.”
Referral bonuses are growing in popularity. Stangl will pay $1,000 to anyone inside or outside the company who brings him an employee who stays for a year.
Covenant HealthCare has begun recruiting registered nurses from Canada to Milwaukee area hospitals, paying bounties of up to $500 to employees who successfully recruit nurses here. Covenant’s Katie Graceffa recently returned from a recruiting visit to Toronto with 60 rÃ&Copy;sumÃ&Copy;s in hand, making several hires out of that batch. Canada’s nationalized health care system has contributed to an oversupply of nurses. Graceffa says Covenant could easily hire 100 full-time to part-time nurses.
Shorewest Realtors was having trouble finding employees until it put out the word among its own workforce: Who do you know? Within the space of a month, the company was inundated with qualified people, many of whom were relatives of Shorewest employees, says Shorewest CEO John E. Horning.

What are computer viruses?
Answer
Let’s first get some facts straight about viruses. Computer viruses are not actually living creatures. They are just programs like any other, except that they copy themselves onto other programs. They “infect” them. They cannot actually run by themselves. To activate a virus, you need to run the program which was infected.
Here is a good example: A computer virus is a self-replicating program containing code that explicitly copies itself and that can “infect” other programs by modifying them or their environment such that a call to an infected program implies a call to a possibly evolved copy of the virus.
From all of this information, you should be able to see that you cannot get infected by a computer virus by just reading e-mail or opening a document. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true. There is a programing language called WordBasic. This is used to write macros for Microsoft Word. It is also used, by some people, to write computer viruses. Those would be started when a document, which is already infected, is opened. Some of these viruses are harmless, while others are very destructive.
Question
I think I have a virus,
what do I do?
Answer
So you think you have a virus? Well, maybe you don’t. Many people just think that they have a virus because something is wrong. Perhaps the computer is slower or you can’t read floppy disks any more. Those are not sure signs of infection. There could be some hardware problems instead, or it could be caused by new software that you have installed, or even a change in a configuration file.
The first step to take to check for virus infection is to use a reliable virus scanner/checker. However, no matter how much they tell you how good they are, I recommend using at least two of them. The more famous ones are F-prot, Innoculan, Mcafee, Norton Anti-Virus, Thunderbyte.
After you have installed at least two of them, run them to see if they find a virus on your computer. Be sure to turn “heuristics” off if you can, as that will greatly reduce the number of false alarms. If there is only one infection, it may be a false alarm.
If the scanner tells you it can clean them, you should make a backup copy of all the infected files. You can then let the scanner clean the originals only (not the backups). After you have cleaned them, try running the programs again. If they appear to be working well, then all is fine, and you can delete the backups. If, however, they are not working, then you should delete them, and restore your backups. You should try other scanners, to see if they can remove it. Different scanners can usually remove some viruses that others can’t.
If you can’t find anything that will remove the virus, and you have an uninfected backup, then you should re-install the backup. If you don’t have any backups, then you will have to wait a while for a new update of your anti-virus scanner. During that time, you should not run the infected program under any conditions. If the program is not important, you can always delete it. If you do not know what the file is used for, do not delete it.
After you have finished your new scan, you should do another scan, with a different scanner. That should be done to pick up the viruses that might have been missed by other scanners.
Question
How do I prevent
a virus infection?
Answer
The simplest solution is to always leave your computer turned off, but that might not be too useful (and then there is no point in owning a computer). Otherwise, be careful with any new things that you install on your computer. That would include any floppies and anything downloaded from the Internet.
Another thing that you should always do is watch anybody that uses your computer. Other users could bring a virus on, even if they don’t mean to. Of course that is not always possible, so you should consider using a scanner that stays in memory. It checks all files before you open them, and also scans memory when you load it.
This tech Q&A is provided by EntrÃ&Copy; P.C. Solutions, of Brookfield. Small Business Times readers who would like to see a question asked can contact EntrÃ&Copy; at 938-2139 ext. 3022, or visit its Website at www.pcsentre.com.

Are your HR policies and practices in order? Now’s the time to check
Traditionally, the start of the new year is the time many of us reflect on and review a variety of personal issues and resolve to take the necessary steps for change and improvement.
