NEBA September 2015 Newsletter

NEW ENGLAND BUS ASSOCIATION

ISSUE 09/ SEPTEMBER 2015

NEBA MONTHLY NEWS & INFORMATION YOU NEED.

n.t.s.b.

CALLS FOR MOTORCOACH

THE FUTURE OF

THE MOTORCOACH INDUSTRY

THE KEY TO CREATING

EFFECTIVE EMAILS 7 GREAT Interview Questions

to Ask Millennials

safety design improvements

THE 5 LEVELS OF MOBILEFRIENDLY EMAIL DESIGN: TIME TO GRADUATE/

THE FUTURE/

In the next 12 months, the motorcoach industry will move over 20 million people....

ROADSIDE NOT THE PLACE TO INSPECT FOR CMV COMPLIANCE STICKERS, GROUPS SAY/

In a not always common show of solidarity, associations representing truckers...

7 SALES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO ASK MILLENNIALS [INFOGRAPHIC]/ As recent graduates start entering the workforce, a handful of sobering statistics...

NTSB CALLS FOR MOTORCOACH SAFETY DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS/

2015 is the Year of Mobile. Just like 2014 was … and 2013 … and 2012 … It’s...

The National Transportation Safety Board on July 14 adopted a probable cause for...

WHAT DO YOU ASK EVERY EMPLOYEE BEFORE THEY LEAVE YOUR COMPANY?/

4 ACTIONS THAT CAN MAKE YOU A WELLSPRING OF CONFIDENCE/

What is one question you ask every employee who has announced they’re leaving...

DOT ANALYSIS OF HOS RULE GETS MIXED REVIEW IN AUDIT/

A Government Accountability Office audit on statistical methodology at the Federal...

THE KEY TO CREATING EFFECTIVE EMAILS/

Most all email marketers ask themselves this one question: How do I keep my messages...

You will never read a single line from some of today’s best writers.

Instead, you will hear....

NTSB: DRIVER FATIGUE CAUSED 2014 WALMART TRUCK CRASH/

A federal investigation has confirmed preliminary reports in last year’s high-profile crash...

WHY YOUR SALES LEADS ARE FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS/

Business owners and sales people are always preoccupied with getting more sales leads...

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Chairman’s Message Time to reflect on what’s important in life!

In recent months we have lost several members of our Industry. It should make us all take heart of what is important in life. While we all are passionate about our business, it is important to take time and smell the Roses! Make Family time and personal time a priority. A balance of Personal time and work time makes for a healthier life! Live long and prosper!

Gregg Isherwood President New England Bus Association

Secretary’s Message Sorry the summers over, schools back , you will all get busy, but safety is number 1. So with that said as Owners and Managers you have a responsibility to act safely every day. I also want to echo Gregg’s thought’s regarding the departing of many of our friends in the industry. Too many have left too soon...... Stay safe........

Mitch Guralnick

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5

The Future

The Future…

In the next 12 months, the motorcoach industry will move over 20 million people.

Wow. That’s a lot.

The vast majority of those will be incident free, comfortable trips. We will take cars off the road, reduce emissions and make the world just a little better for the effort.

Now, this sounds great and is something to take pride in as an industry. However, it also shines a light on the flip side of this coin.

sharpening the pencil, trimming costs, and refining your business model to be able to compete. Salespeople have become very aware of who is using coaches, whose coaches they are using, and often know even know why they don’t have a particular contract.

When I was selling, I would go as far as following our competitors’ coaches around town looking for what kinds of business they were doing. I would look for their contracts, and I would dive into finding what I needed to do to land them.

There are nearly 529 million people in North America. However, only 4 out of every 100 Americans & Canadians will actually step foot on a motorcoach. But, perhaps even worse news, is if we assume only one in thirty people are responsible for booking the coach, then only 1 in every 1000 North Americans will book with us.

Now, if you’re thinking about sending your sales people out to do the same thing, don’t. I was wrong. I admit it now and wish that I could go back and do it differently.

The more I talk to operators around the country, the more I see these numbers are the future of our businesses, even our industry. In most markets, there are a number of viable operators that compete for business. These operators are constantly bidding against one another for work. All are bidding to offer a better service for less than the other guy. Competitors invest in equipment, drivers, training, and insurance. They work hard to create a company that is worthy of beating out their competitors.

Imagine a sports stadium full of people.

At this years’ Super Bowl, a little over 64,000 fans sat and watched a great game (if you’re a patriots fan). Based on the above numbers of those 64,000 screaming, face painted, crazed fans only 64 will book a bus in the next year.

Today you win the bid. Tomorrow you lose it. The following year you get it back.

Round and round we go. Discounting,

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You see, we are all fighting for what we believe to be the pie. But, that pie only represents a tiny little crumb of what is a very large market.

64. Now that number is not something we, as an industry, should be cheering.

The bright spot on that otherwise dark statistic is the other 63,936 people.

Almost all of them will do something that a motorcoach would make better. Some will attend weddings, some will have family reunions, others will go on ski trips or wine outings. The list of what these

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people will do that we, as a motorcoach industry, could help them do better, more comfortably, safer, and more economically is as diverse as the group itself.

The question is not do they need a coach, but do they know they need a coach. One of the key points I have been teaching around the country is that our job as charter operators is not to sell to those who have transportation needs. You see, if someone knows they have a transportation need, they are already a consumer of our product. If they are calling about booking a coach they know about our industry. They know about our product. They know they have a need with which we can help them. What I have been teaching owners, managers, and sales teams is those are not the people on which to focus our time and resources. Yes, we need to provide them with good customer service. We need to provide them a good product. We need to make sure that their experience is such that they will book again. However, when we talk about growth, when we talk about how do we get more people on our coaches, or how do we fill up dispatch holes; those are not the people we need to think about. We need to think about those that do not know they need us.

