Negotiation is not:

I win!

You Lose!

Negotiation is a collaboration between the two parties.

-says Chris Voss, one of the world’s top Ex-FBI Hostage Negotiator.

I got an opportunity to take a master class on the “Art of Negotiation” from The Chris Voss.

Happiness for me is to share every interesting thing I learn.

So, Here we go!

If you want somebody to say yes, you are negotiating with him.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I definitely negotiate with my son (Champ) every day.

In fact, every time I want him to say a yes to study.

Me: “Champ, let’s finish your Mathematics home-work!”

Champ: “Please Mamma, Can I do it after reading 5 pages from the Harry Potter book?”

….after some time

Me: “Champ, are you done reading? Can we now finish Math HW?”

Champ: “Mamma, I am feeling hungry! Can we do it after lunch?”

…..after one hour.

Champ eats his lunch for an hour, sometimes for even longer 🙂

Me: “Champ, let’s just sit for half an hour with a timer and finish whatever we can!”

Champ: “Ok Mamma, but only half an hour please :)”.

#Idea : Sometimes making the deal size smaller helps you land the deal. There will always be opportunities in the future with the same client. 

Just like me with my son, your sales reps negotiate with your clients every day.

If you equip your sales reps with the right strategies to negotiate, I am sure they will be able to close more deals!

Let’s get started with different strategies used in the art of negotiation!

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Tactical Empathy | Negotiation Strategy #1

Empathy is becoming completely aware of the other side’s perspective.

Empathy is the ability to find out what’s driving the person on the other side.

Once you know what’s driving them, it would be easier to convince them to take certain actions as you ask.

TACTICAL EMPATHY

The deliberate influencing of your negotiating counterpart’s emotions for the ultimate purpose of building trust-based influence and securing deals.

The ways you employ your voice, labels, mirrors, and dynamic silence all contribute to tactical empathy.

– Chris Voss, The Master Class

This technique of tactical empathy can be applied with this simple 3-step process“

• Tone of Voice –
  • Chris suggests that it’s critical to keep the tone of voice soothing.
  • And it should be combined with upward (inquiring) or downward (understanding) inflections.
• No denials or disagreements –
  • Empathy does not necessarily mean you need to agree with what the other person is saying.
  • But you need to make sure that you understand and respect what the other person is saying.
• Make them feel heard
  • If a person feels he is not heard, he stops speaking. That’s not what you want.
  • Chris says, “You don’t agree, but you don’t disagree, either.”.
  • Example: Don’t say, I don’t want you to think we’re ignoring what you want. Say, I’m sure it seems like we’re ignoring what you want.

Mirroring | Negotiation Strategy #2

Interesting people are interested. – Old Saying

Genuine Curiosity is compelling.

People would want to tell more.

People would love talking to you if you show genuine interest in listening to them.

Once you show them you are interested.

You will automatically become interesting for them :).

#Hack: You can become interesting by “Mirroring”.

MIRRORING

The conscious repetition of your counterpart’s words.

Mirrors are designed to show the other side that you’re listening to them and understanding them.

– Chris Voss, The Master Class

Mirroring is a way to acknowledge that you are listening attentively.

All that you need to do is repeat 1-3 words from the last sentence of what the other person is saying.

I just tried the mirroring technique in a conversation with my son.

Mirroring worked like charm in it.

Here is the audio clip for the same.

I just kept repeating 1-3 words from his statements, and he just went on and on.

While your sales representatives are in call with your clients.

They can use this technique of mirroring with them.

This shall help them extract a lot of information from the client.

This information shall help your sales reps understand the client’s pain-points.

An accurate understanding of pain-points shall help your sales reps direct the clients to most apt solutions.

Example:

Buyer: Our product is strong, but our reps aren’t always clear about our differentiators. They tend to back peddle when customers ask how we’re different.

Sales rep: Back peddle?

Buyer: Yes. They don’t have a clear answer and they’re not consistent in how they answer.

Sales rep: Not consistent?

Buyer: Yes, that’s the real problem we’re dealing with. I have 70 sales reps who handle sales calls in 70 different ways. Their narratives don’t match up and their sale processes don’t either.

If you look at the conversation above, the sales rep is using mirroring technique and he is able to fetch very useful information about inconsistency in his sales team.

Labeling | Negotiation Strategy #1

My son unknowingly knows this technique of reducing the negative emotion (anger) in my case.

