Be open to change
A few years ago Diamond noticed that with more offices across the hemisphere, it was harder for people to know each other and have that close-knit environment. Seeing a problem, she knew something had to change, so she started instituting weekly phone meetings so people would at least be talking to each other. Then quarterly, all the managers come to Atlanta, and twice a year, the managers from Latin America come to the headquarters. Having these meetings helps bridge the distance gap, but it required change.
“This is something that when you run a company you’ve got to realize, and you’ve got to make changes accordingly,” Diamond says.
A lot of times, you may look at change as bad, but she takes a different approach.
“Sometimes change is good,” Diamond says. “Sometimes you can’t be stuck in the mud. For whatever reason, you have to listen to what the sales managers are saying. They’re running the sales floor. They have the true communication with the customers. We all have to listen to their needs and sometimes change what you’re doing.”
Listening is absolutely crucial, and without doing that, Diamond doesn’t think your business will get far.
“I can’t understand how anybody could not listen if they care about the company, if they want to achieve, if they want to grow,” she says. “How can you not listen? The executives really don’t make it happen. It’s all of the employees that make it happen. It’s not only the salespeople. It’s the warehouse people. It’s accounting. It’s credit. You’ve got to listen to what they need. We all have a common love, and that’s the company, and if you don’t listen to one another, then how can you make it better and how can you grow a company?”
Change can be a crazy process, but it all starts with recognizing that you don’t know it all.
“Not one person knows it all,” Diamond says. “We have to learn from one another and basically, that’s my style. Encourage people to speak up and give us their opinions. You never know. You could have a new salesperson, and he could come up with a great idea for marketing or for another department. You just never know. Everyone has their talents.”
When people bring up new ideas, don’t be afraid to try them. She has an upper management meeting every Monday afternoon, and at that meeting, they discuss any new ideas that have come up. If it’s something that doesn’t have a lot of downside if it didn’t work out, then they move ahead with it. For things that have a larger financial impact, then they discuss them more.
“In this company, it doesn’t take a month or two months to make a corporate decision,” she says. “We look at opportunities, we sit around the table, we talk about them and how it would fit in. Can our warehouses handle this? Can we train our people? Can we bring new people into this? And we make a decision.”
It’s also important to make these decisions fast so employees don’t get nervous.
“A bunch of upper management sitting together behind locked doors every day, that creates problems,” she says.
Once you’ve decided to make a change, then it’s important that you communicate that to your employees. Diamond likens it to parents telling their children that they have to move.
“Let’s say they’re in Buffalo, N.Y., and they have their friends and relationships and family, and the parents decide they’re moving to Texas,” she says. “It depends on how you present it, and if you have the communication and you’re all on the same page, you can make this voyage very nice. But if you sit down and you’re gloom and doom, and, ‘Oh my God!’ then the end result is not so hot.”
Just as those parents present the move as something good for the kids, you have to show your employees how the change will benefit them specifically and how it will help the company, as well.
“It’s usually something positive to help them grow, too, so usually they’re agreeing with us,” she says. “It’s not where we’re saying, ‘We’re closing the office down.’ We’re not. It’s change to help them grow.”
Regardless, you also have to recognize that some people won’t like the change, so you’ll have to demonstrate patience yourself so they don’t freak out as much.
“Change is good sometimes,” Diamond says. “You can grow from change. I don’t have a problem with change. A lot of people do. Change the color of the walls in someone’s house, and they freak out. As long as there’s peace and health, the rest of it is so what — change, it’s not a big deal.”
As you move forward with the change, you’ll get feedback from customers, vendors, salespeople and other employees. Use that feedback to determine if it’s working. For example, when SED started a rewards program, the feedback was all positive and customers and salespeople loved it, so they decided to keep the program. But sometimes you’ll get mixed feedback, and when you do, it’s time to sit down again.
“Sit down and talk about it and say, ‘Does it really matter?’” she says. “Let’s keep going with it and see what happens. For some people, it takes a bit longer to buy in to something, so you give it a chance.”
While these ways have worked well for SED, Diamond recognizes there are other ways to successfully grow a business. Whichever you choose, you can’t deny the success that Diamond has seen in watching SED grow from a start-up to a powerhouse.
Says Diamond, “A lot of people are doing it their way, and it’s better, but this is what we believe in, and this is what I believe in, and this is how we grew the company.”
How to reach: SED International Holdings Inc., (770) 491-8962 or www.sedonline.com
