News Post: Gas prices drive workers - and bosses - to telecommute

Source: CNN.com
POSTED: 1:11 p.m. EDT, June 7, 2007

Article URL: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/07/gas.prices.telework/index.html

Gas prices drive workers - and bosses - to telecommute
By Jonathan Mandell | CNN

Story Highlights

• Rising gas prices pushing workers, bosses to explore telecommuting
• Average price hit record high of $3.18 in May, according to Lundberg Survey
• Virginia nonprofit may get $35,000 incentive for forcing workers to telework

(CNN) -- Irritated by the highest gas prices in U.S. history, John Thorner has a message for his 70 employees: Stay home.

Thorner is requiring all staff at the National Recreation and Park Association to avoid commuting at least one day a week -- either by working four long days and taking the fifth one off, or by working from home on the fifth day.

"The 70 people in our office drive an average of 30 miles a day. We did the math and figured that by having the employees not commute one day a week, we would be saving 100 gallons a week," says Thorner, executive director of the nonprofit, which is based in the suburbs of Washington.

"This is not a huge amount of gasoline, but it could serve as a model for other operations."

When the average price of gasoline in the United States hit $3.18 in May, it was the highest price ever recorded, even when adjusted for inflation, according to the Lundberg Survey of thousands of service stations across the nation.

Those record prices helped push more than a few employees to find alternative ways of working, according to Rose Stanley of WorldAtWork, an association for human resource professionals based in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Stanley knows about this firsthand. Having arranged to work at home one day a week for the past year, she budgeted $50 for commuting the other four days. "But it was costing me $75 a week."

So six weeks ago, she says, she asked if she could work at home a second day each week. "I'm back down to within my budget." (Read more about people who work at home)

Employers, too, are talking more about telecommuting, says Jennifer Pickett of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

"Just in the past week or so, we've heard from employers who specifically mentioned gas prices as a reason for their considering a telework program to offset the cost of commuting for their employees," says Pickett, whose department runs Telework!VA, a program that provides incentives for businesses in the state to encourage their employees to work at home.

While there's no data available on whether teleworking has increased as a result of rising gas prices, the anecdotal evidence is accumulating:

"I've been having people calling me asking, 'How do I get my boss to let me work at home? I can't afford to drive to work anymore,' " says Chuck Wilsker, president of The Telework Coalition, an advocacy organization.

"We're seeing a dramatic increase in the use of the services we offer just in the past 30 days, after the gas prices reached $3," says Michael Halicki of the Clean Air Campaign of Georgia, which provides incentives to individuals to stop commuting alone in their cars. "I can't document that there's been an increase in teleworking, but we have seen a definite increase in interest in it by employers."

"Rising gas prices are definitely making people at least talk more about working at home," agrees Erik Nelson of Better World Club, which bills itself as an environmentally friendly auto club. (Learn how to put together a telecommuting resume)

Even if few employers are likely to mimic Thorner and force their workers to stay home, the nonprofit director is unapologetic: "It's an economic issue for our employees. It's also an environmental one for us as an organization. Conservation is part of our mission."

Much to his surprise, it turns out to be an economic issue for his organization as well. After an article about his plan was published in The Washington Post, Thorner learned that his organization may be eligible for financial incentives for its model behavior.

"When gas prices go up, it makes people more conscious of how expensive it is to commute," says Lonnie Golden, a labor economist at Penn State Abington who researches flexible work arrangements. "And more employers might consider accommodating those employees who wish to reduce commuting time. (See Dilbert's telecommuting adventure)

"It's encouraging to think that something good will come out of rising gas prices."

News Post: Virtual office is what you make it

Source: Boston Globe (www.boston.com)

Article URL: http://www.boston.com/jobs/news/articles/2006/10/01/virtual_office_is_what_you_make_it/?page=1

Virtual office is what you make it
By Penelope Trunk  |  October 1, 2006

While everyone was watching for the telecommuting trend to explode, something else exploded right next to it: The virtual company. The business with no office to telecommute from.

These companies give new opportunities to entrepreneurs to get started with no money down. But a virtual business also gives people the opportunity to create the personal life they want.

