Reduce Hiring Costs Now! Like, Today!

Hiring is expensive.  And, let's be honest, you're probably not great at it.

Food for thought:

• The cost to replace a qualified manager may be as much as 150% of the position’s salary.  –Dun and Bradstreet

• The average cost to recruit an employee in any category is $4,000.
  --The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California at Berkely

• Mid-Level managers require over 6 months to reach their break even potential.
  --Harvard Business School

• Not every new hire will demand the entire process, but even an $8/hour employee can end up costing a company around $3,500 in turnover costs, both direct and indirect.  --Investopedia

• 40 per cent of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year. They cite the lack of skills training and development as the principal reason for moving on. -–GO2

Luckily, the answer may be right in front of you.

The solution is simple.  Instead of the traditional and expensive reactive approach to filling positions, take control of your organization by developing the resources you already have.  The Leadership Excelerator System was designed to help you develop your workforce and to help you retain your high potential candidates.  The LEXs is composed of three unique processes that are central to reducing costs and increasing productivity: 

• Succession Planning
• Executive Coaching
• Cloud-based learning

"When I arrived at Winterwood, we had already outgrown our current training platforms, which were basically a mix of un-customized, off the shelf consumer products with limited features and poor tracking and reporting functions. Halo worked with us to identify areas of improvement, and customized a tremendously powerful system that will greatly improve the effectiveness of our employee development going forward."

Ron Dillard

Winterwood Inc. 

Training Manager

http://www.winterwoodonline.com

Contact us to learn about how you can reduce your hiring costs by developing your #1 resource.

www.halogrouponline.com
502.276.6352

Your First Sales Hire

You've got your products and systems ready to go and now you're looking to make your first sales hire.  What would your ideal candidate look like?  There's an interesting discussion going on over on LinkedIn.  Check it out here.

What do you look for in a sales candidate?  Experience?  Aptitude?  A big contacts list?  Share your thoughts.

Another Weekend....Another Round of HaloDash upgrades

We are excited to announce even more new features have been rolled out to your halo DASH.  The list is nowhere near as exhaustive as the previous upgrade notification, as a number of these features were planned for in the previous release, though, had yet to make it out of development and testing in time.

 

New "Breadcrumb" Navigation

The title bar at the top of every screen is now even more useful.  It is still your “You are here” indicator in the system, but it is now interactive!  For example, if you are currently looking at an Opportunity, you can click on the Contact or Company to navigate directly there or even Dashboard to quickly get back home.  The “breadcrumb” navigation is available on every screen.

 

Activity Analytics By User

Activity Analytics by Type were already included on your Analytics dashboard, and you could also pull Activity Analytics by User by clicking on each individual user in your Users area of the system (to review their individual analytics), though, there wasn’t a single “table” that had analytics broken down by all of your sales users, until now.  Just like with Types, we break down Activity counts by User according to those currently Scheduled for the current day/week/month/year, as well as those currently Completed in that same day/week/month/year range in addition to those Completed in the previous day/week/month range (so you get a snapshot of what’s planned, what’s completed that was planned and what was previously completed as a comparison).  We also even included a link directly to the users specific Analytics area if you want to see their individual numbers broken down by Type as well.

 

Opportunity Competitors

You now have the ability at the Opportunity level to define any competitors that you may have for that specific opportunity.  Look for this in the upper right of the Opportunity Detail screen.

 

Vendor Product Commission Structures

Do you remember the Vendor and Product system rolled out last week?  You can now define commission structures at the Product level, broken down by year.  For example, on a specific Product, you can define that the first year commission is a flat fee, and each subsequent year is a percentage, or perhaps even both (a flat fee and a percentage).  Just as how utilizing the Vendor and Product system for Opportunities isn’t required, if you choose to use the Product system, the Commission system is also not required.  It’s simply there to use if you see value in using it.

 

Opportunity Commission Report

What’s the point of defining Product Commission Structures if there’s no Commission Report?  Available in your Reports area is the new Commission report.  Do you recall the new Opportunity fields rolled out last week for Effective Date and Term Date, as well as Payment Schedule?  These were the groundwork for the Commission report.  Commissions are calculated from the Effective Date to the Term Date, distributed according to the Payment Schedule and at a rate according to the Commission Structure of the Products assigned to the Opportunity.

