How Serious Are You About a Customer-Centric Culture?

Just about every company these days claims to be "customer-centric."    

They talk about being hyper-focused on doing the right thing for their clients at all times. Unfortunately it does not take long for many customers and employees to feel they are not the central focus of their company. And it often takes only one bad client experience magnified by social media to paint a completely different picture from the one the company would like to prmote and live.  

While customer-centricity makes sense for many businesses, we often find two major issues with the "customer-centric culture" claim. First, too many companies only pay lip service to putting the customer first. They have good intentions but poor execution. Second, too many companies would be better served strategically if they put something else first - e.g. their employees, operational excellence or product innovation.  

Issue #1: Only Giving Lip Service to Putting the Customer First
Let's start with too many companies paying lip service to strategically, culturally and operationally putting the customer first. It's like the hotel that places a bell on the counter for customers to ring when they need help. But their front desk clerks are consumed by tasks that keep them focused on their screens and not on approaching guests. These employees are most likely guided and measured by conflicting operational rules and rewards, not by a customer-centric organizational culture that promotes, lives, breathes and rewards true customer service.  

Why would this happen? There are a few good reasons.  

• First of all, it is not easy to create a consistent client experience that delights customers. This is especially true now that personalized online and offline experiences are required to fully deliver on customer-centric brand promises. Nor is it cheap - organizations spend millions measuring and improving customer satisfaction.
• Secondly, many businesses consider customer service a support function and a cost center. In doing so, they typically measure and reward employees based upon operational and financial metrics that trump customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. Many contact centers, for example, over-measure and over-reward call volume and speed of first call resolution versus contact quality and client satisfaction. This is often short-sighted.  

Building customer loyalty however, makes good business sense. Research shows that a 5% increase in customer loyalty can boost profits by as much as 25% to 85%. Satisfied clients lead to greater profitability and higher growth. 

Issue #2: Being Better Served Strategically by Putting Something Else First - e.g. Employees, Operational Excellence or Product Innovation 
Don't get us wrong. We think measuring and exceeding client expectations is an extremely important ingredient to every successful business. 

With that said however, you cannot do it all. And different companies have different target clients and different value propositions. Walmart and Costco, for example, are fundamentally focused on offering the lowest possible prices, not necessarily the best customer experience. Their loyal customers know and appreciate this and are willing to make the trade-off.  

The customer experience bar is therefore purposefully set lower for Walmart and Costco than other brands like Gucci, Banana Republic or Whole Foods.

Read about Tactics to Consider if You Want to Create a Customer-Centric Culture

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Benchmark Your Contact Center to See Where You Stand

Creating lasting customer loyalty makes business sense.  Depending upon how you run your customer service function, a 5% increase in customer loyalty can boost profits by as much as 25% to 85%. 

We know from experience that satisfied clients lead to greater profitability and higher growth.  The goal of any customer service leader should be to determine how to most effectively create loyal and profitable customers in a way that makes sense for their specific business strategy and organizational culture.

Every customer interaction has the potential to move levels of customer loyalty up or down. These "moments of truth" matter.  The better your customer service team is able to work through customer interactions with the necessary skill and understanding, the greater your chances to delight and retain and grow your customer base.

Are you creating positive customer experiences with each interaction?  Is repeat business important?  What about cross-selling and up-selling?   How is customer service effectiveness prioritized compared to your other strategic imperatives in your company?

If you would like to quickly compare how your Contact Center stacks up to 16 key best practice indicators in the areas of differentiating, building sales, creating visibility, and increasing customer loyalty, then this complimentary call center diagnostic is for you.

Benchmark Your Contact Center Now to See Where You Stand

How do you stack up against other leading organizations in other areas?  See all Health Checks.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

"Accidental Project Managers" - Project Management Is Not Just for Project Managers Anymore

There was a time when employees did "their job," and projects were managed only by experienced project managers who had extensive training in all the aspects of successfully defining, planning, executing and controlling projects. 

