I currently reading Jason Seiden’s new book How To Self-Destruct Making The Least Of What’s Left Of Your Career.  You may have guessed from the title that part of the book is written tongue-in-cheek.  In fact, it is quite entertaining and a fast read.

I’ll provide a full review once I complete the book, but I had to share this insightful commentary for all sales managers.  When it comes to excuse-making, one of the favorite topics is time.

“I didn’t have time.”
“I ran out of time.”
“There wasn’t time to ask that question.”

These are excuses that need to be corrected.  I realize time constraints do occur, but I am speaking more to the chronic excuse-makers.  The next time you hear one of these lines from one of your salespeople remember this:

Never blame time for your problems:  time is the one constant that is absolutely the same for everybody.  Time may be the only thing in the whole wide world that never discriminates.

Well said.

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I don’t think this is a big surprise, but in-person networking is the most important.  From the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link):

While the execs expected the importance of online networking to grow from 24% now to 38% in two years’ time, that’s still less important than developing personal contacts (81%), contacting recruiters (63%) or using job boards (51%). Some 93% of the senior executives surveyed said putting time into developing their ‘personal brand’ was a wise career move. While some three-quarters said this was best done offline, two-thirds said they do use social networking sites to look good.

Commenting on the findings, Carol Rosati, director at Harvey Nash, said: “While online networking does not replace human interaction, it does provide candidates with an additional set of resources to create and maintain a personal brand and complement the profile they build through ‘real world’ networking.” The top social networking sites for senior execs looking for career progression were LinkedIn (57%), Plaxo (16%), and Facebook took just 6% of the vote (ed.-my emphasis).

In a way, it seems that the gist of this survey misses the point of social network sites.  They are a tool to improved networking, but I don’t think people view them as a replacement to in-person or phone call networking.  I could be wrong here as I suspect there are people who just connect with others just for the sake of connecting.  Maybe that should be called social connecting as opposed to networking?

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I just read a sales ad with this position title:

Disposable Sales Representative

The context of the position makes sense when you read the entire ad (food service industry), but I would think the title could some serious tweaking.

Can you imagine handing a business card to a prospect that listed that title?  They may decide to “dispose” of you right there.

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