For those of us who are also responsible for running all or part of a business, we may carry this over to our professional lives as well. As part of our professional review, it is important not to overlook the human resource issues affecting our businesses.
The good news is that few, if any, new human resource laws are expected from the federal government in 1999. Although several initiatives are under way to overhaul the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), Congress is not expected to make that a priority.
While businesses may not have to worry about coping with new HR laws, the start of the new year does require businesses to get ready to meet certain imposed deadlines for state and federal regulations already on the books.
Following are some reminders:
W-2 Forms: Employers are required to furnish each employee with 1998 income on a W-2 form by Jan. 31. The W-2 form serves as a wage record for the employee and employer and is required for state and federal income tax purposes.
OSHA 200 Log: Most employers with 11 or more employees are required to maintain an OSHA 200 Log, which is a summary of injuries and illnesses. This information is compiled on OSHA Form 200. Compare the information listed on your OSHA 200 Log to your internal accident reports and Worker’s Compensation WC-12 forms for completeness and accuracy. The portion of the OSHA 200 form to the right of the vertical dotted line is used to summarize injuries and illnesses for the previous calendar year. Your OSHA 200 for 1998 must be completed, signed and posted by Feb. 1. Even if your establishment had no recordable injuries and illnesses, the summary portion, including zeroes across the total line, must still be posted. Post the OSHA 200 Log for the entire month of February in a place where employees are likely to see it.
On March 1, take the form down, and add it to your OSHA 200 file. OSHA 200 Logs must be retained and kept available for the current year and for the previous five calendar years for inspection and copying by current and former employees, their representatives and OSHA.
Family Medical Leave Act: Remember to reset the clock on absences granted under Wisconsin’s Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Unlike the separate federal FMLA, the state FMLA requires employers to grant unpaid time off on a calendar-year basis. Therefore, your employees start 1999 with the full amount of protected time off under this act. Wisconsin grants six weeks for the birth or adoption of a child, two weeks for the employee’s own serious health condition, and two weeks to care for a family member (child, spouse, parent, or parent-in-law) with a serious health condition.
Wisconsin employers are covered by the state FMLA if they employ at least 50 individuals anywhere – not just in Wisconsin. To receive protection under the state FMLA, an employee must be employed with you for more than 52 consecutive weeks and have worked at least 1,000 hours during the preceding 52-week period. Note: All hours for which the employee receives pay, i.e. vacation, sick, must be counted in the calculation of the 1,000 hours “worked.”
Administration of the FMLA is cumbersome at best. It is of great help to track time off under the FMLA on a form or spreadsheet. Record the date, type of leave, number of hours or days taken, and whether the leave time was paid through the substitution of vacation, personal days, sick days, etc. If your payroll system is computerized, develop a code which indicates in the payroll history when time off is FMLA time.
W-4 and W-5: The start of a new year is a great time to remind employees to update their “Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate” or W-4 form. During the last year, an employee may have had a change in family status which affects his tax withholding. Send a company announcement reminding employees to complete a new form available from payroll.
The “Earned Income Credit,” or W-5 form, is less known but can be of great benefit to certain employees. The W-5 has the potential to reduce the taxes an employee owes. Employees with one or more children may be eligible for this tax credit based on income, marital status, and number of children. Paying less in taxes means more take-home pay – something every employee likes. This is a great benefit to promote, without any direct costs to the employer. For an employee to continue to receive a tax credit, a new W-5 must be completed and filed with payroll each calendar year.
W-4 and W-5 forms are available by calling the IRS form order line at 1-800-829-3676.
The Meaning of 15, 20, 50, or 100: As you complete your business plan or anticipate company growth, be aware of the additional laws which affect employers when their employee head count reaches 15, 20, 50, or 100 employees. For example:

Market strategy, innovation lift Oconomowoc PC firm to the paragon
One call to Craig Schiefelbein’s voice mail – in which the voice is out of breath and somewhat rushed – reveals at least one thing about the president and CEO of Paragon Development Systems:
1) He’s just finished working out in the company’s amply-equipped fitness center; or,
2) He’s been in a constant stream of meetings planning for the continued success of his fast-growing, PC company located in Oconomowoc, just off of Highway 67.
(Give yourself extra points for choosing 2.)
