Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving from all of us at Select Metrix!

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I have had the opportunity to work for many different sales managers over my career.  I’ve seen many styles, but I think this article in SalesHQ.com hits upon the most dangerous style:

The Good Buddy is everyone’s friend. Managing is a popularity contest that he intends to win. He’ll be a great drinking buddy, a top notch shoulder to cry on, a guy you can trust to cover for you. He’ll make sure the office atmosphere is loose, that everyone feels welcome, that the office is a fun place to be.

Discipline? Well, that’s not something you’ll find in his office. An insistence on hitting quota? Something else that isn’t a priority. Coaching? Nope. Lots of back slapping and high fiving, but no coaching. Decisions? Don’t expect The Good Buddy to make the hard decisions because he might hurt someone’s feelings.

The Good Buddy is weak and lets his team members run the office. Ultimately, most everyone in his office ends up unhappy.

The reason this style is so dangerous is that the first order of sales management is holding salespeople accountable.  Accountable to their forecasts, their activities, their communication, their sales, etc.  It is the ultimate coaching position that requires the leader to have earned the respect of his or her team.

The Good Buddy I worked for used to hold court in his office for most of the day.  It was always stories, jokes, happy hour plans, etc.  Lunches were 2 hour investments.  Sales discussions were minimal.  Strategy discussions were non-existent.  We were simply expected to do our job, make our numbers and don’t bother him.  It was completely dysfunctional and ineffective.

The sales manager was eventually fired, but the damage was done to the company.  It eventually folded in the mid-1990’s.

This style is one of the reasons why objective assessments are a critical piece to any successful sales manager hiring process.

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“Generation Unretired” according to this BusinessWeek.com article.  That is a new term to me.  According to the article:

The AARP says that 8 out of 10 baby boomers will work part- or full-time past retirement age. That’s 64 million unretiring Americans, the biggest demographic shift in the American workforce since WWII—and 93% of the growth in the American labor market from now until 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.

This trend is one that has been in the making for some time.  The current recession and housing bubble burst has only exacerbated the trend.  Clearly there will be new management techniques needed to handle the Gen U employees.  The article illustrates some excellent hiring suggestions, but this one stood out to me:

Define Roles. How is the former senior vice-president of a multinational going to feel about reporting to a project manager? Your Gen U staff may need to report to others with fewer years of business experience, yet more advanced or specialized skills. While you may not supervise the prospective Gen Uer, it may helpful to engage in some of the interviews so that you better understand the mindset of various Gen Uers.

(You’ll want to be sure that your less senior staff is not threatened or that the more senior member is not threatening. It works both ways.)

There in lies the tension, doesn’t it?  Later in the article comes this management point:

Remember that it’s an upside-down world for retired executives returning to the workplace: Their junior colleagues are actually “senior,” and they are reporting to managers who have far less experience than they do. As a result, Gen U hires may not be feeling entirely secure about their position. Micromanage them and many may feel particularly boxed in. Give them the benefit of the doubt—and watch what can happen. Often, strategic thinking that is the Gen Uer’s greatest asset.

The next decade will provide a unique management landscape for Gen X as we ascend into the majority of the  management ranks.

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The Great Recession roars on during this holiday season.  Our company is focused on sales hiring, both assessing candidates for our customers and running full recruiting processes.  The hiring outlook is of great importance to us and a topic I try to track closely.

That being said, this abcnews.com article provides a mixed bag (emphasis mine):

The November outlook by the National Association for Business Economics, which is set to be released Monday, shows economists expect net employment losses to bottom out in the first quarter of next year. Employers are seen starting to add to their payrolls after that.

I would be more comforted by these economists if I didn’t read so many unemployment stories that are saturated with phrases like “economists were surprised by the numbers….”  However, any possibility of recovery is a welcome thought.  It does appear that the hiring environment will be reserved:

But even if companies do start restaffing next spring, they aren’t expected to ramp up hiring very quickly. Some 7.3 million jobs have been lost since December 2007, according to NABE. Of the 48 panelists surveyed, 61 percent do not expect a complete recovery of those lost jobs until 2012. And they expect the unemployment rate will remain “stubbornly high,” averaging 9.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

“Stubbornly high” should be in quotes.  I would have used the adverb “dangerously,” but that is me.  One point to make here is that strong salespeople are a valuable asset to any company and even moreso during depressed revenue times.

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From ABCnews.com:

The 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates, by percentage, are:

1. North Dakota 4.2

2. Nebraska 4.9

3. South Dakota 5.0

4. Montana 6.4

5. Vermont 6.5

6. Utah 6.5

7. Virginia 6.6

8. Iowa 6.7

9. New Hampshire 6.8

10. Kansas 6.8

I’m guessing many of these states are dominated by agricultural professions which are obviously less effected by corporate employment.

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Every week more numbers come out to reveal another level of ugliness in this economy.  Today comes this article from CNNMoney.com.  The state that speaks volumes:

Every state had an unemployment rate in October that was higher than a year ago, and every state has lost jobs over the course of the year.

