Stick to it

Bill Hayden has been asked a number of times to change his business model at FacilitySource Inc., a company that provides software to property management companies to help them better support their locations. And he admits that it’s not always easy to be sure that his way of doing things is the best way.

“You want to say, ‘We did the right thing; we’re staying true to our business philosophy,’” says Hayden, CEO at the 200-employee company. “But it’s very hard to walk away.”

Despite the occasional uncertainty, Hayden is confident that his commitment to the company’s core business is a key reason FacilitySource had more than $10 million in revenue last year.

Smart Business spoke with Hayden about how to know your core and stay true to it.

Q. How do you avoid temptation to stray from your core?

When you’re chasing a deal and they say, ‘Well, we love your solution, but we want to know if you can do this, as well,’ you want to say yes to that to get the deal.

But step back and you realize you’re putting yourself at risk. I’m a big believer in the reputation of an organization. You have a brand image that marketing and sales works on. But the deliverables is what creates your name in the marketplace. If you say yes to something to get a deal that is outside your core, you’re setting up the potential for you to not be able to deliver on that.

You’re going to be remembered for not delivering that for a particular customer. Nobody will get into the details of whether that’s within your core or not. They’ll just think that it was a failed project or you didn’t get a reference for that particular account.

When you’re in the midst of it, it’s very hard. But as you grow, you realize that sometimes you say no to deals and they end up coming back. That’s very rewarding. When you say no, but you still get the core deal that you were chasing originally, that makes you more confident to say no the next time.

Q. How do you figure out what your core business is?

As important as it is for you to know your strategy, it’s more important for your organization to know what the corporate strategy is.

If it’s a sales organization, it’s looking at what the pipeline looks like and what opportunities are coming up and really articulating that strategy at least on a quarterly basis internally. I find that it helps crystallize your own vision for where the company needs to go.

If you’re doing that in a vacuum and you’re coming up with a strategy yourself, you know where the company is going, but your best players out in the field might not know. You might think you’re communicating well. But you need to have a formal meeting to go through those items and say, ‘OK, here is what we did this year, and this is where we’re headed the next four quarters, and these are the strategic initiatives that we’re looking at.’

Articulating that internally is extremely important to keeping everybody on the same page in the organization and to get the most productivity out of them so they have their ear to the ground and know how to respond to questions or opportunities that come up.