From the age of 3.5 years itself, every time he used to see me raise my volume.

He would say it in a very calm and composite way, “Mamma, I don’t like to see you get angry!”

or he would just say, “Mamma, are you angry?”

( I am not a saint,  I am a mom, after all, I do lose temper! )

And the moment, I hear this from him.

My anger suddenly reduces by 60%.

It triggers me to think, “Anger is not going to help……Calm down!”.

LABELING

Verbally acknowledging the other side’s feelings and positions.

Labels are powerful tools for reinforcing positive feelings and deactivating negative ones.

-Chris Voss, The Master Class

While in a negotiation, If you label a negative emotion, it diffuses. And if you label a positive emotion, it amplifies.

To explain labeling Chris gave a wonderful example of chatting with customer service personnel from airlines.

Scenario: Chris asked for some amendment in his air tickets. The lady on the other side asked him for some information and put him on a Long hold.

#FoodForThought : The customer care executives get beaten up all day. Nobody calls them to appreciate their time /effort. What would you speak to customer care executives to make them feel different? You would be amazed to see what Chris did.

Chris: You are being so generous with your time. Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.

By saying this Chris actually labeled a positive feeling of being generous.

To hear this, something magical happened in the lady’s mind. Her tone changed instantly.

The generosity got amplified. And she amended Chris’s tickets without any extra charges.

She was being generous to not charge any extra money.

Here is an amazing example of you can apply labeling in sales:

The Power of “No” | No Strings Attached | Negotiation Strategy #4

Chris says when people answer a question with a yes, they sort of feel that it’s about they are making a commitment.

Sometimes people just say a yes to end the conversation.

Chris suggests that asking a “No- Oriented” question is more powerful than a “Yes-Oriented” question.

Example:

When you ask, “Does that sound like a good idea?” (Here, the person might think if he says a yes, you shall pitch in your product and he will feel obliged to buy.)

vs

When you ask, “Does that sound like a ridiculous idea?” (Here, the person can easily answer with a No and an insight. Something like, it is not that bad, however, if it would be better if it made my life easier.  Absolutely no strings attached. )

Also, the information that follows a “No” answer is very crucial and can help you gain more insights on buyer’s pain-points.

The Fear of Loss | Negotiation Strategy #5

Chris suggests that “Fear of Loss” is a very important aspect of human decision making.

You sleep over gain but the fear of loss steals away your sleep.

On our home page, our pitch was growth-driven, After learning from Chris, we made it “Fear of Loss” driven.

Look at the two pictures below:

1. The first picture shows “Growth” as a driving factor with the words “Multiply Their Revenue”.
   

    

2. The second shows “Fear of Loss” as a driving factor with the words “Stop Their Revenue Leaks”.

 

What’s your take on this? Which one rings the bell for you? Please do let us know in the comments section at the end of this article.

#FoodForThought: What does your sales pitch look like? Is it driven by “Fear of Loss” or “Opportunity to Grow”?

Black Swans | Negotiation Strategy #6

In the Master Class course, Chris shared how he named his company Black Swans.

BLACK SWAN

A piece of innocuous information that, once revealed, changes the course of the entire negotiation.

Negotiation is, in many ways, all about finding black swans and using them strategically.

-Chris Voss, The Master Class.

The black swan theory is a metaphor for something that comes as a surprise but has a phenomenal effect, often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.

In a sales negotiation, if your sales reps can identify the black swans, they are sure to close the deals.

Happy Selling!

If at all this article brought you some valuable insights, Do you think it will be a ridiculous idea to gain more of these?

If not, here is the plethora of tips to improve your sales.

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It all started in a discussion the CEO of a niche services company.

I just asked him:”What are the challenges you are facing during this lockdown?”

Thanks to Covid-19.

He told me how he:

• ordered 20 laptops overnight to enable his team to work from home.
• solved the VPN issue my giving more rights.
• is continuously in touch with each of his 100+ employees over zoom.
• is all ears to any problem his people might be facing.
• is trying to solve any problems, whatsoever, his people are facing.

While in the discussion, he gave me a very valuable insight about decision-making in businesses.

He said, “Aditi! Sometimes we take wrong business decisions or delay certain actions just to save some money. And we end up with a far bigger loss!”.