He admits that being busy is both good and bad. The bad is that he’s developing a crop of new gray hair on his 34-year-old pate. The good is that business is good. Really good.
Schiefelbein, his sister Peggy, and two others started the company as a wholesaler of computer components in 1986. Being a wholesaler enabled the fledgling company to cut down on its overhead costs – it started in a basement – and sell to a national market while not worrying about its image. It also wasn’t constrained by being tied to a high-traffic location, as most retail businesses are, which allowed the company to grow rapidly.
That strategy paid off in spades as the company recorded $1.8 million in sales in its first year. “We’ve had record sales ever since,” Schiefelbein says. He estimates the company would reach $30 million in sales for 1998.
PDS has three strong markets, targeting medium to large businesses, government and educational institutions, and the health-care industry – the largest segment of PDS’s business. The company’s emphasis is to provide solutions for its customers, even if it means selling PCs made by Compaq, IBM or Hewlett Packard, for which it is an authorized dealer.
And solutions for customers don’t necessarily come from top officers or the sales staff. One of the company’s recent innovations, the Rack N Roll, was suggested by production manager Kerry Marti. Marti was at a client location when he saw how much time was wasted just by taking PCs out of boxes and setting the systems up.
The Rack N Roll is simply a metal rack with wheels and PC units shock mounted to its multiple shelves. PDS was using the racks for its own use in the warehouse, so why couldn’t customers use them as well? Marti estimates that approximately 30% of all PDS’s 1998 sales, or 4,000 units, have been shipped using the Rack N Roll, with no reports of damage.
The Rack N Roll actually cuts down on damage caused by shipping because the number of people handling the units is significantly reduced. “These [racked systems] get rolled onto one of our trucks, if we’re delivering ourselves, or a third-party company that goes straight to the customer,” Marti says. “So it’s been a significant reduction [in handling] as opposed to the regular [UPS] shipping.”
“That was really innovative,” Brian Nowatske of Advanced Healthcare says of the system. Advanced Healthcare receives an average of 18 PCs per order and has purchased a combined total of 1,000 PCs, printers and servers from PDS to date. Nowatske estimates that the Rack N Roll system saves his staff one half hour per new PC being installed. And it saves space as well, which helps in the confined areas of medical clinics.
But the key for Nowatske in choosing PDS over other PC companies was PDS’s commitment to being a business partner with Advanced Healthcare. “They really do try to understand our business,” Nowatske says. “They really step up to the plate in terms of customer service.”
Being a local company also gives customers the satisfaction of knowing that if there are problems, they won’t have to deal with an unsympathetic voice over the phone. That happened too frequently for PDS customer Howard O’Dell of Waukesha Engine. Before PDS, O’Dell was dealing with a manufacturer in Utah and found the customer service to be lax. “I mean, what do you do when a company’s located 900 miles away?” O’Dell says.
Now, O’Dell feels that if he has a problem with one of the 400 PCs he’s purchased from PDS, he can stop on his way home from work if he has to.
The company’s pride in providing solutions for customers extends to life imitating art, marketing manager Carrie Buss says. When flat screen monitors showed up on the television show “ER,” “We had a customer call us and say, ‘I want one of those monitors,'” Buss says. “It took the salesperson a week to find it because, at that time, they were brand-new.”
Old-fashioned teamwork is still abundant at PDS, too, according to Buss. “Everybody really works together and leans on each other,” she says. “We still have that small company mentality where [you say] ‘I’ll just do it.’ Even as we’re growing older and larger, people still do that. They just roll up their sleeves and go down and help out.”
Schiefelbein is predicting that the company’s sales will be $100 million-plus by 2001 and the number of employees will increase from 80 to 250. “If an average company in our industry is growing at 35% a year, that would put us at $70 million [by 2001],” Schiefelbein says. “I think we’re better than average.”
According to the plan, the company will be a nation-wide provider in the health-care market while continuing to grow as a regional provider to medium and large businesses and government and educational markets.
He foresees evolving into the small business market as well. “The largest growth area in our industry will be in small businesses,” he says. “We’re trying to develop real value for small businesses.”
And while marketing to individual consumers is feasible, Schiefelbein believes that the company’s strengths play better to multiple PC buyers. From experience, however, Schiefelbein never rules anything out. If he had, he would be Craig Schiefelbein, MD, instead of Craig Schiefelbein, CEO. “While this is Plan B,” he says of the PC business, “I think Plan B’s turned out pretty well,” noting his original intention of being a medical doctor.