Our jobs need to shift to start talking to the rest of the crowd who don’t know they have a transportation need. These may be churches that have “parking problems”, or brides that have “get the entire wedding party from the reception to the dinner” problems. It could be families that “can’t let Uncle Harry drive again to this years’ reunion” problems, or businesses that want to help their employees to “get to work on time” problems.

These people did not wake up and say, “What I need is a charter bus.” They woke up with a knot in their stomach trying to fix a problem they don’t even know how to begin to fix.

The entire point of marketing, is to sell more of your product to more people for more money. If we believe this as an industry, then we must look outside the comfort of those 64 people and focus on the other 63,936. We must look at ways to reach out into our communities and share what it is we do. What solutions we can offer to help more people have the

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knot in their stomach go away because we can solve their problem.

We are not simply transportation providers. We are solution makers. We are wedding savers. We keep your family safe. We make sure your employees get to work on time. We are, solve your parking problem superheroes.

It’s time we take off our mild-mannered glasses, jump in that phone booth, and wear our cape and stretchy pants proudly. It is time that we leap out of our comfort zone, stop simply taking orders, and sell what it is we really are.

This is the vision I hope we all embrace. I hope we, as an industry, will begin to reach further and further into the market that exists beyond the walls of our existing customer base. I am excited to work with the Motorcoach Marketing Council as they represent operators who are passionate about this vision. Who understand the importance of this moment in the history of this storied business, those who know how paramount it is that we grow.

The future is bright for this industry. There will be operators who wrap their arms around this vision, and who push the bounds of tradition. There will be those who find new markets, develop new customers, provide solutions, and expand their horizons. There will also be those who will go out of business. There is a saying in the marketing world that there is not such a thing as a business that stays the same, you are either growing or you are dying. For those companies who continue to believe that the opportunity to sell to that stadium full of people exists only in those 64 people, the future is clear. But to those who embrace the other 63,936 as the hope for their companies, the future is limitless.

Together we are changing the future of this industry.

Years from now, we will all look back and see this moment, these tools, the vision and direction of this council was the starting point of a revolution that will reshape this entire industry. That is a very exciting realization.

Remember to always keep those wheels turning!

For the Motorcoach Marketing Council, I’m Chris Riddell. Good luck!

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9

Roadside Inspections

Roadside not the place to compliance stickers, gro 10 www.greenazine.com

o inspect for CMV oups say

In a not always common show of solidarity, associations representing truckers, motor carriers, truck dealers and law enforcement all say that a roadside inspection is not the proper avenue to ensure that a commercial vehicle was manufactured to meet U.S. federal safety standards.

A public comment period ended on Monday, Aug. 3, on a notice of proposed rulemaking by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The proposal would require that manufacturercompliance stickers be affixed on all commercial trucks and motor coaches, even if those vehicles are years old.

FMCSA says it is basing the proposal on a recommendation by the National Traffic Safety Board after a bus manufactured in Mexico crashed on U.S. soil in 2008, even though vehicle safety standards were not cited as a cause or contributor to the crash. The NTSB investigation determined that the motor coach driver was likely fatigued.

But the mere fact that a commercial vehicle was operating on U.S. soil without a sticker saying it was compliant with U.S. safety standards at the time of manufacture was good enough for FMCSA to pursue the rulemaking proposal.

OOIDA submitted comments on Monday pointing out numerous flaws in the administration’s justification for requiring compliance stickers and for asking law enforcement to check for the stickers at roadside and note any violations that would affect a motor carrier’s safety score.

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The proposal puts the burden on truck buyers and owners to make sure that the stickers are present and that they show compliance with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) at the point of manufacture.

“OOIDA fails to see how requiring the carrier to maintain proof of a vehicle’s compliance with the FMVSS when it was initially manufactured, a date that for the average owner-operator or smallbusiness trucker took place eight years ago, will improve highway safety today,” OOIDA wrote in comments signed by Executive Vice President Todd Spencer.

The American Truck Dealers estimate the financial burden on the trucking industry at close to $3 million annually.

Comments filed by the American Trucking Associations point out that a sticker requirement is more or less like requiring keeping the tag on a mattress.

OOIDA also takes issue with FMCSA’s claim that it has considered the cost-benefit to the industry.

But FMCSA also asked stakeholders to provide their own cost-benefit analysis to be included for consideration in a final rule.

“There is no safety benefit to implement this ‘mattress tag’ rule, only unnecessary administrative compliance costs,” ATA stated. “FMCSA fails to recognize that operational efficiencies for drivers, carriers, and vehicles will be significantly reduced as a result of this proposal. For example, trailer and chassis interchanges and interlining would be affected, roadside inspection time would increase, driver on duty time due to additional pre and post inspection checks and back-office compliance costs would increase.”

“If anything, the FMCSA should have conducted an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on this topic to learn information before deciding whether or not to issue a proposal,” OOIDA stated.

And while law enforcement, via the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, supports the concept that the compliance sticker be present on all vehicles, the alliance says roadside inspections are not the best avenue for determining that compliance.

But it’s just a sticker, right? OOIDA says owners of trucks with missing certification labels would be forced to go back to the manufacturers to obtain the credential or be issued a letter to carry in their trucks that show “compliance” with the standard.

“When developing the rule, FMCSA should give consideration to how enforcement personnel will be able to verify that a letter produced is valid,” CVSA stated in comments.

“It is unreasonable for FMCSA to place such a burden on hundreds of thousands of motor carriers when it cannot show in its own regulatory proposal what safety benefit would actually be achieved from this new requirement,” OOIDA stated in its comments.

Other groups filing comments to the official docket don’t feel that the requirement would do much good, either.

“An additional mandate that the original certification label be maintained will do nothing substantively to enhance CMV safety,” said the American Truck Dealers. “Certification labels are designed to provide vehicle purchasers and lessees with information and assurances, not to serve as enforcement tools.”