Baffled! I didn’t understand. So I asked him to explain it to me with an example.

To which he said:

“Aditi! Two years ago when I had bought laptops for the company. I bought the ones with i3 processor although i5 and i7 were also available. I thought buying the laptops with “Just Enough” facilities would work. However, it was a a wrong business decision that I made. It brought a domino effect.”.

Let’s do some Math here to understand it better.

First, let’s compare the costs of two laptops, one with i3 processor and one with i7 processor. (Just for reference picked these prices from Amazon)

A laptop with i3 processor costs $699.

A laptop with i7 processor costs $1149, which is ($1169-$699=) $450 more than i3.

How much is the average life of a laptop?

A laptop easily works well for a minimum of 2.5 years (=30 months = 912 days).

Let’s divide this difference of $450 over 912 days.

That’s approximately going to cost you 50 cents per day extra, if you decide to buy i7 instead of i3.

However, on the flip-side, this is what will happen i.e. if you bought i3.

i3 vs i7!

Here is what you suffer with; Just to save 50 cents per day:

1. You buy a laptop with average processor (i3 instead of i7).

2. Gradually the applications to be used in the laptop get updated and the processor fails to support them.

3. Laptop’s performance deteriorates and technical glitches keep popping up.

4. Because of technical glitches, employee’s time starts getting wasted, sometimes 30 minutes in a day to may be 2 hours.

5. Employees need to stay back for extra hours to meet the deadlines.

6. Managers time may get wasted and whole team may have to stay late.

7. You may have to keep extra IT guy to manage queries of employees

8. Sometimes even after staying for extra time, the deliverables get delayed.

9. Clients get upset. And employee’s performance review suffers too.

10. It becomes frustrating for the employee.

11. Sometimes employee may even decide to leave.

12. You lose a talented employee.

13. Now you need to put time and effort again to find a new employee.

14. As a CEO, You got involved in lot of discussions, ( with the employee, his manager, IT guy etc. ) taking too much of your time!

15. You can’t afford to waste so much time, Just to save 50 cents. Can you?

Wow! This looks really logical.

Then, I asked him how did he discover this?

He said. “We had lot of projects but not enough bandwidth to handle. Which actually should not have been the case comparing number of projects and employees. So I conducted a little survey within my operations team to understand what can help them perform better. 50-60% employees came up with this technical glitches problem in their laptops. It was an eye-opener for me.”

#OntheFlipSide: If laptop sellers can explain this logic to their clients. They can definitely up-sell. What do you think?

And as a business owner, the wisdom lies in making smart business decisions.

Spending $5000 for a sales page is absolutely worth.If it converts and earns you much more than $5000!

Spending $10000 a year on HubSpot is absolutely worth. If you can increase your revenue by $1m using the sales data from HubSpot.

Spending $3000 a month on Concurate is absolutely worth. If you can get a double digit revenue growth based on it’s consulting.

Is there any business decision that you took wrong?

Do share it with us. Always good to learn from other’s mistakes.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Is there a wise business decision you are delaying?

Think again. Speed up!

BTW, what do you sell?

Do you know why people buy your product?

I bet, you don’t!