{ By treating your employees right }
Employee turnover is a vicious cycle, says Milwaukee executive search consultant Paul Pagenkopf. It’s a syndrome where the more people a company loses, the more desperate it becomes. And as anyone who has been through the experience knows, replacing workers is time-consuming and costly.
“When you end up losing your people, or can only keep them for a year or two, it’s a spiral in that you are continually behind the 8-ball,” says Bob White, an information technology recruiter on Layton Avenue near the airport. “For companies that are short-staffed and can’t keep people, it puts more pressure on everybody. One of the biggest complaints I hear is: ‘My company doesn’t appreciate me.'”
In the past, employers didn’t need to concern themselves with treating employees right. The scales were tipped in their favor. Now, with workers at every level of the economy in short supply, employers who haven’t already changed their approach need to re-think the way they view their workers, White says.
According to Marlene Haigh, a Racine-based human resource specialist, what it comes down to is: How do you create that environment that induces your employees to stay?
According to a local employment survey conducted last year, the most important thing to employees is company culture. Not perks, not benefits, not even money matters most. That’s the conclusion of BDO Seidman’s Howard Sosoff, whose firm sponsored a local study on finding and retaining workers last year.
The number one thing your employees seek is a sense of engagement with their work, and to feel that what they are doing makes a difference, Sosoff says. Employees also want a comfortable work atmosphere, one in which they have the authority to make decisions, and the flexibility to take time off when they need it.
According to Donald Dailey of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the relationship between the employed and the employer is more flexible and fragile than ever.
Entrepreneurial companies, with their energy and creativity, can take advantage of their smaller size to “cut through the clutter” of larger organizations and reach the next rung of business growth, Dailey says. By virtue of their less rigid structure, entrepreneurial companies have a better chance of creating loyalty and maintaining a sense of closeness than big corporations, Dailey says.
One company that takes this concept seriously is Lakeland Supply, Inc. The 20-employee Waukesha distributor of packaging, paper and janitorial supplies promotes a sense of team through any number of company-sponsored events, from taking employees to dinner theater in rented limousines to riding around the race course at Road America in Elkhart Lake with a professional driver.
“We are like a large family,” says president Larry Schmidt II. “We feel that people are not geared into money. They want a place that is safe, where the surroundings are comfortable and they feel part of the organization. We feel our employees are our most important customers, so we want to treat them as best we can.”
That approach not only helps retain employees, it also helps recruit them. Word has gotten around that Lakeland Supply is a good place to work. In addition to the company-sponsored events, Lakeland Supply has an on-site fitness center, and offers comprehensive benefits, including a 401k plan.
“I have [former employees] who have left us and gone other places,” Schmidt says, “and these people tell me that this is the best place they ever worked for. There is a more holistic approach to the way we conduct business. We try to touch every element.”
Employee turnover is a costly proposition. While estimates vary, Schmidt says it typically costs 150% of an employee’s wage or salary to replace that person.
Employee turnover can become a vicious cycle, says Milwaukee executive search consultant Paul Pagenkopf. In his experience, the more desperate a company becomes, the higher it’s turnover rate.
“You are getting one company raiding another, particularly in skilled trades such as tool-and-die,” Pagenkopf says. “It’s a jungle out there. But if you show me a company where the standards are high, and so is the morale and espirit de corps, then the raiders are going to have a much harder time taking your people. If you have a fun place to work, where your employees feel like they’re really part of the organization, it’s hard to put a price tag on that, but I think it’s really a key factor.”
Pagenkopf says the whole employment picture has come full-circle, from the layoffs of the 1970s, to the mergers/downsizings of the 1980s and corporate re-engineering of the early to mid-1990s. All of those strategies were essentially short-term oriented, with the goal of: How quickly does it flow to the bottom line? During that period, training was cut back, and so was research and development. In many cases, apprenticeship plans were eliminated.
Invest in your workers
Instead of discarding workers whose skills are no longer current, today’s employer has to be willing to invest in their employees through training programs, say both Pagenkopf and Julie Peck, a Thiensville executive search consultant.