"The future is likely to be the age of virtual businesses," writes Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends. "Forget three guys in a garage -- that was your father's startup. Today it's three people spread out across the country or even across continents, each in their home offices or back porches with laptops, mobile phones, and WiFi."

Pamela Slim, who blogs at Escape From Cubicle Nation, says a perfect storm of factors is converging to make virtual businesses more popular, and easier to start:

1. Workers will quit regular jobs to get control over their time. Both men and women are increasingly willing to leave the work force to create personal time and family time, according to Jacqueline Luffman, a labor analyst for the Canadian government. In light of that, a virtual office ends up seeming like a compromise rather than an extreme solution.
   
2. Technology levels the playing field. It has become so cheap and easy to use that someone who doesn't have a lot of resources can create a Web presence that looks established and professional.
   
3. Retail businesses can be virtual. Of course, there's always eBay. But you can also set up a shop with Amazon, where you create a storefront and Amazon handles all inventory and fulfillment issues -- and then sends you a check for the sales you make. Or you can work with a slew of smaller online wholesalers the same way.
   
4. The rise of telecommuting. Established companies such as Sun Microsystems realize that telecommuters are happy, appreciative, and cost-effective, so they encourage people to telecommute. Smart companies provide essential training and support so workers are productive at home from the start. The side effect is that location-based companies are training workers on how to set up their own virtual companies.

This trend means that it's easier for you to have a work life that you
can control -- whether you're working at your own virtual company or at someone else's. The benefits are flexibility, efficiency, and little
overhead. The drawback is that time management is difficult, and not
everyone adapts.

Dennis Yang works at Techdirt, a virtual company that provides daily news and analysis to corporate clients. While Yang does not sit with co-workers, he is never lonely. He typically has about seven conversations going on at any one time on his computer screen, and he can work anywhere he wants -- for example, his grandmother's living room. Continued...

The Virtual Workforce is Coming.

Get ready for the ride of your life.  The virtual workforce is coming on the tail of virtualization, and the virtual world is going to forever revolutionize the way we work, play and socialize. 

In the next 3-5 years we are going to see the first waves of virtual reality take form in the shape of real-time 3d animation - creating all kinds of change in the way we interact with the web.  The rise of the virtual workforce throughout the world and specifically within India is only the beginning.  Companies are going to be able to better manage and leverage the world's populations to get better services and products to market faster.  Web 3.0 will unify communications and allow us to socialize the way we do today in an office environment.

Sites such as Second Life are introducing a social world where people interact with one another in 3D world.  You can play, go shopping visit with friends from around the world.  In less than a year, Second Life went from 600,000 users to over 6 million and it is still growing.  It is just beginning to touch the business world.  In the April issue of Business Week 04-16-07 it was publsihed, In the future, the internet is almost certain to look more realistic, interactive and social – A lot like a virtual world!

Companies such as HP, Sun, Cisco, IBM, Circuit City and others are investing in having a presence in second life.  They are holding meetings and selling products to visitors in ways we never dreamed possible.  Other companies such as Kaneva are creating new virtual worlds with different capabilities.   

Like the firts days of AOL's “You’ve got Mail” or even more similar to Instant Messaging, these trends start with a social network, and then infiltrate into the business world rapidly.  The challenge for virtual collaboration is the security of an open market - not secure enough for most corporations, like instant messenger, it eventually will be brought “in house.”

Sun Microsystems, a technology pioneer, is doing just that.  They have created an internal virtual world for their employees to use in business meetings, social gatherings, thinking/branstorming sessions, and unified communications to name a few.    This is a wave that is going to revolutionize business over the web.  It is going to open up new freedoms and more importantly, new business opportunities the same way innovations like the iPod has created whole entire new markets where many can and will get rich.

ZDNET in December of 06 has said  – Virtual worlds like second life will create  “Zero Distance between Thinkers and Technology”
 
As I said in the beginning – get ready for the ride of your life, or is that the ride of your second life.

