This is a guest post written by Kashyap Trivedi. Kashyap is a Project Manager, working with an awesome team at Launch Space. He helps SaaS companies conquer the SERPs with Expert Outreach. When he is not working, you’ll find him playing Table Tennis or Meditating.

The Sales, Marketing, and Support teams form the three significant points of a business’ interactions with customers. Because of this, they must work together to create a seamless transition for the customers that are moving from one stage of the buying process to another.

When all three teams work together in sync, they can easily help each other to reach organizational goals quickly. This article will show you how these three teams can work together and how your business can benefit from it. To jump to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below.

• How the Sales team can help the Marketing & Support teams
• How the Marketing team can support the Sales & Support teams
• How the Support team can help the Marketing & Sales Teams
• Designing a perfect process for an optimized Sales, Marketing, and Support team sync
• Using Process Street for synchronized cross-departmental collaboration
• Cross-departmental collaboration: Key takeaways

Let’s start with Sales.
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Who resolved to read more this year? ✋

Who actually has? 🙈

Let’s be honest: you’re never actually going to make it through that folder of bookmarked articles you’ve been collecting since last year. Hey – not judging. I’ve been cultivating my own To Be Read monolith for months.

So what’s the deal? How do you catch up with all those industry insights, actionable advice articles, and entrepreneurial retrospectives when there never seems to be any time to, y’know, read?

Simple: let us read them for you.

Introducing Tech Out Loud – the coolest podcast around bringing those must-read articles directly into your waiting ears.
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There are plenty of great quotes from inspirational leaders that perfectly sum up the importance of workforce planning, but in my mind, none of them quite capture it like this one:

“Making a plan without the right tools is like making spaghetti without a pot.” – Kris Hughes, Content Strategy Consultant

You are absolutely not going to be making any spaghetti without a pot, or at least a pot-like vessel that will hold boiling water in a way so as not to burn the crap out of your hands in the process. When it comes to workforce planning, the spaghetti is your business and the pot…

Okay. I took the simile too far. You get the picture: if your business doesn’t have the right people in the right place, you got nothing.

Think beyond that: if the right people don’t stay or aren’t being utilized properly, you still don’t have a pot to… make spaghetti in.

There is a lot out there about workforce planning, and by a lot I mean, a frickin lot. It’s my job to do research and even I got a little dizzy trying to sort through all the different takes on what is or isn’t or could be/might be the best way to manage your workforce.

This post aims to simplify all that. I’ll cover the foundations of workforce planning, specific considerations for remote work, and examine some common methods for finding the right approach for your organization.

This Process Street post is designed so you can jump straight to the info you need to know, so feel free to skip ahead.

• Workforce planning foundations
• Challenges for remote workforce planning
• Future-back planning process
• Recruit, retain, reinforce
• Workforce management tools

Let’s get planning!
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We’re an ambitious bunch here at Process Street.

In terms of numbers, we’ve published over 1,000 onsite blog posts, over 300 offsite blog posts, penned 5 huge ebooks, attended many an external webinar, and created many a podcast, too. And this is only our content marketing team’s efforts. If I were to discuss the phenomenal accomplishments of our other departments — from engineering to sales, product to customer success — we’d be here all day.

Despite our company-wide accomplishments, we knew in 2020 that we could push ourselves further (especially considering our $12m cash injection from Accel, Salesforce, and others). Naturally, we turned the ambitious goals and objectives we’d set ourselves up a notch.

This meant that, rather than only working with KPIs, we threw OKRs into the mix as well.

Not to toot our own horn too much, but I can say with confidence that the choice to do so went in our favor. In fact, we’ve had some of the best months ever since deploying OKRs!

This is why, in this post, I’m going to tell you everything that we learned from internally deploying OKRs at Process Street. Specifically, I’ll give you a quick recap on what OKRs are, go over our method for implementing OKRs in detail, recount my experience of getting used to (and then loving) OKRs, on top of providing 5 tried-and-tested tips for deploying OKRs at your company.