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1. Like-ability is one key to a successful deal. If you are likeable – the chances of having a deal increase by 6 times. This is because at the core – we as human beings are emotional.
2. The hallmark of a true salesman lies in persistence without annoying the prospect by spending the right amount of time, efforts, and, energy.
3. Humour makes follow up effective. Follow up is really about persistence. And with Humour you get a way to persist without annoying them.
4. Be positive, not negative ! Basically this means to say what something is, rather than what it isn’t. e.g. Instead of saying “inexpensive” say “economical”. OR instead of saying “this software is error-free” or “foolproof”, say “this software is consistent” or “stable”.
5. Keep your sales voicemail 20-30 seconds long. Use normal tone. Leave it at the end of the day. Don’t sound salesy.
6. Prospects/Clients in China love WeChat. It’s quicker to get answers to any queries. Use emails for official communication.
7. A one email for all type of campaign won’t work. A lot of prospect research and highly customised email is what can make the difference.
8. A combination of good questioning skills and active listening. A connect call should be like a game of catch — a genuine conversation between a prospect and an SDR (Sales Development Representative).
9. The best way to get more information out of your buyer and keep your deal on track is to mirror the buyer’s most important 1-3 words.
10. Don’t only focus on the top dog in the meeting, the rest of the people are there for a purpose and have a say in the discussion as well.
11. Make your customer the Hero. Use “You” more than “we”.
12. Build a story of how we got a certain “objection” or “failure” or “know” about a problem that most customers face. And from their talk about how we started handling it better – Our solution.
13. Make the message simple enough for even a second grader to understand while writing emails.
14. A business’s true pain is what keeps the CEO/ boss up at night. If we figure out a way to ask about it smoothly – it’s a battle won.
15. Every single follow up email you send should contain a unique benefit or piece of information.
16. If the prospect says – The price is too high. You can say – I get that sometimes. “But let me ask you, if we can work out a price, would you be ready to buy?”.
17. Give prospects an easy out. e.g. “If there is a slightest chance that you are OK with this budget we would be very happy to work with you, else, we understand we will lose this deal”.
18. People buy based on emotion and justify with logic and with tonality you can tap into people’s emotions – make them feel certain emotions.
19. Avoid long boring feature list. Instead of overwhelming the reader with a list of clients and a list of the millions of things you can do, just talk about one success story.
20. After listening to your prospects  troubles, try to  effectively summarize how they feel, and what they hope to achieve ––“So it sounds like you need a solution X that can get rid of problem Y, while not compromising on value Z”.  By doing this, you’re demonstrating an understanding of how he/she feels. Once the prospect confirms this with a “That’s right” , consider half your job done.
21. Try connecting with your client on a personal level ; humanise the conversation. Hand written notes is an amazing gesture that goes a long way.
22. Stop selling yourself or your company and start selling what your prospect needs. The sooner you figure that out, the faster you make a sale.
23. Ask open ended questions. Instead of using verbs like ‘is’, ‘can’, and ‘does’ in your questions that trigger yes/no responses, start using verbs like  ‘what’,’where’ and ‘when’ that lets prospects expand their thoughts to share more valuable info.
24. While writing a cold email, you can list down the pain areas you think might concern your prospect (say 1 to 4) and ask him to reply with the number corresponding to the point that applies to him. Accordingly, you circle back with something of value to him in your next email.
25. A human brain is more likely to get influenced by potential loss than potential gain. So instead of saying “By using our services we’ll be able to add X amount of value to your company every year”, use “ So currently you’re losing out on X amount of resources every year by not doing what we suggested – let us help you get that money back where it belongs.”

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

Happy Selling! You may like to read “Top 15 Sales Tips for the Year 2020!”.

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Micro-Learnings Vs Full-Fledged Classroom Trainings!

Most classroom trainings are ineffective. Here is Why?

Imagine a group of 15 people in a classroom to be trained for sales. How will the trainer keep up the energy high in the class. Because there could be a few people who will get bored (as they think they know it all) and express the boredom too, there would be some who would not be able to grasp the concepts and lose interest. Of course there will be a small set of people who would effectively engage in training. But Is classroom training the best approach towards sales coaching?

Instead look for a way to provide micro-learnings in order to bring incremental improvement.

Here is one very good practice a friend, also the sales head, follows at his company.

So, this friend of mine, the sales head has 15 people in his sales team. They have an email thread called “One Learning”. In this email thread, every team member shares what they learnt, as concisely as possible. Being concise, makes it easier to grasp.

Learning could be as simple as “While in conversation with the client, Respond after a minimum 3 seconds pause.”

Learnings shall most commonly come by reading blogs or books, hearing podcasts or by watching videos. Hence the following format works best.

I watched/read/listened ____________________________________ and one simple learning I can share is ______________________________________.

When they started this practice. It was made compulsory to share one learning every week. There used to be a score cards to motivate people to share more. However, gradually, people started sharing the learnings more often. It became their habit to share. They don’t need any more external motivation to do so.

Do you know some other way to enable micro-learnings culture in your company? Do let us know.

Do check out this interesting collection of such Top 25 micro-learnings in Sales. (A 5 minutes read with every second worth it.)

You might also like to read “Top 15 Sales Tips for the Year 2020!”

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

If you wish to keep receiving great business insights, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!

We visit your inbox just once in two weeks!

Meanwhile, Explore the plethora of resources to help you out your business! If your organisation wants its content marketing strategy designed by Concurate, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today!

Here is the story of the gym …..

