Mike Cardinal has released the final article in our Proactive Sales Management series titled The Finishing Touches. This article completes our 3 part Summer series which defines 3 basic steps in structuring a sales department that acts, well, proactively instead of reactively. An excerpt: A simple but effective way to ensure flexibility within your sales department€™s foundation and structure is to utilize information available to you. Many of our clients take the insight they learn from our assessments to customize and add finishing touches to the communication style utilized with each individual. Each salesperson has a blend of traits, styles, skills and motivations that need to be considered. The sales… Read More
Continue ReadingHow To Get The Most Out Of Your Sales Team
The first step and greatest key to get the most out of your sales team is to know what you have. I realize many sales managers believe they know their team’s strengths and obviously they do to some level. But I’m thinking deeper than an observational level. Assessing and evaluating their skills, talents and motivations provides a detailed, objective blueprint for maximizing performance. This principle is well written in an excellent Boston Herald article titled Leverage your team with sales assessments. Here is a succinct description of some successes which flow from assessing and evaluating your team. Assessments that measure individuals€™ motivating drives at work help you understand who the… Read More
Continue ReadingBeing Qualified
A strong candidate is going to ask strong qualifying questions. I mentioned earlier today a good qualifying and influencing move by one of our candidates interviewing at one of our clients. Another strong qualifying position is for the candidate to ask about a company’s financial situation. The candidate who wants to know about a company’s financial situation should not be off-putting to a hiring manager. Interestingly enough, I have seen this happen in mid-sized, private companies. Public companies are easily researched and smaller companies seem to be less concerned about this question. But hiring managers at these mid-sized companies seem to bristle, at times, with these qualifying questions. They are… Read More
Continue ReadingA Strong Candidate Shines
Great move from a candidate yesterday at his interview with one of our clients: His first move: “What would you say is a profile of a good salesperson for this position?” He followed that question up with: “How well do you see me fitting that profile?” That is some straight influencing of a hiring decision. Beautiful.
Continue ReadingEmployees As Investors
From today’s excellent ERE.net article Employees Are Not Assets: Employees As Investors One of our problems is that we think of employees as assets, or things we control and dispose of as we see fit. Unfortunately, this characterization leads to behaviors that are incompatible with reality. Employees cannot be owned, taxed, depreciated, or disposed of as machines or other tangible assets. They are investors in our organizations and they freely choose to share their expertise and skills with us or not. Each employee has a built-in return on investment meter that is constantly sampling the atmosphere and deciding if she is gaining or losing from a continuing association with the… Read More
Continue ReadingWhy I Dislike Keywords In Ads
I posted on these automated response programs recently. Well, I just received a different promo email for a more “automated” program: For the first time, there’s a service that finds 100’s of perfectly matched, available jobs & instantly applies to them FOR YOU, every day. It’s called __________ and it automatically: searches all the top career sites at once, finds all new jobs matching your criteria, applies with your resume to matching jobs, personalizes your cover letter for each application & provides a history report of jobs you’ve been applied to. Keyword-driven connections – both in the ad and the resume hunt – lead to, well, candidate spam. At times… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Internal Self Control
This week’s trait is one that measures a salesperson’s ability to remain detached from an emotionally-charged situation. Sales requires a cool, level-headed approach even in instances where emotions are high. We highly value salespeople who can keep their personal self detached from their work self. Internal Self ControlThis is the ability to maintain a steady and controlled level of internal emotion in a stressful or emotionally charged situation. Although it directly affects self-composure in a difficult situation, this capacity is more an examination of a person€™s tendency to allow the external environment€™s level of stress to affect their internal levels. If Internal Self Control deals with an ability to keep… Read More
Continue ReadingBenefits Are A Benefit
I think many Gen X’ers like myself grew up in the era of $10 copays and the assumption that health benefits were required of employers. Now that I am older and dealing with grey hairs, I have learned the truth about that topic. One thing we try to stress with candidates is the fact that health benefits are 1.) a perk since they are not required and 2.) a significant piece of the compensation pie. This quick blurb is from the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link): WASHINGTON, DC –The percentage of U.S. residents covered by employment-based health insurance declined again last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. In… Read More
Continue ReadingDining At The Corporate Cafeteria
Ok, this may only interest me, but I am fascinated by the large corporate environment. So it is obvious that I had to read BusinessWeek.com’s The Most Innovative Corporate Cafeterias. Of course is there is the obligatory Google mention to start the article: Google’s Mountain View (Calif.) headquarters€”dubbed the Googleplex€”boasts 15 cafeterias, each with its own theme and menu. Options range from regional American cuisine to tapas to dishes emphasizing locally grown ingredients. Ok, we get it – Google has unbelievable benefits. Microsoft boasts 26 cafés at its main Redmond (Wash.) campus, with several more slated to open this year and next€”and that’s not counting the pantries scattered throughout the… Read More
Continue ReadingLoyalty Amongst The Younger Generations
A quick read from Inc.com – Younger Employees More Loyal. Some excerpts: In a survey of 2,469 adults nationwide, 56 percent said they feel appreciated by their employer, according to the latest Workplace Insights Survey by Adecco, a Melville, N.Y.-based workforce-solutions firm. It doesn’t get any fuzzier than to use the words “feel appreciated.” Three-quarters of respondents reported that they are committed to their employers, with members of Generation X — ages 30 to 42 — feeling the most secure in their jobs. I suspect the Gen Xers are moving into management positions and are more confident. However, the survey also found that feelings of company loyalty often vary by… Read More
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