Just read the following sections to get completely clued-up:

• OKRs: A quick breakdown
• How we deployed OKRs at Process Street
• Deploying OKRs: How do they impact the rest of the company?
• 5 tips and tricks for deploying OKRs at your company

It’s time for you to pivot to OKRs and hit challenging targets like a pro, too.

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This is a guest post by Brian Skewes, a technologist into deconstruction. Over two decades of self-employment, he has accumulated a wealth of inadvertent real-world lessons related to building, running, and preserving a small company.

There’s a phrase that’s become popular in web analytics, digital marketing, and business consultancy in the last few years: data is everything.

There’s a lot to recommend it. It’s short, snappy, and captures the importance of data to the way in which we do business today. Whether you are building organic links or in the process of drafting an employee development plan, the path to success runs right through a big ‘ol pile of numbers.

Unfortunately, there’s more to numbers than just numbers.

This is due to the nature of data itself. The problem with relying on numbers and nothing else is that no matter how impressive it is, it also remains inscrutable, incomprehensible, or simply boring for the majority of people. Unless your audience is composed entirely of the type of person who can instantly visualize columns of figures, you are going to need to provide some context for the ever-so-impressive stats.

This is where the concept of storytelling comes in.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at how you can go beyond data acquisition, compilation, and presentation. We’ll show you how to make your data come alive through the magic of storytelling.

• Purposeful data, the Enlightenment, and Single Source of Truth
• Building the framework for your data story
• What’s the story behind your data?
• The happily ever after

Once upon a time…
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“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” – George Patton

“Once I have X, I can do Y.”

This phrase is the defining characteristic of the toolbox fallacy: thinking you can’t do something until you have the right tool.

The toolbox fallacy is self-deception disguised as excuses or a lack of “tools”. The issue with these tools is that you believe that you need them and thus, can’t (or won’t) start a project without them.

“As soon as my Apple Watch arrives, I’ll start training for the 5K.”

The problem is when X arrives, do you crack on and get started with the Y? Often times, it’s too easy to continue down the slippery slope of toolbox logic.

“My Apple Watch arrived, but now I need a coaching app – which I am yet to have downloaded.”

So, how do you overcome the toolbox fallacy? Simple: You default to action. In other words, you get the ball rolling – whether you have all the tools you think you need or not.

The solution, in a sense, is to be more agile.

In this post I’ll be looking at how to overcome the toolbox fallacy by putting the systems in place to move fast, and with virtue. I’ll try to address:

• How do you plan and structure clear action items, so you can move fast and be sure you’re making the right decisions?
• How will you move fast without breaking things (by things I mean humans)?

And, to sum things up I’ll take a look at how we at Process Street use OKRs to decide when it is we should be moving fast vs when we should be slowing down.

To jump to a specific section click the appropriate links below:

• Toolbox fallacy: Once I have X, I can do Y
• Moving fast with the toolbox fallacy
• A framework to move fast (& with virtue)
• How our OKRs help us avoid the toolbox fallacy

Let’s start by unpacking the toolbox fallacy in more depth! 🛠
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You are an HR leader at an executive search firm and you have landed a big client, who has agreed to kick-off a retained search with your company. What’s your next move?

Who am I to know anything about executive retained search? Well, I am an ex-associate from one of the top executive recruiting firms in the industry. In an article from the Economist about corporate headhunters, it was said that:

“Nobody has ever studied to become a headhunter but the profession is becoming more diverse. Those serving in its ranks include ex-engineers, a former Olympic gymnast…”

– and me, a former visual artist and administrative assistant. Working in executive search, I developed a deep understanding of how each role on the search team can greatly influence the quality and success of the retained search.

The executive search business has been operating since the first World War, through the 1940s. According to AESC (The Association of Executive Recruiting Consultants), it’s likely that Thorndike Deland formed the concept of executive search back in 1926 when he founded the first retained executive recruiting firm.

Meaning, the executive retained search industry has been evolving for over 90 years and will continue to evolve with the digital revolution. Although, there are elements of the retained search business that will remain constant, like the drive to deliver the highest quality service.

