Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

As we gear up for an intensive recruitment effort to find our new General Manager for Initiating, Opening & Sustaining Client Relationships (which others might call a GM for Sales and Marketing) it was timely to see this “8 ways to build customer loyalty” article posted on Inc.

Maintaining a high retention rate is critical to our business, and something we’ve done reasonably well over the past 12 years – but there’s always room for improvement (it’s not 100%).

These 8 pointers will be another useful reference in the months ahead…

Let’s get one thing out-of-the-way straight away, for those who are easily distracted – yes, it is an unfortunate choice of acronym.  Back in 1988, when the book was written, political debate was not as lightweight and sound-bite-sized as at present.

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I can’t recall who it was who first suggested I read the book, but it was some time ago and (since that time) I have read the book several times.

The Book	What we thought
“Spin Selling” by Neil Rackham	It’s certainly worth it, for us, given the nature of our business

I’ve posted separately about why we read, and review, so many books (and about the links above)… .

With this book in particular, I’d strongly recommend you pick up a copy in order to gain the value – what follows is my attempt to just hit the highlights.

The book describes the SPIN technique, which evolved based on some fairly extensive studies of sales effectiveness completed by the author during the time he was founding the Huthwaite business.

Here’s a brief 5-minute video in which Neil outlines what SPIN selling is all about.

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Back around November 2009 read an article by Roger Martin promoting his new book, and posted about it here.

The book arrived and I read it some time ago, but some developments more recently prompted me to pick it up again.  Given the reliance our company has on product innovation, it was worth reading (even a 2nd time).

The Book	What we thought
“The Design of Business – Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage” by Roger Martin	Not a large book, but packs a punch

I’ve posted separately about why we read, and review, so many books (and about the links above)…

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Frequent readers to this blog will have noted an organogram included in a post made back in January that identified the organisation structure and responsibilities that existed at the start of the year.

Since that time, our business has been evolving fairly rapidly – with a fair number of changes already completed (and a number still to go) in order to ensure that we really can deliver on our primary core value of “Customers First!”.

When I have a bit more time, I will post in more detail about some of the other developments that have been completed, or are still in progress – in this post I just wanted to ensure you were aware that last Monday (22nd March) we were delighted to have someone start with us as our new General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering the Software our Customers Want.

The title is a bit of a mouthful, so he will shorten it in most cases – but he will certainly be specifically focused on delighting our growing customer base with the software we develop.

I will let him introduce himself in his own time, so stay tuned for more …

On Friday last week (5th March) at Beer O’clock, we brainstormed about what it means (to us) to share the primary value of “Customers First”.

We will continue this process in subsequent weeks with the aim of identifying the specifics of what each core value means to us, and how we (and others) can hold ourselves accountable.

The following is a shortened list of some of the points made during the brainstorming session (a fuller list is here as a restricted post).

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Beginning in early March, I have been progressively posting about each of our core values.

A.  Why focus on Values?

To provide context – i.e. to provide the reason why we do what we do.

Increasingly in future, we will be referring back to these core values to provide us a grounding as our business grows – they will define the basis for our culture (the way we do things around here).

It is through reference to these values that we will be able to rapidly grow our number of clients with only a relatively small growth in the size of our team.

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Here’s another back-dated post, with a date chosen shortly after Joel’s post to which it refers.  I’ve done this to ensure that these comments are read in context.

My apologies to those for whom this practice offends – as noted before, I believe ICT is an enabler, not an ends in itself (or, to put it another way, I am not interested in form without substance).

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1)     Introduction to Joel’s Post

Back on November 1st, Joel Spolsky made a post for Inc magazine entitled “Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?”.

One of the guys in the office found this, and it stimulated a bit of discussion internally about where our bus is headed (on a restricted post).  This was good, as we had commenced our Autopsy 2 process. read more »