Great quote that is. Selling Power provided it in their article Re-Recruiting and Retention. The gist of the article deals with keeping your top performers when they have been recruited from your company. The article lists some suggested goals you can gather by conducting exit interviews: – Eliminate the barriers to retention that were mentioned in surveys of ex-employees.– Identify essential, “can’t operate without” employees and thank each one of them (often).– Upgrade personal performance contracts, paying special attention to the problem areas identified.– Provide extra compensation and rewards. (Pacetta suggests establishing a recruiting and retaining fund for this purpose.)– Ask each of your essential employees to come to you… Read More
Continue Reading6 Reasons Why Top Performers Leave
Tight employment markets require a successful hiring processes and strong retention programs. Companies have to play good defense when it comes to the rainmakers within their sales department. CareerJournal.com ‘s Six Reasons Top Performers Seek Out Greener Pastures lays out a handful of clear pitfalls to avoid in this present market. First off, number 1 is rudimentary…and, in our experience, the most abused of the list: They receive few rewards for good behavior. If high performers receive no extra kudos or compensation for their extraordinary performance, they’ll begin to wonder whether it’s worth putting in the extra effort. It’s important to acknowledge those who work to promote the success of the… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Management – Top-Down or Bottom-Up
Here is a sales management question for you – in terms of coaching and developing your sales team, is it best to focus on your top performers to make them better or your bottom performers to build them up? I have recently read articles that argue from each side of this equation. It’s a good question. My position would be to manage top-down with a focus on your top performers. The main reason I take this position is retention. I would qualify this position by assessing the top salespeople and adjusting my management style slightly to match their preferred communication, motivation and reward pattern. Simply put, some top salespeople are… Read More
Continue ReadingTelecommuting = Retention
This isn’t shocking news, but telecommuters are more satisfied with their work when compared to the traditional office worker. CareerJournal.com’s Working From Home Fosters Job Satisfaction does provide some detail to this difference that I found noteworthy. First the background stats: Seventy-three percent of the remote and home-based workers surveyed said they are satisfied with their company as a place to work compared with 64% of office workers, according to the survey in June of about 10,000 U.S. workers. But here is the section that points to retention (emphasis mine): Some of the differences were striking, Wiley said, pointing to the 10 percentage point difference between the 54% of telecommuters… Read More
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 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
Continue ReadingTips To Retain Employees
Retention is on everyone’s mind with the job-hopping world we now live in. I have to admit, if we see a candidate who has been locked in with a company for 10+ years, we start to wonder about their overall development. Today Kevin Wheeler offers an excellent article on the ERE website that deals with strategies to implement to improve employee retention. Money Won’t Hold Them starts with a quick history lesson on how we got here: But somewhere in the early 1980s, things began to change. The first crack came with the advent of the 401(k) and (b) plans that freed employees from the corporate retirement programs. The 401… Read More
Continue ReadingTelecommuting Is Becoming An Expected Perk
We have been discussing telecommuting in the sales world over the past year and have seen it appear in our sourcing efforts as a common topic. Inc.com looks into this trend in their article The Benefits of Telecommuting. The focus of the article is in the realm of IT professionals. That group is obviously an early adopter of technology trends so this isn’t surprising: In a survey of 1,400 chief information officers, 44 percent said their company’s IT workforce is telecommuting at a rate the same as or higher than five years ago, according to Robert Half Technology, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based technology-consulting firm. Many IT workers fall to the… Read More
Continue ReadingA Simple Reward For All
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… Read More
Continue Reading50 Best Small And Medium Companies
The 50 best small & medium-sized companies to work for were selected and ranked by the Great Place to Work Institute Inc., a global workplace research and consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco. The institute also selects Fortune magazine€™s annual list of the €œ100 Best Companies to Work For,€ recognizing companies with more than 1,000 employees, as well as similar lists in 29 countries. Here are the top 25 small companies with 50 to 250 U.S.-based full- and part-time employees: Badger Mining Corp., Berlin, Wis., Mining & Quarrying InsureMe, Englewood, Colo., Financial Services & Insurance Analytical Graphics Inc., Exton, Pa., Information Technology Heinfeld, Meech & Co. PC, Tucson, Ariz., Financial… Read More
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