Interesting question to me that actually. I'm a director of a company wholesaling goods and we have a team of field based reps each responsible for sales in a given chunk of geography.
We've conducted an experiment this past year or so where we asked one of our guys to more or less never come into the office and to concentrate his efforts on going to visit ( by appointment ) his customers and potential customers.
We asked another chap to limit his travel and try to work his area by phone and email from his desk.
Clearly the second one reduced his costs considerably but having started with approximately the same historical turnovers the guy who is going out and asking for orders is doing much much better than the one sitting at a desk and despite his running costs is still resultantly much more profitable to the company.
Pays yer money takes yer choice I guess.
Edited by Alby Back on 15/04/2014 at 13:44
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@Alby -- very interesting. As the old saying puts it, 'people buy people first.'
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Yes that is interesting.
The company i work for are absolutely customer committed, the customer is by far the most important person in the company, customer says jump we say how high, customer has a problem which may be nothing to do with us, but we shift heaven and earth to sort things out if we can.
Example, one of our customers had plant problems middle of the night, couldn't use bulk product, within 1 hour 10 tons of bagged product was in their premises and production could continue, i know as delivered it.
Result that the company which has been going well over 100 years is one of the biggest in its field and continues to expand where others have contracted or vanished altogether during this recession.
Most employees with half a brain do their best in all ways and appreciate what they have, in turn the company treat their staff with respect and field leading terms and conditions, whats not to like, and it works.
Cheapest doesn't always cut it, whichever way you look at it.
Edited by gordonbennet on 15/04/2014 at 14:11
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It would certainly seem so on this tiny straw poll. Like most companies we have competitors and the usual list of potential reasons to deal with us or not. Price, service, quality etc.
Ultimately though, if you go and ask for someone's business and stand there expectantly, it would appear you are more likely to get the order than by not doing so.
I believe most people want an easy life, if you are prepared to send someone to visit a customer with a suitable solution to their business needs which is at least competitive and all they have to do is 'sign here please', it's just easier for them than even getting around to replying to an email and from our point of view we generally get the order on the day rather than having to wait for the customer to remember to place it.
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The is also the benefit of being able to visit more than one client on the same day - and servicing clients with a mix of visits, emailed documents and telephone conversations, however face to face meetings will always have a place, so a flexible multi-modal approach is probably the most cost effective solution.
Same applies for meetings in the office, skype etc are all very good and do have a place, but so do personal one to one discussions.
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I agree with you Smileyman. We decided to experiment with the two extremes almost by way of proving it.
We spend a heck of a lot of money on generating our orders. Trade shows, reps salaries, commissions, expenses etc and we were interested to challenge our own methods to see if we could re-invent our way of doing business. In the end though it will for now be a process of working practice evolution rather than revolution.
Technology has advanced and we embrace those benefits happily but there is still room and a real need for the personal contact with our customers.
It has not been easy in recent years and we need their business just as much as they need reliable suppliers. Sometimes we have to 'go the extra mile' for them but in return, by and large they support us. Maybe, just maybe, some of that loyalty has been enhanced or earned because they actually 'know' us and we are not just some faceless organisation blinking at at them from their computer screens.
I'd like to believe that anyway.
Edited by Alby Back on 15/04/2014 at 21:04
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I might be able to do a few bits of my job from home, but not that much. I still have to go in.
Companies don't like people working from home because of a simple reason. People do less work when they're at home.
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Jamie I think you are both right and wrong.I certainly know people who abuse their home-working systems and produce very little, certain public employees especially round here spring to mind. On the other hand, given the right measurements, i.e measuring performance by output rather than by hours worked, then it can be made to work successfully. Industry is a long way behind in terms of progressive thinking, for example the firm I am currently with measures performance by how many unpaid hours over and above the standard week one is prepared to put in. Seriously, they do. perhaps not suprising they are unprofitable and likley cannot survive!
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Well the majority of public sector workers don't do anything when they're in the office, never mind out of it. In fairness if they work somewhere like the NHS or benefits agency they likely couldn't do any work from home because of data protection rules and all that stuff.
How do they reward you for your excellent performance then? The one who works the most unpaid hours then gets paid for them?
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:-) I wish I could claim for all my unpaid hours!! It's certainly not an effective culture as the firm is loss making, what seems to happen is that staff are largely ineffective despite the 12 hour days. i think there's a Harvard study somewhere that concluded that if a firm is having to create a long hours culture, then they are not effectively managing. Iwould agree.
As for the original thread, I think that even with all our fancy gizmos, nothing beats a face to face meeting still, but it is expensive all told.
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Well I've always bought into working better and smarter rather than longer or harder.
If you're not doing a good job, doing it for 12 hours won't make it any better.
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I came to the conclusion that more man hours do not equal more profit.
I leave the senior and middle staff to manage themselves and encoo then to be creative.
The 30 odd year old with a small family is hardly seen in the office anymore, he got spotted by a colleague playing in a park with his kids during the middle of the day while in work hours, he turns his phone off after 6pm and not back on until 8am, but by a country mile he is my most successful, effective, talented member of staff.
Its the staff who work long hours and who live in the office who are the least productive.
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>>Its the staff who work long hours and who live in the office who are the least productive...
