3 lessons we’ve learned from The Demographica Awards

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At Demographica, in December each year, we hand out 4 awards recognising outstanding performance and contribution to the company – aptly named The Demographica Awards.

The awards are now in their 3rd year and the impact that they have had on the company has been tremendous.

We have 4 awards:

  1. The Culture Award – This award goes to the person who has made Demographica a happier and fun place to work
  2. The People’s Award – This award goes to the person who has made the biggest impact on fellow Demographicans during the year
  3. The Rising Star Award – This award goes to the person who has shown the most promise and potential in the year
  4. The Demographica Award – This award goes to the person who has made the biggest impact on the company during the year
Demographica Award Winners 2012

Demographica Award Winners 2012 || The People’s Award – Darren Van Der Schyff || The Rising Star Award – Valentina Kupresan || The Culture Award – Alex Hibberd || The Demographica Award – Gareth Kumin

The winners are voted for via compulsory electronic voting whereby each Demographican gets a weighting of 1 for their votes. The management team gets a weighting of 1.25 for their votes.
The votes are tallied up and the winners are decided. Each winner gets a framed certificate, a significant amount of cash and a floating trophy with their name engraved on it which sits proudly in our reception area.

Here are 3 lessons that we’ve learned by formally giving recognition to team.

  • The awards are a motivator

The awards are strategically given at the end of the year, when people are generally tired and burned out. The awards therefore become a motivating factor and the team typically raises their commitment and energy levels when everyone else is burning out. This behaviour gives us a competitive advantage going into year end

Demographica Award Winners 2013

Demographica Award Winners 2013 || The People’s Award – Natalie Maratos || The Culture Award – Carmen Murray || The Rising Star Award – Elan Tanur || The Demographica Award – Marloe Wise

  • Sometimes peer recognition is more valuable than incentives

Each time we have given out a Demographica Award, I’ve witnessed a genuine confidence emanate from the award winners over the following months. The rest of the team really acknowledge and respect the winners and each year people come to me telling me that next year “they’ll win it”.

At Demographica we have given out sunglasses, luggage, iPods, MacBook’s, exotic holiday’s, international flights and an absolute fortune of cash – none of it has had as much of an impact on people’s confidence like peer recognition, and we all know what large dose of confidence can do to a person.

  • The awards show everyone what our company values are

What you award for is as important as actually having the awards. It shows the team, the industry and our clients what we value most at Demographica. It puts a significant stake in the ground and rewards Demographicans for living our values.

Demographica Award Winners 2014

Demographica Award Winners 2014 || The Culture Award – Arlene Wills || The Rising Star Award – Nicole Cohen || The People’s Award – Simone Tal || The Demographica Award – Natalie Maratos

If you contribute to making Demographica a happier place to be, then you will be rewarded. If you impact on your fellow Demographicans by inspiring them to be better, then you will be rewarded. If you’re passionate, hungry and smart and punch above your weight, then you will be rewarded. If you make such an impact on the company that your peers believe that you had the biggest impact on the overall company, then you will be rewarded.

It’s as simple as that.

CEOs should not play the odds

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Came across this excerpt from a book that I’m reading. The comment was in reference to some of the decisions and the decision making process that high growth CEOs face.

“CEOs should not play the odds.

When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it.

You just have to find it.

It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.”

It couldn’t be more true.

4 Observations after a restructure

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Observations and learnings are key when building a business.

For those that don’t know the Demographica story, we have gone through a fundamental restructure of the company business model. The entire restructuring process took roughly 6 months and we were operating within our new structure from the 1st of November 2013.

Today we’re roughly 8 months into our new structure and there have been some incredible observations which I think are well worth sharing.

Observation 1 – Our strongest employees have bought into our new vision.

During and after a restructure, it is normal to have a high level of staff turnover. A big reason for this is that the company is now a different company to the one your staff had initially signed up for. People leave companies for various reasons but if an employee kept his/her job during the restructure and then decided to leave voluntarily afterwards, the reasons are generally that the employee has not bought into the new vision of the company. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s better for everyone for them to leave.