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“Putting proper controls in place will prevent motor carriers from creating fraudulent letters,” CVSA added. “While CVSA supports the (proposal), it should be noted that, in our opinion, the best way to prevent non-FMVSS-compliant vehicles from operating in the U.S. by U.S.-domiciled motor carriers is to identify them at the point of titling, vehicle registration, or importation. Roadside inspections should be the secondary means of verifying that CMVs were FMVSS compliant at the time of manufacture.”

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Setra - a brand of Daimler AG

Don’t be fooled by its pretty face

Once again, Setra has raised the benchmark in the North American luxury motorcoach segment, with over 30 innovations in design, passenger and driver comfort, safety and environmental efficiencies. Daimler’s new, unique Front Collision Guard (FCG), for instance, is a passive safety system engineered to protect the driver and tour guide in the case of a frontal impact. Experience the all-new Setra TopClass S 417. From Daimler Buses North America, the worldwide leading manufacturer of buses and motorcoaches.

Motor Coach Industries 1700 East Golf Road, Suite 300 · Schaumburg, Illinois 60173 · Phone 866-624-2622 Distributor of EvoBus GmbH for Setra buses and Setra parts in the United States and Canada

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Sales Interview

7 Sales Interview Questi [Infographic] 14 www.greenazine.com

ions to Ask Millennials www.greenazine.com

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As recent graduates start entering the workforce, a handful of sobering statistics are bound to occupy the minds of sales recruiters everywhere.

•

l By age 30, the average millennial has had an average of 6.4 job changes and 3.5 employer changes.

•

The average sales force loses one-third of its headcount each year.

•

The cost of a bad sales hire can range from $25,000 to $50,000.

•

Sales representative is the second hardest position to hire for in 2015.

The responsibility for employee retention starts with recruiting. There are many factors that impact whether a salesperson will be a successful hire, but handing out offers to the wrong people is a guarantee your employees will leave sooner rather than later.

The responsibility for employee retention starts with recruiting. There are many factors that impact whether a salesperson will be a successful hire, but handing out offers to the wrong people is a guarantee your employees will leave sooner rather than later.

Even if it isn’t your day job, a sales interview should come naturally -- it’s not too far removed from qualifying a prospect. But when you’re sitting across the table from recent college grads, things can get tricky. Without an extensive employment history to reference, it can be difficult to establish a candidate’s track record in a professional environment.

So when evaluating new graduates, it’s even more important to know what exactly you’re looking for. The infographic below from Sandler Training highlights key areas to focus on in a sales interview: communication skills, accountability, personal energy, ability to work on a team, competitive drive, rejection handling, and professionalism.

Each skill is accompanied by tips on how to assess it.

When evaluating a candidate’s “personal energy,” for example, Sandler suggests observing behavior in the interview as well as past experience: •

Do they seem engaged?

•

Are they asking good questions?

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•

Were their college years filled with extracurricular activities, volunteer service, and internships?

Ultimately, there’s not much you can do to keep an employee around if they’re set on leaving. But by being more deliberate in your hiring, you’re increasing your chances of finding salespeople who will stick around for the long haul.

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In regards to the Motorcoach Marketing program, we love it. So far, we have made the 1000 postcards, and we did some full page handouts. We just got a stand up banner.

When I get some time, I’ll be making new rack cards for both offices. We made 500 church theme postcards and 500 in the safety theme.

We sent out the church cards through a local mailing company to every church within 50 miles. So far, we have had a great response and 4-5 people booked trips from it. I plan on using the safety ones soon by sending them to our new customers. All of our staff and drivers love the modern design and the finished products. Only one of my staff has watched the videos so far, but we will be working on that next month. So far I’m very happy with the service. It works well and looks great!

Chris Knittel

Owner/General Manager New Mexico Texas Coaches, LLC

We Help Operators Sell More Charters To More People.

Easier. Faster. Far More Effective.

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Email Design

The 5 Levels Of MobileFriendly Email Design: Time To Graduate 2015 is the Year of Mobile. Just like 2014 was … and 2013 … and 2012 … It’s become a bit of a joke, really.

But what’s not funny is that consumers have been well ahead of marketers when it comes to mobile behavior.

are currently read on mobile devices, according to the latest environment marketing share data from Litmus (disclosure: my employer). It has been hovering near that level for much of the past year.

Mobile reading of email is a prime example. Email reading is the No. 1 activity on smartphones, according to Salesforce. And roughly 50% of emails

Meanwhile, marketers have been racing to catch up.

Over the past year, the percentage of B2C brands using mobile-friendly email designs for their promotional

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emails has grown by 36%, according to joint research between Litmus and Salesforce. However, even with that substantial progress, only 56% of B2C brands have adopted email designs that are mobile-friendly.

I say “only” because brands have been much faster to adopt mobile-friendly designs for their websites.

According to our research, 85% of B2C brands have

mobile-friendly websites, which is up from 74% the year before.

The result is email experiences and Web experiences that aren’t aligned — and, in many cases, are jarring.

For instance, 8% of B2C brands send mobile-friendly emails, but their websites are not mobile-optimized, while another 37% have mobile-friendly websites

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but not emails. I’d like to focus on that second, much larger group.

Research has shown that many consumers will immediately delete or unsubscribe from emails that don’t look good and function appropriately on their smartphones. Having a mobile-friendly site is great, but few of your email subscribers — who are among your best customers — are going to bother to click through based on a bad experience with your brand in the inbox.

Reasons Behind The Gap These brands have acknowledged that mobile is a valuable channel to them by taking the effort to make their websites mobile-friendly. But why haven’t they also provided that same experience to their email subscribers? A few reasons are likely: 1. Limited expertise. They may not have the skills or training necessary to create mobile-friendly templates.

2. Limited resources. Depending on the number of people on their team and the number of campaigns they send each week, they may not have the people available to create mobile-friendly campaigns.