But times are different now.

• Respondents to a Blanchard survey stated that they spend as much as 50% of their time in a team setting. Yet 42% admitted to rarely, if ever, receiving any training to properly kick-off their projects.
• Up to 66% of organizations polled by the Society for Human Resource Management use virtual project teams.
• An Appleseed Partners poll found almost 30% of team leads are "accidental project managers" of which almost two-thirds have no formal project management training or certification.
• The pace of business has accelerated exponentially and many teams are operating in a 24/7 global economy.

At LSA Global, we see our clients committing a greater proportion of their time and resources to key projects and project teams. And, as more and more business gets done through projects, the need for project leadership and project team skills continues to grow. In order to succeed, leaders need to add another competency arrow to their quiver of leadership abilities...they need to know how to effectively lead projects and project teams. 

With more internal and external work being accomplished by co-located and remote projects teams, the need for rock solid project leaders and team members who can effectively define, plan, execute and control projects of all shapes and sizes has grown exponentially. The new competency often comes as a surprise for many leaders who don't consider themselves 'professional project managers,' a role often equated with Information Technology, a formal PMO function or Engineering. But professionals in every department - marketing, accounting, purchasing, and human resources, for example - are being affected by this new need for project management capability.  

The shift is driven by three easily observed factors: 

1. Organizational change is most often achieved by one or more projects. As projects become a bigger proportion of everyone's work, basic project management skills are becoming as essential as interpersonal communications, conflict management, team dynamics, and other foundational skills that apply to every professional.


2. Millennials are entering leadership roles, while Boomers are retiring. Flatter, more agile organizations are turning over the reins for small and large leadership responsibilities to a new generation of leaders who will spend most of their careers in teams navigating change. The sooner they sharpen their project leadership skills, the better.   


3. Innovation and V.U.C.A. (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) are pervasive challenges. Whether a company is driving disruption or reacting to it, innovation affects everyone. V.U.C.A. is a term used to describe the less predictable world most organizations face. Project management is a key capability for driving innovation and responding to 'a V.U.C.A. world.'

However, there is a challenge for those of us working with leaders to instill the basic tenets of successful change and project management. Since many managers, executives, and senior staff don't see themselves as project managers, they are leery of project management training, processes and practices that are bloated or designed for IT, construction, or engineering projects. And they rightfully reject training designed for passing the PMP exam. 

Read about Setting Non-Project Managers Up to Succeed

 About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Benchmark Your Project to See Where You Stand

Up to 75% of projects fail to meet stakeholder expectations.  That is unacceptable to us and our clients. 

Knowing that successful projects require the concerted and coordinated work of committed project teams, knowing where you stand is imperative. Whether the teams are part-time volunteers or highly-skilled professionals, their productivity and success is dramatically affected by the project leader's ability to create the clarity required for the team to function as a cohesive unit. 

And project teams have a special challenge: they come typically together for a temporary assignment in which they face a unique problem. Successful project teams build a positive project team environment and learn to work together to solve problems even in the face of conflict.

If you would like to know how you stack up to leading organizations  across 27 key performance indicators in the areas of Project Management Environment, Project Definition, Project Planning, Risk Management and Project Execution Best Practices, then this complimentary diagnostic is for you.

Benchmark Your Project Now

How do you stack up against other leading organizations?  See all Health Checks.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

How Strategic Clarity Distinguishes High Performing Leaders - The Elite 6%

Only 6%. 

According to a recent USA Today article, only 6% of last year's Standard & Poor's 500 firms accounted for 50% of the profits.

These days, regardless of industry, it is not easy for leaders to consistently outperform their competition. Yet, leaders of 30 firms outperformed 94% of the other companies in their peer group. Apple in particular, the biggest profit contributor of the S&P 500 by a 2-to-1 margin, reported a whopping $53.7 billion in net income. As of this writing Apple had captured over 90% of the market's operating profits from only 20% of smartphone sales in the face of immense competition from both Samsung and Android. What sets companies like Apple apart from the other 94% struggling to thrive?  

