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Below is a very small selection of case studies highlighting what Certain Change has done to help improve the results of various companies of different sizes across a range of sectors. All case studies are genuine but some details have been omitted to protect the confidentiality of the organisations and to safeguard their commercial interest and privacy.
When Professional Qualifications Got In The Way
Not A People Manager
The Problem
A company director called asking for help solving a problem with a middle ranking manager. This manager controlled a process that brought in about 1/10th of the company’s revenue and controlled a small team allocating resources to perform a business function for a very large client company.
Some complaints had been made towards this manager. The complaints mainly focussed around the manager’s style of communication and the way they dealt with disputes. The directors were becoming increasingly worried that these small number of complaints were damaging the relationship with the client company and would threaten re-signing of the contract creating a significant loss in revenue.
The Real Problem
The manager was excellent at controlling the process side of the operation but was inexperienced and untrained in people management.
As the role grew bigger their lack of people skills became more and more of a problem both in working with their team and with the client company. The manager did recognise there was a growing problem but did not know how to solve it and fell back on what they knew and tried to fix it with more efficient processes. This of course made the problem worse.
The Solution
The solution was simple and quick. The manager was given two sessions of 1:2:1 training around Understanding People and Communication Skills. From this they began to understand how their management style had created problems with certain people. We built a strategy on how to solve these relationship problems as well as building better relationships with both their own staff and the client company.
The Result
The results were excellent. The company resigned the contract. The complaints dramatically dropped and the team increased their performance.
A Lovely Extra
Not only did the manager solve the problem but they did it so well they were promoted a year later. That’s a great result.
Promoted To Crisis Point
The Problem
An essential but small group of managers were getting swamped by their workload. They were under huge pressure to deliver in what could only be described as an incredibly successful but highly aggressive and chaotic company. Their decisions affected and directed the course of the large company they worked for.
The Real Problem
They were at breaking point. Several of them were on the point of leaving the company and were literally at burn out. These were highly intelligent, passionate and committed people who were out of their depth in a company that did not support them. They were being asked to do a role that they did not know how to do.
None of them had ever been trained in Leadership or Management Skills. They had all arrived at their managerial roles because of their considerable technical expertise. It was the classic trap; they had been promoted into jobs they did not know how to do.
The even larger problem was that they did not even realise that being a good leader and manager was something they needed to be, or could be, better at. t was not even on their radar of important business skills. They were technical experts whose main interest was technology.
Only one of the group believed they were a true leader. And while the rest thought they were managers none really knew how to be a better one.
The Solution
The solution was for them to see and believe they were leaders and mangers as well as being technical experts. This is not a small thing for someone to do as who you think you are stimulates what you think about and how you behave.
To accomplish this we did group work and 1:2:1 sessions to educate and change their understanding of leading and managing. This was a 6 day programme over 2 months.
The Results
The results were dramatic. By the second session all but one had made the identity shift to be both leaders and managers. The one that didn’t sensibly chose to return to a lower role where they were far happier because they recognised that managing was not what they wanted to do or something they enjoyed.
The rest were very happy to spend time learning how to be better managers. They voluntarily read around the subject and changed how they operated within the company. They changed how they communicated and all reported back significant improvements in efficiency and productivity as well as improved relationships with their staff.
They became strong advocates of this type of development within their company and none of them left from burn out.
When Professional Qualifications Got In The Way
The Problem
The Managing Director of a professional services company had a problem with one of his highly qualified and experienced teams. The simple fact was that they were not converting enough qualified leads into real business. The MD was deeply concerned that the size of team needed to cover a particular geographic area was too large and expensive in comparison to the revenue and margin the team generated.
He could not easily reduce costs without compromising the coverage needed or the quality of the professional service they provided.
The Real Problem
The real problem is extremely common and found in many companies who provide professional services.
Most professional people have spent many years training in their specialist fields. They then spend many more years building up the specialised experience they think they need to gain the reputation they will use as their main marketing tool.
This is a very big business trap. Although reputation is a major business sales point it is only one of many. Customers will buy for many reasons and, in this case, price point was the major driving factor because the customer could not easily differentiate one provider from another.
The Solution
The solution was simple, the team needed to see themselves as commercial people as well as professional people. Training was done to increase their sales and commercial skills whilst work was done to create key messages that could be used to differentiate the company from their competitors.
The Result
The MD reported back that the team were now actively pursuing new leads as well as presenting their offering in a better way. He also reported they had increased their sign up rate.
Confidence To Speak
The Problem
A successful business owner was venturing into a new area of marketing. Although this individual was very successful in her small geographic area she wanted to expand this area using social media and public speaking presentations to do so.
She did not feel confident about doing this and public speaking in particular was a very big challenge to her. Because of this she was not creating the expansion in the business in the way she wished.
The Real Problem
This is another case of personal fears getting in the way of business success. Many people feel very uncomfortable speaking in public and will lose business because of it. Just because it is one of the biggest fears we have does not mean it can’t be overcome quickly and easily.
