From Forbes.com:

How To Handle Post-Recession Job Stress

Post-Recession?  I think most people are still dealing with Recession Job Stress.  It gets worse:

The worst of the waves of layoffs may be over, but countless American workers who still have their jobs are unhappy at them, overloaded with increased responsibilities, short of colleagues to share the burden, and unsure where they can turn to look for something better. Few people got raises last year–many took pay cuts–and it’s not looking like pay hikes will come anytime soon.

Again, this viewpoint strikes me as seriously off target.  I equate this type of unhappiness to people who complain that their ice cream is too cold.  There are countless people attempting to find employment so stories involving the stress of not receiving a raise seems out of touch.

Comments(0)

No, not a Wisconsin graduate, an actual badger.  JustSell.com has the video on their site.  The setup is this – the badger is an “old-school” car salesman who badgers his prospects.  The 30 second ads are for a car dealership.  It is quirky, but I love quirky and got a real kick out of them.

Here is a taste:

Badger Sales Rep

Comments(0)

Most people agree that there will be a demand for workers as soon as we start the recovery process (no, I do not subscribe to the idea that the recession ended in June of 2009).  Companies are running in a most efficient manner right now due to the fact that they had to cut staff to the bone.  Growth/expansion will require an expansion of most company’s workforces.  The supply of workers will be limited due to the Baby Boomer retirements and the great decrease in workers in Gen X.

Along with this shortage comes another important limitation in the workforce.  From the Herman Trend’s weekly email (emphasis mine):

“Unfortunately, with all of the uncertainty created by the current regulatory environment, small to mid-size businesses have put their hiring plans on hold; in fact, many are waiting to see the outcome of the United States’ elections on November 2″, said Daywalt.

When they are ready to recruit trained, qualified people and the demand exceeds the supply, US employers are in for a rude awakening. Why? Government, healthcare, and energy industry Baby Boomer retirements and the significant training cutback that accompanied the recent economic slowdown.

Absolutely true.  I work with a handful of sales trainers and they have all seen serious declines in their revenue.  There will be a price to pay for this lack of development in the workforce.  The “tsunami” of hiring that is impending will be tempered by the sheer lack of candidates along with the lack of trained candidates.  Companies will need to keep an open mind when hiring as to the investment they will have to make in their new employees.

Comments(0)

Here is a somewhat ethereal concept I have been encountering in this present economy.  It starts with this – return on investment (ROI).  ROI has been the backbone of sales since time immortal.  This is the basis of sales in that customers pay the money to receive the solution.  As long as the customer views the return on their investment as greater than the investment, they will make the purchase (generally speaking).

The top-performing salespeople possess this motivation pattern (called Utilitarian).  They view prospects in terms of ROI – how much return ($) will I receive if I invest time to close them.  This principle has changed in the present economy.

Salespeople know that spending is tight – deals are difficult to close.  I am seeing a change in the salesperson’s approach:  they are measuring prospects based on Return On Effort (ROE).  This approach is akin to taking the long road and it is a wise strategy in these recessionary times.

Salespeople are realizing that extended sales cycles are the norm so they have to focus their effort in the most strategic prospects.  Yes, you could argue the effort is their investment and that would be accurate.  However, I talk to more salespeople who speak in specific terms of their effort to close the prospect.  Is it the deal worth it?

I think this approach is born out of the lack of deals closing.  What I mean is this – salespeople are working on qualifying and closing deals, but deals are closing slowly (if at all).  So now the salesperson is stuck with fewer closes.  Instead, they have to keep their effort level elevated even though they are not receiving the return/reward they are accustomed to receiving (a sale).  The salesperson must change the metric and focus on their effort and what they will receive for it.

As a sales manager, it is important to keep the salesperson focused on keeping their effort level elevated.  A bad economy has a way of derailing salespeople, even good ones.  There will be a payoff in the long term for their effort.  Do not let the discouragement of extended sales cycles affect their Utilitarian motivation.

Comments(0)

Retention does not seem to be a topic of great concern in this present economy.  However, the economy will turn and hiring will accelerate.  When this happens (hopefully sooner rather than later), retention will become a key topic for many companies.

In a surprising story, CNNMoney.com provides a brief description of a unique approach Chipotle uses:

Find incentives that work. The best Chipotle restaurant managers get the title “restaurateur” and a $10,000 bonus for each person they hire who starts as crew and goes on to become a manager. We have 170 restaurateurs out of 1,000 managers, and the turnover rate among them is very low.

Two things that work in this incentive plan are the status and recognition reward (“restaurateur”) and the material possession reward ($10,000).  I suspect their turnover rate is quite low based on these two incentives.

Comments(0)

I am a psych major.  As my mother likes to say, “I’ve never met a psychologist who didn’t need their own services.”  Although I am not a psychologist, I get the gist of her commentary.

In that vein, I was revisiting some of my antiquated text books in search of a professional explanation for why “bad” sales candidates can often smoke good interviewers.  I give you self-presentation or impression management.  The definition from Social Psychology-Understanding Human Interaction by Baron and Byrne:

…they flatter others, pretend to agree with them about various issues, or feign great interest in what they are saying – all in an attempt to create a favorable first impression.  Not surprisingly, persons who are skilled in self-presentation often make better first impressions on others than persons who are less adept in this regard.