Based upon our organizational alignment research of 410 companies across eight industries, 30% of the difference between high and low performing organizations related directly to leadership's ability to create a clear, believable and implementable strategy. 

Strategic Clarity 
Good leaders start by creating a business strategy that outlines clear and compelling choices about where they are headed, how to get there and why it matters. Our high performance organizational alignment research revealed that people find it difficult to perform at their peak until all team members commonly understand the direction, the plan, the part they are expected to play, and the expected benefits from reaching the objectives. In terms of clarity, Apple's strategy appears very potent; they rely on product innovation to surprise and delight a narrow target market in order to consistently sell high margin items. 

As a leader, you know you are on the right track in terms of strategic clarity when employees: 

• Can clearly articulate the company's business strategy - the what, the how and the why.
• Understand how their work and the work of their team directly contribute to company, team and individual success.

 Read about Creating Strategic Believabilty and Implementation as a Leader

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Benchmark Your Strategic Clarity to See Where You Stand

Most leaders believe that their strategy is 2x as clear as their direct reports. 

Our organizational alignment research shows that most leadership teams are pretty happy with the strategy that they have created together. Once complete, it tends to make sense, and leaders are usually excited about a renewed sense of clarity and focus. Leaders also typically assume that people will then be able to "go make it happen." 

Our experience and research, however, tells us that there is usually too large a gap between a leadership team creating a vision/strategy and actually getting people to implement it. Effective leaders ensure all stakeholders are behind the plan. The strategy must be clear enough to those who will be charged with leading AND implementing it. 

It is difficult for leaders and followers to succeed without a clear, believable and meaningful direction. Yet many high-growth companies mistakenly move too quickly to create and clearly articulate an implementable corporate strategy. Some say they do not have the time. Others think their strategy is already clear. But when you ask employees, time and time again, strategic ambiguity reigns. 

If you would like to see where you stand from a strategic clarity perspective, these free online health checks are for you:

Benchmark Your Strategic Clarity Now


How do you stack up against other leading organizations?  See all Health Checks.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

3 Smart Strategies to Scale and Upgrade Your Sales Team

Most of our clients are looking to grow their sales force to meet ever increasing revenue expectations. 

But sales leaders face four serious complications that make it difficult to effectively scale and build a high performance sales team:

1. First, according to CSO Insights, the average annual sales turnover is almost 30%. So just to keep your team the same size, sales leaders must attract, hire, onboard and develop an entirely new sales force every three to four years.    

2. Second, sales people are expensive. According to the US News and World Report, the average sales manager base salary is approximately $126,000 and the average sales rep is paid $55,000. Additionally, direct replacement costs (excluding customer and opportunity costs) average 1.3 times salary.    

3. Third, the growing requirement for sales reps to have higher business, financial, technical and analytical acumen has significantly added to the training and ramp-up investments necessary to set new sales hires up to succeed.    

4. Lastly, companies are struggling to identify and hire for the distinctive attributes that produce a salesperson who can sell effectively for their company's unique sales strategy, organizational culture and brand promise. 

The implications are clear and were powerfully stated by a client during a recent executive coaching session. "Sales leaders who are unable to consistently attract, develop, engage and retain top talent will not hold onto their jobs for long. The success of sales leaders depends upon the success of their team."