As an employer, I believe that you owe it to the employees that have bought into the new vision to surround them with colleagues that share it. Poison spreads fast – so be mindful of it.

Observation 2 – Make decisions around your clients.

Advertising agencies like Demographica live and die by the quality of their clients and the work that they do for them. We know that if we grow our clients businesses then we grow our business. It’s a symbiotic relationship and anything less than that is not sustainable.

We are very specific about the clients that we retain. Unless we know that we can consistently grow our clients businesses, we do not pitch for the work. To take this a step further, we have resigned clients that we don’t share values with and have resigned clients that don’t take their work as seriously as we do ours.

Observation 3 – There is no substitute for efficiency.

Restructuring Demographica from a 7 year old media owner to a newborn Direct Marketing Agency is literally starting a new business. We’re a startup again and startups require an immense amount of work!

I’ve discovered some productivity and efficiency tools that we are using now and it’s proven to be the game changer in our output. I estimate that we are over 200% more productive in the same amount of hours – no exaggeration. I firmly believe that Demographica’s recent windfall of new client wins is solely down to the significantly increased efficiency levels of our sales team.

Lastly, Observation 4 – Success breeds success.

One of my business partners Mark Levy says this to me all the time and I’m watching it happen right in front of me.

We pushed hard in our new structure to secure some strategic client wins. In a startup, you have no history on what to say to clients, how to tailor your pitch and how to close the deal so you are completely reliant on gut, passion and drive. As soon as we had our first client win, another one came in soon after and another one soon after that. Everyone at the company gets a lift because the reasons to restructure finally become validated and the morale booms!

5 Lessons I learned in a restructure

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The last six months have been a defining period in the journey of Demographica. For those that have followed the Demographica story, you would know that there have been many challenging times but I must admit, the last 6 months have been the most educational and fulfilling to date.

In short, I realised last year that the business model needed to change. I had this feeling of angst around the business model for some time but the thinking around the restructure process only started in May/June 2013. This post is not about what we did to restructure or why the business was restructured, but rather about the lessons that I learned.

I learned lessons about people and the way they respond to their security at work, I learned lessons about the business community and the impact it has on culture, I learned lessons about challenging your innermost beliefs about what makes a good business, and most importantly, I learned lessons about myself.

I’d like to share them with you here:

1. Think before you hire

This seems obvious. But is it? Demographica has experienced rapid growth since 2009 and the need to hire more staff to service the growing needs of the business was clear. We hired at will to keep up with demand and during a hiring spree, it’s pretty much impossible to only hire top quality. During the restructure process, my partners challenged me to look objectively and critically at certain positions and people to decide if they were a luxury or a necessity. Once the decision was made a retrenchment process followed.

The retrenchment process is ugly. It rips the foundation out of people’s lives and it has a spill over effect on the entire company. It’s not pleasant for you as the employer either, I had many sleepless hours wrestling with the retrenchment process.

Lesson: When hiring, take the time to make sure that this person is not only right for the job, but right for the culture of the company, because the process to terminate their employment impacts them, you and the people they work with in ways that are unimaginable.

2. Retrench properly

Demographica is a ‘family culture’ environment. Just take a look at our facebook page to get a window in the culture here. I’ve also always had an unusually close relationship with my team. When someone hasn’t worked out, I’ve always taken them for lunch and had a frank conversation with them about their future at the company. That conversation has always ended with a handshake, a compensation package and ways are parted on good terms with no bridges burned.

During the restructure, I tried this methodology and unfortunately it didn’t work out. It didn’t work out because during a company restructure, the element of trust between employee to employer is challenged. Things can get ugly and the rumours start to poison the company and the business community at large.

Lesson: Get a labour lawyer in from the start and do the process properly. There is no other way. Just do it properly.

3. Look harder at your expense model

Restructuring the business gave me the opportunity to look at our expense model and cut away the fat. When my partners and I decided to cut the fat, the first step was for me to look at the income statement and make decisions on expense items that were not needed. I trimmed about 20% of our expenses and felt pretty good about it.

