Full confession – I despise meetings.  I have spent much of my career sitting through insanely inefficient meetings – I prefer to call them “boil the ocean” meetings.  The topics in these meetings usually lacked clarity and focus so the meeting would drift…badly.  Of course, when your boss is sitting in the meeting (or worse, was the one who called it) it is difficult to exit early.

But alas, I have found an inspiring article with a fantastic idea.  This is from Inc.com (emphasis mine):

“Interaction should be constant, not crammed into meetings once a week. You just turn around in your chair and bounce an idea off one of the other 10 people in your office. Keep the floor plan open so people can talk to each other. As the company gets bigger, keep dividing it into smaller and smaller groups. Follow Jeff Bezos’s two-pizza rule: Project teams should be small enough to feed with two pizzas. At Hunch, we don’t have meetings unless absolutely necessary. When I used to have meetings, though, this is how I would do it: There would be an agenda distributed before the meeting. Everybody would stand. At the beginning of the meeting, everyone would drink 16 ounces of water. We would discuss everything on the agenda, make all the decisions that needed to be made, and the meeting would be over when the first person had to go to the bathroom.”

Caterina Fake is the co-founder of the photo-sharing site Flickr. Her new start-up is Hunch, a website in New York City that takes user input to make recommendations on thousands of subjects.

“When I used to have meetings…” – fantastic.  If I were there, I would drink a pot of coffee myself before heading into that meeting.

Comments(0)

I have had the opportunity to work for many different sales managers over my career.  I’ve seen many styles, but I think this article in SalesHQ.com hits upon the most dangerous style:

The Good Buddy is everyone’s friend. Managing is a popularity contest that he intends to win. He’ll be a great drinking buddy, a top notch shoulder to cry on, a guy you can trust to cover for you. He’ll make sure the office atmosphere is loose, that everyone feels welcome, that the office is a fun place to be.

Discipline? Well, that’s not something you’ll find in his office. An insistence on hitting quota? Something else that isn’t a priority. Coaching? Nope. Lots of back slapping and high fiving, but no coaching. Decisions? Don’t expect The Good Buddy to make the hard decisions because he might hurt someone’s feelings.

The Good Buddy is weak and lets his team members run the office. Ultimately, most everyone in his office ends up unhappy.

The reason this style is so dangerous is that the first order of sales management is holding salespeople accountable.  Accountable to their forecasts, their activities, their communication, their sales, etc.  It is the ultimate coaching position that requires the leader to have earned the respect of his or her team.

The Good Buddy I worked for used to hold court in his office for most of the day.  It was always stories, jokes, happy hour plans, etc.  Lunches were 2 hour investments.  Sales discussions were minimal.  Strategy discussions were non-existent.  We were simply expected to do our job, make our numbers and don’t bother him.  It was completely dysfunctional and ineffective.

The sales manager was eventually fired, but the damage was done to the company.  It eventually folded in the mid-1990’s.

This style is one of the reasons why objective assessments are a critical piece to any successful sales manager hiring process.

Comments(0)

The stresses of this economy are affecting entire sales departments from the leadership down to the trenches.  One piece I have noticed is a distinct aversion towards customer relationship management software.  Interestingly, the resistance is coming from sales managers.

What I believe I am seeing are sales managers with less than solid forecasts…and they know it.  However, one of the oldest games in sales is fudging the forecast.  Sales managers typically inflate the forecast to buy time.  They know certain deals are soft, to say the least, but they are hopeful they can cover those loses with new, undiscovered opportunities.  It is some twisted logic for sure.

I once worked for a sales manager who knew – knew – his forecast was inflated by at least 33%.  However, he also knew that if he reported the real forecast to the overseas headquarters, his department would be slashed within a month.  He figured the remoteness of the corporate headquarters would make it difficult for them to get a clear view of the veracity of his numbers.

The obfuscation approach has a tendency to buy time, but the sales manager has to pay either by not making the number or by creating doubt about their knowledge of the pipeline.  If they make the number, upper management tends to view it as luck, whether right or wrong.