Virtualizing the Workspace Part4

The final, and most difficult step to virtualizing your workspace:

    4. Creating a trust relationship between management and employees
    3. Defining the policies that outline the boundaries
    2. Building the infrastructure to support the new work environment
    1. Making the decision

When we first decided to go virtual, we knew people might take advantage – a grave concern for one of my managers.   Of course there are always people who will take advantage, and for us, we had just one.  Staying true to my vision, I decided to not let an individual ruin a great opportunity for many and stuck to my strategy. Of course, that person is no longer with us, but the company went virtual with little complications and productivity is now at an all time high.   

We found there was a need to adjust policies for telecommuting, performance reporting and project management.  Converting to a virtual work environment mandated that we communicate with our teams in new ways, forcing absolute requirements for work schedules and availability during business hours.  Virtual is not about more time off; it is about flexibility to work from anywhere (including the home.)

I suggest the way to build a sustainable virtual working environment is to start slowly. Let people transition at their own pace, allowing them time to make personal adjustments along the way.  The good people will adapt quickly, while others may need more coaxing and time to get comfortable working in a virtual environment.

Case in hand – one of our senior managers had difficulty making the transition because he needed to "physically" see people to know he was managing effectively.  Initially, he worked from the office every day and was in constant contact with his teams.  This gave him structure and peace of mind that work was being completed.  It wasn’t until a few months after the company was settled into the new work style, that he started "to get virtual" himself.  Now, less than a year later, the entire company is virtual.  In fact, one of my other managing directors just did a three week working vacation as he accompanied an American Armed Forces Entertainment tour across the Caribbean and Central America.

The key to overcoming this final obstacle is to trust that the people you hire are responsible. More importantly, demonstrate that you trust them.  Set the guidelines, and then build the process slowly - a little at a time - as it becomes comfortable and commonplace.  Going virtual all at once is not a good strategy - it requires gradual steps. When executed properly, it will pay off in spades.

Personally speaking, this is the best thing my company ever did.  Ask anyone who works for me. We are far more productive then when we were working together in a physical office space.  Moral is higher, creativity is up, and overall, we work better as a team while operating for much less.

Go Virtual – it is a win/win for all!

Virtualizing the Workspace Part3

3. Defining the policies that outline the boundaries.

Interesting that very little actually exists on defining the policies for a virtual workforce. Most companies just try something and adjust until it seems to be right. When we first started  virtualizing our company, we allowed for one work day a week to be performed from home. Each person had to have a broadband connection, telephone and a PC. To alleviate some of the technological strain, we gave some of our employees without home computers old PC’s.

It seemed to work pretty well, but we ran into a few snags such as one-off IT issues, connectivity problems with personal firewalls, unique configurations of different ISP providers and just plain user error - all of which required cumbersome troubleshooting over the phone rather than the convenience of direct face-to-face IT support as you would commonly have in an office environment. After working out these issues, we quickly moved to a two day-per-week work from home model that ultimately yielded some non-technical challenges. We wanted to stagger the at home virtual time and asked employees to define their workdays. Well as you might expect, everyone wanted Monday’s and Friday’s off, and what started out as a virtual work model quickly turned into a 4 day weekend. We had to set some ground rules quickly by installing some simple policies that included working in the office at least one Monday or Friday each work week.  Eventually it all worked out and we moved to the next and final step, a full-time virtual workplace at home, utilizing the office for one-off client meetings and a weekly face-to-face update.

Ultimately, productivity rose and moral was at an all time high. So, what made it work?

1st - Technology is critical. Don’t give people old PC’s. Either utilize state-of-the-art equipment or virtualize your infrastructure as discussed in Part 1. The technology is critical, old technology runs like old technology - Slow and riddled with problems! You need the best and performance is critical.

2nd - High Quality Telephony. Invest in business grade VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Make sure you have the right tools as we mentioned in Part 2. For instance, make sure your telephony can forward to a cell phone if and when a person is away from their desk (they can always reject the call and have it go to voicemail.) This is not a privacy invasion issue, but more a simple part of conducting business virtually. The first rule of thumb is no matter where any of your employees maybe, they need to be in constant contact. Otherwise synergy breaks down and time and opportunity will be lost due to latent communications.