Yes indeed that is also my experience, the office martyr, the one who always wants everyone to know how overworked they are and who comes in before everyone else and leaves later is usually the one who achieves the least particularly if you examine the relationship between their productivity and their hours 'worked'.
We encourage our staff to work from home if they want to. Of course we need them to come in for important meetings etc but much of what they do can be done from wherever they have access to a broadband connection and a telephone. Their pay is results geared so slacking would cost them quite significantly and isn't an issue. We don't really mind what 'hours' get worked, it's the results achieved in a working week, month or year which are of interest. Hours are a poor measure of productivity, it's what gets done that matters.
To come back to the OP, a rep might only be in front of customers for a total of a couple of hours a a day with the rest spent travelling or organising appointments or what have you but if the 2 hours result in good orders which we would not otherwise have got...
Edited by Alby Back on 15/04/2014 at 23:33
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Well the majority of public sector workers don't do anything when they're in the office, never mind out of it. In fairness if they work somewhere like the NHS or benefits agency they likely couldn't do any work from home because of data protection rules and all that stuff.
You have a laptop with encrypted hard drive and a secure RAS connection to your office server. Other than need for care about leaving screen unlocked while family could view it security is as good as at the office.
Certainly no issue with DP etc for policy/admin type work. Quite a few HR bods worked partly at home too. Public facing stuff might be different.
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Similar thinking applies to HS2. Why is a 20-minute time saving between London & Manchester so important, when you could simply upgrade Wifi web access on trains at under 1% of the cost? Then everyone on the train will be able to work or pass the time happily, and wouldn't care about a 20-minute saving.
There is an interface with HS2 but not the one you suggest. The rationale for HS2 is capacity. The exisitng lines from Euston and Kings Cross are full, they simply cannot handle any more trains. Move the long distance stuff to a new line and there's space to meet surging demand from places like MK to London and for freight.
If your'e building from scratch it makes no sense to stick to Victorian standards so facility to run at 180/200mph is a given. Upgrade of wifi on trains would need a quatum leap from where it is now - tunnels and cuttings are too often dead spots.
Whether people still need to travel at all for business is a different question. Evidence in this thread is that even where VC etc is theoretically do-able it doesn't meet people's needs.
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There is an interface with HS2 but not the one you suggest. The rationale for HS2 is capacity. The exisitng lines from Euston and Kings Cross are full, they simply cannot handle any more trains. Move the long distance stuff to a new line and there's space to meet surging demand from places like MK to London and for freight.
The lines may be full of trains, but as a regular on the West Coast main line from Manchester to Euston, the trains are not full of passengers (sorry, customers) - especially during so-called 'peak' hours (i.e. getting to Euston before 10am, or leaving London any time between 3pm and 6:45pm).
Virgin's outrageous pricing has seen to that. Anytime fares have risen far in excess of inflation, while the Government continues to press cash into their grubby mitts (and those of the other TOCs). Still, that's the wonder of 'competition' - the risk is socialised while the profits are privatised.
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The lines may be full of trains, but as a regular on the West Coast main line from Manchester to Euston, the trains are not full of passengers (sorry, customers) - especially during so-called 'peak' hours (i.e. getting to Euston before 10am, or leaving London any time between 3pm and 6:45pm).
Virgin's outrageous pricing has seen to that. Anytime fares have risen far in excess of inflation, while the Government continues to press cash into their grubby mitts (and those of the other TOCs). Still, that's the wonder of 'competition' - the risk is socialised while the profits are privatised.
I'm not surprised by that. To some extent it's the same in the eveninig peak. In fact Virgin will carry local traffic to Milton Keynes on some services between 16:00 and 19:00 after next timetable change. Some of the most overlaoded commuter trains in the country run Euston to MK in eve peak.
OTOH the Virgin trains immediately after the peak are loaded to the gunwales. Better balance could be achieved by some tweaking of peak times or fares or using demand management better so as to offer more 'train tied' peak tickets. Part of the appeal to passengers is the 3 trains an hour/consistent journey time pattern and little would be gained by thinning less used services.
I current growth remains the trains will soon be as full as the track.
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I'm glad someone else is making the "capacity" case for HS2. Unfortunately, I understand that Cameron has refused to tell voters that capacity is the rationale, despite advice so to do. He evidently thinks the public would only accept it for speed reasons. Patronising b*****.
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I'm glad someone else is making the "capacity" case for HS2. Unfortunately, I understand that Cameron has refused to tell voters that capacity is the rationale, despite advice so to do. He evidently thinks the public would only accept it for speed reasons. Patronising b*****.
Unfortunately, any spare capacity slack in this country for almost anything will be taken up and filled to overflowing and we're back at square one, the elephant in the room and we're some sort of 'ist for daring to mention it.
The capacity argument could lead on to tangent discussions, not in a pro EU party's interests.
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Unfortunately, I understand that Cameron has refused to tell voters that capacity is the rationale, despite advice so to do.
Cameron is speaking only to the very elite minority he can connect with; the tiny elite minority who travel between major cities every day. Most rail passengers don't go from London to Manchester and those services aren't even the most oversubscribed, but Cameron doesn't understand those normal people because his handlers have never let him near one.
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