3. Confusion over best approach. What’s the best approach? Mobile-aware? Responsive? Something else?

If you’re experiencing any of the above, there’s good news on all those fronts.

1. Many ESPs (email service providers) now offer their clients free responsive templates. Litmus also offers free responsive templates that we’ve thoroughly tested.

Media queries, which allow responsive designs to adapt to different screen sizes, don’t work in all email clients — most notably all Google environments, including Gmail, Gmail app for Android and iOS, and Inbox by Gmail. However, it makes a huge difference in other email clients, including the Apple iPhone native email app, which tops the list of most popular email clients.

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2. Becoming mobile-friendly can increase your email marketing team’s workload, but there are ways to mitigate that. For instance, you can redesign your templates to take a more modular approach to content.

This constraint can simplify design and can be great for content stacking in mobile email renderings. You can also adjust your email design approach incrementally, which we’ll talk more about in a minute.

3. Don’t get decision paralysis over the best approach.

It’s not responsive or nothing. There are many shades of being mobile-friendly, and incremental improvement is always better than nothing.

5 Levels Of Mobile-Friendly Email Design There are five levels of mobile-friendly email design.

They vary in sophistication and workload, and they largely break down based on the design approach used for the header and footer versus the primary and secondary content blocks.

5. Responsive email design. Using media queries and other means, responsive design changes the content and layout of an email based on the user’s screen size.

Most of the growth in the adoption of mobile-friendly email design over the past two years is due to the adoption of responsive design. Plus, in the past few months, this has become the dominant email design approach used by B2C marketers and is on its way to becoming the standard design approach. Google has indicated that it has become a priority for its email clients to support responsive design in the future.

When that happens, responsive will get a huge boost.

4. Responsive-aware design. This approach uses responsive design for the headers and footers, while using mobile-aware design for the primary content block and any secondary content blocks.

This is a savvy approach; headers and footers arguably suffer the most with mobile, since they tend to have tightly packed links and small text. Using responsive design to turn an eight-link navigation bar into a threelink one, for instance, or converting a horizontal nav at the top of the email into a vertical nav at the bottom of the email makes the subscriber experience much better. And navigation bar links generally convert at a

high rate, so ensuring that they’re easily tappable with a finger is smart business.

3. Mobile-aware design. Single-column layouts, large text and images and big, well-spaced buttons and links are the hallmarks of mobile-aware design, which is sometimes referred to as mobile-first. The popularity of this design approach has been quite stable over the years, hovering around 15%.

The wonderful thing about this approach is that technically, it’s very simple. No fancy coding here.

In essence, you’re just scaling everything up and simplifying it so it’s easy to read and interact with when it gets scaled down to smartphones. Fewer elements also mean email production and quality assurance are easier.

The hard thing about this approach is that it requires a lot of difficult decisions about what content to cut from your previous desktop-oriented email design.

However, making these difficult decisions will give your emails more focus, which is critical for success in mobile inboxes.

The above three email design approaches are mobilefriendly, while the next two are not.

2. Quasi-mobile-aware design. This approach caters to desktop users by using small text and closely packed links in the header and footer, but it acknowledges mobile users by making the primary content block mobile-aware. Depending on the implementation, secondary content blocks may lean toward desktop or mobile users.

This is actually the second-most popular approach to email design. This group has been growing slowly as marketers abandon pure desktop-centric design.

However, this approach still creates a fairly poor subscriber experience for mobile email readers. In many cases, the next step for these marketers is to jump up to a responsive or responsive-aware design.

1. Desktop-centric design. Multiple columns, small text and images, and tightly clustered buttons and links are the staples of desktop-centric design, which favors big screens and the pinpoint accuracy of a mouse.

In the next 18 months, we may see this design approach to email effectively disappear as the low bar for what’s acceptable rises.

Choose The Design Approach That’s Best For You All of this begs the question: What design approach should I be using?

First, look at your audience. Where are they opening your emails? Generally speaking, if fewer than 10% of your email opens are from mobile email clients, then quasi-mobile-friendly email design may be fine. If 20% or more are being opened on mobile, graduating to mobile-aware is wise. And if more than 30% of your opens are coming from mobile, then graduating to responsive-aware or responsive is advisable.

Keep in mind that roughly 50% of email opens are happening on mobile devices at this point, so if your audience is well below that, then you can likely expect it to continue to rise in the months ahead.

And second, think about the subscriber experience you’re trying to create. Think about the brand experience you’re trying to create. For instance, I’m shocked by how many luxury retailers have yet to make their emails mobile-friendly. And if you’ve already done the hard work of creating a mobilefriendly website, taking the next step and creating a consistent experience across Web and email makes a lot of sense from a brand perspective.

What’s certain is that with the majority of B2C brands using mobile-friendly email design, consumer expectations are rising. Increasingly, they’ll be expecting an email and Web experience that works on smartphones and tablets. That also means that if you’re not being mobile-friendly, the risks to your brand image and to subscriber engagement are rising, too.

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Exit Interview Questions

What do you ask every e leave your company?

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employee before they What is one question you ask every employee who has announced they’re leaving your company?

1. What can we do better?

There’s so many reasons for employees to move on: new relationships, new opportunities, difficulties with the job.

One thing that I always want to know is what we can improve as a company.

