Every company can offer a reward similar to what is offered in this Pioneer Press story – Time off is a great summer motivator at small businesses.  Simple.  Valued.  This is a good approach for any business in developing reward programs especially for Gen Y workers (emphasis mine):

Owners do have other ways of motivating staffers in the summer, by catering breakfasts or lunches or sponsoring picnics, trips to museums and other social events. The point is to help make working during the summer more palatable, and, more important, to boost morale in a way that will result in increased productivity all year long.

…

Besides improving morale and motivating workers, summer perks like time off will help a company hire and keep good staffers.

His company allows its 53 employees to leave at 1 p.m. on eight of 12 Fridays during the summer. The company also has an outing each summer; this year, it’s a three-hour cruise out of Annapolis.

And towards the end of the article is some sage advice in the modern-day market:

“You attract and keep people not just by salary … but by giving people some flexibility and recognition that they have lives outside of work.”

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From Yahoo! Finance comes this article – How Loud is too Loud?  As you might guess, the loud phone talker topped the survey as the most annoying office habit.  Being an auditory person, I can agree with that one.  I’m always telling the Rock Star to use his indoor voice since his voice carries a country mile.

Despite the laundry list of complaints, the loud talker wins the award for most annoying. Of 2,318 people surveyed in March 2006 by Harris Interactive and Randstad, 32% say an office loud talker is their biggest pet peeve. Coming in a close second at 30% is using an annoying cellphone ringtone; 22% said speakerphones are their No. 1 peeve.

I worked in a cube farm early in my career and was a neighbor to a speakerphone talker.  I would have voted that as the most annoying habit.  This guy would talk to prospects and customers with a speakerphone that would clip both sides of the discussion (not a full duplex speakerphone).  I was amazed that he sold anything at all.

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SMT (Sales & Marketing Training) has an article in its recent newsletter that surveyed its members for advice they would give to new sales managers.  The author has provided the top 4 pieces of advice:

• Assessing talent is a first step
• Coaching the €œcoachable€ spending appropriate time on those individuals
• Avoid falling into the trap of €œwhat made you successful as a rep€ will make you successful as a manager
• Setting expectations and goals

I couldn’t agree more with these 4 items, especially the first one.  The contributors expanded on their suggestions:

€œAssess the strengths, weaknesses and development needs of your team. Review your team by your success measures. Set plans against benchmarks and focus on what you can do to improve the best producers.€

Absolutely.  We assist new sales managers by providing an objective assessment of their team and providing a development plan to target the right benchmarks for each individual.  Another piece of sound advice occurs later in the article:

€œSpend time with your reps and coach them.  Don’t just tell them they have to do this or that (a Drill Sergeant), work with them and coach them to be better performers (a manager).€

This is a top issue for sales managers.  We encounter many who appear to take a completely hands-off approach.  I’m not sure if they consciously do this to avoid accountability for the rep’s performance or if they simply are not sure of what to do.  Either way, a detached drill sergeant is not an effective management method in today’s business world.

Sales managers need to stay involved with their reps in order to develop them further and grow the revenue stream.  This growth occurs by knowing the rep’s pipeline and coaching them to expand upon their strengths.

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From Podcasting News – Nearly One Out Of Ten Companies Has Fired A Blogger:

Nearly one out of ten large companies has fired an employee for violating corporate blogging or message board policies, according to a survey conducted by Proofpoint, a company that specializes in corporate messaging security. 19 percent of the companies have disciplined an employee for violating corporate blogging or message board policies.

It would be interesting to know what some of the violations entailed. We’re not familiar with what companies use for their blogging policy but we would be most interesting to know what is a typical policy.

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This may be a topic that only interests me, but here is the link to the annual Fortune 500 list (h/t JustSell.com).  You can sort the list on a myriad of criteria.  I sorted the data by state and found that Minnesota came in with a respectable 20 F500 companies with an impressive 5 companies in the F100 (based on revenue):

21. UnitedHealth Group

33. Target

72. Best Buy

89. Travelers Cos.

97. 3M

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I wanted to just post a quick shout-out to Paul DeBettignies at MN Headhunter who organized one of the most impressive, impromptu conferences I have ever attended.  Paul is a genuinely humble guy but he did yeoman’s duty as the driving force behind the conference.  He has a post summarizing the event that you can read here.  John Sumser has pictures here.

110+ people attended the event at Best Buy corporate headquarters yesterday and the feedback has been amazing.  The discussions I had afterwards were all highly complimentary and those attendees were hoping for a continuation of the conference.  That discussion has already started so I will pass on information on the next Twin Cities’ conference as it becomes available (here is the information pertaining to yesterday’s conference).

The next traveling roadshow will be in Atlanta in Sept. in case you are in the area and would like to attend.  I’ll post the details when they are available.

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Here is a typical article about interview technique titled How to Keep Your Cool In the Interview Hot Seat from CareerJournal.com. The article promotes common advice regarding how to keep your nerves during an interview.