I then sat with one of my partners Neil, and he challenged me to cut deeper and we debated every single line item on the income statement. We managed to cut a further 15%, bringing down our fixed expenses by a whopping 35% in total.

For business owners, take a second to think about the increase on the bottom line if you manage to slash 35% of your monthly expenses. The truth is, we never ever really needed those expenses. They came as part of our rapid growth and they never really impacted the business that much. Today, Demographica is a significantly stronger business with 35% less fixed monthly costs.

Lesson: Think long and hard before committing to another expense. Always ask yourself the question: What else could I use this money for? Is this the best place to invest the money?

4. Perception in the business community

This was a lesson that I didn’t anticipate. With hindsight, I should’ve thought about it  and managed it but I suppose hindsight is always 20/20 vision.

I got many phone calls from people who I work with to ask me about the Demographica restructure. Questions I got asked were along the lines of: “Are you going bankrupt?”, “Is Demographica closing down?”, “What’s with the turmoil at Demographica?”. A wife of a friend even asked me directly: “Is Demographica having financial problems?”.

When staff are feeling insecure about their jobs they start to update their CV’s and put the word out that they are open to opportunities. This leads to interviews and when you come from a company with a top reputation like Demographica, our staff have no issues getting interviews. Even competitors and collaborators would interview my staff just to try get some insight into the happenings at Demographica.

These staff are generally insecure and a little disgruntled so they are painting a picture of total turmoil and burning at the company. It’s totally not true but that is the story that they tell.

Lesson: Share the intent to restructure and the reasons for the restructure with the companies that your reputation is important to. If they get the information from you before they hear the stories it is much more credible than when they hear it from you after their opinions have been influenced by disgruntled employees.

5. Business partners

I am blessed with business partners that have held my hand and guided me through every step of my Demographica journey. There is simply no way that I would have got to the place that I am at now without them.

To have partners that are incredibly empathetic, experienced and objective whilst at the same time have a vested interest in the company is priceless.

Lesson: Seek out a partners. Once you find the right partners do whatever it takes to bring them on board and align your interests with theirs. Most of the successful people who I know have partners, very few do it alone.

I started off this post by saying that the last six months have been the most educational for me in my time at Demographica. The lessons I have learned (I’ve only listed 5 here) have been invaluable and have only made me a stronger leader and a better CEO.

Demographica is a significantly stronger business today then it has ever been with a team that is hungry and dedicated to our business purpose. We are well poised to take advantage of the advertising industry within our new structure and the people who are currently part of the team are a huge part of that.

Watch this space.

 

You need to believe to sell

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I had an epiphony the other day and I’ve since coined it “the belief lag”.

Last week I went out for dinner to the Meat Co in Melrose Arch with the Demographica Head of Media Sales Marloe Wise and the Head of our Cape Town office Kath McChesney to discuss product sales strategy and the integration of culture between the Jozi and CT offices.

I went to the bathroom and came back to an intense debate between Marloe and Kath on the unique selling points of our latest Drive Time advertising product. I sat back, didn’t get involved and listened to the debate. Then it struck me – they totally believed. They both had a 100% belief in the product.

Drive Time was conceived of in September 2012, a full 11 months prior to this debate at the Meat Co. The product was then developed and launched in February 2012. In the build up to the launch and obviously post the launch, I was Drive Time’s biggest advocator. Why? because I believe in the product 100%.

When I pitch Drive Time to potential clients their responses are truly remarkable and some big things are happening. But the same wasn’t happening with my sales team – they were struggling to pitch it even though I knew that through training they completely understood the product.

For months I couldn’t figure out why I was having success pitching the Drive Time product, whilst my top business developers (who are better than me to be honest) were struggling to get client buy in.

My epiphony happened at the Meat Co. It took Marloe and Kath a full 6 months to believe in Drive Time – and trust me, they really wanted to believe. It will take the rest of the sales team a little longer. The product owner (me in this case) will always be the first to believe. Then naturally you start to train and educate the company and the market about the product. You then set sales targets and create client wish lists and ultimately get to work.