“Don’t get rid of people just because their skills have become obsolete,” Peck advises. “You need to assess what needs to be done in terms of training and retraining. This requires you to look ahead, to anticipate what your needs are going to be.”
Generac Power Systems Inc. has expanded rapidly. In doing so, the Waukesha manufacturer of generators and industrial engines has received any number of people who lack necessary technical training, says Generac human resources manager Stephanie Borowski.
“It’s an unskilled workforce you’re hiring from, so it becomes a matter of providing in-house basic training for people who have only worked at Burger King before,” Borowski says. We have our own Generac University.”
Generac also provides ongoing training for its existing employees, from the shop floor, to engineering to computer skills, Borowski says.
Another strategy that pays dividends is cross-training your employees, Pagenkopf says. By teaching them additional jobs or skills within your company, you get more flexibility and more productivity from your workforce, he says.
At the Pfister Hotel, executive chef Josef Zimmerman has established an informal training program for the kitchen staff. A kitchen employee begins by learning basic knife skills and working hotel banquets. Eventually, the trainees work on the cooking line for banquets. As they become more comfortable with food preparation, Zimmerman starts them on smaller menus. Once they’ve mastered their technique, those employees become ready to assist Zimmerman, a European-trained master chef, with the meals served in The English Room.
As a result of that in-house training program, many members of the Pfister’s kitchen support staff have climbed the culinary ladder. The internal promotions have resulted in retaining a staff of satisfied employees.
Structuring a creative benefit plan to the employee’s advantage can sometimes mean the difference between keeping or losing a key employee. Lakeland Supply’s Schmidt came up with an employer life insurance program for a 30-year-old employee. By matching the employee’s contribution, he will receive $1 million by the time he reaches age 59, or, $1.5 million by the time he reaches age 75.
“If someone really cares about our company and goes the extra mile, we want to show them that same dedication,” Schmidt says. “This way, if [the employee] stays with us until retirement age, all of the benefits come back to him.”
Offer incentives
A number of Milwaukee area companies are finding that offering employees trips as part of their overall compensation is not only a good way to reward employees for a job well done, but that it promotes team-building and the ability to reach company goals.
“A lot of companies reward their employees with cash and merchandise,” says Louise DeMarco of Incentive Experts, a subsidiary of Salentine Travel in Mequon. “Cash goes out the door to pay a bill, and merchandise is just that. Trips are very motivational. It builds loyalty within your company and gives employees an opportunity to do something they never would have done before.”
Two years ago, DMC Inc., in Pewaukee, made headlines when it took all 97 of its employees to Walt Disney World in celebration of the company’s 10th anniversary. The trip combined pleasure with training at the Disney Institute.
“If we are successful, we are willing to give that back to the company,” says Jeff Nowak, president of the Pewaukee direct-response advertising firm. “I think if more businesses try to look at bringing some fun into the workplace, it makes it easier to create a team atmosphere.”
According to Jackie Salentine, employers who use incentive travel generate a three-to-one return on their investment, with some of her clients achieving a five-to-one return. She arrives at that ratio by taking a company’s expected annual sales increase compared to the additional increment they receive when they reward employees with travel.
“It’s a really good way to institute behavioral changes without being a watchdog,” Salentine says.
According to Bill Troyk of Roadrunner Freight near Mitchell International Airport, offering employees trips is an alternative means to money for rewarding them. Roadrunner limits the trips to its terminal managers and their spouses.
Roadrunner lets employees select the destination. The first year, the company took employees to New Orleans. Last year, 45 people went on a Caribbean cruise. Next month, it’s Cancun for four nights and five days. The trips generally cost Roadrunner about $75,000, and employees are asked to contribute $500 if they bring their spouse.
“People talk about it for two to three months after,” Troyk adds. “You can use this as a tool to sell the job to people who are being promoted, and it’s also not a bad recruiting tool.”
Not all companies can afford to take their employees on vacation. At Value Computer Accessories in Pewaukee, a distributor of computer connection parts, Jenni DeGlopper rewards employees for meeting goals by letting them go to the movies on company time. Another monthly incentive is allowing employees to leave two hours early if goals are met.