If you are looking to scale or upgrade your sales team, here are three smart strategies:

#1 - Consistently Attract Top Sales Talent
For anyone who has grown a sales team, you know it's not easy to find and attract top sales talent. "A" players are probably making more in their current job than you can pay them in their first year with you. Additionally, Rolodexes do not always transfer from one company or industry to another. The good news when you are planning to hire is that, according to the latest Glassdoor research, 68% of sales professionals expect to look for a job in the next year. The top 5 reported factors that would cause them to leave are:

• Salary and compensation (72%)
• Career growth opportunities (65%)
• Company culture (48%)
• Relationship with manager (46%)
• Senior leadership (38%)

To set your team up to perform at their peak and to attract and hire top sales talent, make sure that you start with strategy, align your sales culture and then hire for what matters most by:

• Creating a clear, believable and implementable go-to-market sales strategy that aligns with the overall business strategy.

• Defining your ideal target client and the key situations where you should win most of the time.

• Crafting a compelling value proposition that clearly differentiates you from the competition, deeply resonates with your target clients and is supported by persuasive case studies.

• Building a high performance sales culture that clearly defines success and failure, provides meaningful rewards and recognition, holds people accountable, responds to market changes, shares information, is decisive, and reacts well to change.

• Using a proven behavior-based interviewing process to rate candidates.

• Being careful, lastly, not to oversell the position, your company or the opportunity...or to be oversold by the candidate. As one executive recruiter put it, "At its worst, you can have a cartoon-like situation where the hiring manager is overselling a job opportunity to fill an open slot and the sales candidate is overselling their motivation and capabilities to get a new job and, while they are both so focused on closing the deal, they miss that they are not a good fit for each other." 

Read the Final 2 Smart Strategies to Scale and Upgrade Your Sales Team

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Benchmark Your Sales Practices to See Where You Stand

Not all sales practices are created equally or applied consistently.   

Different approaches work for different sales strategies and different sales cultures. Regardless of your sales strategy or sales culture however, there are important and foundational sales practices that every sales force needs to get right in order to grow revenues, increase margins, decrease sales cycles, improve portfolio mix and increase deal size.  

First, we believe that every sales force needs a clear, compelling and believable sales strategy that aligns with the overall business strategy.  Our organizational alignment research shows that an unclear strategy slows growth, shrinks profits and disengages customers.  

Second, sales leaders must create an implementable sales plan that their team is willing to execute that makes sense for their unique sales culture.  Unrealistic plans are worthless. 

Third, qualified sales opportunities with target clients need to be consistently generated.  Weak leads waste everyone's precious time. 

Fourth, sales reps must be able to identify what matters most to their buyers at every level in the organization and directly link their solutions to them and their business.  Few clients can afford to invest in areas that are not directly related to increasing revenues, decreasing costs or increasing productivity.

Fifth, your sales team must be able to effectively communicate, present and reinforce your differentiated value proposition in a way that deeply resonates with their buyers.  The right solution with the wrong messaging is often not seen as the right solution when it matters most.

Lastly, sales teams must be able to negotiate mutually beneficial agreements.Do not let the last step in the buying process derail your sales and marketing efforts.


If you would like to see where you stand from a sales perspective, these free online health checks are for you:

1. Benchmark Your Overall Sales Performance: All 5 Areas (20 minutes)  
    
2. Benchmark Your Sales Strategy and Planning (5 minutes) 
    
3. Benchmark How You Generate & Present Sales Opportunities (5 minutes)  
    
4. Benchmark Your Executive and Solution Selling (5 minutes)  
    
5. Benchmark Your Sales Negotiations (5 minutes)  

How do you stack up?  See all Health Checks.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

6 Management Practices that Make the Difference Between Effective and Extraordinary

Superstars in the management arena are rare. But when they emerge, they have an enormous impact not only on their own teams but also on the departments and organizations that their protégés go on to lead.