I think CEO’s sometimes mistake poor sales with poor sales ability – it is not necessarily true. Maybe the sales team still need to believe, maybe they are still in “the belief lag”.

It took Demographica over 6 months to believe, I don’t know if that’s long or short, or good or bad, but I do know that it’s reality. People need to authentically believe to perform, give them time.

You are the company you keep

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For those of you that don’t know, I’m involved in a number of different associations  and one of the perks of generally being an engaged member is that I get to meet some really interesting and fascinating people. One of these organisations is called Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) where I sit on the board and am responsible for the Marketing & Communications portfolio.

One of the EO products that I organize is called “In the Boardroom”. It’s an event whereby I invite a successful entrepreneur to an exclusive experience sharing session with EO members.

The last “In the Boardroom” event was with South Africa’s top family and celebrity lawyer Billy Gundelfinger.

As part of the event organising process, I always go to the invited entrepreneurs office for a one on one briefing session before the event. Sitting with Billy and talking about his life, he told me a story about his father Max and ended the story with a little gem that I thought is well worth sharing. Billy explained that his father used to say with reference to a persons character: “Show me who your friends, colleagues and business associates are; and I’ll show you who you are”.

The words hit me like a ton of bricks. Immediately I started to evaluate my own life based on the company I keep.

I think its important to acknowledge that as you go through life – I would say +- 10 years after school is the turning point – you start to shed the people in your life who you lack commonality with. You tend to be friendly, network and build business relationships with people who you share common values and ethics with.

I think Max Gundelfinger’s wise words are a good litmus test for yourself, every couple of years.

Lessons for business owners from a thug

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    Note:

      This post is the second draft of the original after I removed some unnecessary information.

The life of an entrepreneur is full of lessons, I literally never stop learning. Today I learned some great lessons which I think are well worth sharing.

A year ago, one of our top sales people did an advertising deal with a company, a first time client. Demographica is an advertising business and this particular deal was not out of the ordinary. The deal was for a large sum of money and we were pretty excited about it. The campaign was executed and the results were fantastic – the client was actually so happy with the results that they wanted to extend the campaign and book a few more.

When the sales person came to chat to me about putting together another campaign for the client – I asked her to please ask the client to settle their bill and once settled, we will gladly run more campaigns for them.

A year later, we were still chasing them to pay the invoice.

About 3 months ago, I asked our financial manager to get in touch with the clients CEO and try work out some payment terms with him. Their CEO was completely ‘unavailable’ and eventually the CEO’s assistant came to chat to our financial manager. They agreed to settle the invoice in 3 equal monthly instalments with the first instalment due at the end of April 2013. After the meeting, the CEO’s assistant sent us an email confirming the terms of the deal.

This morning, Demographica’s financial manager and I were going through our management accounts and I noticed on the debtors control account that this client still owed us the full amount and had not paid the first instalment.

I was angry. I was upset. I was disappointed.

I suggested to our financial manager that he and I should go down to the clients office right away and see the CEO to talk about the money owing. We got in my car and took a drive.

We arrived at the clients swanky offices in a really upmarket part of Jozi and requested to see the CEO. We were told to wait in the boardroom and that they would check if he was available.

In the boardroom, there were pictures hanging on every wall. Each picture had the CEO posing with a different government minister right up to the president of South Africa. Already I had some insight into the character I was dealing with. He also had numerous business certificates and awards lining the walls.

After 30 minutes the CEO had still not joined us in the boardroom. I walked out the boardroom and recognised the CEO from the pictures, standing in the hall, and confronted him. I shook his hand, introduced myself and asked him about the money that he owed us.

A physical altercation then occurred.

I’ve removed the details of the altercation out of this post because they are simply not necessary. This post is about the lessons learned, not what actually went down at his offices.

We both left his office immediately after that.