This January again, like every year, I took the resolution to lose weight. To help me with it, a friend recommended Celebrity Fitness Gym to me. I was delighted to know about their 7-days free trial and I quickly signed up with all the energy. However their sales-guy could not convince me to pursue the gym further.

Is the gym not good enough?…..NO!!

Frankly the whole concept of Celebrity Fitness gym is really cool. All the treadmills and exercising bikes are equipped with screen and unlimited internet making it easier to work out. Besides this the gym offers lot of fitness classes like Yoga, Zumba, Hatha Yoga, Floating Yoga etc as a part of membership. To top it all kids can enjoy Zumba and Yoga classes for free on weekends. In fact it offers a great membership package too which is actually quite cheap compared to other gyms or fitness classes in Singapore .

Am I not the potential client? …Well, I am!!

Age 31, Weight 74, Height 152 cms, 45% body Fat. Not just overweight I have entered the category of Obese. I really need to shed off those extra pounds.

Why did their sales representative failed to sell me the membership?

The sales consultant pissed me off. For 7 days of free trial everyday he called or messaged me to sign up for membership. He kept repeating the same thing; “We have a limited period offer only for limited customers, Sign up soon!!”

I think the sales consultant cared the least about my experience at gym.

My experience at gym:

I tried different fitness classes:

• “Seduce” Zumba class”
  • Tried to catch up for 15 minutes.
  • The trainer didn’t pay any attention at all to guide me.
  • I quit, came out and did some cycling and walking on treadmill
• “RPM” class: In this class they have some 25-30 bikes in one room. A bunch of people bike together and adjust the speeds to match the rhythm of music as instructed by the trainer.
  • I found it very uncomfortable to exercise on that bike and got severe rashes on bums in a 15-minutes struggle to cope up with the class.
  • The trainer could not help me out.

1.  

• “Family Zumba by Coach Jeslyn”
  • I really enjoyed this class.
  • But with my stamina and ability I could not continue after half an hour.

1.  

• “Fast Fit Training”
  • I loved this class.
  • The trainer (named “Bit”) guided the class really well.
  • Her instructions were very clear.
  • She corrected the students whenever they went wrong.
  • This is the first class where I survived happily for whole 1 hour.
  • But the workout was really intense and I could not recover from body aches for following 3 days.

1.  

Probably, by now, you would have understood that I was misfit for most of these classes. How these 7 days can be better utilised to convert a lead like me into a customer?

• Step one should be a body analysis and a fitness test for the lead. This can work as an eye-opener and can make a strong psychological impact on the lead.
• Educating the lead on how some exercises can help the lead to be fit and in a better shape.
• Salesman/Trainer should be able to make the lead believe that it’s possible to lose weight; it’s gradually achievable to be more fit.
• Salesman/Trainer should give a schedule that the lead can follow for the week.
• On the 7th day the salesman should be all ears to the lead’s experience.
• I am sure if the team succeeds in giving the right experience to the lead. The lead would himself/herself be more willing to join in.

An important Observation:

Most of the people I saw working out at gym already seemed fit. For this set of people who go to gym to maintain their fitness or gain muscular strength are self-motivated. To win such customers is easy as gym already offers what these people need.

However, there is huge set of overweight or obese people who are either shy to join the gym or join but quit the gym very easily. The gyms should try to catch hold of this set!!

The story continues…..

I am still looking for somebody to help me out with my weight loss resolution.

P.S. The story dates back to 2016. Fyi, the Celebrity Fitness later got merged with Fitness First.

If you like to head or hear stories, do check out our podcasts section!

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

If you wish to keep receiving great business insights, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!

We visit your inbox just once in two weeks!

Meanwhile, Explore the plethora of resources to help you out your business! If your organisation wants its content marketing strategy designed by Concurate, let’s connect over a short call. Block our calendar today!

Today, my manager asked me to write a post on how can the companies prevent the employees from leaving negative reviews about them. I did not know what to write because I don’t have any experience of running a company. So it was time to do some research. With a little bit of googling I thought a good approach would be to speak to people in the industry.

First I had a short interview with the CEO of a successful company. He gave me a lot of valuable insights which has come from 20 years of his industry experience. It’s my absolute pleasure to bring that bank of knowledge to you.

I asked him, “Why do people leave negative reviews about the company when they leave? His candid answer was:

“Review is an effect not a cause”

When an employee leaves a company. He just reflects on his experience at the company in his review. What we need to find out is why was he unhappy working at the company?