They are able to build high performing organizations at the same time as they are able to develop the next generation of top talent. What is it they do to get high performance that the rest of us miss? That is what we set out to discover. After two decades in the field of management consulting and leadership development, here is what we have come to understand and appreciate. Great managers are self-confident and authentic; they are creative and willing to take risks; they are competitive but always act with integrity. These are their personal traits. What makes them truly remarkable, however, is that they are extremely successful at nurturing top talent along the way. The truly great managers follow these practices when it comes to attracting, selecting and grooming talent for high performance: Great managers hire only the best and the brightest, not necessarily the most qualified.  High performers are noted for their ability to learn, adjust and create innovative new solutions to problems. They consistently show flexibility when things go awry and have the intelligence and discipline to prioritize and focus on what really matters most. Great managers are able to consistently identify employees with unusual gifts and are willing to take a chance on putting them in positions of merit even if they lack the more "typical" experience and credentials.     Great managers modify the job to suit the special gifts of high performers.  Great managers feel free to change job descriptions and roles to squarely fit the specific talents and desires of their high performers. This goes counter to the conventional wisdom of never changing a company "for the people." But smart leaders and coaches know that their "A" players will contribute far more if given an assignment that takes advantage of their strengths than if forced to work within the constraints of what the job is "supposed" to be. By playing to strengths, great leaders accelerate performance and create loyal employee advocates willing to give more discretionary effort.     Great managers value the quality of talent rather than the stability of talent.  Great managers understand that high performers thrive best when working at a fast pace with other high performers in a way that provides new challenges in the areas that they love. They also understand that top talent often moves on to take advantage of outside promotions and opportunities. Great leaders don't try to impede the progress of their protégés. Instead, similar to college sport's coaches who must recruit new talent each year as their players graduate, great managers focus on what is best for their people (internally or externally) while constantly looking for fresh new talent. Read the Final 3 Management Practices that Make the Difference Between Effective and Extraordinary

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

20 Science-Backed Things Managers Do to Improve Employee Engagement

One of the best ways to measure management effectiveness is a manager's ability to engage their employees.   

Based upon surveying over 500,000 employees across over 5,000 companies each year, we know that engaged employees are 18% more productive, are 51% less likely to quit and create 12% higher customer satisfaction levels.

Yet, many leaders underappreciate the importance of creating a clear business strategy, an aligned organizational culture and smart talent strategy that drives higher employee engagement. This becomes even more important as managers and their employees are being asked to do more with less. 

According to McKinsey & Co, nearly 70% of senior executives are only "somewhat" or "not at all satisfied" with the performance of their companies' frontline managers. And a stunning 81% of frontline managers are not satisfied with their own performance.  

To ensure that your frontline managers are creating highly engaged employees, make sure that they consistently:

1. Make it easy for employees to share opinions openly without fear of reprisal.
2. Acknowledge when employees do a good job on a task or project.
3. Discuss career opportunities within the company.
4. Communicate what is expected and establish open and honest communication between employees and managers. 
5. Address performance issues effectively and fairly. 
6. Share important information clearly and quickly.
7. Explain the reasons behind decisions they make. 
8. Provide the support required for people to do their job well. 
9. Have the expertise and ability to help their team succeed. 
10. Are accessible and responsive to ideas, requests, and suggestions. 
11. Coach and mentor effectively. 
12. Concern themselves about the well-being of their team. 
13. Lead by example. 
14. Explain how future organizational plans affect them and their team. 
15. Manage disagreements professionally. 
16. Measure performance fairly. 
17. Recognize the importance of personal and family life. 
18. Treat everyone fairly. 
19. Care about people's development. 

Give constructive feedback about job performance. 

Read the Top10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Wishing you good times, good cheer, 

and a wonderful new year.

All of us at LSA Global want to thank you for your business, loyalty, 

and support in 2015. Get Aligned in 2016! 

