A few years ago, United Airlines aired a commercial that featured a company’s chief executive officer admonishing his sales force for relying too much on faxes, phone calls and e-mail to keep in contact with clients. He then passed out plane tickets to everyone and said they were all going to change that and meet with their customers face-to-face, including himself.
If you remember that commercial, you might get an idea of what Metrocall Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer William Collins said to his executive management team when he told them they were going out to visit all their employees across the country to give them an update of the company and its vision of the future.
According to Mike Scanlon, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Metrocall, the whole operation began at a meeting where Collins passed out an itinerary with a list of meetings, said ,”We’re going to talk to all our employees and then answer their questions.”
Collins established three presentation teams, led by himself, Chief Financial Officer Vince Kelly and Chief Operating Officer Steve Jacoby. They each then visited some 20 cities in two weeks, meeting with employees from every regional office in the country. Various senior vice presidents rotated in and out of these meetings as well, so someone could continue to run the company.
The roadshow-dubbed the State of the Company-was in response to the carrier’s recently completed merger with ProNet. “Bill Collins felt that because of the recent acquisition of ProNet and because many employees never saw our management team before, he thought it was important for them to see who we are and what we think,” and to show them how the company plans to integrate ProNet into the company, Scanlon said. “`We’ve had some people from acquired companies that never met their CEO before and never shook hands with him,” and Collins wanted to change that.
Scanlon said another factor was PageNet’s recent announcement that it will cut 30 percent of its workforce. “We wanted to let them know we are in solid shape and have a healthy balance sheet” to ease any fears of similar downsizing at Metrocall.
The presentation given by the senior executives and vice presidents lasted almost two hours. In it, employees learned about the company’s management structure and were brought up to speed on the events of the last two years-which included six acquisitions, new distribution channels and financial and subscriber growth.
“So everybody was up to date, even if they just joined the company as part of ProNet … they would have the depth of knowledge of what has happened in the last two years,” Scanlon said.
Then they explained the company’s acquisition philosophy and how it plans to integrate ProNet. In particular, Scanlon said employees were assured that Metrocall would only eliminate positions at the executive level and redundant back office positions.
“We don’t mess with the folks out on the firing line,” he said. “Head-count reductions are aimed at folks at the top of the company, not folks dealing with the customers.”
The presentation also gave a regional breakdown of subscriber numbers “to give them a sense of the size and scale and scope of the company,” Scanlon said, followed by a briefing on the industry as a whole and where Metrocall stood in relation to the major players “so they could put us into context of what’s out there.” The presentation teams also explained the nature of the company’s distribution channels and gave a “crash course” about its finances.
Finally, the teams presented Metrocall’s operating goals for the future, which was followed by the local manager presenting that particular region’s operating goals and where the two fit together.
“We zoomed in to show how the corporate vision affects each market,” Scanlon said. “To show that it’s like a puzzle and every piece of the mosaic adds to the overall picture … It lets them know they’re not operating in a vacuum.”
Employees at every level of the company seemed genuinely impressed.
Steve Minkow, market vice president for Metrocall’s California operations, said the presentation went over very well with employees.
“It was real positive and really well received,” he said. “I’ve received rave reviews from all my offices.”
Minkow oversees several regions in California, one of which-the Stockton region-was once a ProNet Supercenter. He said the former ProNet employees perhaps benefited most.
“There was a lot of uneasiness,” following the merger, he said, “but they came out of this with a real feeling of well being about their future in the company … Whenever there’s an acquisition, it always scares people. But this definitely put them much more at ease.”
Minkow came to Metrocall as part of the AllCity Paging Acquisition in 1988, and has experienced other state of the company briefings in the past, but said none matched this most recent presentation.
“None were of this magnitude,” he said. “They didn’t go to as many offices and the describing of the future was never as detailed” in the past.
“It’s a very unique opportunity for the senior executives of a company to travel around the country and set aside time to talk to employees about the company’s goals,” Minkow continued. “They took two weeks off of their obviously very busy schedules and went to some offices with just 10 employees. That’s unheard of, at least from my view and history in the business … It really shows their sincerity of what the Metrocall family is all about.”
Scanlon echoed these comments.
“I’ve been with the company about 10 months now and it gave me more insight to this outfit-sitting through those presentations and Q+A’s-than any information booklet,” Scanlon said. “It was a real eye-opening experience.”