Once that employee has announced they are moving, they feel more comfortable being honest so they can really give us feedback. I ask for the good, the bad and the ugly — and then try to make improvements. — Marcela DeVivo, National Debt Relief

2. Why? Firstly, I want to find out if it is something I can control. If it is something I cannot control, then I know there is nothing wrong with our company or culture; it is just what they wanted to do. For example, we have had two employees in the last month go on two different reality TV shows. In this instance, I knew this decision did not come from them having a negative experience with our company. — Jayna Cooke, EVENTup

3. Would you be willing to continue the relationship?

It’s a small world, and just because someone is leaving your employment now doesn’t mean you won’t have the opportunity to work with them again, either as an employee or in another

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There’s so many reasons for employees to move on: new relationships, new opportunities, difficulties with the job. One thing that I always want to know is what we can improve as a company. capacity. I encourage all former employees to keep in touch so that they continue to be a beneficial part of our network. — Alexandra Levit, Inspiration at Work

4. Would you recommend a job here to others?

Their reaction and response to this question, with some careful reading between the lines, tends to get us much closer to an honest assessment for the reasons motivating an exit. Those genuinely seeking a career change or unique opportunity tend to be very positive. For those who may otherwise conceal deeper frustrations motivating an exit, it opens up the conversation by depersonalizing it a bit. — Jacob Goldman, 10up Inc.

5. Did you have what you needed?

When employees leave, I want to know if they felt they were given the appropriate tools and resources to do their jobs, and how often they felt that way. I want to eliminate any gaps between what I’m asking my team to do and how I’m helping them do it. — Simon Casuto, eLearning Mind

6. What are your next plans?

This allows the employee to give you information about why they are leaving without directly

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asking why they are leaving. It also gives them the option not to tell you if they aren’t comfortable.

It’s a more personal approach then just thinking about the company and filling that position. — Phil Laboon, Eyeflow Internet Marketing

7. Have you shared your concerns prior to deciding to leave?

Thankfully, my company has experienced very little turnover throughout the years.

However, when someone decides to leave, it is very important to find out if, at any point, they shared their concerns. Then, were these concerns addressed? I believe if your company promotes open communication, most concerns can be addressed prior to an employee making the decision to leave. — Matt Telmanik, CCS Construction Staffing

8. How can I help you?

I like to ask them how I can help them, because it’s a small world, and it’s amazing how many people you cross paths with over and over again.

Awesome people will keep becoming more awesome with time. They could leave for a variety of reasons, and sometimes we just weren’t the right fit. — Kevin Henrikson, Acompli (now Outlook iOS/Android @ Microsoft)

9. What did you like and not like about working here?

I ask for feedback (both positive and negative) about their overall experience working for my company. I have learned not to take it personally when someone leaves, as the modern economy is all about rapid change. But I do want to know if there were aspects of working for me that the employee didn’t like. I also want to know what they did like. This is a good opportunity to get honest feedback. — Shawn Porat, Fortune Cookie Advertising

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HOS Rule

DOT Analysis of HOS Rule Gets Mixed Review in Audit A Government Accountability Office audit on statistical methodology at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gave the agency mixed grades on its assessment of drivers’ hours of service and suggested that mandatory electronic logging might one day be used to gain better understanding of how drivers operate.

The July 29 report from GAO, a congressional agency, said FMCSA “followed most generally accepted research standards” but also that it “did not completely meet certain research standards, such as reporting limitations and linking the conclusions to the results.”

Susan Fleming, a GAO director, led the 13-month audit, which was completed in July.

GAO approved of FMCSA’s performance on choosing valid and reliable measures for evaluations, using quality-control standards to identify data inconsistencies or errors and reporting results and analysis that could be supported by data.

The partial approvals covered using a methodology that would support accomplishing the study’s objectives and reporting conclusions linked to results.

For the final standard, reporting the 26 www.greenazine.com

study’s limitations, including their potential effect on results, GAO said FMCSA did not follow that practice.

The report generated a celebratory response by Department of Transportation officials that American Trucking Associations derided as excessive spin control.

The audit was sent to Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), chairwoman of a Senate subcommittee that deals with truck safety. The two panels asked GAO to examine a 2014 FMCSA report on safety and the HOS rule.

For 18 months — from July 2013 through December 2014 — FMCSA required through HOS that drivers include 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. on consecutive days when they used the restart provision. The use of restart was also capped at once per week, or 168 hours.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx welcomed the GAO audit, saying it “provides further evidence that the changes FMCSA made to the HOS rules improve highway safety” by saving lives and lowering the risk of driver fatigue.

“This reinforces our belief that these lifesaving measures are critical to

keeping people safe on the roads. We value the GAO’s independent review and will use their recommendations to further strengthen our department’s research to ensure that we have the best data available to keep our roads safe,” Foxx said in a July 30 statement.

ATA responded the next day, saying that the DOT statement ignored the bulk of the report, “choosing instead to cherry-pick a handful of points in a desperate effort to influence lawmakers.”

Dave Osiecki, ATA chief of advocacy, said, “It is unfortunate that rather than present an accurate and balanced characterization of the GAO report, FMCSA is once again living in Spin City.”

As for how to examine HOS restart now, the audit was not optimistic.

“Due to current data limitations, it is not possible to fully evaluate the rule’s impact. For example, our analysis suggests that the rule may have affected a larger population of drivers than FMCSA anticipated, but without representative data there is no way to be certain this is universally the case,” the audit said.

Paper logs make it difficult to gather driving information on a national scale.

But FMCSA’s final rule on electronic-logging devices, expected

by Sept. 30, could lead to substantial amounts of data, though designing such a project would be challenging, the report said.

GAO offered recommendations to Congress and DOT. The report urged consideration of directing DOT to study and provide a

report identifying approaches for extracting, storing and analyzing electronically collected drivers’ schedule data. Such a report should include the potential benefits, privacy and cost concerns for how such issues could be mitigated, the report said.

DOT, the audit said, should help ensure that FMCSA’s future studies follow generally accepted research standards.

The department’s secretary should direct FMCSA to adopt guidance outlining research standards for designing, analyzing and reporting the results of scientific research.

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Effective Emails

The Key to Creating Effectiv 28 www.greenazine.com

ve Emails

An effective email provides value to the recipient in the form of content that is both relevant and unique.