Were the expectations not set correctly at the time of joining itself?

Is there a mis-match, whether the employee is not a right fit for the company or company not a right fit for the employee?

Did the employee get fired because of underperformance issue? Was he given time-to-time feedback?  Was he provided with necessary mentorship and resources to help him improve his performance?

Is it a high-performing employee with great potential leaving the company then there is something definitely wrong. And it’s time to find the root cause for it?

Hence it’s important to work on the cause to bring the desired effect.

Then I asked him, How can we work this out?

To this he said, we have learnt it hard way but it’s really important to have a common belief system across three stake holders:

Earlier we had clients who would quickly opt to work with some other company on the moment of receiving a lesser quote. Let’s say we do a certain kind of project for 2500 USD. The moment they find another company quoting 2300 or 2100 USD for the same project they switched. Because for them the quality of work didn’t matter too much. For them it’s more important to just get the project done. Same as company A just wants to get a road build with coal and tar vs company B who also wants to build a road but want to make sure that it’s durable, it doesn’t get spoilt with rains or heavy vehicles, it’s made using the best practises in the domain. So the company B doesn’t want to compromise on quality even if they need to shell out a little extra money.

On the flip side, we also wanted to make sure the people whom we hire are culturally right fit for us. From our 15 years of experience of working with people, we have learnt that it’s important to hire people with the right attitude than the right skill. All companies will have different definitions of people who are ill-fit and who are the right-fit people for them. Let me draw a comparison of the two types of people based on the culture of our company:

Parameter	Ill-Fit	Right-Fit
Attitude	People who feel they know it all and without them they feel company would stop working.	People who are always up to learn and try something new.
Curiosity	People who are happy with the monotonous work. These are the people who are happy to do the same work day over day, year over year.	People who feel that monotonous work leaves no room for growing, experimenting or improving.
Creativity	People who fear to fail and thus always want to go by conventional approach to problem solving.	People who have the ability to think out-of-the-box and approach to solve the problem in a unconventional way.
Passion	People who think more hours mean more work. These are the people who focus more on productivity than hours.	People who work hard and party hard too. People who enjoy their work. People who find pleasure in solving challenges. And by solving every challenge , they keep progressing to become their better-selves.
Reaction to feedback	People who were expecting an A and are super disappointed to receive a B in performance review. Problem is not in disappointment. Problem is the reluctance in finding out why? And what can they change or learn in order to be an A  next appraisal.	People who believe in taking feedback positively. People who do not get offended to receive a feedback. People who happily take guidance and help to improve themselves.
Problem-Solving	People who just crib about their problems. People whose ego gets hurt to ask for help. People who blame other people or team for problems.	People who solve the problems instead of complaining about them. People who don’t mind working across different teams to solve the problem.

Wow ! That sounds interesting! then I asked him Have you also developed a hiring strategy?

Most of our recruitments take place on interns level. These young minds join us with an insane amount of energy. These are the people who come with the mindset of learning and NOT “I know everything” attitude. They don’t mind going an extra mile to learn and deliver. And the best part is we can instil the right thought process very early in their careers, which goes for a long way with them. We have a very few, barely 5% lateral hires. Also, We have learnt that, the moment you find that one of your employees is a negative person you should straight away fire that person so that he does not spread an negativity in your company.

These sounds like great insights now let’s hear from the people on the other side of the table – The Employees.

It’s really important to know how an employee feels about the company. Because only happy employees can yield great results for the company. In order to find it out I thought it would be best to speak to professionals on how they feel about their companies they work with. My focus group consisted of professionals working in different domains, in different companies, in different countries, on different levels (but most of them having 10+ years of work experience), the following two questions:

Do you love your work and your company ?

Tell me one best thing about your company’s culture. What keeps you bonded with it ?

Below are some interesting responses I received:

Hi Aditi, I like my work yes but I am not Super “passionate” about it. One best thing would be – people are nice. I think people is what defines the place. Good people around you can sometimes mask other issues coz you are generally happier.

One best thing about my organization is the work does not let me fall into the comfort zone, It always presents opportunities for me to explore new areas that contribute to my growth.

Right now the best thing about the company is Money.. :). Otherwise majority of the companies here in Silicon Valley have the same generic culture.

