From the JustSell.com newsletter:

The doctors of “Grey’s Anatomy” are reaping rewards “Grey’s” is the most expensive show this television season, bringing in $419,000 per 30-second commercial, according to AdAge.com. That’s $25,000 more than last year’s top show, “Desperate Housewives,” commanded per
30-second spot.

Here’s the fall lineup, in terms of advertising dollars…

“Grey’s Anatomy” – $419,000
“Sunday Night Football” – $358,000
“The Simpsons” – $315,000
“Heroes” – $296,000
“Desperate Housewives” – $270,000
“CSI” – $248,000
“Two and a Half Men” – $231,000
“Survivor: China” – $208,000
“Private Practice” – $208,000

The show that has them all beat? A 30-second spot in this year’s Super Bowl cost $2.6 million.

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This week we look at a trait that ebbs and flows with salespeople. Typically, candidates have a lower level of role confidence (a driver in their reasoning for finding a new job). Established salespeople who are having success tend to have higher role confidence.

The lack of this trait usually reveals an indecisive, uncertain salesperson. This weakness unfortunately is most often revealed in front of a prospect.

Role Confidence
The ability to develop and maintain an inner strength based on the belief that one will succeed. Role Confidence is a combination of a salesperson’s ability to see their role clearly, positively, practically and functionally. They see themselves as valuable in that role.

A salesperson with strength in this trait will be willing to give their opinions in situations where they do not have a thorough knowledge of all the particulars. They will most likely not be overly stubborn or insistent about their opinions.

A salesperson with weakness in this area will not be very assertive in the majority of professional situations. They may also lack the security in their opinions about what it is that they are doing (or supposed to be doing) so that they become indecisive, unsure of how to proceed.

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The local paper. Simple, right? We monitor sales employment ads on the major boards and the local papers (we have 2 here in the Twin Cities). We have been doing this for over 6 years now and have watched the gradual decline in ads.

The only ads we tend to see now are placed by staffing firms and what I would characterize as “old guard” industries. The death rattle of this newspaper section is palpable.

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I was reading through the latest Herman Trend Report this morning about the new souped up cubicles that are being developed by IBM and Steelcase.  Yes, it sounds similar to customizing a Yugo, but there actually are some interesting ideas geared towards Millennial workers.

For instance:

Two new technologies facilitate people working in collaboration: “MyTeam” uses sensor data to connect team members and to broadcast availability awareness. One touch opens the preferred communication channel, whether it is e-mail, phone, or instant message. Their Everywhere Displays projector transforms any surface into a touch-screen.

Rather than gathering around a monitor, participants working together may project their work onto tables or walls. Users may interact with the system through simple gestures, detected through vision technology.

The thought of any surface becoming a touch-screen is amazing.  Anyway, I enjoyed this paragraph the most:

Further adding to the experience, the BlueSpace occupant will have unprecedented control over his/her physical environment. The BlueScreen information panel provides touch-screen control of the lighting and temperature in the workspace. In addition, the space can sense and automatically adjust the environment to meet the physical preferences linked to identification badge.

I have worked in numerous offices where wars have broken out over the thermostat.  One company, in particular, had to install those goofy looking, lockable plastic covers over the thermostat and tell everyone that the maintenance manager was in charge of the setting.  Having a cube that adjusts the temp for the individual seems like an excellent idea.

On a marketing note, many of us are old enough to remember the phrase “blue screen of death” from the earlier versions of Windows.  Honestly, it wasn’t that long ago.  I’m chuckling at the “BlueScreen” information panel.  My Pavlovian reaction to a blue screen is to launch expletives and start banging the keyboard.  Apparently Gen Y hasn’t experienced such training.

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Ok, this is more brainstorming than well-developed post (don’t touch that – they are all well-developed in my mind).  Anyway, I read through an interesting piece on BusinessWeek.com titled Coping With the Talent Crunch.  The article is from last year, but the author hits on a couple interesting points.

First, this (my editing and emphasis):

It may be that employers (especially large ones) are increasingly out of touch. True, for most of the past two decades employees have consistently said there are reasons more important than money that make a job attractive. The problem is, most of those reasons to stick around have gone the way of the manual typewriter.

Employees used to be willing to trade a few dollars today for the promise of things that were really important to them: Job security, career development, the ability to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Over the past decade (except for the Internet bubble hiring blip) the message from U.S. companies to employees has been clear: Don’t count on us for anything except your next paycheck.

Companies that are no longer able to provide such things should not be surprised when employees take a “show me the money” attitude. And this is going to affect not just the big institutions most responsible for fracturing the social contract between employer and worker€”it will affect all of us. And it will affect us at a time when the competition for talent is going to be at its greatest.

I think the author is spot on with this analysis and especially the highlighted text above.  That fracture will lead to this:

Competition for talent will be not only with other companies but with employees themselves. Of the roughly 22 million U.S. companies in business today, around 16 million are one-person shops, and that number is growing rapidly. Why take a full-time job if you are likely to be out on the street in 18 months because your company has been purchased and integrated into a competitor? If you are one of the best in the field, why not set up shop yourself and control your own destiny?

The sales skills-for-hire days may be upon us.  I have always been skeptical of this approach since selling does require a relationship with the customer.  Many companies are loathe to outsource that relationship.

But what of it?  Maybe there is a place for this approach in light of the talent crunch?  The manufacturer’s rep model has been in place for decades and provides a manufacturing company with local representation.  Sales is uniquely set up for compensation in that you can reward the rep for success – a closed deal.