Your readers are constantly flooded with emails, so as marketers we need to remember that what we deliver must not only look good but be unique and hyper-targeted to our recipients. www.greenazine.com

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Most all email marketers ask themselves this one question: How do I keep my messages out of the spam folder? Mailify’s CMO Eric Krattenstein says the answer is simple: content. The strategy behind that answer, however, is a bit more complicated. In a lucid (and humorous) Q&A, Krattenstein breaks down what readers are looking for in emails, the things marketers should avoid, and what the future of email marketing holds.

What makes an email message effective?

An effective email provides value to the recipient in the form of content that is both relevant and unique.

Your readers are constantly flooded with emails, so as marketers we need to remember that what we deliver must not only look good but be unique and hyper-targeted to our recipients. Stand out from the overcrowded inbox by drawing the reader in with a great subject line and pre-header, and then deliver excellent content once you’ve won the open.

You’ve got to know your audience to be able to understand how to speak with them effectively. A key point here is to also remember you are speaking with your audience, not at them. If you treat email like a personal conversation—rather than a billboard— you’re on the right track.

What are readers looking for in an email from marketers?

Statistically, we know that most readers subscribe to email lists to receive discounts and promotions. Of course, that doesn’t mean every email you send needs to be selling something; it’s important to find balance.

What readers are really looking for is value—and it isn’t always monetary. Share with them what you do best and how it can help them. If you run a DIY blog, share recent projects and advice. If you’re a digital marketing agency, provide useful tips for optimizing a website for Google’s latest algorithm update.

How does content fill those needs from the audience?

Email is all about content. More and more companies today are investing time and money into content strategies designed to develop and distribute great

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pieces of thought leadership content in the form of eBooks, whitepapers, videos, and the like. The same qualities that cause this content to get shared and distributed are what make email subscribers want to read it.

Marketers can be extremely successful either repurposing that content for email newsletters or using email as an additional lever for viewership. Imagine a great eBook you wrote with 10 great pieces of advice.

Repurpose that eBook into a series of 10 extremely

helpful email newsletters to let your subscribers benefit from the same great content via the channel they’ve chosen to use.

How do you pick the right content for an audience—and the company?

Well that’s the question that marketers have been asking since the beginning of the profession, right? How do I position myself to best resonate with my viewers?

Since email is just another cog in your marketing

machine, the same considerations for content and tone that you apply to other marketing materials should be true to your email as well. That said, the beauty of digital marketing (and email specifically) is the ability to segment based on data. The only sure-fire way to pick the right content is to test. Split testing your email campaigns allows you to get a real world look into what makes your recipients tick. Use the results for your tests and historical engagement data to create a model for the type of content your recipients respond to and then plan accordingly.

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Is a content plan really that important for email marketers?

When we speak with clients, especially small businesses, we find that one of the primary issues we encounter is the irregularity of frequency and substance in their email campaigns. Having a content strategy in place allows a marketer to schedule their campaigns ahead of time, preventing the last-minute scramble to “get an email out.” Planning ahead with your email content strategy also makes it easier for marketers to look at the big picture and plan for seasonal events or promos.

Should email marketing always be a part of a content plan?

Absolutely. With email marketing you’ve got a proven channel for matching content with eyeballs.

Even if email is just a supporting player in your content strategy, the fact that it is unparalleled in terms of cost-efficiency and the relatively small amount of time it takes to execute means marketers have no reason not to use it. Email marketing is so versatile that it can always be adapted to the needs of the overall content strategy. Email could be the focus of the content—like a series of 10 informative newsletters from the previous example—or it could be another outlet for driving traffic to a landing page for content downloads and lead generation.

What should readers expect when they open an email and read content?

(I love this question.) Readers should expect to open an email and not be able to think anything other than, “Wow, this email is exactly what I needed.” If you know your audience, each email you send should be so targeted and relevant that they can’t help but believe you are inside their heads waiting for the perfect time to send that coupon or the exact piece of information they were looking for.

What would you like to see less of in email content creation?

I think one of the things I’d like to see email marketers improve on is not always feeling the need to go the

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“hard sales” route in every email. It requires a lot of trust in the program, but a good email marketing strategy establishes trust and builds relationships— the revenue will follow. Believe in your content.

What would you like to see more of in email content creation?

I’d love to see email marketers start to embrace a mobile-first approach to their email campaigns when it makes sense. We know the number of emails being opened via mobile devices is increasing each year, but very few marketers specifically plan for these circumstances. Designing your emails to be responsive is a good start, but it goes further. When marketers realize that the chances of their email being viewed on a mobile device are greater than it being viewed on a desktop, the entire campaign should change. Can your recipient easily complete your desired call-to-action from their smartphone?

Does your landing page take too long to load on a 3G/4G connection?

What do you see for the future of email content?

The future of email is exciting. Eventually email client capabilities will catch up to the creativity and ingenuity of marketers (I’m looking at you Outlook), and email can be taken to new levels.

Videos, animations, interactive experiences; all of the things that make great dynamic Web content will be delivered right to your inbox. Spam filtering and inbox segmentation will continue to improve, which will even further increase the need for email marketers to deliver exceptional content and establish great relationships or be discarded.

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33

Motorcoach Safety Design

NTSB Calls for Motorcoach S The National Transportation Safety Board on July 14 adopted a probable cause for the April 10, 2014, collision of a tractor double trailer with a motorcoach on Interstate 5 in Orland, Calif., an impact that resulted in 10 deaths and 39 injuries to passengers on the bus and in a passenger vehicle the truck struck after it crossed a 58-foot-wide median at about 5:40 p.m. The board found that the probable cause of the head-on collision was the truck driver’s inability to maintain control of his vehicle “due to his unresponsiveness for reasons that could not be established from available information.” Contributing to the severity of some bus passengers’ injuries were high impact forces; the release of combustible fluids, leading to a fastspreading post-crash fire; difficulties in motorcoach egress; and lack of restraint use, according to the board.