Hey Aditi, I always believe, “love your work not your company”. Company and its treatment towards employees is very subjective and relative to circumstances. I totally love my work, as it gives me exposure to complex business processes and consulting is something I always dreamt of. With respect to my company- It has given me an opportunity to work on hottest technology in my sector. A very nice lead who is a good teacher as well. Frankly speaking I don’t like the culture here. It’s too Asian and expects me to stay back even when there is no work. And it’s not very employee friendly.

For me, my team, very small team but everyone helps each other, my bosses who don’t mind playing a game of chess or carrom during office hours with any one including freshers.

Hey Aditi! Where to start! I just love my company. I like the openness and freedom of expression in my company’s culture. Whatever’s happening in the company is shared with everyone across the company which give me the feeling of respect as a stake holder. It gives me the freedom to create my own road map and work over it which of-course is in company’s interest. The wi-fi enabled shuttle service of my company is really wonderful which gives me the leverage of turning travel time into productive work time. Free fresh and healthy food comprising of different cuisines with the details of ingredients, allergen information is like cherry on the cake.  

Hey Aditi! Before an employee of the company, I am a mom who is also passionate about her work. I am so blessed that my company respects this and believes in me. Based on performance at work they gave me the flexibility to work from home when I became a mom. My son turns 4 this year. But our work relationship is still intact. My company also helped me with a change in stream when I wanted to have a flexible work schedule and my then job scope didn’t allow me to do so. My company really invests in people. It has given me so many opportunities to learn new things by sending me to world class conferences, sponsoring different certification courses for me. Another best part about the company is direct access to communicate even with C-suite people of the company. One more thing I love about my company is they believe in helping their employees to maintain great health by introducing various health challenges like drinking 2 liters of water a day, eating health, not eating fried and sugar, weight loss challenge, steps challenge etc. Another thing about my company is that it believes in giving back to society and because of the I got an opportunity to volunteer for so many social causes like building homes for homeless, teaching less privileged children etc. The list of goodness is too big J

Most of the people I interviewed are happy with their companies for various reasons like:

1. Quality of work,
2. Growth opportunities,
3. Flexible work schedules,
4. Great colleagues and mentors,
5. Meritocracy
6. Ability to choose what you want to work on,
7. Direct access to communicate even with C-level executives,
8. The feeling of being valued and cared for,
9. Interest Groups,
10. Compensation, food and transport.

But, How can all of them be happy? It feels like a biased view. Isn’t it? I also felt the same so I took a closer look at what’s common in all these Happy Professionals. Well all these are the people who are ace performers and have reached great heights in their careers. Where company feels that they are assets to the organization. “The Talent to be retained”.

It really became challenging for me to find out people in my network who are not happy with their work. So I decided to reframe from my question. And then I asked some more people the following question:

Is there something you do not like at your workplace?

Here are some pointers I received:

1. Lack of result-oriented work culture versus time-sheet based work culture,
2. Office politics,
3. Monotonous work,
4. No learning or growing opportunities,
5. No Work-life balance,
6. No transparency (e.g. an employee wishes to attend his son’s football match and wants a half day leave from office. Can he tell it frankly or does he need to lie that he is feeling sick and he needs to go home, just because of the fear of judgement.)
7. Grouping because of regional or cultural bias.
8. No meritocracy or ownership.

If you can manage to keep your employees happy, automatically they won’t leave any negative feedback about your company unless you made a wrong hire or you have not developed the right culture at your work place.

If you are a founder/C-Suite executive of the company and your employees are leaving negative reviews about your company, I want to ask you a few questions:

1. Do you think your employees are happy?
2. If your answer to the first question is yes, have they ever expressed that they are really happy?
3. Do you believe that you care for your employees? Which was your last gesture that expressed your care for them?
4. Do you think you are easily approachable? When was the last time you drank a coffee with a trainee at your company?
5. Do you think you are giving growth and career opportunities to your employees? When was the last time an employee switched vertical in your company thinking that his growth has become stagnant in the current vertical and by making a switch to another vertical he will get a learning opportunity and grow more?
6. Do you think your employees have a work-life balance? Do you have one-one-one conversations with them? Do you ask them about their families, children’s school?

Sometimes, it so happens that actual scenario is far from the story we have in our mind. If you want to bridge this gap we can help. Try our live chat or Drop us a line.

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