DeGlopper decided to implement the incentives in lieu of annual Christmas bonuses, which got handed out regardless of the company’s performance. Now, if the sales goal is reached, everyone at the 18-employee company gets $100.
“We are tying it to performance,” DeGlopper says. “It has helped me achieve some company objectives, and it gets people talking together and working together. It’s amazing. You get warehouse people asking where the sales are at for the month. It gets everyone involved and helps keep people motivated.”

New Berlin bakery in line for some Super exposure
Dolly Mertens has been anxiously awaiting this season’s National Football League playoffs.
But her focus isn’t so much on the Green Bay Packers’ possible return to Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami. That would be icing on the cake, so to speak, for the owner of the New Berlin bakery.
Mertens has a solid team behind her as she is a finalist in a contest to win a commercial on the television broadcast of the Super Bowl.
Thanks to teachers and students in the West Allis-West Milwaukee school system, Mertens’ Wild Flour Bakery could be selected to be showcased as the winner in Mail Boxes Etc.’s “See Your Small Business on the Super Bowl Search II.”
The winner is highlighted in a nationally-televised Mail Boxes Etc. commercial during the Super Bowl, which is expected to have an audience of 130 million people.
As of presstime, the bakery was among the top 10 finalists in the contest which attracted thousands of entries. The top three finalists were to be named the first week of this month.
A 30-second commercial on the Super Bowl this year will cost regular advertisers $1.6 million, notes Karen Gajewske, of Mail Boxes Etc. headquarters in Escondido, Calif. But she called the exposure “priceless.”
In addition to the nationwide exposure from the commercial, the winner will receive $5,000; second- and third-place winners will receive $2,000 each.
“It’s been phenomenal,” Mertens said of the process – especially the part involving the students and educators who’ve come together in the effort. “It’s a wonderful opportunity that we can encourage young people and make something for us at the same time. And it shows the community that our young people have great talents.”
The Super Bowl contest has been another serendipitous event for Mertens, who ran a residential and commercial cleaning business before she found her real calling.
“I always thought of bakeries in terms of just donuts. And that wasn’t my cup of tea,” Mertens says. “But one day when I was back East I saw a loaf of bread and instantly knew my mission in life.”
With her youngest son Josh as the master baker, Wild Flour quickly became established in its New Berlin neighborhood and beyond. The bakery currently employs 26 people, eight of them full-time. Its breads and pies have won reader polls in Milwaukee Magazine and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Mertens [whose husband Greg Mertens works for the U.S. Small Business Administration] attributes the two-year-old bakery’s success to one miracle after another. She’s always been a supporter of young people and has been involved in employment training programs with several area school districts.
Now she’s getting something back for that involvement. A group at the West Allis-West Milwaukee schools approached Mertens about entering the Mail Boxes Etc. contest, offering to create a video commercial of the bakery.
“I had no trouble getting people to help me on this one,” said Dennis “Bart” Bartel, a West Allis-West Milwaukee instructor who’s been instrumental in the project. Bartel saw the project as an educational opportunity for the WA-WM students, and as a way to maybe earn some income for school programs. He asked Mertens if she would be willing to donate half of any winnings to the schools. “We don’t like begging for things,” Bartel says. Mertens’ response? She’d donate the full amount.
Bartel estimates the video production took at least 100 man-hours. “I doubt too many small businesses could afford to put together a commercial like the one we did,” he says.
While the bakery positions itself as a re-creation of the neighborhood bakeries that once flourished in urban neighborhoods, Wild Flour products are distributed throughout the metro area. It ships its made-from-scratch breads and pastries far beyond its Moorland Road and Howard Avenue neighborhood – via the nearby Mail Boxes Etc. franchise owned by sisters Patty Risch and Beth Riemer at 15417 W. National Ave., of course.
Wild Flour Bakery and the local Mail Boxes Etc. franchise could be a whole lot busier if the bakery garners the Super Bowl spotlight. And both are gearing up for that prospect.
The bakery – through the West Allis-West Milwaukee students – is working on a Website that could process orders that Mertens expects would pour in from the national exposure. [While the Super Bowl commercial focuses on the first place winner and its relationship with Mail Boxes Etc., the second- and third-place winners are also mentioned.]

