Newspaper circulation continues its precipitous decline. However, online employment ads have increased 24% from last April according to this Inc.com article. Surprisingly, I talked to a company last month that did not believe online job ads were the way to go. Their plan – post sales ads in the printed newspaper. Some stats: Online job ads totaled 4,365,000 in April 2007, an increase of 16 percent from the previous month, and represented approximately 2.9 vacancies for every 100 persons in the labor force in April, the report said. That is a significant number of ads especially compared to the number of people in the labor force (ever wonder how they… Read More
Continue ReadingKinetic vs. Potential
I’m not physicist, but I remember some teaching in class regarding the difference between kinetic energy (an object in motion) and potential energy (stored energy within an object). Salespeople are similar in that you want to hire the ones with kinetic energy and not the ones with only potential energy. I’m going to stay on this theme since it is so important to successful sales hiring – filtering candidates based on their resume does not allow for determining these two “energies.” Hiring managers attempt to divine kinetic energy from a document that is written to imply kinetic energy/activity. But is it true or is it an embellishment? Or was it… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Allure Of The Resume
When was the last time you read through a marketing piece concerning a product or service you were considering to purchase? Imagine you are in the market to buy a new vehicle. Do you read through the brochure and accept every statement as objectively true? Or how about attending a trade show and picking up a pamphlet at a booth? Do you consider that information to be an advocate’s view or not? Most people view this information as propaganda and rightly so. Yet when it comes to resumes, many hiring managers use this embellished “product” sheet as the definitive filter for interviews. That’s a mistake that leads to inconsistent sales… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Enabling Freedom Of Accessibility
We’ve posted about no-email Fridays and those companies that want to encourage face-to-face meetings and phone calls that day. Now ManageSmarter.com offers a different perspective on being accessible – Office Vs. The Field: Accessibility. The premise of their article is to pit one sales manager’s opinion against one salesperson’s opinion on a specific topic. This time the question is: Should salespeople be accessible 24 hours a day? Both manager and salesperson agree that they should be available. I concur. Technology today allows for salespeople to be responsive in ways that solidify the customer relationship. I particularly like the sales manager’s take on technology: It€™s a salesperson’s responsibility to keep on… Read More
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