 

As always, if you have any questions or run into any issues or need assistance with any of the new features, please let us know.

502-276-6352

www.halogrouponline.com

Are you in the 34% club?

How many businesses fail in the first year?  90%?  How many last 5 years or more?  How many 10 years?  People have come up to me this week congratulating Halo Applications for making it 10 years, and they've quoted me survival rates that are all over the board.  The  the typical compliment contains a nugget something along the lines of, "Most business fail to make it 10 years.  So, you must be doing something right."  I guess that could be true, but I looked it up anyways, just to make sure we weren't patting ourselves on the back too hard.

As it turns out, businesses have a pretty good shot at making it.  Data from the Census Bureau shows that 69 percent of new firms with employees survive at least two years, and that 51 percent survive at least five years. An independent analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 49 percent of new businesses survive for at least five years.
34 percent of new businesses cruise ten years or more, and 26 percent are still trucking after 15 years.  So, it's not all doom and gloom now, is it?  If you only hit the ball 34% of the time, you're a lock for the hall of fame.  The reality is, in my opinion, based upon my experience, if we can make it...anybody can make it.

But, still, a decade has gone by in a flash, and I feel like we are only now just beginning to hit our stride.  So if you dream of starting your own business, give it a shot!  It only takes a few things:  

1. Faith:  If God doesn't want you doing this, you're not going to be doing it.  And if God wants you doing it, you're going to survive whether you're a bonehead or not.  But, through all things by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God.  He'll answer and bless.  In fact, there's not another logical reason we should still be operating.  So, thanks and credit to whom it is due.
2. Great clients:  If you don't have great clients, people who you enjoy working with, then hang it up.  It's not worth it.  Great clients are happy for your success, and understand that we all screw up from time to time.  So, thanks to all our clients, many of whom have been with us since day one. 
3. Great team:  Not everybody who started with us in 2004 is still with us, but everybody has brought value to the table at one point in time (except that one guy...and he knows who he is).  In any case, thank you Team Halo.

I'm sure I could name a few more, but those are the most important to me.  

What are the most important to you.

Thank you all again for making this possible.

www.halogrouponline.com

 
 

Time Warner Blacks Out Chicago--Halo Gets Resolution

How the Internet Works

It has been an interesting morning.  Around 10:00am, our clients started calling us reporting that their websites were down.  However, a quick analysis proved that all web traffic for clients other than Time Warner customers was functioning as normal.  All websites were up and accounted for.

So, we called Time Warner, which in typical fashion was slow to acknowledge an issue. Team Halo rushed into action.  Our data center team in Chicago remotely logged in to workstations in the Louisville area and began running traceroutes.  We were able to conclusively prove that all web traffic was being incorrectly looped by Time Warner.

So, what happened? According to our data center techs:

"The issues this morning were due to a Tier 2 network incorrectly routing traffic from 10am until about 11:30am.

So, if you happened to be using an ISP (such as Insight/TWC) that used that specific Tier 2 network (RoadRunner) for handshaking/routing, you were basically blocked from all of Chicago, since the Tier 2 network wasn’t routing connections up to the Tier 1 networks properly."--see image above

Around 11:30am Time Warner officially confirmed what we already knew, that a routing loop on their end caused all traffic to be delayed.  All of our traceroutes that were dying showed it was traffic they were connecting through Road Runner.  Time Warner took this information and resolved the problem.

Thank you for reporting your issues.  We resolved them to the best of our ability regarding the national behemoths that caused the problem.  We apologize for any inconvenience this caused you.

The name is Freeze. Learn it well---epilogue

 :) Cleared  :)

As of today, our auditor said we were cleared, and that she was sending the results on to Frankfort.  Of course, a final resolution letter will take 90 days to receive.  So, here's to holding our breath.

As a note, Kentucky is one of the few states that files sales tax in this bass-akwards way.  Most states, you take your taxable sales, multiplied by your sale tax rate, and voila.  Send the check.  But, Kentucky likes to be cumbersome, I guess.  Our process is akin to using a full blog post, when a tweet would have sufficed.