Top 10 Blog Posts for 2015

Be Smart...Some Revenue Is 10x Better than Others. Revenue is revenue is revenue, right? Not really. Solution selling training programs find that some revenue is better than others because it holds more promise and security for the future. Here is the revenue you should aim for.   The Optimum Frequency for Employee Engagement Surveys to Get 5x Greater Results. Employee engagement training organizations like ours that measure employee engagement annually see stronger improvements to engagement than those that survey less frequently. Read about why.   Do Not Set Your New Managers Up to Fail - Give Them Time to Learn Before They Lead. When you promote a star individual contributor to management, recognize that many of the traits that fostered high performance in one role do not necessarily carry over to the next role. It is not uncommon to under-estimate and under-appreciate what it takes to successfully lead others.   Research Report on the Relationship Between Employee Engagement and Manager Effectiveness. For decades, organizational effectiveness experts have believed that managers have an enormous influence on employee engagement and retention.  While most of us would intuitively come to these conclusions, this research report offers compelling data and insights based upon surveying over half a million employees across more than 5,000 organizations every year.   Organizational Alignment: The Missing Performance Ingredient. Leaders are being asked to do more with less, faster - and they cannot afford to miss the mark.  Getting aligned means configuring the critical elements of your company to optimize short- and long-term performance. Based upon our proprietary alignment research, we know that misaligned strategy, culture and talent cause poor performance in the short-term and, in the long-term unsustainable  organizational health in terms of revenue, profits, customer satisfaction and retention, employee engagement, leadership effectiveness and business performance.   When It Is Smart to Measure Training Impact. Overall, we believe that corporate training should be undertaken only when it is relevant to the participants, their boss and the company as a whole.  We also believe that training measurement should be a critical ingredient of any training initiative undertaken to change behavior and improve performance.   How to Significantly Reduce the Cost of Training. If you want a quick way to decrease the cost of training, consider this... the majority of training does not quantifiably impact the strategic priorities of the company.  Lessen the bottom line "cost" of training by eliminating any training that does not provide measurable business value and impact.   Sales Presentation Tools to Convert Your Audience from Negative to Positive. Have you ever faced an audience that was predisposed to just the opposite of your proposal or viewpoint? It can be very uncomfortable.   Convincing people to do what they don't want to do can feel like an impossible challenge. But sales presentation training offers a few tools to disarm a negative audience and thoughtfully convert them to your way of thinking or at least to consider a more broad perspective.   Four Training Assessment Warning Signs to Avoid at All Costs. Too many well-intentioned companies undertake surveys without a solid and implementable plan to take action in a way that makes sense compared to all of the other priorities on their plate.  Too many employee engagement survey results and skill assessments languish on the shelf before meaningful action is taken. No wonder so many groan at the mere thought of taking another survey. This phenomenon even has a name at many companies - "Survey Fatigue." It does not mean that people are tired of taking surveys. It means that they are weary of taking surveys that do not matter.   The Value of Scenario-Based Training. Getting a pilot's license used to involve simply showing your flight instructor that you could follow the steps to get from A to B. If you mastered the individual tasks required to take off, maneuver through the flight pattern and land safely, you were OK'd for your solo and the ultimate test of competency. Now, however, flight schools have realized that better training involves understanding not just what to do but why you do it. This is the value of scenario-based training.  And corporate universities should pay attention.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

Season's greetings to you and yours! 

Thank you for your support this past year.  We are so grateful to be working with wonderful clients and partners who actively strive to create a competitive advantage through people. 

Please enjoy access to the top 10 articles downloaded in 2015 by clients like you to help align their culture and talent with their strategy.

Top 10 Whitepaper Downloads

1. 3x Alignment Research Findings. Strategy + Culture + Talent
   We launched a research initiative to understand what distinguishes the winners from the losers. What did we find? Highly aligned companies significantly outperform their peers and 7 unique factors matter most.
   
   
2. 5 Warning Signs that Your Managers Are Falling Behind Strategically Managers matter. Yet, too many high-growth companies mistakenly exclude their managers from the very strategic planning and implementation processes they need to excel as managers. If your managers are not clear about the strategic direction of the company, their ability to lead, set priorities and make trade-offs for themselves and their team is severely hampered.
    
