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Culture Shock

Office climates determine hot sales or the cold shoulder

By Rebecca Trela

Most industry firms distinguish themselves by what they sell: I’m an envelope manufacturer. I’m a software designer. I’m a forms distributor. Don McPherson, CEO of Southern Imaging Group, Florence, S.C., does too. He sells trust.

McPherson, a 30-year print industry veteran, didn’t always sell trust—he used to sell business forms. But the industry has changed, he says, and today’s sales reps have to market themselves. “It’s a new selling culture,” he says. “The reps who don’t sell print-to-mail, commercial print, labels or ad specialties are minimizing their chance for success.” He tells his most successful sales reps that, above all, they have to sell their expertise and their relationships with clients.

Four years ago, Southern Imaging merged with Computer Forms and Products, Granite Falls, N.C., which specialized in variable imaging and commercial printing. McPherson credits the merger’s success to the culture both businesses shared. “We found out that although we were selling different products and were different companies, we were both selling trust.” The companies had been acquainted for decades, he says, and were familiar with one another’s business model.

Everyone Has Culture

“Corporate culture” sounds like a fancy, nebulous term used by fancy, expensive business consultants that small companies don’t have time for, but all businesses, regardless of size or type, have some sort of office culture and could benefit from properly managing it.

One firm, Dudley Consulting Inc., defines corporate culture as “the way we do things around here.” Restated, it’s the behaviors that groups or individuals use to accomplish tasks in a specific location, says CEO Peter Hendley-Hall. Culture is a “question” most companies could answer if they only asked themselves. “Usually, you hear people say things like ‘work hard, play hard’ or ‘small family company.’” Those are values, he says, that compose company culture—such as selling trust.

It could be your company’s culture to start every meeting 10 minutes late, for example, or to stay late on a Friday if a client needs help. Not all companies realize this about their work ethic but, “The most successful companies are very conscious of it,” says Judd Allen, Ph.D, president of The Human Resources Institute, Burlington, Vt.

Find the Time
Many companies think of cultural review as a good idea but something they rarely have time for, like cleaning the top of the refrigerator. There are a few problem scenarios or warning signs, however, that should trigger a thorough climate analysis: beginning a merger or acquisition, hiring a lot of new employees, implementing a new technology or process, or warning signs such as high absenteeism or high turnover.

Ignoring those key moments can be disastrous, as one Florida distributor learned more than a year ago. Suncoast Marketing, based in Ft. Lauderdale, acquired a sales association about one-fifth its size in hopes that the companies would do better together than apart.

“The company was very profitable and we sold a lot of product to them,” says Randy Eubanks, VP of Sales. “We liked the synergy there.” The executive team of the acquired firm, he says, was about 15 to 20 years younger than Suncoast’s partners, and the energy and young sales talent the company offered seemed to balance Suncoast’s strengths. Both companies had similar ideas, enthusiasm and business plans.

“It looked like a great marriage on paper,” Eubanks says, “and to some extent, it was—for a little while.” The two companies struggled for more than a year to combine Suncoast’s longer-term sales cycle with the acquired firm’s transactional model before calling it quits. “It was definitely a conflicting culture. They were set on ‘let’s get it done no matter what,’ we were more ‘let’s get it done the right way, within the parameters.’”

Hendley-Hall says he has seen this approach many times before. “You often hear company A and company B are going to merge because they have this synergy,” he says. “Which they might have. But the reason most mergers fail comes down to the culture.”

Trying to combine a big-customer, conservative financial approach with many small customers and a transactional approach ultimately flatlined, Eubanks says. “No one wants to say they failed, and there were a lot of talks about where could both businesses flex and merge and compromise. But it was becoming a detriment to both business models.” The opposites attract approach proved disruptive to the sales reps’ processes. “It was like mixing athletes and the elderly,” he laughs.
But even healthy cultures need a checkup once in a while. “If you sit back and rest on your laurels,” Hendley-Hall warns, “that doesn’t mean you’ll be healthy in the future.”

What’s Broken
The first thing to think about, says Allen, is what the shared values and beliefs are, even if it’s a two-man band. Then, think about whether those norms work for you (“we’re customer-focused”) or against you (“we’re always late”).

Cultural change can happen quickly or slowly, and it can be expensive as rebranding or as simple as new stationery. It takes about a month for a culture to form in a new company or a merger, and about six months to a year to alter those elements once they’ve formed. Change varies by company, but most experts agree that leaders play a special role in that paradigm shift.

“Leaders provide four functions in culture change,” Allen says. They share the vision, act as role models, line up the necessary resources and celebrate the successes. “One of the problems with culture change is that one of those usually gets missed, and it’s lining up the resources. Change isn’t just about throwing an idea onto your employees and hoping they succeed.” Additionally, he says, many leaders focus on individual efforts and don’t celebrate the progress of the entire team.

In the Suncoast model, the leaders had the wrong expectations. “From our side, we expected them to say, ‘Gee, this model makes more sense in the long term,’ but they didn’t,” Eubanks says. “It’s difficult for a company to come into another company and give up their corporate way of life, the thing that’s put bread on their table, and embrace something new that might not immediately yield remuneration.”

“Think of corporate culture like farming. You’re taking an idea and preparing the soil for it, then you plant the seed by telling people what you’re trying to achieve,” Allen says. The “seed” must be nurtured by giving employees time, training and feedback. Periodically, the crop needs to be checked.

McPherson also credits a regular training cycle with keeping Southern Imaging on track. “It’s hard to do when you’re focused on sales,” he admits, but the company does training twice a year with vendor organizations, products and educational topics. The company also continues “trust training,” reinforcing the Southern Imaging Business tenets. “Trust training teaches the reps to show the customers we have the intent to always do what’s best for them,” McPherson says, “that we’re always thinking ahead and looking out for their best interests.”

When the culture and the company goals align, Allen says, it makes a good business model and brings in money. “Here’s an example: If you had a grocery store that wanted to promote a service culture, you could charge a premium for food because the people who demanded service would still want to come there,” he says. If the grocery store identified itself as an affordable place to shop, it would have to lower prices and cut back on service.

Nowhere But Up
A healthy culture can influence a company’s communications structure, customer perception, employee retention and morale, productivity and, of course, the bottom line.

“We consulted with a company that had a very loose, ad hoc communication system,” Henley Hall says. He described a situation where customers were constantly returning defective items. Employees struggled to make changes on the line without information, judgment support or institutional knowledge to draw on. The returns declined once the company established a database of errors and common fixes. The employees were relieved of pressure, and the customers were thrilled.
Before beginning a cultural change, he cautions, estimate the potential benefits and identify checkpoints where the benefits will be evaluated along the way. Those will provide an insight into whether the path to change is working, and remind leaders to congratulate employees.

“A cultural change can be very significant to your company,” Hendley-Hall says. “Unfortunately, you won’t get 100 percent of all your employees to improve. But you’ll have a better working environment and better customer relations.”

Rebecca Trela is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@PSDA.org.