3rd - Utilize Instant Messenger.  Everyone must have IM access and log in each morning. You must define the parameters where you can reach anyone within 30 minutes if necessary. The IM should be set to idle when you’re away from the computer and be active when you are there. The option to never go idle should be set to off!

4th - Define Business Work Hours.  This seems simple, but the hours in which you conduct business remain the same. Employees must be available for work related issues during business hours. It does not mean that is all they do during that time. When working from home, you lose some level of socialization. There are times when you need to take a break and/or see someone for personal or official business reasons. This is important for moral. But, conversely, people emotionally remain accountable and will make up for hours lost or give more than a full work week to keep the at-home working model intact. From our perspective, going virtual has raised productivity and we get more from our employees even if people aren’t at their desks for every single second from 9am-6pm.

5th - Maintain Synergy through Multiple Meetings.

Mandatory Company Meetings:  We have three meetings a week. A morning meeting on Mondays and Fridays at 9:00am which are used for level setting the week and determining both short and long term objectives, as well as, each Wednesday from 10am to noon for a face-to-face meeting in our office. This is critical to keeping the team functioning. Everyone has the need to socialize, but the ability to collaborate in person cannot be duplicated through any technology solution shy of holograms and virtual reality software unavailable for decades to come. During these meetings, we cover all open projects and assign responsibilities and action items. After which we often go out to lunch together to satiate our
socialization needs.

Tactical Meetings (aka, one-off meetings that are held to complete billable initiatives):  We have these types of meetings each week when collaborative brainstorming and face-to-face agreement is required. There is a level of productivity and creativity that social collaboration generates which cannot be reproduced in any other way. We have tried and do utilize shared collaboration tools and team building sites (such as SharePoint), and have come to understand that a hybrid of both virtual and physical approaches work best - there has to be a give and take between working via the web and in person. There are a lot of people out there who may disagree and believe you can work entirely over the web, but I know differently through actual practice and not just theory alone.

These are just some of the policies and procedures we have implemented. There are other policies that have stemmed from human resource issues such as personal time off, sick leave, company morale, customer visits, etc. which we can discuss in more detail if you email me.

Overall the policies we created to run virtually are as much part of the process as the technology. People have to know what the boundaries are, and if you don’t define them properly, there will “unfortunately” be those who take advantage of this unique way of working. In the end, poorly planned policies for working virtually will lead to failure.

I hope this insight helps your business thrive both physically and virtually. The benefits are immense, you just need to make the first step and be open-minded to a new way of working.

Virtualizing the Workspace Part2

Continuing on with the second of four steps to virtualizing your workspace:

1. Making the decision
2. Building the infrastructure to support the new work environment
3. Defining the policies that outline the boundaries
4. Creating a trust relationship between management and employees

2. Building the technology infrastructure

Here is where technology enables virtualization. Initially setting up a workspace with access to technology is paramount. Many businesses are locked into fixed technology infrastructures that don’t allow for much latitude. To protect the infrastructure from intruders, managers have rigid centrally located technology in a standard office environment buffered by policies that allow no flexibility in office etiquette. Others have moved toward a laptop solution – the primary the reason why laptops have become so popular – but opening their infrastructures to severe security risks. When we introduce portable computing into the workplace, we introduce huge security caveats (especially for those involved in regulated industry.) Equally as important is IP protection. Security of technology has become such a big issue that entire multi-billion dollar companies have been formed to solve the issue. Keep in mind, neither of these solutions are virtualization.

To virtualize a workspace, the processing technology needs to be centralized and the access technology must be portable. Today this is accomplished through a few methods. First the workstation. The PC has become one of the biggest successes in history to enable the worker. At the same time it has become one of the biggest lockdowns to flexibility. The PC takes on a personality of its own - it takes resources to make it work, it becomes a repository of information that is both vulnerable and often not backed up – even though it is a powerful devise that opens its user to a world of information and commerce. How can we live without it? Well you don’t, but what you can do is take the vulnerability and inflexibility out of the PC. Technologies today allow you to separate the processing compnents from the user interface via internet streaming technologies. This allows for ultimate security with the same, if not more flexibility of the standard PC. To do this, you must adopt 21st century technologies such as the Backoffice BladePC or virtualized PC infrastructures. The user accesses information via what is called a thin client that can simultaneously sit on a desk both at your work and home offices. All files, software and services are IDENTICALLY available in both locations even at the same time. For the laptop user, they can emulate the thin client and access the infrastructure from any secure network connection.

