Greetings everyone!
I stand before you today to give an update on our second quarter state of the business and financial highlights. Overall it has not been a solid quarter. Our software sales and related training have been steadily declining and we reached a breaking point this past quarter. We’ve seen a decrease in sales of 3.3% and training income is down a modest 1.9%.
Unfortunately the increase in head-count and additional contractor hours has negatively affected our bottom line. We’ve hired a handful of fresh college grads along with a couple well-experienced training professionals ultimately increasing our salaries and benefits expenses by 5.9%
By itself this sounds bad to most, or all of you. However, this comes with good news in that our increase in staff will eventually pay off in the long run. Our internal training and the cost of getting the new employees up to speed has decreased our selling productivity and decreased our ability to offer outside training to clients.
I feel confident telling you all that once we get over this hump and everyone is back up to speed then our sales and training income will spike back up to normal levels and beyond.
Bill
ReplyDeleteYou took a tough situation and explained it with a postive long term outlook!
I also liked the descriptive adjectives used in differentiating the additional staff members.
Some CEO's would have not been as honest or as positive in their delivery of a downturn in business results!
Your message was deliverd with confidence and portrayed a company that made some short term decisions that in the long run will probably prepare the company for success for many years to come.
I also liked the way negative financial results were analysed carefully. If I read as a real case scenario, the message is also helpful in conveying the message that new hires will be applied towards the long term growth and gets them involved soon with the business.
ReplyDeleteIt is a skill to understand results honestly and see true business impact, I think your message is a very good example of that.
Well written Bill. I thought you did an excellent job informing your audience about the poor results of your organization, while simultaneously informing them of how your organization planned to rise out of the recent slump. It felt like a very personal message. I believe this is due to the way you set the tone, and then maintained that tone, by conveying the message with a focus on the poor performance but a hopeful outlook on how you would overcome the current slump and achieve success.
ReplyDeleteI think this speech does a nice job of of preseting the negative results from the quarter. The CEO tells it like it is. While that negative message may seem to drag morale down, the CEO is then able to turn that around and shed some positive light on the situation by describing how the company is now poised for success in the coming year. A nice job of turning negative results into a positive outlook!
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to convey happy times and good news. Not so easy to convey bad news and put a happy spin on it. I think that we are only kidding ourselves if we tell our employees that things have been great. Everyone knows someone out of work and financial uncertainly is the daily headline in the news. Good for you for being honest and if you are confident, then so am I.
ReplyDeleteBill,
ReplyDeleteI thought the flow of your message was well thought out and contained a lot of valuable information that employees should be aware of. Furthermore, I like how you mention employees as being a factor that will play a large role in the successes of your company in the years to come. It is important that employees feel important and valued by the company in which the work for. You have certainly made this prevalent in your message to the workforce. Your confidence in your organization and its employees is very inspiring. Great job!