Inc.com posted this article earlier in the week – Entrepreneurs Twice as Charitable as Heirs. The main thrust of the article: When it comes to charitable giving, self-made entrepreneurs are more than twice as generous as millionaires who acquired their wealth through inheritance, according to a new study. I think many people would have guessed this result. I think there is a principle here that affects lottery winners also. We’ve all seen the follow up stories of lottery winners and how their lives were not as rewarding as they expected them to be. The incredible wealth did not bring them incredible happiness. The difference in donations between self-made millionaires vs.… Read More
Continue ReadingAnecdote – More Rapport
I was watching Selling Power Daily Report and today’s video interview is with Dan Seidman of Sales Autopsy. Dan is a sales trainer who has written a book by the same title which is a collection of sales horror stories. In today’s video he recalled a horror story that happened to a salesperson who was trying to build rapport with a new prospect who was the President of a company. The salesperson took 6 months trying to set up this meeting with this prospect through phone calls, snail mail and messages with the gatekeeper. Finally, he landed a face-to-face meeting: He was led into the President’s office which was very… Read More
Continue ReadingObjective vs. Subjective Hiring
Most hiring managers believe they are accurate assessors of talent. Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they still trust their hiring ability over someone else’s. Why is this disconnect so prevalent? I believe it comes down simply to gut-level hiring. If you rely on your gut to tell you if a candidate is strong, there is no appreciable way to outsource your decision to another. You can’t place your feelings into an HR person, an external recruiter or a different process. You simply have to meet candidates face-to-face and hope you aren’t being snowed over by a disingenuous salesperson. Sounds high risk, doesn’t it? Yet it permeates… Read More
Continue ReadingFull Employment
Well, the latest unemployment numbers are in and they indicate that, as a nation, we are basically at full employment. The new unemployement number is 4.4% – a drop of .2% from last month and a 5-year low. Sourcing is going to be even more of an issue for companies. We are seeing this in our business as we have extended our sourcing times while doubling our efforts. If you aren’t using multiple channels for sourcing, you are going to find long lead times on strong candidates. The second part of the equation is compensation: Workers’ average hourly earnings climbed to $16.91 in October, a sizable 0.4 percent increase from… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Traits Series – Project and Goal Focus
This week we turn our attention to another important aptitude for successful selling – Project and Goal Focus. Most sales managers can relate to the issues that surround this particular ability. Project and Goal Focus An individual’s ability to maintain their direction in spite of obstacles in their path. It includes their ability to stay on target regardless of circumstance. A salesperson with strength in this capacity is able to stay on track while involved in a project or opportunity – even if there are unforeseen obstacles that occur during the process. They will tend to ignore the problems and stay on the path even if some event causes the… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Cure for CEO Turnover
Honestly, I just came across this article – Women CEOs Experience Longer Tenures, Faster Growth – as a follow up to my previous post. This study is from a limited sample of Massachusetts-based companies with an average size of $54M/year revenue and 120 employees. Not huge, but sizeable companies nonetheless. This piece of information from the short article caught my attention: When asked about their priorities for driving that growth, 80 percent of women CEOs surveyed identified expanding customer relationships ahead of aggressively pursuing new products, new geographic markets, or strategic alliances, the study found. Another 77 percent said they sought input into the decision-making process through a participatory leadership… Read More
Continue ReadingCEO Turnover
We first posted about CEO turnover in this post. Now BusinessWeek comes along with an article titled The Great CEO Exodus. CEO’s get a bad rap about their compensation packages, but it is not an easy job. Now consider the pressure being exerted on these leaders: Not so long ago, a new CEO like McComb would have had six to nine months to get his act together. Not any more. Management experts say the newly minted boss has about 90 to 100 days to start implementing strategy. It would appear that there is a drastic candidate shortage even at the CEO level: Gerard R. Roche, senior chairman of leading recruiter… Read More
Continue ReadingiPods at Work
Full disclosure – I don’t personally own an MP3 player (my kids do), but I do use one from time to time. This past week I have come across several articles about the use of them at work, the pro’s & con’s of allowing them and whether companies have policies regulating their use. Here are some of the articles and the interesting points I found in them: iPod @ Work – StarTribune.com Some problems that occur related to the wearing of iPods/MP3s include the users not being able to hear others when they address them, inaccuracies and mistakes on the job due to being more mentally engaged in the music,… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Importance of Your Boss
Sales & Marketing Management has a quick hitter of a story regarding an Adecco survey about the worker-boss relationship. I think most people are aware of this: “The relationship between a worker and his/her manager has very real implications for both employee satisfaction and performance,” says Ray Roe, president of Adecco North America. But here is a survey result that I found somewhat surprising: The younger the worker, the less impact the boss has on overall happiness. Among Generation Y workers, 53 percent said their relationship with their boss had no impact on their work-life happiness. However, 62 percent of baby boomers report their bosses have influence over their day-to-day… Read More
Continue ReadingFortune 500 Blogs
Business blogs seem to be the topic of the day here at The Hire Sense so I putzed around with Google and came across this interesting wiki site that is amassing the active public blogs concerning Fortune 500 companies. Their preliminary findings: According to our research, 40 (8%) of the Fortune 500 are blogging as of 10/05/06 Some of the blogs are written by employees while others are truly corporate-sponsored blogs.
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