How are you setting yourself apart? | Mike Figliuolo, Part 1

I want to talk a little bit about talking about baking and strategy. I don't know why those two really don't go along, do they Mark?

Baking and strategy?

I don't know. Okay, let's talk about strategic planning and part of, and as a lead into that, let's just talk a little bit about trends, right? So when we talk about strategic planning, we, we're looking at long term trends, right? We're looking at predictions, we're looking at things that we believe are going to impact a strategy. That's what we build it around. So what are some of the trends, Mike, that you would see today that we believe will be holdovers or that you believe will be carryovers as we look into 2021?

Yeah, I think there's the short term obvious ones of people are a lot more comfortable with remote work and remote collaboration. That's not going away, especially given the cost savings you can get from doing it as well as the efficiencies that come along with it. So I think that's one, I think another one that I'm increasingly seeing. It's really fascinating working in the learning and development space, right? We do a lot of training is, I hesitate to say it but like the university is dead and it just doesn't know it yet. So when you look at the costs of getting an education, right, higher ed, whether it's your undergrad or graduate degrees, the costs have just been skyrocketing. Skyrocketing. Then you look at the increasing availability of additional learning materials and how ubiquitous that stuff is becoming. You know, look at LinkedIn learning and eLearning platforms and being able to do distance learning. And now you've got learners who are getting more comfortable doing distance learning. Plus you've got a, another trend of people continuing to look for career growth. But I think this whole all the unemployment that we've experienced and all the shocks to the system, I think it's going to be an awakening for a lot of people saying, yeah, my company always said they would be there for me until they weren't. And I think a lot of people bought into that loyalty pitch that a lot of companies throw their way. And I'm not saying that companies aren't loyal, right? But when it's like, all right, we got to stay in business and lay people off or we can just keep everybody and then go out of business, well, the choice becomes clear. But that fractures the loyalty. So you have all these people who are now saying, wow, I'm not as secure as I thought I was. Going to be. Therefore, how do I increase my marketability? How do I do it in a more remote manner? And there's just a lot of interesting workforce dislocation trends that I think are absolutely going to continue. And that can have huge implications for your salesforce. Right. I mean, you think about your salespeople, and we know they stay around for compensation and for lifestyle. Some of them stay around for the travel. That's not happening anymore. And you really got to rethink how you approach them. Yeah.

And one thing we're looking at, Mike. So you're talking about the relationship being broken between the company and the employee. And I'm assuming that's involuntary turnover. Right. So we need to save the business, people. You know, we need to lay off some companies. Some clients we know are in second, third, fourth round of layoffs. But you bring up another point, which is the change in the employee value proposition. So as a salesperson, you know, I'm getting money slipper fatigue working in my living room all the time, and I really want to be out with people. And this is not really what I signed up for. And I mean, it's our view that companies need to do something to be able to strengthen that value proposition, to keep the right people.

Absolutely. You know, and it's got to go necessarily beyond just the day to day blocking and tackling, because in 21, that's not going to change. Yeah, travel will hopefully pick up a little bit, but it's not gonna change that much. So what are the other areas that you can provide value to those employees? And it may be learning. It may be comp. It may be. Ben. It may be special projects that they're working on with all that new free time from not being on planes. Right. Are there other projects that they can get involved in that are gonna be development opportunities for them? You know, I think the other thing to realize is people are now gonna be a lot more comfortable taking roles outside of their geography. And this is going to work either to a company's advantage or against it. Right. So now I can touch salespeople. I can have salespeople working remotely. It used to be, oh, I need to see my salespeople physically, like at least once a week when they get in off the road. And we'll have our sales huddles. And it's like now, all right, everybody hop on zoom. Let's have the sales huddle. And people are not tied to the office anymore. So you're going to have these high performers. Right. So when you have the layoffs. The low performers go for the most part, but you're going to have the high performers saying, wait a minute. Yeah, I'm not secure either. So they were first, but I may be next. And that employee value proposition and that trust has been fractured. And now you got people who want to learn, they want to grow, they have more geographic flexibility, and they're seeking other sources of value.