Second is the telephony infrastructure. With technology such as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP), excluding non-business models such as Vonage, the person can access the same telephony capabilities from any location. This adds a huge advantage to current models.

Example: Jet Blue Airlines has a virtualized infrastructure for reservations and customer support. Instead of traditional call center employees centrally located, Jet Blue has hired retired persons that reside across the country. These people are usually very qualified and happy to work. Users access the technology infrastructure through the web and utilize a VOIP business phone to perform customer service and reservation duties. The combined use of PC technology and VOIP has made the cost-saving efficiencies completely invisible to the customer while the success and flexibility is clearly evident to the company’s bottom line and stock holders.

Small business can also take advantage here because the technology itself is relatively inexpensive and is easily customized.  Lawyers, Doctors, Insurance providers, and even financial service companies can all benefit from these technological advancements. Additionally, companies such as Virt2go (www.virt2go.com) have arisen to help small business setup and manage such infrastructures.  For more on virtualizing the workspace (aka, front office), read the following whitepaper "Executive Viewpoints - Virtualizing of PC Computing."

Virtualizing the Workspace Part1

Continuing on with my mantra of virtualizing the Workspace, Workplace and Workforce, this post will specifically focus on the first stage: Workspace Virtualization. When virtualizing your business, there is no specific point from which you must start, although it will be hard to virtualize a workforce without a strategy for the other two first.

Before doing so, I wanted to respond to some comments about virtualization from a technical point of view. First off, using virtualization software on a computer server or a piece of hardware is a form of virtualization - one that is specific to technology. When looking at Virtualization from a business perspective, the potential is boundless. Virtualization solves many issues outside of technology such as business flexibility, cost savings, and most importantly, the ability to leverage a world of resources never before available.

With that said, I should first define the workspace. Also called the Front Office, a workspace is where a person accomplishes whatever task their employment requires. This could include an office or a cube, an automobile or combination of office sites. It includes the home office and even a traveling laptop while you work from a coffee shop or airline terminal. The 21st century has allowed and even encouraged more flexibility in the way people interact with their work environment. Technology has provided the largest part of this ability, but we must not forget about the ingenuity of forward thinking corporations that have created the policies and processes to make this work environment a reality.

There are four easy steps to virtualizing a workspace:

1. Making the decision
2. Building the infrastructure to support the new work environment
3. Defining the policies that outline the boundaries
4. Creating a trust relationship between management and employees

Point #4 is an area that many companies struggle with based on traditional values and policies. But it is also one of the areas with the biggest payback. Points #1 and #4 are very much related. I’ll detail out the first step here, saving the others for my next few posts.

1. Making the decision to virtualize:

This sounds easy, but in practice is not. I stumbled onto a lot of unforeseen challenges in virtualizing my own companies. Often in decision making of this criteria, there are two key areas of resistance. A) The reluctance to change and B) the perceived loss of control.

For example: In a consulting engagement I did to help a client virtualize their workplace, create a telecommuting model and home office program, I fell upon some resistance from one of the senior managers who was dead set against virtualizing. He could not fathom how he would manage people remotely, check up on progress of his employees (if in fact they were truly working), or how he would personally work from home and remain in control to deliver on his objectives. Basically hidden behind his objections was the concern that the reward was not great enough for the level of risk. Loss of control was a huge factor. Security was used as an obstacle. After some convincing and CEO encouragement, he succumbed to the project. After a couple of months working through the bugs in the process, he grew to like it and greatly appreciated the increase in employee moral and productivity. The point here is that someone has to drive the initiative and confront the traditional concerns of becoming virtual head on. Feel free to email me for tips on handling these types of objections.

Next post will focus in on step 2.

