The JustSell.com guys put out a helpful, quick-read daily newsletter that I recommend salespeople and managers subscribe to. The quotes are poignant and their free resources are extensive. Their salestools section is overflowing with great tools.

Today’s newsletter directs us to their Sales Glossary. I have to admit, I was stuck on the site for quite some time. Here’s the first (and most important) sales term I searched:

qualify
to determine the purchasing potential of a suspect, prospect or customer

I love it. That definition cuts to the quick of qualifying. The next one I searched:

disqualify
to determine the purchasing potential of a prospect or customer as unlikely and therefore a poor use of sales time (see qualify)

By now you can see where I was going with this pattern. As an aside, being a good qualifier means that you are truly a good disqualifier – a task many salespeople avoid since it means they have to find a new prospect.

The glossary is quite extensive and well worth the time to explore. The definition for “yes” is worth the visit alone.

Comments(2)

Full disclosure – I’m no economist. You wouldn’t have to know me long to realize that fact. However, our local Pioneer Press offers a quick read business article with a potpourri of short articles – Labor could reap rewards of political shifts.

From the 1st story:

Political shifts in the U.S., Europe and Asia increase the chances that 2007 will bring labor higher pay and stronger job protection after five years in which its share of economic gains fell….Wages in the dozen nations sharing the euro barely shifted last year even as the region, which expanded last week to include Slovenia, enjoyed its strongest growth in six years. “Economic data is so good that employees must have a share in the success they’ve helped to bring about,” says Juergen Peters, head of IG Metall, Germany’s largest labor union.

And the next story in the same article:

Employers are spending much more on employee benefits than they used to.A study released Wednesday by the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C., found that of the $7 trillion employers spent on workers in 2005, 80.6 percent went to wages and salaries and 19.4 percent went to benefits.

In 1960, wages and salaries accounted for about 92 percent of employer spending for total compensation, EBRI said.

I wonder if Mr. Peters (from the first story) has taken an account of the exploding healthcare costs that businesses are absorbing for their “workers.” I guess the pay-for-performance model is thoroughly engrained in my psyche. I don’t see unions being eager to take a significant pay cut when the company is struggling. Funny that the editor chose to sequence the two stories this way. Perhaps it was an oversight? Or perhaps not. Either way, the article does close with a humorous story:

Sharper Image said its recently departed founder and CEO Richard Thalheimer agreed to pay the company $10,000 to keep two of his office decorations sculptures of Superman and “Star Wars” character C-3PO. The specialty retailer said all future management hires would be done under a strict policy of “no mega-dorks.”

Comments(0)

From abcnews.com – How to Have More Fun at Work. This topic is going to become more common as Gen X ascends and Gen Y populates the workforce. Already we are seeing numerous articles on work/life balance enter the article sphere.

I’ve worked for many Boomer managers who were suit-and-tie, get your work done leaders with no time for, well, fun at the office. At one technology employer, we had a dartboard and ping pong table in the lunchroom that was a huge hit. In the sales department, we would take a 15 minute afternoon break to go trash-talk each other while competing like we were in the Olympics. To this day, I remember how enjoyable those competitions were. Afterwards, we would get back to work almost invigorated from the mini battle.

Now for a strange aside. When my son was in preschool years ago, the teacher explained that children learn better when they have large-muscle activity before a seated learning time. I don’t know if that is true of adults or not, but as I mentioned, I always felt invigorated after a game of ping pong. I had more energy and was more “alive” on my phone calls.

Yet there is a downside to offering this type of fun at the office. The word came down from the Boomer management team that salespeople should not be playing ping pong at any time during the day. Mind you, no other departments received a similar dictate, just sales. After that, every time we went to get a coffee or snack, we would see others enjoying a part of the corporate culture that was forbidden to us. That rule created much angst and resentment between the sales team and the managers.

My point is simple, if you are going to commit to a culture of fun, make sure you set parameters at the beginning and make it accessible to all employees. And remember, the opportunity for employees to have some fun will go miles to improving morale and hopefully retention.

Comments(0)

If you have read The Hire Sense for any length of time, you know that we are consistently reading sales employment ads looking for strong formats. Unfortunately, the majority of our reading reveals poorly constructed ads. I personally believe these ads are the starting point for companies who end up criticizing online job boards.

They pay the exorbitant fee to place the lousy ad and then receive a lousy response. Their defense mechanism is simple – the online boards are an unproductive waste of resources. As I’ve stated before, if you don’t catch any fish in a lake renowned for good fishing, it doesn’t mean the lake is inferior. The first place to look is at your bait.

I give you this long lead-in due to the ad I just read. It starts out with this bullet (I edited the ad by inserting widget):

Must have at least 10 years of prior experience in selling widget-related products to OEM widget engineers and / or widget distributors

The questions that always enter my mind when I see this statement in an ad:

• Is 10 years the magic threshold for sales success in this position?
• What if the candidate has had 10 years of mediocre success in the industry?
• If a salesperson has 10 years of experience and verifiable success in this industry, why would they want to leave their current employer and potentially risk their established customer base?

I could keep going with the questions, but you get the point. The ad spirals downward from the opening bullet. There is not a single word describing the skills and talent needed for success in the role. There is an entire paragraph copied and pasted from the marketing materials that describes their company’s products. Now, they may find the right salesperson, but it won’t be because of their ad. My hunch is that they will settle for recycling mediocrity by hiring the candidate with the most experience in their industry . . . but not necessarily the candidate with the best skills and talent for their position.

Comments(0)

It has been a while since we have done this Monday thing so here is something amusing to start your week. CareerJournal.com offers Drinking on the Clock Is OK for This Position.

Opening graph:

If drinking beer on the clock and traveling to Oktoberfest in Munich on the company dime sounds like a dream job, there are still nine days left to apply for the newly created post of chief beer officer at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel chain.

