Greg LaLonde wanted his company, Triplefin LLC, to extend into the mail-order pharmacy business so it could send drugs directly to
patients. But there was one hang-up — the company, which provides solutions for pharmaceutical, health and beauty, and consumer
product companies, had no idea how to get the ball rolling. So LaLonde looked outside his company for help. As the company formulated
a plan, its talked about how others have done it, but with a sense of urgency, didn’t talk the situation to death. As a result, Triplefin, which
employs more than 100 people, grew from 2005 revenue of $7 million to 2006 revenue of about $54 million.
Smart Business spoke
with LaLonde about how to build momentum and how to handle mistakes.
Build momentum. We’ve been able to enjoy
some success and recognize the momentum
by adding some good people and new
accounts. We have to remain focused on
certain initiatives because if you get spread
too thin, you can lose momentum. It’s my
responsibility to find some way to build
momentum and keep it going.
A lot of it is luck and capitalizing on opportunities. Then, I boil that down to it’s my
responsibility to help find those opportunities. Whether it is a new person to an
account or an acquisition, then we get
together and try to take advantage of that
opportunity. I have to make sure we have
the resources so my colleagues can execute
their jobs.
Give employees opportunities to grow. It’s a
continual emphasis. We want everyone to
understand to be proactive. We try to make
it known we want you to take that chance.
To facilitate that, we randomly poll people at
quarterly meetings about improvement and
best practices. We also reward performance
and share the profits of the company with
the individuals.
There’s the monetary reinforcement that,
if my team does better, I will be rewarded
financially for that performance. So, it’s self-fulfilling. It could be, ‘We should extend our
customer service hours because I am getting a lot of calls from Walgreens on the
West Coast, and we aren’t open.’ Often, stuff
like that can be an easy slam dunk, but we
wouldn’t necessarily know that.
Be accountable for mistakes. You need to be
decisive and accountable for decisions,
especially the bad ones. We try to showcase
failures or mistakes. We don’t want that culture where you bury it or hide it. We really
pride ourselves on humility and to be the
first to execute accounts for brands that
have much more market intelligence than
we could hope to ever have. We’ll try to
throw out our ideas but, generally, we are
there in a supporting role.
But if there is a mistake or an issue, we
need to communicate that. One of my colleagues here said it best that, ‘The bad news
flows faster than the good.’ That phrase kind of sums it up. We all know we’re going to do
some good things and those will be understood, but if, and when, you or someone else
makes a mistake, we need to communicate
it.
Point out mistakes, but don’t embarrass people. Sometimes that is tough. But some of
that is the sense of family. We have to be professional, and part of that is recognizing we
will have our shortcomings. We don’t want
to parade someone around.
It’s not just learning, but it’s a responsibility
to communicate that. They’re not going to get
fired, but they would have to take their lumps
and recognize it, improve and move on.
Communicate your direction. We’ll do formal
presentations to the company on a quarterly basis and review our strategy and solicit
input along the way in both the formal meetings to the random polls. We are trying to
grow.
The rah-rah speech that I have been trying
to give has been somewhat constant. I don’t
think it’s been diluted. Hopefully, in some
facets it’s galvanized it because of the little
bit of success we have had.
Share information to keep things fresh. One
thing we realized we weren’t doing a good
job of was sharing companywide the opportunities, either new business or new
prospects.
It came out in these meetings that, ‘We didn’t know about Johnson & Johnson, or
some new win’ and how much that means
to them. Now we do a general business
prospecting and new client wins overview
and couple that with new employee orientation. It keeps the buzz around about new
business. In turn, from an operations standpoint, it has enhanced the ease of transition
business because you know about it.
Find energetic employees. Energy is something that is difficult to learn or teach. It’s
there or it’s not.
I go with my gut or someone else’s gut.
We’ve had multiple hires over the last year
of, ‘I’ve worked with this person in the past
and he/she has been great.’
A lot of that is trusting the current team
and entrusting in them an important responsibility of helping us recruit, assimilate and
then translate into better retention. We are
trying to build a company and recognize it’s
on their backs.
Listen and try to learn. The result of the decision can be most effective if you have the
buy-in. The decision itself is best when I’m
just agreeing or the other people making the
decision are agreeing on a position advocated by somebody else.
We manage up, not down. The ideas come
from direct reports and their direct reports,
and that is pretty effective. It breeds a culture that is more respectful compared to
just telling someone what to do.
Retain employees through culture and vision.
People who come aboard understand they
want to grow. Our retention tool is a bit of
our vision of jumping on something that is
going someplace.
And the family atmosphere. If you are
bringing someone in you know, that’s a nice
sign and reinforces that, ‘We are all in this
together’ mentality. Profit-sharing, too.
People like to know that not only are they
part of getting the job done, but they are also
part of the success from a financial standpoint.
HOW TO REACH: Triplefin LLC, (800) 841-3055, (513) 794-9870 or www.triplefin.com