Virtualization: Setting Up the Approach

The concept of virtualization is big as I stated in my last blog. Since then I have been trying to narrow the concept down so that I can define and direct readers in a way that they can leverage or even exploit it for their
own benefit.

Since there are so many different variations, I would like to start with one that is near to our business model. But before we discuss, I'd like to lay the foundatuion down for the right approach. My company went virtual a couple of years ago, and since then, we have seen a rise in productivity, higher moral and lowering in office costs and most important fuel costs. I believe I speak for all of the people that work with me when I say this has been a huge success.

What Virtualization May Mean to You

Although virtualization also applies to the gaming world, as in 2ndlife and other immersive leisure activities, I intend to only focus on the business aspects of virtualization, specifically the use of virtualization to free up time, money and productivity.   

Virtualization for large corporations will mean better utilization of resources, telecommuting and possibly off shoring of resources. An interesting story about Nortel employees avoiding the office showed up in a local Atlanta suburban paper the other day, read the article here: Nortel Workers Avoid the Office, by Bob Pepalis.

Small to medium businesses may believe they can’t take advantage of virtualization, but that is totally false. Small businesses can get as much benefit, and possibly more, from finding virtualization approaches that streamline their processes - freeing up time and budget constraints. The technology is more affordable than ever, making it infinitely possible and available to everyone. You just need to find the right virtualization strategy and go for it.

I have defined the business process into three stages.

1. Virtual Workspace
2. Virtual Workplace
3. Virtual Workforce

These three steps will help you create an efficient virtual office environment. When implemented, virtualization will help in solving problems such as support, licensing, time management, moral, compliance, customer satisfaction just to name a few. In the next three blogs we will investigate each solution and how you can build a winning approach with the simplest of ease.   

Looking forward to sharing ideas to move you forward - Talk with you soon.

Virtualizaiton: The Next Big Thing to Change the Way You Live, Work and Compete

I am reading a book about how the world has become flat in the 21st century. What a concept.  According to the author, the world is growing smaller every day and will continue as long as we keep improving technology and its reach to every corner of the globe. I recommend you give it a read, “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman.

Upon the first page, I immediately saw this as part of the new movement of virtualization, a topic I have been focusing most of my work on over the last year. Some see the above as a threat, others as an opportunity - and those who see opportunity are sure to prosper greatly.

So, how do I define Virtualization?

Virtualization is the integration of resources into cyberspace. And if that doesn’t make sense, it’s the globalization of technology itself. As long as you have an internet connection, it is now possible to be anywhere in the world and work the same way you do from your office. Virtualization technology makes it possible for people to access data, information, or a host of other services and features world wide. Yes, I am talking about working from the beach. I am talking about the next generation of the web. I am talking about outsourcing, and I am talking about living a virtual life in cyberspace - just look at sites like Second Life. All of which are creating a new world that is growing at record speed.

We all know there is a con to every pro. Technology has opened up lucrative world markets never before accessible to thousands of skilled people that can provide the same quality work for less. A whole new world of competition has grown from outsourcing and many can feel it on the home front – people are losing their jobs to someone overseas.

For us who call USA home - the pro and con are the same. Through technology, we can work markets in ways we’ve never dreamed. It might be as simple as working from home with the same capabilities as in an old fashion office, but without the commute, frustrations or stress. Or, it could be as complex as global sales offices utilizing the same data center and IT department located far from the reach of expensive city limits. 

It also opens up a way to sell our own skills and innovations to others located around the globe. For example:

In the book "The World is Flat", the author describes how “fast food” restaurants are evaluating the use of call centers located “anywhere” to take drive-thru window orders. Yes, you may not be speaking to the restaurant when you’re sitting in your car ordering your next hamburger. They simply capture your data and send the order to the cooks as you drive around. They are finding this improves efficiency, orders are more often accurate, and customer satisfaction is up, all while driving down the bottom line.

WOW! Now that is the power of Virtualization.

As I spend more time discussing this topic, it is important to remember that this is going to be a two way street - one we need to start traveling. I plan to delve deeper into the world of virtualization, research all of its applications and document how it will reshape the way we work, compete and live our lives both professionally and personally. In fact, I am working virtually to write this blog as I and my companies have been working for the past few years. It is a wonderful way to live and work…

It is the next “BIG” thing.