3. Do You Have High Performing Managers? The 4 Management Metrics that Matter Most Despite rumors to the contrary and the recent buzz around holacracies and self-managed work teams at companies like Zappos, management and managers are still a major factor in the running of most organizations.
   
   
4. Performance Pressure: How Much Should a Leader Push? As leaders, we are expected to create the environment that produces the most from the people within our organizations. If we (or our culture) push too much or too little, we may not meet our goals. Read more about how to strike the right balance.
    
5. Top 5 Warning Signs that Your Performance Environment May Be In Trouble If you have direct reports, then you should sit up and take notice. Think about it. What percent of your success is dependent upon the success of others? If you are like most savvy leaders today, you will answer 70%+. Download this provocative whitepaper to learn what to watch out for in your organization.
   
   
6. Create a High Performance Sales Environment It is a sales leader's responsibility to create the circumstances that stimulate improved performance from their sales force. The key question is not "why" high performance but rather "how"? Are you hitting your sales targets? Read about the 6 steps that a sales leader must take to build a high performance sales environment.
    
7. The Truth About Sales Coaching and the Biggest Mistakes For much of the sales world, the notion that sales coaching is an essential ingredient in improving sales organizations is not up for debate. But most sales leaders - if they're honest - will tell you that they barely have time to manage their sales teams much less time to coach. With that reality as the backdrop, here's the question - What if you could cut your coaching time in half and get better results?
   
   
8. 5 Most Common Training Function Strategies and Key Mistakes to Avoid There are many different paths to creating a successful training function. In our experience, however, there are 5 main strategic approaches that differentiate one training function from another. One direction is not necessarily better than another. Rather, the key is to create a core focus that works in your specific environment and addresses your most pressing needs.  
    
9. New Employee Orientation: 7 Speed to Productivity Best Practices Is your speed to productivity for new hires where you want it to be? Most new employees take anywhere from 3 to 24 months to "get up to speed." This wide disparity provides wonderful opportunities for organizations who want to decrease "ramp time" and implement a more effective new hire on-boarding process.
   
10. Leading for Engagement: The Top 10 Most Powerful Ways Leaders Can Boost Employee Engagement Inspiring people to put forth their best effort is, perhaps, a leader's most vexing, and yet most rewarding, challenge. The good news is that employee engagement can be measured and improved. And if leaders take the right actions to improve employee engagement, business performance can improve dramatically.  Here are the ten actions with the greatest impact.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned

3 "Must Have" Steps to Convert Customer Loyalty into Customer Revenue

Most customer service leaders agree that satisfied customers create customer loyalty which, in turn, leads to higher revenue and greater profits. 

Loyal and faithful customers matter. Their devotion typically manifests itself in repeat business, higher margins and positive word of mouth.  In fact, according to:

• Bain and Company, a 5% increase in customer retention can improve profitability by 75%.
• Forrester Research, it is 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain current clients. 
• Nielsen, over 75% of consumers are most likely to buy a new product when referred by friends or family.
• The Direct Marketing Association, the average company loses between 10 and 30% of its customers annually.
• Gallup, a fully engaged customer represents an average 23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth compared with the average customer. 

We agree that strong customer loyalty can enable companies to significantly out-perform their competition, but only if the necessary strategies are in place to turn customer satisfaction into revenue-generating action. These strategies are the critical link between a customer's feelings and whether or not they act upon those feelings. 

Customers may love you. They may intend to invest in your products and services and talk about them with others...but do they actually translate intentions into real purchases, referrals and testimonials? 

To gain the most from fulfilling your brand promise, you need to do whatever it takes to make it easy for your best customers to buy and recommend you. Our customer loyalty experts tell us that there are three simple steps to converting customer loyalty into customer action...all possible, all under your control, and often necessary to realize actual revenue growth.

The bottom line - when customers believe in your brand promise, they give more.

Read the 3 "Must Have"Steps to Convert Customer Loyalty into Customer Revenue

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned