If you're at the stage of your business where you're growing your team or even exploring the first steps, it's essential to implement not only a recruitment strategy but also a retention strategy.
Last week, at my final ‘MASTERMIND. with Sherrie’ session for 2022, we found out about the recruitment and retention strategies of one of Australia's most astute businesswomen... Naomi Simson.
You may recognise Naomi from four seasons of Shark Tank Australia, but she was also the founder of Red Balloon and co-founded the Big Red Group, which employs 150 people in Adrenaline, Experience Oz, and Red Balloon.
She is also the author of two best-selling books, the most followed person on Linkedin, is a blogger, podcaster, business commentator and is a regular panellist for the ABC on The Drum.
Naomi, through her extensive business experience has a true understanding of the importance of retaining talent and strategies to enhance the productivity and success of our MASTERMINDERS businesses.
Here are some of the lessons she shared with us:
Bold vision is achieved by inspired ambitious thinking, high urgency, and sharp focus.
Red Balloon has always pushed the boundaries of business.
Naomi knew that brands were built by people that felt something for a brand. Red Balloon’s helps not only its consumers create memories, but it helps small businesses grow by providing them with a platform to do so.
They created big hairy and audacious goals within the business and never took their eyes off the scoreboard. Within the office, they shared their KPIs, achievements and experiences booked via screens around the office.
This sharp focus helped them get to the end game.
Red Balloon delivers an experience every 21 seconds, every day and it is this velocity making a material difference to small businesses around Australia.
Great leadership comes from asking powerful questions.
As leaders, we must view work as an experience for our employees. Gaining trust with your employees, ensuring they feel valued and valuable to the business and aligning them to your cause.
This means that when you need to have conversations with your staff, you can ask powerful questions. An example of this is being able to ask ‘is this your best work?'
If no, the next question is ‘what was missing that you did not have to get your most effective work done?’ This could be things like resources, the deadlines allocated were achievable, the volume of workload etc
Let your staff know that you view them as bigger than they see themselves and challenge them to be the best version of themselves.
Deliver exceptional customer experience to retain your clients.
The cost to acquire customers has increased by 35%. So how can we add to our customers' experiences?
Sometimes this requires us to step back into an operational role. At times, Naomi has picked up the phone or responded to emails from customers about their experiences. It has surprised and delighted them to know that she is so hands-on.
Send your customers surveys, allow them to share their experience and if need be the Chief Experience Officer for your business, pick up the phone, delve in further and solve their problems.
The baseline is that it is always about people. Business is about people.
And lastly, life is not linear. The journey is not linear.
So, enjoy the experience.
If you've been watching the past two series of ‘MASTERMIND. with Sherrie’ and experienced some serious FOMO, applications are NOW open for 2023, and the keynote speaker lineup is ICONIC!
If you want to do something different for your business and life, the 2023 program is the place to be.
Find out more here: sherriestoror.com/mastermind
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