Last week I put up a second post, What Candidates Look For In A Job on a webinar conducted by Monster and DDI. In that post I highlighted the disconnect between what the candidate is looking for and what the employer believes they are looking for. Age is a factor in the responses and I promised to share that information with you. So here you go, the top 4 reasons by age group in order of importance:

Less than 20 Years Old
A creative/fun workplace culture.
A compatible work group/team.
A good manager/boss.
Opportunities to learn and grow.

21 to 30 Years Old
Opportunities to learn and grow.
Opportunity to advance.
An organization you can be proud to work for.
A good manager/boss.

31 to 40 Years Old
Opportunities to learn and grow.
Opportunity to advance.
A good manager/boss.
An organization you can be proud to work for.

41 to 50 Years Old
Opportunities to learn and grow.
A good manager/boss.
An organization you can be proud to work for.
Opportunity to advance.

Greater than 50 Years Old
A good manager/boss.
An organization you can be proud to work for.
A compatible work group/team.
Opportunities to learn and grow.

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I am speechless:

Graceful Services recently started offering a BlackBerry Finger Massage that promises to help eliminate neck, back and finger-cramping caused by excessive typing on tiny BlackBerry keyboards.

A repetitive-stress injury informally known as “BlackBerry Thumb” may also affect people who spend too much time with a video game controller, television remote control or any number of handheld devices.

Graceful’s hour-long BlackBerry massage costs $60. It’s a full-body massage with emphasis on the back, neck and fingers.

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Salary.com put this article out earlier this month. It is a lengthy article written to employees in regards to 2007 areas of compensation, but there are some points to keep in mind not only as you are hiring staff this year but in retaining your current team. These points are complementary to one of our earlier posts on the top reasons why candidates take a job.

If you haven’t read this post, let me highlight the top 4 things candidates are looking for in jobs: A good manager/boss, opportunity to advance, opportunities to learn/grow and balance between work and personal life. Salary.com’s article aligns with 3 of the 4 points from that post. If you are not already doing these things, may I suggest that you start thinking how you can incorporate them into your hiring practice this year?

The first trend they see is the increase in performance-based bonuses. Salaries will not increase significantly this year as the market continues to tighten but bonuses based for performance will.

In the area of advancement, they are seeing leadership development no longer being just an executive perk. Instead, leadership training will be provided to the middle manager giving him or her the ability to develop the additional skills needed to advance.

Another trend is that external and internal training programs are on the rise. This approach gives employees the opportunity to learn and grow within the company. Our economy is a knowledge-based one and without these training programs, companies will no longer be able to be competitive in their market.

Finally, one trend is the ability to work a more flexible schedule or to work entirely from home. With the technological advances – VoIP’s, VPN’s, PDA’s – and all the other acronyms can give your employees the same abilities as if they were sitting in your office.

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Selling Power is covering topics near to our hearts this Valentine’s Day. A Primer for New Pharmaceutical Sales Managers discusses some of the challenges facing new sales managers and provides 5 key tips. Obviously the context is the pharmaceutical industry, but these challenges are consistent throughout industries.

I couldn’t agree more with this statement from the article:

“The biggest mistake new pharmaceutical managers make,” Williams says, “is failing to properly evaluate the sales team’s strengths and weaknesses prior to developing and implementing a firm plan of action for the team’s sales improvement and increased goal attainment.”

Amen to that statement. In fact, we see this error play out amongst existing sales managers also. But how do you determine the team’s strengths and weaknesses? More on that later.

The article also points out that you have to adjust your management style, albeit slightly, for each salesperson. Unfortunately, many sales managers prefer to lead by staying in their own style and replacing salespeople who do not conform to their ways. Many times we find that a long-standing sales manager has created a “clone” team – salespeople that share his or her own style, skills, talents, etc. These are not the strongest teams we evaluate.

The strongest teams we see are the ones with many different styles and skills and a sales manager who knows how to handle each salesperson individually. Some sales managers develop an understanding of each salesperson’s abilities through observation and bloody noses. But that is where we come in. We can accelerate a new sales manager’s understanding of his or her team and lessen the bloody noses by evaluating each salesperson’s abilities and providing that information to the new sales manager.

We are presently working on a new offering based on this topic so please look for more information coming from us soon.

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This article – Sell Your Team on Team Selling – from Selling Power’s Pharmaceuticals Newsletter approaches a trend we are seeing in spades these days.

“The greatest benefits from a team selling approach are what I call just-in-time factors,” he says. “That includes just-in-time technical expertise to address complex and/or outside the box inquiries, decision making to solidify the deal without self-imposed company decision making delays, and the confidence gained by being a team, especially from internal support from the potential purchaser or user.”

The “team” typically is composed of a single sales rep along with members from other departments (i.e. engineering, financial, operations, production, etc.). In today’s world, this approach makes sense. The team acts like a mini-extension of the company and places the right people in the midst of the prospect’s decision process.

A critical topic to observe in a team-selling environment:

The person responsible for closing the deal, typically the sales rep, should be the team leader.

I’ve sold in a team sale before and it is key to establish the sales rep as the point person on the call. Think of them as a point guard in basketball – they will distribute the ball to the right person at the right time.

I bring this topic up because part of my experience was selling with an engineer. This is no small feat. Engineers like to solve problems while displaying their knowledge. This approach is death to qualifying an opportunity. The salesperson needs to qualify the needs, budget, decision process and so forth before the solution gets formulated. That process seems to be a difficult delay for many engineers. I learned that you need to do a pre-call strategy meeting and stick to your plan in front of the prospect.

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