Oh..wait...

www.halogrouponline.com
502-276-6352

New HaloDash features give you even more ways to improve your performance.

Please take a few minutes to review this post to get up to speed on all of the new features available (and to learn where your navigation went).  If you find yourself thinking, “I already knew about that feature,” then more than likely, it was your company that requested the feature :)

 

New Navigation Menu

The large toolbar buttons have been replaced by an expandable navigation menu in the upper left.  Think of this just like your Windows Start Menu that expands to show you everything available.  This gives us even more room to add future modules (and the new ones mentioned in this email) and also reduces scrolling on mobile devices.

 

New Opportunity Vendors & Products Modules

You now have the ability to add your possible Vendors that may be supplying any Products and/or Services that you resell.  Simply click on the new Navigation Menu, and under the Opportunity heading, select Vendors.  Once you have added your first Vendor, you can add Products that this Vendor supplies.  Then, the next time you create an Opportunity, when adding an Item to the Opportunity, you’ll have the ability to select an optional Product, and it will pre-populate all of your Item fields based upon the Product information (with the ability to change).

 

The Vendors/Products system is entirely optional, there is no requirement to use it, but if you find yourself constantly typing in the same Item information over and over again, you may find value in using it to save yourself some data entry.

 

New Fields for Current Modules

See the list at the bottom of this email for the over 30 new fields available for you in the Company, Contact, Secondary Contact, Opportunity, Opportunity Items, Projects and Project Task modules. 

 

New SSL Upgrades

The halo DASH system now forces SSL on all connections to ensure that all of your information is kept secure in transmission from your computer/phone/tablet to our server.  Any non-SSL links you may have (such as your auto-login links) will be automatically redirected for you, there is nothing that you need to update.

 

90 Day “Out of Contact” Alert

When you have a Contact that has not been updated in over 90 day(s) (such as a new phone call or meeting or opportunity), they will be displayed in this new Alert.  As a reminder, the Alerts display on your Dashboard in the expandable “gold” bar area.  This area only displays if there is any alert data to display.

 

Printable Summaries

Pull up any Contact and/or Project and above the details you will find new “Print” buttons to print off a quick summary of just that Contact or Project.  Projects also offer a detail print view that will line item out everything about the Project.

 

Update Contacts from Company

Have a company that changed their address?  Don’t want to have to update every single contact at the company with the new address?  Simply click the new “Update Linked Contacts” button from the Company Detail screen to “push” out the updates to all contacts at the company.

 

Title “Auto-fill” from Types

When creating a new Opportunity and/or Project, when selecting the Type, the Title field will now be auto-filled with the Type value.  For example, if you have an Opportunity Type of “Learning Management System,” simply selecting that Type when creating your Opportunity will automatically enter that in as the title to reduce the amount of data entry required.  This also occurs at the Opportunity Item/Project Task level.

 

Are all of your Type dropdowns still set to “Unassigned”?  Remember to contact us to have us update your account with your Type values.

 

Opportunity Analytics By Type

Remember the Type fields mentioned above?  The Opportunity Types are now being used on the Opportunity Analytics to break down Win/Loss/Margin not only across all Opportunities, but also broken down by Opportunity Type.  Even more reason to let us know the Type of Opportunities you have to have us setup your account!

 

Workflow Usability Improvements

When completing an Activity, are you tired of having to scroll all the way down to the bottom to select your Result?  How about when editing your Opportunities or Projects to update their Stage, Probabilities or Status?  Or when your resources are entering in their Project time, having to scroll down to the Hours field?  All of these fields have now been relocated to the top of the screen on their “Edit” views to ensure that the fields you are needing to edit are easily accessible.  Now when you close that next Opportunity, simply click to Edit, change the Status up top and click Save in the lower right, without ever having to scroll.

 

Also, in regards to resources entering time, there is now also the ability to “Save and Enter Additional Time” so they can quickly enter their timesheets with even less clicks.