One of the simple, critical steps in managing revenue in this economy is to conduct a scheduled, thorough pipeline analysis.  This analysis must include the salespeople responsible for the opportunities along with the sales manager to whom those salespeople report.  The end of the calendar year is a natural time to analyze every opportunity presently in the pipeline and those on the horizon too.

Failure to look at these opportunities under a microscope will place a certain amount of hazy ambiguity into your 2010 revenue estimates.

Comments(0)

It has been a hectic week of crashed computers, new blogs set up, new video integrations, business deals, etc.  Suffice to say, I have been worn out by the myriad of tasks.

In the middle of this busy week, I talked to a strong salesperson I know who has been quite successful in an industry that normally would suffer during this economy.  Unfortunately, he is starting to fade in his current position.  What I mean is that the company is grinding him down to where he is looking for another opportunity.

The main reason is disgustingly simple – he can successfully close deals in this economy, but his company struggles to deliver the product/solution.  The owner is absent from critical, time-related decisions.  The production department misses deadlines.  Installations fail due to installer error.

I met with this salesperson for coffee to discuss the situation and you could see the light fading in his eyes.  I’ve seen this scenario play out many times.  Companies want to hire strong salespeople, but they do not have the structure to support them.

The key here is to make sure you have the proper structure in place before hiring a strong hunter.  These hunters will stretch your company in new directions.  They will expect fast responses.  They will prefer to pass along the deal to a support person while they track the next deal.  These principles are simple to understand but difficult to put into action.

If you have strong salespeople today, be sure to monitor their internal company tasks.  What areas are slowing them down?  What could be done to be more efficient?  Don’t allow lethargic internal procedures to wear down the drive of a deal-closing hunter.

Comments(0)

I’ve noticed in some companies a casualness regarding sales forecasts from their sales team.  Heck, I’ve worked for some companies that shared that casualness.  Some companies view it as an exercise in Excel gymnastics.  Others view it as a coffee klatch activity.  One customer of ours had multipliers (<1.0) for certain sales reps since they knew those sales reps’ forecasts were inflated…greatly.

Here is a news story about a local company and a significant change to their forecast.  The setup:

Digital River Inc. shares plunged Monday after the e-commerce services provider announced it will lose its largest customer.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) notified Digital River on Oct. 9 that it will not extend its e-commerce agreement. That deal, under which Digital River provides a variety of e-commerce-related services to Symantec, expires on June 30, 2010.

Ouch.  Most people know that Symantec owns Norton Anti-Virus so that is a big loss.  How big?

In 2008, sales of products for Symantec accounted for 24.3 percent of Digital River revenue and sales derived from proprietary Digital River services sold to Symantec consumers accounted for 9.4 percent of Digital River revenue.

Over one-third of their revenue gone.  I’ve never been a fan of companies having one customer be so dominant in their revenue stream.  And now that one company won’t be!  Here is a pristine example of when a sales forecast can be a lifesaver for a company.

Here is the CEO’s explanation to the street (emphasis mine):

“Our company is financially strong, our new business pipeline remains healthy, and sales activity in the software, consumer electronics and business-to-business sectors continues to grow,” he said.

As an investor, I would sure like to know what measurements constitute “healthy.”  This scenario, losing a large customer, plays out often in the sales world.  The companies that can absorb such loses are the ones that know how to secure new (i.e. replacement) revenue from new customers.  An accurate sales forecast is the tool that will guide the Chief Revenue Officer to the quickest path for revenue replacement.  If I were in that role, I would be doubling efforts on the best short-term prospects on the forecast.  If my forecast was little more than notes on a napkin, I would be updating my resume.

Comments(0)

Good leaders must be good followers.  That is paradoxical, isn’t it?  This article from CNNMoney.com chronicles an M.B.A. students journeys from grad school to the Marines to a tour of duty in Iraq and back to grad school.  It is a fascinating first-hand account (h/t to JustSell.com).

This is profound (emphasis mine):

In many ways there’s probably no better preparation I could have had for the business world than joining the Marine Corps. The Marines teach you how to be both a leader and a follower.