I believe it’s crucial for everyone on the executive retained search team to understand how they fit together within the retained search process. However, to impact the performance of your retained search, you have to work on the system. 94% of problems and opportunities for improvement belong to the system, not the individual.

In this post, you’ll learn the difference between a retained search and a contingent search, how to optimize the retained search process (based on my personal experience and reports backed up by leading firms in the industry), and how to maximize the efficiency of your process, especially in the era of remote work (using digital tools like Process Street).

• What is a retained search?
• What is the difference between a retained & contingent search?
• The process of a retained search
• 5 lessons on how to run an effective retained search
• Mediocre to exceptional

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“Processes underpin business capabilities, and capabilities underpin strategy execution.” – Pearl Zhu, Digital Capability: Building Legal Like Capability Into Business Competency

A 2018 survey by BPTrends found that 93% of the organizations studied engaged in multiple process improvement projects.

This is because business processes are the life-blood of your organization. Process improvements, therefore, prime your organization to run like a well-oiled machine, bettering your chances of business success.

On that note, in this Process Street article, we take a look at our top 45 process improvement tools. Using these tools will improve customer satisfaction, save you money, strengthen customer retention, and boost project success rate (+ more).

Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say.

• Why you should care about improving your processes
• 45 top process improvement tools
• How to improve your business processes using business process documentation

For clarity, I’ve split each tool as per the following subheaders – click to jump to the unique tool category.

• Process improvement visualizations 👀
• Process improvement exercises 🏃
• Process improvement frameworks 🎞
• Process improvement methodologies 👩‍🔬

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This is a guest post by Brayn Wills, the current Knowledge Management Specialist at ProProfs knowledge base. He is responsible for creating unique and relevant content on the knowledge base and keeping track of the latest developments in the realm of knowledge management. In his free time, he is either reading a new book or exploring offbeat destinations.

When a crisis strikes, it brings along daunting challenges that require businesses to reevaluate their strategies. One such significant challenge is customer churn. It can impact a business drastically if left unchecked.

Statistics show that, on average, most companies experience a monthly churn rate of 7.5%. If left unchecked, this can be catastrophic for a company’s bottom line.

A rapidly shrinking customer base means reduced profits that can have a severe impact on an organization, especially during a crisis. What’s more, crisis situations tend to exacerbate the root causes of churn, meaning businesses need to be extra responsive and attentive to their customers during these times.

While you cannot prevent all customers from leaving your company, you certainly can take concrete steps to keep customer churn in control.

In this post for Process Street, I will cover:

• What is customer attrition?
• Customer expectations and mindset during a crisis
• 6 Effective ways to reduce customer attrition
• How to provide extra value to customers during a crisis
• Move beyond promotion to meet customer expectations
• Customer retention solutions with Process Street

Read on to uncover the pragmatic ways to reduce customer churn during a crisis by understanding and providing value to your customers.
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Netflix doesn’t do bonuses. They don’t do formal reviews and they don’t do staff training.

Instead, their HR practices involve heavily scrutinizing employees’ skills and capabilities, and ruthlessly firing them for being good, not great.

“Netflix and chill” it is not.

But, despite these seemingly harsh HR practices, 71% of Netflix employees would encourage their friends to become co-workers. They’re officially the best place in the world to work (even beating the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple). Their employee turnover is only 11% a year, which is below the 13% annual average for tech companies. They’ve maintained a voluntary attrition rate of 3-4% over the last two years, and they make around $2 million per employee.

“Netflix has not only captivated the attention of its customers around the world, but also continues to grow its reputation as an attractive, sought-after employer.” – Forbes, Incubating Culture: How Netflix Is Winning The War For Talent

So, why is Netflix the best place to work, how do they maintain such a productive workforce, and what lessons can we take from them?

Grab some popcorn and let’s find as we go through the following in this Process Street post:

• HR practices: How Netflix does things
• 4 HR practices that changed HR forever
• How Process Street embraces Netflix’s HR practices & why they work for us
• Are Netflix’s HR practices right for you?

Settle in for the story of the year (that you can’t stream)… 🍿

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