People in business don’t necessarily have all the skills they need just because they own and run a business.
The Solution
This was a three pronged solution. First - some 1:2:1 to destroy the major fears that created this situation. Second - she joined our Public Speaking Bootcamp to learn the skills needed and to get practise and feedback. Third – she was observed in real situations and given feedback based on the response of the audience.
The Result
She became a confident, effective and extremely passionate speaker who actually enjoyed public speaking. She is currently building her bigger business and has moved considerably outside of her old geographic area. She has also been invited to speak at industry events due to her reputation as a good speaker.
The World Had Changed
The Problem
A small but successful business started to notice a change in the buying patterns of their prime customers. Although the changes were initially small, if it continued there was a real threat to the company’s main profit making product. The directors were worried because they were unsure if this was a trend emerging or because their marketing and selling was not up to scratch. They had very good feedback from previous customers on their services.
The additional worry was because of the threat of the global economic climate. The main product was a high price point and the concern was that the sector was vulnerable to financial changes.
N.B. The concern of the directors was accurate and shortly after the economic crisis did hit the sector very hard with many competing businesses going bust.
The Real Problem
There were several problems in this situation. The first was indeed that the market was shifting. The product had run its course of popularity and was no longer seen as a want but viewed as a need by a smaller and harder to convert market.
The other problems of high price point in the economic market were also accurate but the main issue lay with the directors themselves.
They had been successful and learnt many business skills but they were fundamentally stuck in who they thought they were as a company. They had opened the company in a specialised area and been successful, they had branched out into related areas but had not concentrated their position to be able to market and sell themselves clearly. They had too many areas in which they could operate so very few people actually knew what they did.
In essence they had an identity problem. They were no longer the old company because the market was disappearing and they had not formed their new identity using all the skills they had.
The Solution
This evolved over a period of time. The first problem to solve was to create a new offering of services and then to create several networking and marketing strategies they could act upon.
The second step was to solve the understandable reluctance to let go of the old identity of what they did. They stopped promoting their core product and removed all references to it from all of their marketing.
Once this was done we helped them create a new identity around who they were. This was not an expensive change in branding, this was an internal identity change that aligned with the current market activity.
The Huge Result
The company not only stayed afloat when the economic crisis hit, they had their best ever year due to their new identity, position and product. This revenue was 90% from new sales in new markets. Their old core product did fail at this time and many competitors went bust in this period.
Moving from a previous success strategy can be scary but if the strategy is no longer working it has to change.
Targeting The Business
The Problem
A company owner attended one of our Business Builder courses because they were struggling to build their customer base in the face of a competitive market. The company was “doing okay” but margins were slim and the battle to win contracts was time consuming and very uncertain.
The owner had rightly decided that they needed to improve the business skills within the company.
The Real Problem
Although the owner had recognised that the technical skills within the company were good and it was sensible to develop better essential business skills, they fell in to one of the most common business traps. They were concentrating on what they did rather than on what their customers wanted.
As they were taking their staff through their business skills training it became obvious that they had not paid any attention to what makes them different from their competition. In fact they had not even thought about this issue and so had no marketing or sales strategy they could work on and test.
The Solution
We helped them focus on what their prime and second level customers really wanted from them. A new value proposition was put together based on the strengths of the company. Some changes in working structure were introduced and the business skills training were targeted towards this new sales strategy.
The Result
A 30% increase in sales were experienced in 2 months and the company had a definite hook to work with to win contracts.
Networking Failure
The Problem
A professional services company sent several of its staff to regular networking events as part of their business development strategy. The problem was they were not getting any real returns. Although networking was reasonably financially cheap for the company they were not building their business as they needed to.
The Real Problem and Hidden Costs
They did not have a Real Networking Strategy.
They were wasting their time, money and opportunities because they did not understand what networking was about and how to get a good return.
Like most businesses they understood that networking was a very important business tool but failed to have a clearly defined networking strategy. Because of this they could not run targeted campaigns whose results could be tested.
The senior partners no longer actively participated in networking events and sent junior staff instead. Staff members were being sent to the wrong places, with no training and without clear and defined messages.
Business development and on-going success of the company was being placed in the hands of non-commercial and inexperienced people.
The hidden costs were huge. Not only was the image of the company being damaged by poor representation by the junior staff but each trip created financial expense both directly from fees and travel expenses and more importantly by taking staff away from client billing time because of their absence from the office.
A swift calculation showed that the hidden costs ran into tens of thousands over the year rather than a couple of thousand as previously thought.
The Solution
This was a three step process.
1) Construction of a networking plan and strategies based on defined targets
2) Training the staff in the tactics and messages for each strategy and the personal skills they needed
3) Testing what worked and what need to be changed
The Result
The company significantly changed their networking activities. They changed the events they went to and concentrated on creating an efficient network to hit their specific targets. They reported back that they had significantly reduced their networking costs and dramatically increased their revenue from networking within the first 3 month period after the problem was fixed.
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