Summary: Almost Perfect by BusinessNews Publishing

Author:BusinessNews Publishing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BusinessNews Publishing
Published: 2016-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

6. IMPRESSIVE GROWTH

By this stage, a lot of rumors were circulating about the vast profits generated by WordPerfect Corp., and many new employees would come to the company with unrealistic expectations about what they would be doing and earning.

“In February, I started spending one half-hour each Tuesday morning talking to all the new hires. Some weeks I spoke to twenty or more people. Too many young people - especially young college graduates with no other job experience - came to work with the wrong expectations and some bad habits. We didn’t need people who were interested in a series of promotions that would help them reach a goal of fame and fortune. We needed people to answer phones, to take orders, to keep the networks running, to write software, to test software and to call on customers. We specifically tried to avoid those ambitious individuals seeking “challenging entry-level management positions to improve their interpersonal skills”. We were hoping to find people who would take a job and do it well, who were not just passing by on their way through to the top. Unfortunately, many people became unhappy once they understood how difficult it was to move up in our flat organization.”

– Pete Peterson

In addition, WordPerfect Corp. was trying to organize its sales representatives in an efficient way. The company now had 100 reps across the United States and Canada. WordPerfect also tried opening offices in New York and Washington, but these were soon closed and the reps were equipped with laptop computers, mobile phones and an 800 number for people to call and schedule an appointment with administrative assistants who were based at WordPerfect’s corporate offices in Utah.

The industry average for marketing expenses for a company with sales in excess of $150 million per year was about 16 cents for every dollar in sales, with about 2 cents being spent on customer support. By comparison, WordPerfect spent a total of 11 cents of every dollar on marketing, with 5 cents of that paying for customer support. Despite the fact that WordPerfect had grown very large very quickly, the company was still careful about expenditure, relying on word-of-mouth endorsements and a superior product more than high budget marketing.

In September 1989, WordPerfect Corp. reached the 10th anniversary of starting business. For every single quarter of those ten years, sales had increased. That was an impressive achievement that any company in any industry would be very proud of. Sales for 1989 were $281 million, with pretax profits in the 33-percent range. The company had now grown to 1,612 employees.

Despite the impressive sales figures, the company still lacked any depth in management.

“Alan, Bruce and I claimed that our management approach was defined by the statement, “We teach correct principles and our employees govern themselves.” We borrowed the statement from Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of the Mormon Church, who said, “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves,” when asked to explain how the church was governed. We had attempted to follow this philosophy, but over the years we had not done a very good job of teaching correct principles.

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