With qualified workers in short supply, employers are getting creative in their attempts to mine the pool of available talent. United Wisconsin Services in Milwaukee has come up with a unique way to tap the skills of parents who would like to work, but whose first commitment is to their children. The newly created Parents Program allows working mothers and fathers to spend 19 hours a week at work, and still have the ability to be with their children at all times, says United Wisconsin employment supervisor Shannon O’Brien.
The 13 working parents in the program work from 10 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday, processing Compcare claims in an office at 3rd and Cherry Streets. The working parents are allowed to take time off when their children are not in school, and they have summers off.
“Because the market is so tight right now, this was a way of tapping into a population that others haven’t gotten to yet,” O’Brien says. “We wanted to try and cater to a different population, to people who may only have the need to work on a part-time basis, but still want to be there for their children.”
According to Paula Acker, a supervisor with Compcare Blue Cross National Government, who works part-time herself, the employees who began the program in November like the job because there is no “latch-key” anxiety that they are at work while their children are left home unattended.
Carol Aberg of Mequon previously worked for a large telephone company, but when her job was eliminated, she decided to stay at home with her two children.
“The only job that met my needs was on the third shift,” Aberg says. “That’s what most mothers end up working if they want to work.”
Aberg says processing claims for Compcare is perfect in that it allows her to still be with her children at all times. She learned about the job through a flyer that was distributed through schools and area churches.
“My sister brought this [flyer] home, and I couldn’t believe it,” Aberg recalls. “I had so many exceptions. I remember my family saying that I would never find a job like this. This is an actual day job where I can come in and feel like a normal human being. And, nobody knows that I’m even gone.”

Without a clear vision, sales team can’t know the goals
It’s often been said that there is no way you can successfully build something unless you have a plan. That’s true in part. Yes, you must have a plan, but it’s the execution of the plan that determines its ultimate success or failure.
For the sales leader, the blueprint for creating a high-performance sales organization is the sales vision.
As the leader it is your responsibility both to your company and your people to create a plan of action – a plan that can be executed by all, that will garner an excitement and willingness to achieve high standards, that will reap financial rewards for all involved and that enables you to maintain order, provide clear direction and, most important, clearly establishes you as the leader.
Your sales vision requires a great deal of time and thought. It is a message that you will want to deliver directly to your sales team in a one-way format – not in a conversational, give-and-take manner. It should not be open for discussion; remember, you are the leader. Your people expect you to share your experiences and expertise in leading them. Your people should trust you as a leader who understands them and who will design plans with their best interests in mind.
There may be one other key component to creating a strong sales vision. You may have to humble yourself and realize that in the past you did not do all you could have done to ensure the overall success of the team. For example, maybe you didn’t get out in the field as often as you told your team you would. Perhaps you haven’t done any sales training designed to enhance the skills of your people. Maybe you’ve fallen short in meeting one-on-one with your people, truly understanding their challenges and trying to assist them in overcoming those challenges.
As leaders, we all get swept away in the fast pace of the day. Sometimes we lose focus on where we should be best spending our time. So remember, be honest in your own self-assessment. That may lead to your humbling yourself in front of your team.
If you set higher expectations of your people going forward, and if you want to change some of their past behaviors, you must make them aware that you are willing to do the same. That involves a heart-to-heart talk with your staff – a talk which might start out like the following:
“This morning I am going to share with you my sales vision. In my opinion what I am about to share with all of you is a blueprint for success. Just like I have, we all came here to be a part of a winning team. We came here to make a nice living and to build a career path for ourselves. We all believe that this is the company, the industry and the products through which we can achieve our goals. However, as the leader of this team, at this time I don’t feel we are playing at a championship level. This in part is my own fault. I have fallen short in providing the field time, one-on-one time and sales training that you should expect from a great leader. That is going to change today. On the other hand, I also feel that you have fallen short in some areas also that are crucial to your individual success as well as the success of the overall team – areas such as promptness, activity and professional appearance. This vision I am about to share will enable all of us to exceed our objectives. I will share this with you now. If there are any questions or concerns, I will address those individually off-line.”
You are probably saying, Wow! Wow is right. You have just laid the foundation for the execution of your sales vision. Now you must share what you believe the team needs to carry out. You are in control and whatever is put forth now could determine the entire outcome of the success or failure of your team.
Following are some suggestions on what to include in the sales vision.