Morning all,
I’m back after a ‘week away’ from Pearl Lemon and there’s been (and still will be) – lots of lessons learned about the whole experience.
Let’s go through some of the top-line areas –
Table of Contents
Lead Generation Team
The lead-generation side of the business needs better management and direction – this was something that became clear as I had to get back involved by Wednesday instead of Friday.
So basically – this was the team that broke down the quickest.
On the client relationship management side, there were some learnings with Gary which we resolved.
This is about coming prepared to meetings and making sure all campaigns are being worked upon equally.
Furthermore, Vasco will be coming in to bolster that position and take more of a leading role which will help on the lead-generation side no end.
Daily meetings will move to 2x per week which should increase the time all spend on the phone as Tue/Wed/Thur meetings will be abolished.
The lead generation team will also be split up so that Imogen will work exclusively upon internal campaigns to book appointments for Josh and Robbie instead of any of the client campaigns.
We’ve also clarified the speeding up of how call recordings can be added for internal campaigns to remove the SoundCloud elements of call recordings so that it’s quicker for the internal team to document things.
New Business Team
On this side, it has simply been a case of showing the team how they can call folks in the instance that someone is unable to attend a meeting.
We’ve given Ion and company a specific login to use for Crazy-Call to ring people with a London-based London in the instance that someone isn’t at a meeting.
SEO Team
What is clear from the SEO team is that they weren’t able to even watch the videos on management and client relationships whilst I was gone – which is worrying.
Furthermore, it doesn’t seem that there’s been good communication between the SEO and the Content team given that a weekly call hasn’t been organised.
I’ve sign-posted this to the teams and will be following up with Semil today to understand what other challenges there are.
PR Team
Not alot to report here as such – although I need to see if Pearl has solved her laptop speed problem which has been slowing her down and get this resolved as quickly as I can.
That will be a big win for her – and in fact, anyone in the full-time team – having a speedy laptop is essential for getting things done.
[convertful id=”197358″]
Leadership Team
Communication between teams still needs improvement as there wasn’t enough active communication between the lead generation and the cold calling team about what’s needed for clients.
The PR team and SEO team could probably benefit from talking to each other about what the struggles are so the PR team know where links need to be generated.
HR Team
I think being proactive with finding out who was having challenges and finding ways to resolve them is something that didn’t happen.
Alongside this – being flexible with trying to identify means of improving our current processes will also be important.
Interim CEO
Lydia losing her voice and getting ill during the week away wasn’t ideal. In general, she needs to be a firmer job of chasing up people and demanding answers as to why when notice is given – work isn’t getting done.
She also needs to assume that work will not get done when she asks until such a time it evidently does get done.
Feedback On Myself
It was powerful to see what happened (to some degree) whilst I was away.
What I did badly was to not stay involved as I did keep on getting things done from Wed onwards – but these are some of the actions I’m going to take now I’ve come back:
- Have a meeting with all team leaders and walk through all the challenges that have come up with a view to resolve them
- Build some more processes around new commission-only sales team onboarding
- Attempt to go away again next week for a week
- Not return to any of the client conversations aside from Queensgate – whom I will introduce Gary to with a view to passing the relationship over to him within the next 1-2 weeks
- Work with Lydia to look at the overall business and how we can improve as many things as possible
- Ask Lydia to have detailed ‘get-to-know’ phone calls with the entire team and learn all about their roles
- Ask the leadership team do this with each other so everyone has a clear understanding of what the other does
Final Thoughts
It’s been excellent to have been away from the business for a couple of days and identify issues that have come up and do our utmost to work through as many problems as possible so we can fix them and keep finding more and more again.