Let’s start discussing how we can all go virtual.

Convergence Selling: Competing Part4 - Loss Recovery

As promised, the last and final part of a sound competitive strategy is Loss Recovery. At first glance you might think I am talking about a defensive loss strategy. Usually utilized in that manner, a good loss recovery plan needs to become part of your pre-emptive winning strategy.

I break down loss recovery into three parts. First, and most important, is when you win a deal. What are you going to do to prevent a competitor from executing a loss recovery plan? Have you solidified your position with the buyer, their peers or their management? All too often we take a deal and run home to spend the check only to find out a competitor has used a political attack, price attack or fear attack to dislodge the order.

When you win an order, the best way to prevent a dislodge is to get the service and/or product implemented as fast as possible. Aside from that, motivate your buyer to promote and communicate their decision to as many coworkers throughout the company. Reversing a decision that has been made public is not good for anyone’s career. The most powerful, but hardest strategy to execute is to sit with your new customer and inform him what competitors may do once they learn of his/her decision. Make sure you get this right! When properly executed, your customer will be less apt to second guess and look to other offers. This is similar to the “pre-emptive” trap discussed in part three of this series, Neutralizing and Trapping Your Competitor.

Second part of loss recovery is when YOU lose the deal. What do you do? How do you engage your management team? What can you do to dislodge the opportunity? Just like your competitor, you have little to lose and potentially a lot to gain by disrupting the deal.

There are three possible approaches to effective dislodging, and perhaps the best approach is a combination of all three.

1. Go Political – go up the management chain with as much support from your management as possible, and fight for your product
   or service.
2. Go Price – offering a lower price is an effective way to win, but it sets a new pricing standard you will have to live with for a long time. I particularly don’t recommend price dropping, but it’s a desperate measure that works. 
3. Go FUD – use Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to emotionally play your customer. For tips, see my post on emotions.
   
   The key to an emotional play is to find out what is truly important to the buyer and identify why your competitor’s solution might fail these objectives. You will need proof of your claims and be sure you are conducting your affairs out in the open so your competitor is aware of your actions – better to be known as a great competitor rather than a “sneak” or “back stabber.” It is a hard angle to play, but when done right, it yields a huge success factor.

The final part is not really a direct loss recovery strategy but I mention it because it happens to all of us. It is the RFP (Request for Proposal) that arrives in your mail box. It is that tempting document that seems to perfect not to pass up. The problem is that most RFP’s (or tenders) are written by people who either have a bias for a specific vendor or prefer a particular product. Unless it was written for you, your likelihood to win the contract is quite small. Don’t spend weeks and thousands responding to these unless you are 100% sure it’s a winner.

My advice here is “Don’t follow the rules!” - easier said than done, especially when working in the public sector. Although highly successful, ‘Out of the box’ thinking is hard to execute. First, ask yourself how you would solve the problem regardless of the restraints required by the RFP. I have seen this work with an RFP released for a large financial institution. The requirements were by spec, and all the vendors responded knowing it was written for a specific company. Interestingly enough, a dark horse vendor responded with a totally different solution proving to be more cost effective and faster to deploy. They also perfectly executed a loss recovery strategy making upper management aware of an alternative and better solution. This turned the sales cycle upside down, and they won! 

In summary, do not forget:

When you win, someone else loses
(and they will do whatever it takes to get it back.)

Just like when you lose, it can get emotional. Make sure before you execute on your loss recovery strategy you find out what the competitor is doing to block you. Most often it is obvious; you just have to be looking for it.

I hope you have found this interesting and valuable insight about competitive strategies. You are now fully armed to sell at your
best potential.

I am going to be switching competitive focus in my upcoming blogs to a passion I’ve had for sometime now called Virtualization of the Workplace. I’ll be discussing how this emerging trend will revolutionize our “work” culture, enhance your competitive edge and change your lifestyle for
the better.

Talk to you soon in the Blogosphere,
Bentley