The board has recommended that motorcoach interiors be designed with improved flammability requirements and improved emergency exits, and that event data recorders be installed on commercial trucks and motorcoaches. Neither the truck nor the motorcoach in this crash were equipped with data recorders. “With access to event data recorders, we might have been able to determine why the truck crossed the median, which could have enabled us to make recommendations to prevent it from happening again,” NTSB Chairman Christopher A. Hart said.

“Much of the reason that aviation is so safe today is that we have required such recorders for decades so that we can learn the lessons of accidents. But they are still

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not required in commercial trucks or motorcoaches despite more than a decade of recommendations by the NTSB.” Both vehicles’ drivers died in the accident.

Investigators ruled out the drivers’ experience, licensing, and training, alcohol or drug use, mechanical factors, and weather as causes of the crash, and they found no evidence that the driver was experiencing distraction, fatigue, or that he intentionally crossed into opposing traffic.

“The investigation brought to light the difficulty of getting out of a burning motorcoach,” Hart said. “It is unacceptable for anyone who survives a crash to perish in a post-crash fire because the exits were too hard to find or too difficult to use.” According to the agency, at least two passengers died because they could not exit the burning coach before succumbing to asphyxiation due to inhaling smoke from the fire.

NTSB said its investigation also revealed that the fire performance standard for commercial passenger vehicle interiors, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 302, needs to be updated because flammability testing under it involves a small-scale fire source, such as those that might be caused by matches or cigarettes, which differs drastically from the actual common causes of bus fires.

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Safety Design Improvements

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Be Confident

4 actions that can make confidence

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you a wellspring of You will never read a single line from some of today’s best writers.

Instead, you will hear them in a TV program or movie.

A line that has resonated with me is from season six of “Mad Men.” When Pete, distraught about his work circumstance, asked for advice, he received this thought-provoking statement: “I realized I had regrets because I didn’t understand the wellspring of my confidence.” Spurred by that counsel, Pete recognized the importance of his ex-wife and family, reunited with them, and was able to take a risk on a huge career move.

That’s fiction, yet in reality, there is tremendous significance to being a wellspring of others’ confidence in order to help them grow. You can shore up your employees’ footing to go face risks and make big leaps in their capabilities.

While not always expecting to receive it, most employees look to their managers to build confidence. Viewing it as a lesser priority in their role, many managers do a poor job with this. Based upon interviews I did with scores of managers who now excel at developing others, there were typical mistakes these managers made while learning to do this well. Today, their advice is to start by looking inward and overcome some natural www.greenazine.com

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results in prompting them to take those next steps of development.

You will never read a single line from some of today’s best writers. Instead, you will hear them in a TV program or movie. tendencies such as: micromanaging, risk avoidance, playing favorites, indiscriminate cheerleading, and lack of follow through with their employees.

Next, consider that it is not only the action you take with employees, but also the relationship you build that will have an impact. After all, you are not just affecting their skill, but most especially their will; and, employees use that support to push through internal (e.g., fear of failure) barriers.

Here are four actions toward being a wellspring of confidence for your employees: 1. Focus on each employee individually knowing their skill set, interests, and tolerances. For example, new and seasoned employees have different needs and encounter different challenges (new employees need direction on what skills are needed for progression, while seasoned employees may feel there is less interest in investing in their development). Understanding each person allows you to pinpoint the tailored direction to take, will be noticed by each employee, and more likely

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2. Relate feedback in respectful and credible terms. Give them honest feedback in a thoughtful give and take discussion. This involves more preparation then a straight telling of your observation, and requires you to neutralize any emotional reactions to their actions that caused you extra effort. Leave space for their viewpoints, inviting them to share their questions and concerns. Allowing them to have their foibles, and still be OK with them, is crucial. Do this regularly so that it is an expected part of the work week.

3. Get yourself ready to provide challenging assignments, even high-stakes tasks, if possible.

Thoughtfully consider and unlock your own inclination to take reasonable risks in giving this assignment. You can quietly plan behindthe-scenes contingencies. Without dispelling or downplaying their qualms, discuss what will be required for success. In fact, help them identify potential vulnerabilities to getting the job done and set the expectation for some missteps. Let them know that you and other resources can provide guidance if and when they get stuck.

This provides a relatively safe testing ground.

And, when they do make those mistakes, provide guidance and resources without micromanaging.

4. Follow up and acknowledge progress. Spurring them to new, challenging behaviors is not oneand-done. Give them your observations, ask where their new behaviors are working and where they are not, and have them fine tune. Let them know how the impact they are having increases the team’s ability to achieve the objectives. It is amazing how often managers forget to do this, yet the payback from this relatively small action is very high.

Who will be saying you are the wellspring of their confidence? Overcoming some typical manager tendencies and delivering on this not only advances

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39

Driver Fatigue

NTSB: Driver fatigue caused 2014 40 www.greenazine.com

4 Walmart truck crash

A federal investigation has confirmed preliminary reports in last year’s high-profile crash on the New Jersey Turnpike: The truck driver was fatigued at the end of his on-duty period, likely because of an 800-mile commute to his Walmart Transportation LLC terminal the day before, and injuries to the celebrity occupants of a customized luxury van were made worse because they were not wearing seatbelts when the speeding truck rear-ended the van while traffic was slowed in a construction zone.

As a result of its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Tuesday reiterated a 2010 recommendation to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to make fatigue management programs mandatory for all carriers.

“Hours of service (HOS) rules cannot address what drivers do on their own time,” said NTSB Chairman Christopher A. Hart, noting that the driver, Kevin Roper of Jonesboro, Ga., had been on duty 13.5 hours of his 14-hour workday, and had been awake more than 28 hours at the time of the crash. “Fatigue management programs can help. To its credit, Walmart has taken steps to bolster its driver fatigue education and policies since this crash.”

Among the occupants of the 2012 Mercedes-Benz limo van, actor/ comedian Tracy Morgan, a former “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock” star, was seriously injured and comedian James McNair was killed in the first of several collisions that ultimately involved 21 people and six vehicles.