After doing some research on the CEO after the incident, it turns out that although he is a very successful businessman, he has a colourful history of law suits and controversy. His companies were at the centre of huge public interest scandals and he himself has appeared in numerous respected business magazines exposing him for his behaviour.

He is a thug.

This is what I’ve learned after today’s ordeal.

  1. If a company owes you money, there are processes and procedures that can be followed. There is no need for vigilantism.
  2. Get a deposit from first time clients and do the necessary background checks. It’s important to know who you are in business with.
  3. Consult colleagues, partners and/or friends before you take any drastic actions. a contrarian view can change the game.
  4. If you confront someone, be diplomatic – you never know what type of person you are dealing with.
  5. At the end of the day, it’s only money – you don’t need to put your safety and the safety of your staff at risk.

Story telling in sales

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Remember your group of friends from high school?
There were two types of people in the group: those that could tell a joke with such conviction that people would laugh hysterically and then those that could take even the funniest of jokes and not be able to deliver it properly.

Why is it that you could take the same joke, give it to two people and see two totally different outcomes?

Storytelling. The art and skill of being able to tell a good story.

Those of you who know me will know that I have a passion for sales and deal making. I am also lucky enough to work with some unbelievable people who are award winning sales people and deal makers. I am therefore exposed to the top sales people / deal makers in the advertising industry.

When I study the people that I work with, I consistently find that the people that are able to tell a great story are consistently better at selling than people who can’t tell a good story.

Even if you look at our history, story telling has been around for generations and traditions are passed down through the generations via storytelling.

If you want to succeed in sales, learn to tell a great story.

Closing the deal – like a dog

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I love learning from other entrepreneurs. The other day, I learned a lesson from an entrepreneur that I have massive respect for.

First, some context.
Demographica and his company are in the early stages of doing some work together. We have a new product that he likes and he has a hugely successful business with some clients that our new product would connect to perfectly.

Like all shrewd businessmen, he wanted to do his research as well as totally understand the structure and various applications of the new product – in order to do this, he needed conversation time with me. Over a period of 3 days, he called me 6 times, sent me 5 sms’s and we exchanged about 4 emails – that’s a total of 15 conversations in 3 days.

Not for one second did I feel ‘hounded’ or ‘pestered’ by him – in fact, he made me feel that he genuinely wanted something to happen with this new product of ours and his authenticity and tenacity was something that I admired. Bottom line – he made me want to do business with him – because I felt that he genuinely believed in what Demographica and his company could do together.

A few days later I asked him about his deal making style, and he introduced me to a concept that his company uses internally – it’s called ‘Dogfuck’.

I googled ‘Dogfuck’ and you can imagine what it showed me.

He explained to me that when a dog wants to mate, there is nothing that will stop that dog from mating. You can hold the dog back, you can push the dog away, but at the end of the day – the dog will mate!

When they interview potential employees, there is a rating on the HR form whereby the interviewer rates the interviewee on a scale of 1-10 on his/her level of ‘Dogfuck’.

The lesson here is clear – potential customers will knock you down, reject you and give you a million reasons why they wont meet you or buy your product or service – but the deal makers with a high rating on the ‘Dogfuck’ scale will eventually close the deal.

The importance of prioritizing

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So this year is a massive year for Demographica. We’re launching an exciting new product, we’ve opened an office in Cape Town, our staff compliment has pretty much doubled and we’re going to move to a bigger office space in Jozi.

Whilst there are clearly some big risks involved in doing all of that, all the decisions have been carefully considered and the risks that we’re taking are all calculated.

So whilst the business will be scaling at an exponential rate, I have realized that the biggest and least considered risk of all – is me.

I need to scale at the same rate as the business, if not faster.

Whilst thinking about this problem pretty much full time whilst I have been on leave, I have come to the realization that “prioritizing” is going to be my biggest challenge as well as my biggest weapon. If I am able to prioritize effectively then I believe I will be giving myself the best chance to scale at the rate that I need to.

Here is a really good article by Fast Company about prioritizing called: 3 Ways Successful People Prioritize Their To-Do Lists.