I’ve been to Munich but not during Oktoberfest. I have also stayed at a handful of Four Points by Sheraton hotels. If they hire based on experience, I can probably land this job.

But there is competition . . . lots of competition:

By yesterday, officials at Four Points’s parent company, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., had received more than 5,500 applications from beer lovers in 31 countries. In addition, scores of current Starwood employees have signaled their interest in the part-time job that comes with no salary, but plenty of perks.

“No salary, but plenty of perks.” I love that line. Try dropping that into your next sales employment ad and see what type of response you get. I doubt you would see 5,500 resumes.

Comments(0)

I’m having more fun today digging through online resumes and came across this intro to a cover letter:

SPECIAL NOTICE:I ONLY accept 1099/C2C/Freelance Web Development assignments. No other offers of any sort or job description will be considered beyond what is stated below. Anything else will be considered SPAM and dealt with accordingly, up to and including reporting the offender to proper authorities.

I’ve never seen anything of this sort in my lifetime. Nothing like indirectly threatening potential customers/employers!

Comments(0)

This may be an old one, but it is a good way to end the week:

A little field mouse was lost in a dense wood, unable to find his way out. He came upon a wise old owl sitting in a tree. “Please help me, wise old owl, how can I get out of this wood?” said the field mouse.

“Easy,” said the owl, “Grow wings and fly out, as I do.”

“But how can I grow wings?” asked the mouse.

The owl looked at him haughtily, sniffed disdainfully, and said, “Don’t bother me with the details, I only advise on strategy.”

Comments(0)

CNNMoney.com takes the today’s job report even further – Skilled worker shortage hurts U.S. The article’s opening sentence:

The biggest problem with job growth right now isn’t too few new jobs. It’s too few skilled workers.

And later:

“It’s down to the nub already,” he said. “Supply and demand is completely out of whack.”Some experts say part of the blame for the slowdown in the economy in last year’s second half can be laid on labor constraints – companies couldn’t expand as fast as they wanted due to a lack of workers with the right skills.

Notice that the comment is not a lack of skills, it is a lack of the right skills. We are releasing an article early next week on finding the right talent for your sales position. There are numerous sales candidates available and many actually look good on paper. However, there are 2 critical pieces of information you must possess to hire effectively in this evolving market. More on that next week. For now, it seems clear that we are on the cusp of a significant skilled-labor shortage – a shortage that will lead to many exasperated hiring companies.

And this is a good description of future sourcing activities:

“With this level of unemployment, the only way they can find the workers they need is to hire them away from someone else, hire them from someplace else, or hire someone without the necessary skills,” said Vitner. “All these things cut into productivity growth.”

And to close:

“When the economy hits some natural barriers, it slows it down, and one of those barriers is when the pool of workers begins to dry up,” he (John Challenger) said. “The lifeblood of the economy today is skilled workers.”

Dramatically stated but accurate nonetheless.

Comments(0)

In Selling Power’s latest Sales Manager’s Newsletter there is an article from Anthony Parinello, author of Selling to VITO and Think & Sell Like a CEO. As a sales manager who is working with a salesperson on their messaging, Anthony makes some great points about assumptions CEO’s hold about the business world. He provides seven assumptions – if your sales approach aligns with the CEO, he/she will not feel you are wasting his or her time:

1. Knowledge is power. CEO’s seek knowledge. They understand that the more they know, the better their decisions. Thus your message must expand his or her flow of critical information, not clutter that flow.
2. Passion and commitment make the difference. CEO’s typically are very passionate about what they do. Make sure your own enthusiasm for the topic under discussion complements the CEO’s enthusiasm.
3. What’s good for me is good for the company. CEO’s self-identify strongly with their organization and “tend to feel very good about both,” says Parinello. Ask yourself whether what you’re doing supports the CEO’s best view of him or herself and his or her company, says Parinello.
4. You can do, get, and be anything you want if you see a big enough picture. CEO’s don’t focus on tactics; they focus on strategies. They take “50,000-foot views” of the world, says Parinello, and tend not to get bogged down in details. Are you focusing on the big picture? Or are you stuck in selling features and benefits?
5. Good things happen when you get people to buy into your message. Every successful CEO knows the importance of communicating persuasively and effectively. If what you are doing will help the CEO get the message out and communicate effectively within his organization, you’ll have instant status with him.
6. You can never get enough good ideas to support your plan. “CEO’s love to consider ideas they can connect directly to the plan or vision that gets them up early in the morning and keeps them going late at night,” says Parinello. Ask yourself whether the ideas you’re presenting directly support the CEO’s plan.
7. Results are what count. CEO’s know they must deliver tangible and intangible results in their own markets and in the markets of their prospects and customers. It is essential that the issues you plan to talk about help the CEO create positive results for shareholders, customers, and prospects.

Some excellent points to remember if you are calling on CEO’s!

Comments(0)

From Foxnews.com – Economy Shrugs Off Weak Housing and Automotive Sectors As Employers Add 167,000 Jobs in December. We are encountering extended sourcing cycles right now due in no small part to compensation increases.

Employers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by a brisk 167,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at a still historically low 4.5 percent. Workers’ wages grew briskly.

The latest snapshot of the nation’s employment climate, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the jobs market ended 2006 on a strong note and provided fresh evidence that the troubled housing and automotive sectors aren’t dragging down employment across the country.

We have implemented numerous behind-the-scenes updates (technology, resource investment) to better attack the tight market. I posted earlier this week about a statistic from CareerBuilder regarding a 60% bump in job searches they encountered last January. This is a good time to be sourcing since many people use their vacation time around the holidays and then actively pursue a new opportunity after Jan. 1.

Comments(0)