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Criminal charges against Roper were filed in New Jersey, while Walmart settled civil suits with Morgan and two other injured passengers for an undisclosed amount earlier this year, and paid a $10 million wrongful death claim

by McNair’s children.

The federal safety watchdog, which has no regulatory authority, reiterated a recommendation to the FMCSA to require coach operators to give pre-trip safety briefings to passengers on the importance of safety equipment and how to exit the vehicle in an emergency. The board also called on FMCSA to finalize its research to evaluate integrated onboard systems, including fatiguemonitoring technologies.

“One tragic aspect of roadway deaths is that so often they could have been prevented,” Hart said.

Criminal charges against Roper were filed in New Jersey, while Walmart settled civil suits with

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Morgan and two other injured passengers for an undisclosed amount earlier this year, and paid a $10 million wrongful death claim

by McNair’s children.

The accident also received a lot of attention on Capitol Hill, coming as the U.S. Senate was debating legislation to suspend the restart provisions of the 2013 HOS rule.

Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, led the fight to block the rollback and cited the crash as a reason to strengthen driver hours regulations instead of loosening them. The spending bill to which the language was attached stalled on procedural matters, but the HOS provision was eventually included in the year-end federal budget appropriation.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who fought the restart suspension with Booker, reinforced his position Tuesday.

“Today’s meeting of the NTSB underscores a sad and tragic fact we already know: a tired trucker is a dangerous driver, capable of turning a big rig into a killing machine,” Blumenthal said.

“Allowing more tired truckers on our roads will only lead to more accidents like the horrific accident that injured Tracy Morgan last year.”

He also criticized the Senate for recently passing a highway bill “full of special interest gifts to the trucking industry.”

“The most troubling of which would allow 18-year olds to drive these monster trucks on little rest,” Blumenthal said. “We can and must do better. Lives depend on it.”

Similarly, Daphne Izner—who founded Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT) after a Wal-Mart truck driver fell asleep at the wheel causing the accident that killed her son—said she was “saddened” that “the economic interests of the trucking industry have prevailed,” despite the ongoing efforts of highway safety groups.

“I am not surprised, however, that once again a Wal-Mart truck has forced other families, like the

An NTSB animation of the June 7, 2014 accident, which occurred at about 1 AM near Cranbury, NJ, is below:

Administration, the New Jersey Department of Health, the New Jersey State First Aid Council, the National Limousine Association, Walmart Transportation LLC, Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC, Detroit Diesel Corporation, and Meritor WABCO Vehicle Control Systems.

The NTSB also issued new safety recommendations to the Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety

These recommendations address issues including improving work zone safety, recording data from in-vehicle collision warning and

McNairs and the Morgans, to deal with the devastating effects of preventable, fatigue-related truck crashes,� Izner said.

avoidance systems, increasing seat belt and proper head restraint use in passenger vehicles, and creating a standard for emergency medical system training and practices for emergency responders on the New Jersey Turnpike.

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Sales Leads

Why Your Sales Leads Are Business owners and sales people are always preoccupied with getting more sales leads – whether it’s from online lead generation (email marketing, SEO, PPC ads, etc.) or traditional outbound lead generation tactics like cold-calling and direct mail. Your business needs a constant influx of fresh business leads in order to survive.

Your company has invested lots of time and money to find those new sales leads and lay the groundwork for a future sale – sales leads are a valuable commodity.

So even though we all agree that sales leads are valuable and important, why do so many companies treat their sales leads so carelessly? At many companies, sales leads fall through the cracks – whether it’s poor organization or bad follow-up, there are many sales leads that never result in a sale, and it’s often because the sales team or the company management isn’t doing a good enough job of managing sales leads.

Here are a few key reasons why sales leads tend to fall through the cracks:

No Initial Lead Qualifying This happens so often that it might shock you, but it’s true – often when companies get new sales leads, they don’t have any initial process in place to qualify the new leads by asking questions and finding out

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Falling Through the Cracks

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more about how ready the buyers are to make a purchase. Instead, they just hand the leads off to the sales team. This is a terrible mistake, because you’re not getting any real insights into these new prospective customers – you don’t know what they need, you don’t know how urgent their situation is, and you don’t have any basis for starting a real sales conversation. As a result, too many bad sales leads get mixed in with the “good” ones, your sales team gets overwhelmed by chasing bad leads, and the good opportunities get lost in the clutter.

Lack of Lead Nurturing By the same token, many companies might have an initial lead qualifying process, and they do a decent job of separating the wheat from the chaff to sort out the good sales leads, but then they are too eager to follow up only with the “good” sales leads that are urgently ready to by. As a result, the long-term sales leads that would benefit from more extensive follow-up and relationship building get ignored – when instead they could have build a long-term pipeline by nurturing these leads for several months until they’re ready to buy. Don’t focus only on low-hanging fruit – be ready to invest in building a longer-term dialogue with sales leads.

Disorganized Sales Processes Some companies have a disorganized sales process. We’ve all seen this in our own lives as consumers or as buyers for our businesses – have you ever gotten 4 different follow-up phone calls from 3 different sales people? Have you ever had your doctor’s office ask you the reason for your visit 3 teams, even though you were just there last week? Sometimes at sales organizations, there is bad information sharing behind the scenes, and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Avoid this by utilizing a good customer relationship management (CRM) system and take regular notes about the results of each customer contact.

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Managing sales leads is a longterm, neverending effort of communicating, listening, building trust and establishing credibility.

Managing sales leads is a long-term, never-ending effort of communicating, listening, building trust and establishing credibility. If your company can change just a few simple things about the way you handle your sales leads – by putting in additional effort on the front end or back end of the process, or by re-examining how you track and share information about your sales leads – you’ll be more likely to win customers’ trust and close more sales!

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