Personally, I appreciate a candidate who has some nervousness in an interview. Granted, I don’t want them to curl up in the fetal position on the floor, but a bit of nervousness tells me that they have a desire to do well. Implicitly I then believe they are most interested in the position (not always true but a good way to hedge your bets).

Now, here is the advice in the article that we derail in our interview process:

Since you tend to panic during interviews, running through the basic questions a couple of times before turning on the television is not good enough. You need to be prepared to the point where you can list your best qualities in staggering detail while parallel parking a Cadillac in a tight spot.

That approach may work in other positions, but not sales. Salespeople who come to an interview with a pre-canned shtick are most annoying . . . and appear phony. Imagine this salesperson representing your company in the market and sitting before your best prospect. What if he or she simply runs their pre-canned presentation whether it resonates with the prospect or not? You’ll be able to remove that prospect from your forecast. That day.

The better approach for sales interviews is to keep the candidate off guard. Don’t ask common questions. Don’t ask leading questions. Ask questions that require specific answers and then drill down on their answers to get the unvarnished truth. You can even gently interrupt them to keep them on topic.

Sales is a tough position that requires people with a unique and rare skill set. Your best bet for making the best hire is to see the salesperson in action during your hiring process.

If you need assistance with this process, we can help.

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SellingPower.com offers an excellent article titled End Those Last-Minute Negotiations.  The article quotes one of our favorite trainer/authors – Jeff Thull.  Thull rightly ties together two critical pieces of closing a sale – value proposition and money.

Many salespeople are clumsy with putting the right value proposition in play.  If the salesperson is not asking the right questions, he or she will not know whether the value they offer through their solution is valuable to the prospect.  To make matters worse, many salespeople struggle with the need to discuss budgets (money) with the prospect.  Combine these two weaknesses and you have trouble.

Thull€™s team conducted informal research of about 10,000 sales and found buyers consistently paid a premium when the rep selling the product provided a clear definition of the problem and its cost, and provided a very clear plan for success. In these situations, says Thull, buyers had no motivation or desire to negotiate down the price because the value they were receiving was so crystal clear. The only way to get to this point is to shift your selling emphasis to diagnosing problems rather than presenting solutions.

Exactly.  Salespeople who are able to diagnose first are able then to present the right value.  One aspect of this approach that isn’t addressed in this article is the fact that you may not have a viable, valuable solution.  Every salesperson must be willing to walk away from the “bad” deals – especially if uncontrolled discounting is the end result.

As Thull puts it, €œAlways be leaving.€ Always be ready to walk away from a deal. When that€™s your mindset and the customer says, €œIf we can€™t get another 5 percent we may not be able to go forward with this,€ you€™ll be ready to calmly reply, €œWell, that would be disappointing. But if that€™s the decision you need to make, let me know.€

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A common myth – the best salespeople are great talkers first and foremost.  Most people have heard that one yet it is simply not true.  The ability to communicate effectively involves speaking and listening – it is difficult to find strength in both of these abilities.

ManageSmarter.com offers The Power of Questions which is on topic for this discussion with a good analogy:

The most effective way to control the sale is to ask more questions.

Selling is like driving a car: The person who asks the questions sits in the driver’s seat and controls the direction of the sale, while the passenger€”the person who answers the questions€”goes along for the ride. Unfortunately, many sales people feel that they are selling when they respond to their prospect’s questions. They mistakenly believe this will demonstrate how smart or knowledgeable they are and will help their prospect make a buying decision.

Objective listening ability is one of the most important skills for any sales position.  Beyond that ability, asking the right question is just as important.  The ability to listen is of little value if the question did not prompt the right information from the prospect.

Instead, your reps need to ask high-quality questions that will make your prospect think and will demonstrate your company’s knowledge and expertise.

…

Here are three tips to developing good sales questions to pass on to your team:

1. Determine your key objective.

2. Consider the person you will be speaking with.

3. Use “what” questions.

You can read the article for the author’s specific suggestions for each tip (especially point #3).  It is well worth the read.

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This week we focus on a thorn in many sales manager’s sides but this trait is one where strength may not actually be beneficial to success in sales.

Respect For Policies
The ability of a salesperson to see and appreciate the value of conducting business affairs according to the defined intent of company policies and standards.

A salesperson with strength in this trait generally understands the philosophies of the corporate structure and will strive to conduct business according to those standards. They will honor the concept of doing things according to the rules and regulations of the company.

A weakness in this area indicates a salesperson who does not have a clear picture or concept of the function of rules and regulations. They may feel that a company policy is only to be utilized when they are practical and functional. The policy can be broken whenever it hinders the effective and practical execution of their job. This does not mean that they actively seek to violate company policy for the sake of breaking rules. Instead, they may honestly feel that the policies are only guidelines to be used in the execution of their responsibilities (not laws always to be obeyed).

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