At a minimum, I can see more salespeople becoming contractors for multiple companies as opposed to an employee for one company only.  If a salesperson has demonstrable skill closing deals, the talent crunch may provide an opportunity to sell their skills to many buyers.

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If you have read The Hire Sense for any period of time, you know we have some strong feelings about using resumes to filter sales candidates.  This approach is ripe with problems.  However, we know it occurs and until we change the world on this topic, we’ll have to make the best of it.

In that light, here are the items we look for when reading through resumes:

Performance.  Has the person succeeded by what you can see in their work history?  Is this success supported by specific numbers?

Progression.  Has their sales career shown overall  growth through their different positions?  Have they been with only 1 company or have they worked in multiple cultures?

Punctuation.  Fine, I need another “p” word.  Does the document contain proper grammar and punctuation?  The reason is that this document is the showcase of their abilities.  You have to consider their attention to detail if the document has composition errors.

For sales, it is far more valuable to interact with the candidate via phone conversations and email.  These are the mediums in which they work so our focus is on their abilities there.  When hiring salespeople, I would recommend you put your focus there as opposed to drawing too many conclusions from a resume.

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As a resident in many cube farms for many years of my career, I have a fondness for stories involving this topic.  This article – Why Silicon Valley Firms Are Rethinking the Cubicle – provides probably more insight than the average person cares to know about this topic.

But this caught my attention:

Intel Corp. is often credited, or blamed, for popularizing the office cubicle. Now it is joining some prominent Silicon Valley peers in reconsidering the concept.

I didn’t know that, but later in the article you find this statistic:

Sun Microsystems Inc. is particularly aggressive about flexible work styles; the computer maker estimated that about 55% of its employees work from home or a remote office as many as two days a week. To accommodate these workers when they are in the office, Sun offers drop-in desks and places terminals in offices, cafeterias and other common spaces.

Now that definitely is a trend I foresee taking off over the next 10 years.  We already have customers that have these areas and they allow us to use them when we are onsite for a day of interviews.  This convenience is much appreciated since the PDA phone can get old when you are trying to read attachments and write out long emails.

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It’s me.  Well, I didn’t make the list, but I think I could have won it (Lee will confirm it).  But this article in CareerJournal.com reports that SnagAJob.com went with their own list and came up with these answers:

According to the 7,000 people who responded to the poll last month, the “slacker” and the “kiss-up” tied for the most annoying person to work with. Each type was selected as most annoying by 32.6% of those who responded to the one-question survey.

…

Third on the list of annoying co-workers was the “gossip hound,” which 18.4% said was the most annoying co-worker. The “loud talker” was deemed most annoying by 11.8% of participants and the “hypochondriac” was ranked worst by 4.6%.

Me, I’d have to agree with the slacker vote.

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We’ve run into some “unique” problems in handling offers with sales candidate.  Strong salespeople all share one significant ability – qualifying.  This ability, when used in the negotiation process, leads to a desire for real clarity when it comes to an offer.

We lost a strong candidate last week due to a lack of informational clarity within our customer’s offer.  There are many variables to this specific situation, but one thing that came out was that the offer was too vague.  The critical piece of information that was poorly defined was the expectations for the position.  No quota, no targets and no defined levels.

This is a new sales position within an expanding company so it is difficult to pin down exact numbers.  Yet, the refusal of the President to articulate the expectations sent a red flag to the candidate.

Don’t underestimate the significance of a position’s sales expectations.  The strongest sales candidates plug that information into the commission plan to sort out what they will make within the plan.  Most salespeople have a target number they hope to earn and will work the plan backwards to sort out how many sales they have to close to earn that target money.

Our customer, despite our pleas, did not want to explain this critical information and it cost him a strong candidate.

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Great quote that is.  Selling Power provided it in their article Re-Recruiting and Retention.  The gist of the article deals with keeping your top performers when they have been recruited from your company.  The article lists some suggested goals you can gather by conducting exit interviews:

– Eliminate the barriers to retention that were mentioned in surveys of ex-employees.
– Identify essential, “can’t operate without” employees and thank each one of them (often).
– Upgrade personal performance contracts, paying special attention to the problem areas identified.
– Provide extra compensation and rewards. (Pacetta suggests establishing a recruiting and retaining fund for this purpose.)
– Ask each of your essential employees to come to you immediately if another firm approaches them.
– Make a personal commitment to keep your essential employees €“ especially when they attempt to leave €“ it will raise the stakes for you as well as put the recruiting company at a disadvantage.

I’m of two minds when it comes to salespeople who give their notice.  First off, they have crossed a bridge from which it is difficult to return.  Normally, the return involves paying the salesperson more money while wondering if they are going to be swayed by the next employment overture.  Expectations are now raised and the sales manager may get an itchy trigger finger when it comes to the salesperson’s performance.

Also, I’m highly skeptical that asking employees to come to you “immediately” if they are approached about another opportunity.  I’ve worked in plenty of companies where a recruiter reached me.  I always listened to what they had to say and never, ever, told my boss about the call.  Maybe it is just me, but I think I am in the majority on this one.

The main point I gather from the above list is that you need to pay attention to your employees.  Communicate with them on a regular basis.  Make sure your compensation plan is inline with the market.  Give them accolades when they deserve them.

Simple, yes, but successful retention is not a grand scheme of epic actions.  Instead, it is a daily commitment to doing the little things right.

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