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Ask yourself at the end of every single day, Did I show my employees that I cared about them?"

The Innovative Workplace

HR Insights from the world of sales and marketing

Applying successful marketing and sales strategies to employee relationships

By Don Phin

Over the years I've been able to make a number of strategic contributions to the human resource field as the result of asking a simple question: "How do sales and marketing strategies, techniques, and tools apply to managing people?" An incredible amount of time, energy, and research has gone into solving the sales and marketing question. It is estimated that more than half of all training dollars go to sales and marketing training, with the other half going to all other disciplines in business. There is easily 10 times the volume of sales and marketing literature that there is on human resource strategies. Let me share with you a few of the insights I've gathered over the years:

1. Cut and paste. Perhaps the most powerful insight is simply this: Take any sales or marketing book, cross out the words "customer" or "client" and substitute the word "employee"… and you'll learn a heck of a lot. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming reminds us: It's very hard to lead change unless we look outside of the current paradigm for answers.

2. Repeat it over and over again. You can't expect a message to stick the first time. We are all bombarded with information day after day. It is estimated that we receive thousands of marketing messages per day. These messages flood both our conscious and subconscious minds. If a company doesn't provide its marketing messages, then as Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote years ago, that company has lost The Battle for Your Mind. If I walked into your company, would I see your sales and marketing messages to your employees? Employee testimonials? Billboards? Would I know your story simply by walking into the place? Remember that the worker's environment is always communicating. It is never not communicating. My question is what work experience, culture, or messages are you marketing to your employees?

3. Make it concrete. People have a hard time grasping concepts in the abstract. For most employees, there is nothing more abstract than finance. Take a look at how they manage their personal finances and you'll understand exactly what I mean. When a company executive talks about profit in millions of dollars, it could easily go right over an employee's head. In the book Made to Stick, the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, talk about making things concrete.

For example, if we want to increase our productivity by 10%, that means we'll have to build 150 more new homes this year. That means we'll have to hire an additional 300 employees to do so. That means we'll have to lease 30 new trucks to do so. That means we'll have to do so in an economy where new home sales have been stagnant for the last five years. When you make things concrete, people will remember them and think about how they can do something about them. Again, it's a lot easier when you say, "Each of you will have to add two more sales per day" as opposed to, "We have to improve our in-store sales margin by 5%."

4. Consider the cost, ease, and impact formula. This is one of the most powerful formulas in marketing. It's used by companies to test different approaches to find out which one is the most profitable. For example, I may be trying to decide if I want to do a direct mail approach or spend money on search engine optimization. I can decide to test with the same amount of cost, say $5,000 each. I can measure the ease of that effort depending on whether I have to do it myself or if I can outsource it. Then I can measure the results or impact to then determine which approach is most cost-effective. When marketing and sales executives simply assume what approach works best, they waste a ton of dollars in the process. This means that HR needs to use this formula when testing different hiring approaches, performance management techniques, retention incentives, and overall compensation and rewards. Not availing ourselves of this formula guarantees that HR will waste money.

In today's accelerating change environment, we have to test and fail faster than the competition, not just in our marketing and sales experiences, but in our HR ones as well. Send me an e-mail to don@hrthatworks.com and I will send you the Retention Possibilities Spreadsheet from HR That Works, which will show how this formula applies to dozens of potential strategies.

5. Use relationship-building techniques. You can't sell anything to anyone unless they think you care about them. The second they think you don't care about them is the second they decide they won't buy from you. In the same way, the second your employees don't think you care about them is the second they decide they won't give their fullest effort. We can't simply assume people know we care about them because that's our self-talk. We have to show them we care. The Arbinger Institute's excellent book,  Leadership and Self-Deception, drives home the point that we often deceive ourselves as leaders when we think that we show people we care. Typically when you run 75 mph for your life, like many people are doing today, that's very difficult to do. Ask yourself at the end of every single day, "Did I show my employees that I cared about them?" And by the way, have you shown yourself that you care about you, too?

6. Use mixed media. Some people respond better to messages when they see them, read them, hear them, or feel them. We're taught to use all modalities in sales and marketing communications, and there's no reason not to do so in management as well. This means we continually market and sell to our employees on our Web site, in articles we get published, in our advertisements, on our social media pages, on our blog, our company newsletter, weekly meetings, one-to-one conversations and so on. I've yet to see a single employee complain that the boss or company communicates too much.

7. Remember the value of high touch. It improves the quality of the relationship. Thank-you notes, simply being present for five minutes, remembering the names of loved ones and any challenges or excitement they may be experiencing is high-touch. As John Naisbitt wrote years ago in Megatrends, in our fast-moving environment we're going so high-tech that we're losing touch. The high-touch manager is guaranteed to build a high-results team.

8. Have a good referral system. This is one of the basics of good sales and marketing. How good is your employee referral system? Is there enough "juice" in it for employees to get past the fear of making a poor referral? I would encourage you to give them a script to follow as well as a one-page hot sheet that they can hand out about the opportunity. Then make sure to give a real referral bonus (at least $500) spread out over a year with certain benchmarks attached (bonus on date of hire, after 90 days, six months, and one year, for example).

9. Think in terms of the lifetime value of the client. Or for our purposes, the employee. For example, let's assume a CSR is paid $60,000 plus benefits and then nets you $90,000 per year. Let's further assume that the average retention rate is five years. Those facts say that the lifetime value of that employee is in excess of $100,000. This should help you better understand the value of making proper hiring decisions and retention efforts.

10. Don't guess about their concerns; survey them. I am a big believer in surveying our HR That Works Partners and Members. We learn something new every time we do—what we are doing well and what we can do better. The same applies to your employees. Survey them, do focus groups, and don't just guess at their concerns. In his Purple Cow workshops for agencies, Scott Addis points out to the attendees that the most important question to ask is if they would refer you to another company.

11. Make if fun! Insurance, like HR, can be so boring! What marketing techniques have other professionals used that aren't campy but still managed to put a smile on your face? Okay, maybe a little campy. Do you send your prospects and clients "lumpy" mail, for example? Do you have contests and prizes, and great parties? Same goes for managing employees. Theme days, contests, silly awards, etc. If you missed my offer last time, I will also send you a copy of my How to Create a Fun Workplace checklist.

I could go on with another 20 examples drawn from the field of sales and marketing. Many of the HR trainings, strategies, and tools we've developed on HR That Works include these insights. Your agency will prosper when you use them.

The author

Don Phin is president of the Employer Advisors Network, Inc., and the author of the "HR That Works" series of compliance and management products. He can be contacted at www.donphin.com or at  www.hrthatworks.com.

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