Selling Power offers up Forget Market Share; Go for the Profits in their sales management newsletter and it is a compelling read. The problem with going after market share as a primary goal is that companies wind up sacrificing profitability in the process. When your whole marketing strategy is about preserving or increasing market share, it€™s easy to get wrapped up in aggressive bidding wars. And it€™s a downward spiral: customers learn to take advantage of that aggressiveness, demanding lower prices, which further erodes profits. It is a slippery slope because in essence a discount in price immediately discounts your value distinction. Businesses that not only articulate their value differentiation… Read More
Continue ReadingMe Time Is Vital
Gen Y or Millennial candidates take a different approach to their job search. If you weren’t sure of this or have yet to experience it, I give you the Pioneer Press’ The choosy generation: They want to work for companies that offer nice salaries and clear career paths for advancement. But many are pushing for more. Work isn’t their life, they’re saying before they even begin working, and they’re searching for employers who offer flexible work schedules that allow them to maintain their personal pursuits. “Me time” is vital. So is volunteering in the community €” on company time. We can attest to this trend as we have seen it first-hand. … Read More
Continue ReadingA Creative Employment Ad
From Poynteronline blog (hat tip to Michael Benidt): The Roanoke (VA) Times is looking for a new executive editor — and it looks like they’re serious about recruiting someone fun, creative, and online savvy. They’ve published an extensive and impressive multimedia recruitment ad. This ad is quite creative and obviously an attempt at creating a viral ad campaign and one that I suspect will be successful. I was commenting on this ad with Michael in regards to one of our previous posts and I think this viral approach is a strong play by a newspaper. The newspaper industry, as a whole, has been behind the curve when it comes to… Read More
Continue ReadingBuffett On CEO Compensation
From the Pioneer Press’ Buffett too hard on director pay: The media, he says, have scrutinized “CEOs who have received astronomical compensation for mediocre results.” At Berkshire Hathaway Inc., where the famously successful investor has long been chairman, things are different. Pay can be high, but only when there are results. “When we use incentives €” and these can be large €” they are always tied to the operating results for which a given CEO has authority,” Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders, released Thursday. We’ve posted on CEO compensation before (here, here and here) since it is a topic at the forefront of today’s business news. Warren… Read More
Continue ReadingBetter Than I Expected
We’ve been working as or with sales for over 20 years and have to deal with many discussions involving candidate’s resumes. The bias that occurs is that hiring managers make broad, sweeping generalizations based on what they think they see in the resume. This anomaly occurs even after we have screened and assessed strong candidates. After discussing the possibilities of what may be wrong with the candidate, we usually get to a point where the hiring manager agrees to to the interview based on our recommendation. After the interview, we hear something to this effect: “He was much better than I expected.” Strangely, I suspect we will still be hearing… Read More
Continue ReadingCoffee and Blizzards
As a proud coffee addict, I am please to see this Managesmarter.com article titled Coffee, Please. For the past 2 days, we’ve been dealing with blizzard conditions, thunder snow (seriously – there is such a thing), well over a foot of snow and closed interstate highways. Yet it is all quite tolerable as long as I have good coffee. I think these people share that perspective with me: What would you give up to hold on to your morning cup of coffee? * 42 percent would forgo AM radio, television or newspaper. * One-fifth said they’d be willing to skip lunch. * 12 percent said they’d trade three hours of… Read More
Continue ReadingCommunicating Your Sales Strategy
From Managesmarter.com’s Crystal Clear Communication: To hear Scott Glatstein tell it, as much as three quarters of American companies “do not broadly communicate their sales strategy” to their sales teams. The result, not surprisingly, is a breakdown in the sales process. Aligning the sales compensation plan with the desired business outcome is a critical component of sales management. One constant with salespeople – they will work the compensation plan to maximize their reward. The article contains a great example: One giant food company Glatstein worked with had lost $20 million in a year because of out-of-date products. The solution from corporate executives was to motivate sellers to avoid food spoilage… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Personal Accountability
This week we look at an age-old sales trait that, unfortunately, is common to many salespeople. Personal responsibility in sales involves being responsible for results. Holding salespeople accountable for their results is part of the sales manager’s job. If you are experiencing a problem in this area, as a sales manager, your first task is to stop the salesperson’s excuse making. That move is the first step to accountability for the salesperson. Personal AccountabilityThis is the ability to be responsible for the consequences of one€™s own decisions and actions. It involves taking responsibility for these decisions and not shifting the focus of blame or poor performance somewhere else (i.e. others). A salesperson… Read More
Continue ReadingMythical Top Performers
From Dave Kurlan’s Myths About Top Performing Salespeople: Most companies have “them”. Most managers brag about “them”. Most of “them” toot their own horns. Most are their company’s role models. Most companies would love to have more like “them”. They masquerade as the top salespeople in their companies, a claim supported by data, spreadsheets, commission statements, awards and accolades. But who are they really? Most of them are sales frauds. Most of them have everyone fooled. Most of them, if you took their cushy, big accounts away and asked them to go out and find some new business would fail. Most of them aren’t very strong salespeople. Most of them don’t possess… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Allure Of Someone Better
From Seth Godin’s Marketing your job post: This is part of a larger trend, which is realizing that an amazing hire is worth far more than a mediocre one, or even a very good one. My take? There’s a difference between being noticed and succeeding. Sometimes you need to be noticed far and wide in order to succeed. That’s why some TV ads for low-involvement products are noisy or funny or over the top. Often though, especially for something like a job, I think that sacrificing your message in order to get noticed is a mistake. Making a video that tries to be funny in order to spread doesn’t necessarily get… Read More
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