The recovery from this recession is going to take a long time as the hole keeps getting deeper.  I think it is safe to say that the unemployment rate is higher then what is being reported:

Unemployment rates, which are taken from a separate survey, tend to rise even as the employers start hiring again, because the survey only counts people who are looking for work. When times are bad, many people become discouraged and give up their job search, so they are not counted in the unemployment data.

We’ve seen this first-hand in our business as one of our customers simply stopped their salesperson search and decided to hunker down until the economy turns.  I certainly understand the approach as long as your competitors are taking the same approach.  If one of them is well-funded, they may realize that this is an opportune time to grab some market share.

I’ll close with a ridiculous headline from the same site:  Is TARP bailout helping the economy?

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I have seen versions of this statement appearing in quite a few sales ads:

The ability to work well independently and within a collaborative environment

I think I understand what they are saying, but it is a poorly constructed bullet point.  Independent salespeople tend not to work well in collaborative cultures.  The same is true of collaborative salespeople, they tend to struggle in an independent role.

For me, this type of writing is either lazy, unfocused and/or wishful.  The better approach here is to define what a typical sale looks like in your company.  Use that information to determine if you need a salesperson with an independent mindset or a collaborative disposition.  This simple adjustment will relieve some of the qualifying that is surely occurring with this unclear ad.

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The stresses of this economy are affecting entire sales departments from the leadership down to the trenches.  One piece I have noticed is a distinct aversion towards customer relationship management software.  Interestingly, the resistance is coming from sales managers.

What I believe I am seeing are sales managers with less than solid forecasts…and they know it.  However, one of the oldest games in sales is fudging the forecast.  Sales managers typically inflate the forecast to buy time.  They know certain deals are soft, to say the least, but they are hopeful they can cover those loses with new, undiscovered opportunities.  It is some twisted logic for sure.

I once worked for a sales manager who knew – knew – his forecast was inflated by at least 33%.  However, he also knew that if he reported the real forecast to the overseas headquarters, his department would be slashed within a month.  He figured the remoteness of the corporate headquarters would make it difficult for them to get a clear view of the veracity of his numbers.

The obfuscation approach has a tendency to buy time, but the sales manager has to pay either by not making the number or by creating doubt about their knowledge of the pipeline.  If they make the number, upper management tends to view it as luck, whether right or wrong.

One of the simple, critical steps in managing revenue in this economy is to conduct a scheduled, thorough pipeline analysis.  This analysis must include the salespeople responsible for the opportunities along with the sales manager to whom those salespeople report.  The end of the calendar year is a natural time to analyze every opportunity presently in the pipeline and those on the horizon too.

Failure to look at these opportunities under a microscope will place a certain amount of hazy ambiguity into your 2010 revenue estimates.

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Part of what I do in our company is ride around with sales reps on sales calls.  The goal is to get market information that isn’t easily discovered – how the prospects view the solution, what degree of buzz words are incorporated, what stalls and objections occur most frequently, etc.  You never learn more about a sales position than when you are in the trenches with the salespeople.

That being said, I came across this article in SalesHQ.com.  The format is a theoretical construction of a mistake-ridden sales call.  The article is a bit exaggerated, but not by much.  The concluding exchange is priceless:

“Well,” Arnie responded, “I understand that your business has used Sure-Fire Pest Control Company for the last few years. As you know, I represent Ultimate Protection Pest Control. This seemed like a good time for me to come and talk with you.”

“Why now especially?”

“Oh, because I’m sure you’ve read the newspaper stories about the lawsuit a local restaurant filed against Sure-Fire Pest Control. Radio and TV covered the story too, so it’s unlikely you missed it. The restaurant lost its sanitation rating because customers complained of rats and roaches running under the tables. I’m sure you don’t want to do business with Sure-Fire any longer.”

I believe it is Emeril Lagasse who likes to say “Bam!”  Here is the Bam! from the author:

Not only is mistake number five more common than you’d guess, it is also a colossal blunder. Citing bad news about your competitor will not gain positive ground for you. The opposite happens. Why? It appears that your company has no clear advantages to offer, because you haven’t mentioned them yet. If your only benefit is that someone else is worse, you’re doomed to lose the sale.

Absolutely right.  The prospect’s first thought is that you do not have anything better to offer.  I call it a vulture move – you are slowly circling a carcass hoping for an easy meal.  If your salespeople are incorporating any aspect of this move, you need to put an end to it immediately.  I observed a sales call where a salesperson in a highly-competitive market attempted just such a move.  I instantly observed the prospect turning on their mental screensaver as they simply waited out the remainder of the time allotted to the call.

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Everything is so serious these days that it is nice to find some levity.  This is good – a company recently tracked aspects of 75,000 tech support calls.  They have some gender-related data (emphasis mine):

Male callers: 64% didn’t bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Female callers: 24% didn’t bother to read the instruction manual before calling for help.

Male callers: 12% just needed to plug in their gear to “resolve their issue”.

Female callers: 7% ditto!

Female callers stayed on the phone with tech support 32% longer than male callers.

66% of tech support operators said they preferred dealing with female clients, anyway.

So according to the first point, 36% of guys did read the instructions?  I am embarrassed that so many did.  Time to check their man cards.

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