That sounds just about right, doesn’t it?  The real hook, in my opinion, comes from the next section:

While skillful self-presentation often involves tactics such as the ones listed above, it may also rest, to an important degree, on the effective use of nonverbal cues.  As we noted above, certain facial expressions, patterns of eye contact, and specific body postures or movements convey liking or positive reactions to others.  Persons who are successful at self-presentation seem to be well aware of this fact.  Thus, they often seek to manage such impressions by controlling their own nonverbal behavior.  While interacting with target persons (ones they wish to impress), they smile frequently, lean forward, maintain a high level of eye contact, and nod in agreement on many occasions.  The result:  they often succeed in producing positive first impressions.

Exactly.  This fact is why we use a system for selecting sales candidates that incorporates phone screens and objective assessments before we ever meet the candidate.  Bad salespeople, ones who couldn’t sell ice water in the desert, can sometimes have these deceptive abilities.

The more dangerous candidate is the one who is mired in mediocrity.  These candidates often have decent to strong self-presentation abilities but they lack the overall sales abilities to succeed in your position.  Think of a salesperson who cannot qualify money, who chases dead-end deals or who has a tremendous need for approval.  These are the salespeople who bog down sales teams with underwhelming results.

Comments(0)

Fast Company has an entertaining article written by a CEO of a company that employs almost all Millennials.  The article is well worth the read, but let me give you a taste of it:

Lazy. Entitled. Fickle. Freighted with their own inscrutable agendas. These are the kinds of things people say about cats — and millennials. For today’s managers, the generation born after 1980 is a favorite punching bag.

It’s not hard to see why, given that they’re the generation of Lindsay Lohan, Jersey Shore, and flip-flops as appropriate office footwear.

I have been drawn in by these exact topics and I’m an Xer.  But further on in the article comes this dandy (emphasis mine):

Millennials don’t have traditional boundaries or an old-fashioned sense of privacy. They live out loud, sharing details of their lives with thousands of other people. Of course there are the obvious risks to this — say, that unflattering, reputation-damaging photo that should have been deleted from Facebook — but while you shake your cane at them for indulging in TMI, I see their openness as a great opportunity. For instance, when our summer intern @jimmyaungchen tweets and Facebooks about something he achieved at work, that’s free marketing for Do Something to the 1,500 people in his immediate network. I now ask job applicants how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers they have.

Excellent point.  In fact, I just did some network checking of a sales candidate for one of our customers earlier today.  I like that she asks the candidate directly.  I prefer to check on my own and it is mainly LinkedIn that I peruse.  Facebook is fine, but it is definitely closer to the social/personal side in comparison to LinkedIn.

An entertaining and informative article for sure.  It is rare to find this combination so I strongly encourage you to read the entire thing.

Comments(0)

A thought I had about sales approaches based on economic conditions:

Booming Economy – Salespeople should focus their message (value proposition) on efficiency and velocity.  Their solution should essentially provide an improvement in productivity.

Recessionary Economy – Salespeople should focus their message on reducing waste/improving profits.  Their solution should provide a method for getting more out of what the customer has today.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying things, but I think this approach has merit.

Comments(0)

My wife was at an interview last week for a medical position that is similar to her most current role.  She walked into the lobby to find 4 other candidates there.  They were all called in to a conference room by the HR person.  They were then asked questions individually and asked to answer in front of the other candidates!

The 5 of them were then asked to role play certain situations while the rest observed.  Finally, they were given a tour of the clinic and then had to provide their own tour to a staff person.  The point, I guess, was to see how they handled prospective patient visits.

Suffice to say, I was laughing my way through the story as she told me later that evening.  But what of this?  What is the purpose for running a group interview?  Personally, I have never heard of such an approach.  The HR person was quite young and perhaps only a handful of years removed from college.  My wife was offput by the fact that she was not provided the opportunity to ask questions of the hiring manager regarding the position or the company.  Her characterization of the entire experience was that it was more like a silly game than a professional interview.

I personally think this was some textbook theory that sounds “progressive” in college but fails in the real world.  My experienced wife was not impressed.  In fact, she was laughing about the comical nature of the entire event.  She has shared her experience throughout much of her network (to their great delight).

I appreciate new approaches, but I find this one to be a bridge too far.

Comments(0)

I am slowly coming to the realization that many (most?) sales hiring managers are drawn to hiring experience like a moth is drawn to light.  I am seeing it play out again at one of our assessment customers.  The allure is to hire a salesperson with industry experience before properly assessing their sales skills.

Here are some of the common statements I hear from these hiring managers:

-They will pick up on our sale quickly

-They know the competition

-They know the nuances of our market

-They know the competition

-They will step in and start selling

All of these beliefs stem from the hope that the hiring manager will not have to spend an overly large amount of time training the new salesperson.  Wind them up and turn them loose in the field – the perfect hire for a busy manager.

If only it worked that way.

Experience can be a valuable asset to a new hire, I want to be clear about that.  But rarely, if ever, does experience trump skill.  The point is that skill will outperform experience over time…by a significant amount.  Unfortunately, in this present economy, with managers asked to do more with less, many hiring managers reduce sales hiring to what they consider the quickest, easiest hire.

Comments(0)