 

Additional New Features Launching This Week

Some items unfortunately didn’t make the cutoff for launch over the weekend, but are dangerously close to completion and will be launching this week!  The Opportunity Module will no longer be left out and will be getting its own Printable Summary (think of this almost as a printable quote).  You will also be able to link Documents to Activities, Histories, and/or Notes, so you can easily see what documents you uploaded pertain to a specific phone call or meeting.  Also be on the lookout for new Activity Calendar views, where you will be able to toggle between the current monthly calendar view to a new work week and/or day view.

 

If you have any questions, or run into any issues with the upgrades, please let us know ASAP and we will get them addressed.

support@halogrouponline.com

http://www.halogrouponline.com/halo-dash

Is your CRM too big?

"I'll grow into these in 30 years."

Having a CRM solution that is too big to be useful is a very common complaint.  I ran into an old friend earlier this week whose business is a Microsoft Service Provider. As such they use Microsoft Dynamics...and buy "use" I mean they "ignore 80% of the features". Dynamics is a heck of a program. However, most small to medium sized businesses don't need a full blown ERP Solution.  The entire system gets bloated down and most features go unused. We've all heard the phrase "killing a fly with a sledgehammer."  That's what they're doing.

But it's not just the enterprise products like Dynamics, SAP, and SalesLogix that overpack the suitcase; even smaller scale applications such as SalesForce and ACT can get packed to the gills with features that many companies never use.  This is commonly known as feature bloat.  If there are buttons in your CRM that you've never clicked and have no intention of clicking, then you've probably asked yourself one of the following questions:

• Am I missing out on something?  
• Could I be doing something better? 
• Why am I paying for features I never use?

The reality is that most businesses need their CRM to provide a few core functions:

1. Keep track of contacts
2. Keep track of your sales pipeline
3. Keep track of your customer communications, follow-ups, and activities

Halo Applications' custom CRM solution HaloDash was designed to deliver the most basic CRM functions first, without unnecessary feature bloat.   We applied the same philosophy to post sale/delivery functions with a complete Project Management solution.  Finally, the HaloDash combines the data and provides valuable metrics from both sides of your business (Sales and Projects) in a simple to understand dashboard.

If you are experiencing feature bloat or suspect that your productivity is being drained by over-complicated software solutions, I encourage you to contact us about what HaloDash can do for you.

http://halogrouponline.com/contact-us

502-276-6352

Cold Hard Fact of the Week--or How to Blow Off a $500,000 job offer.

I know they say employees are motivated by more than money.

Sometimes, however....it's about the money.

Check out this story from Business Insider.

"$500,000?  Nah.  I'm Good."

Top 10 Business Lessons to Learn From Bobby Petrino

We live in a fascinating world.  When Bobby Petrino can get rehired by the University he dropped like cold pancakes, only to turn around and walk-out on his next job; and then get fired from the job after that; to in turn leave his current position after one year; and finally to return with the accolades of Richard the Lionheart, you figure there's got to be some business lessons.  So, here goes.

10) We all lose clients from time to time.  Be nice to them on the way out.  You'd probably take them back if you had the choice.

"I hate you!  If only you weren't so darn beautiful."

9) When you're in your start-up phase, take big risks, especially if they're not risks. WKU took a chance on damaged goods because they knew it would help them make a big splash.  The PR alone helped them fill the seats on the "other" side of LT Smith Field (the once famous half stadium).  But now they'll also receive 1.2 million from the University of Louisville Athletics Department, and they only paid Bobby $850K for his services to begin with.  Nice! 

Major university owned by this guy.  Film at 11.

8) Haters Gonna Hate anyway.  If the opportunity comes along for you to win, take it, regardless of what your competition says.

WKU Legend Rod Smart.

7) Contracts are a two-way street.  If you're going to dedicate time and effort on a client that has displayed a history of backing-out, have some guarantees built in for your business.  You are providing a valuable service just as they are providing capital.  You are equals in the arrangement.  Petrino isn't breaking his contract with WKU, he is fulfilling it with the buyout clause.  

Can we still be friends?

6) Strive to reach the highest levels of your profession.  Once you've proven you're good at what you do, you can always go back to where you were if things don't work out like you expected.

