Has your sales department stalled? Is your team awash in mediocrity? If so, you are not alone. According to ManageSmarter.com’s Different Year, Same Objectives for Sales Teams: 57 percent of reps are making quota, but 43 percent are still under quota. Not good. Obviously it is next to impossible to ascertain why 43% are not selling at their quota. My first guess is misaligned hiring for the position, but that’s only a guess. Here is a stat we are attempting to influence greatly: 27.8 percent of companies say it takes more than a year to get new sales reps ramped up. Sounds about right…and that’s not good. That extended ramp… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Manager Compensation for Retention?
A recent conversation brought to mind the responsibility of sales management for the development of both existing and new sales people. Why? Retention. As the employment market has shifted to an “employee market” – at least for talented sales professionals – sales management needs to make plans to retain sales people. After all, the talented sales person chose you and your organization, just as you chose them. Don’t kid yourself…this isn’t a one way street. Far from it my friends! Those tasked with the responsibilities associated with sales management (regardless of the title given them) have a wide variety of tasks that need their attention everyday. The investment in sales… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Robotic Nodder
I came across an interesting article from Selling Power titled “Stop Nodding and Ask.” A far too common mistake I make with my wife is nodding as if I am paying attention, understand and agree with her. This interaction usually occurs when I think I am just too busy to stop what I’m doing and listen to what she has to say. Unfortunately, she always catches me and rightly busts my chops. You would think after 23 years of marriage I would learn. Okay the article isn’t written for the purpose of having better spousal communication. It is written for salespeople to ensure that they don€™t fall into the trap… Read More
Continue ReadingApril Fool’s A Day Late
April Fool’s went by this year uneventful for me, no practical jokes and no annoying pranks. At least so I thought. I have a group of guys that I lead in a bible study on Monday nights. Since it is Spring break this week, we talked about moving our usual meeting day and time. After several emails and conversations everyone agreed that we would keep it our normal time. I showed up, as usual, about 15 minutes early to shoot the breeze with some of the guys. Our 7pm meeting time came and went and no one showed up. I thought out of my 8 guys that at least half… Read More
Continue ReadingHiring Tips
Ok, earlier today I posted on mistakes made by candidates in the interview. Now it is time to look at mistakes made by hiring managers in the interview. From CareerBuilder.com’s article Five Common Hiring Blunders and How to Avoid Them: Experience is important, but life experience is sometimes better Yes, you want to make sure your candidate has relevant experience in the field, but don’t place all your eggs in that one basket. Some candidates lack the desired amount of relevant experience, but they make up for it with their life experience. Military experience, studying or working overseas, volunteering a year of their life to saving the whales, or taking… Read More
Continue ReadingTop 10 Most Annoying Buzzwords
In an effort to stay on top of the hippest trends, I give you this: The top 10 most annoying buzzwords or phrases in the creative industry today: * Outside the box* Synergy* The big idea* ROI* Paradigm shift* Strategy* Integrated solution* CRM* Customer-centric* Voice of the consumer From ManageSmarter.com’s Office Lingo: Buzzwords That Are Losing Their Buzz. The bolded entries are ones I have used in the past 7 days. I will make the proper adjustments to my lexicon, but “ROI” is too important to abandon.
Continue ReadingInterview Tips
We attempt to keep track of the interview tips that are offered all over the web to candidates to assist them in their job search. Some tips seem clever, others seem robotic. This StarTribune.com article – Ten Things Not To Do In An Interview – provides a general, helpful list of interview faux pas. For instance: 3. Don’t speak badly about previous employers or co-workers. Make sure you’ve practiced an honest answer but one that doesn’t show that you’re angry with the previous employer or circumstance. Very true and yet I have encountered many candidates who cannot resist the urge to denigrate previous managers. I worked for my share of… Read More
Continue ReadingWant A Better Answer? Ask A Better Question
The title of this post is a statement often offered by my father. The statement can be slightly aggravating in certain situations, but there is much truth in it. Who? What? Where? When? How? and Why? When phone screening or interviewing salespeople, one of those 5 words should be the lead-in to your question. Yes, I crossed out “Why” for a specific reason that we will get to shortly. We have covered this technique before but it is immeasurably important when screening sales candidates. Do not ask questions that leave you “boxed” in a corner. Those questions tend to have a structure that leads with a verb and always elicits… Read More
Continue ReadingA Brief History Of Email
We’ve discussed no email Fridays here before and now this morning I kick up this CareerJournal.com article regarding the use of other communication channels. Instant messaging is popular here at Select Metrix and does work well as a companion tool to email. In case you didn’t know the history of email: Electronic mail was invented in 1971, but wasn’t widely adopted by businesses until the late 1980s, with the arrival of Lotus Notes and other programs. Since then, its use in the corporate world has exploded: Research firm Radicati Group Inc. estimates the average corporate email user sent and received about 171 messages a day last year, a number expected to… Read More
Continue ReadingSmall Company Incentive Programs
Good article here from Selling Power’s Incentives newsletter – Big Motivation at Small Companies. The topic is how to run effective incentive campaigns when you aren’t a Fortune 500 company. Still, as a recent article in Incentive Magazine points out, smaller companies do enjoy a few incentives-related benefits compared with their larger counterparts. For one, with most of the company€™s employees occupying the same workspace, communicating with the entire team at the same time poses few logistical problems. Also, this sort of intimacy means that whoever is planning the rewards will likely have a better idea what specific prizes will motivate the targeted participants. Plus, as the article points out,… Read More
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