5) The grass isn't always greener.  Make sure you analyze that great opportunity before you burn your bridges.  You might not like the job once you get it.  Friends, advisers, and coaches can be helpful here, but I've always found a good prayer is the best approach.  If God says "Go," go.  If he says, "Stay," stay.  1 Kings 18:21.  

If the bible isn't your thing, then take a queue from Mr. Miagi.


4) Admit your mistakes.  Apologize.  Ask Forgiveness, and Move on.  Road Rash is hard to hide.  Everybody knows you messed up already.

"My bad."

3) Don't be dishonest.  You're good at what you do.  If you're the best, it shows.  If you're not, find something else you are good at, but the truth always comes out. Don't taint your reputation over something stupid.  Even sub-par employees get 2nd chances as long as they have good character.  

Obama and Petrino.  Change we can believe in....again.

2) Determine your measurement of success before you start. Football is in the business of winning games.  Moral victories are great, but don't be surprised when you can't pay the light bill.

And finally....

1) Exceed expectations.  People will tend to overlook your mistakes if you have a history of delivering big time.

www.haloapplications.com

Home of the HaloDash CRM Solution and LEXs Leadership Excelerator

  

The name is Freeze. Learn it well.

So, I’d like to start off my first post of the year by simply recognizing the ridiculous state of our local governments.  As I type this, I’ve got two state sales tax auditors sitting across the table scouring my accounting software.  And for what?  Not so that they can verify we “collect” sales tax, but to verify that we “pay” sales tax.  Hmm, that’s somewhat offputting.  

Now, these ladies are pleasant people.  It’s not their fault they have this unenviable profession.  Matthew was a publican, if memory serves, and he wrote a pretty good book in the bible, so they’re not beyond redemption.  Of course, various traditions hold that Matty was either crucified, beheaded, or burned to death.  Whether this was for being a Christian or for being a tax collector is not recorded, so I’ll not speculate further.  It’s just the general ridiculousness of it all.  By the time you’ve decided to audit Halo Applications, you’ve admitted that your money management is so grossly negligent that you’ve got to grasp at every dollar that flutters through the state.

About three years ago we were audited by the yahoos at the Metro Revenue Commission. Again, they’re a glorious bunch of pleasant incompetents, but they were on our trail for 4 months before returning a verdict that we owed a sum of money for insufficiently withholding taxes for two freelances we had hired the year previous.  Both freelancers did the same type of work, for the same client.   When I explained to the office what a freelancer was, they asked “Did they pay taxes?”  My response was, “I don’t know.  Ask them.  I’m not responsible for everybody else paying taxes.”  So, after about 30 minutes of round and round, I said, “Cut to the chase, what do we owe?”  The response, “$42.”  I said, “OK, great.  I’m still not paying it, because you’re wrong.”  At that point, the auditor said, “You’re right.  You only owe taxes on one of your freelancers.”  I said, “Great, but can you tell me why I would owe on one and not the other when they did the same work. I’m not paying for either.”  After a few more minutes, he relented and admitted we owed nothing.  Whether he agreed with me, or finally realized that he’d spent four months of his life chasing $42 was never fully explained.  It also took them 3 years to understand that it was possible to have a company, located in Louisville, that had most of its employees that lived in Indiana or surrounding counties.  “MEEP-ZORP.  Does not compute.  Does not compute.”  Look, we provide CRM software and Learning Management Solutions, we can do that from anywhere.

But, back to today.  I understand we need to collect and pay taxes.  It’s our responsibility. I can understand an audit to see if we’re collecting responsibly.  That’s fair, albeit a pain in the butt.  But, to demand that I prove that I paid taxes on a 12 pack of BIC pens in 2010 seems a little much.  And if I can’t prove it, guess what, I’ll have to pay it again.  If this were any other organization demanding that we prove our innocence, we’d call it a shakedown.  I had a client tell me last week that the state demanded that he prove he paid tax on a box of toilet paper he bought from the office supply store.  Nice.  Pay your protection money, and maybe we’ll leave you alone.

I will have the last laugh though.  I’ve turned the heat off in the building today.  I hear it's supposed to reach -25 on the windchill.  The runny noses across the table are only fueling my resolve to execute my insidious plan .  “The name is Freeze, learn it well, for it is the chilling sound of your Doom.”