I don’t have to lead in every situation – but I’ve come to enjoy stepping up in a time of chaos. When I’m working with a group now, I can honestly say that I think about the team first. The “I first” approach has been drilled out of me.

Therein lies a common problem I encounter with business leaders – they are not good followers.  Leadership has a way of removing empathy over time.  Some leaders forget what they personally experienced when they were in follower positions.  Other leaders develop what I refer to as “god complexes” where they believe they are all-knowing.  Usually they are not, but you can’t illustrate that point to them.

For instance, I know of one business owner who is a subject-matter expert in his field.  Unfortunately, that field is not a business field.  However, he believes his subject-matter expertise transcends the subject into business management.  His employees, some of whom do have business expertise, attempt to contribute to him in these areas.  He will not receive the input.  Instead he forges on making independent decisions that have cost the business dearly.

If you read the entire article you will see a unique process, employed by the Marines, to teach team-building amongst leaders.  The best sales leaders I have encountered are the ones who know how to empower their employees, direct through difficult situations and make the tough decisions at critical junctures.

That last sentence sounds trite, but it is true.  The gist of it is the opening sentence of this post – good leaders must be good followers.

Comments(0)

I’ve come across two different instances of a nefarious sales trick that is reviving itself in the telecommuting era.  Two different customers recently shared accounts of salespeople who were on their payroll and the payroll of another company.  This stickler is that they were allegedly full-time employees for both companies.

In one instance, the salesperson was on the West coast while headquarters was back in the East.  This guy set up a small office in an office building and had a slider sign on the door.  He would simply slide it to reveal the company he was representing that day for that appointment.  He also had a company car from both companies.

Outside of the healthy paychecks, it appears this guy was submitting expenses to both companies also.  Double reimbursement!  What a snake.

The other customer has a woman who works for them on a part-time basis which worked out well for them.  Unfortunately, another company was paying her full-time as she was working at home for them.  She would be at the part-time job in for half of the day while she was “on the clock” for the other company.  True double-dippin’.  In the end it evened out as the full-time employer found her work lacking (imagine that) and ended up letting her go.

Workers of this integrity are the ones who make managers uncomfortable with telecommuting.  There is no denying the telecommuting trend, but hiring the right salesperson with the right aptitudes and responsibility is crucial to success.

Comments(0)

Here is another line from a sales employment ad (emphasis mine):

The primary role of this position is to build a revenue generating sales pipeline which will primarily consist of prospective accounts.

Pipeline bloat is something we encounter with sales managers on a regular basis.  As you probably know, salespeople have a tendency to…overestimate their pipeline.  This is done for a number of reasons, but the primary one is to make their sales manager believe that the salesperson is on the cusp of big revenue.  Many a sales manager has been drawn in by potential deals.

So with that as a backdrop, I am surprised to see a sales ad written with the weak qualifier: primarily consist of prospective accounts.  The sales managers we work with are usually attempting to reduce the pipeline to only prospective accounts.

Clearly the better sentence for the ad would have been: The primary role of this position is to build a revenue generating sales pipeline consisting of qualified, prospective accounts.

Comments(0)

SellingPower.com’s article deals with something we have seen throughout our many years of sales assessing, hiring and coaching – financial comfort zones.  Here is a good explanation of it from the article (emphasis mine):

Eker stumbled on the concept of financial blueprints while running his first company, a fitness business. In that business, his trainers often referred to a body’s “set point,” or the metabolic rate at which a body is comfortable. Eker, looking back over his financial history one day, realized that again and again he followed the same financial pattern of making a lot of money and then losing it. Up and down, up and down for fifteen years. “Wow,” he thought. “In the same way we have a set point with weight, we must have a set point with money.” His follow-on observations of others confirmed his theory, that everyone has a financial set point they unconsciously return to all their lives.

So true – this plays out time and again in the sales world.  Salespeople often get caught in a stagnant mode once they hit their financial set point.  They stop prospecting, they find busy paperwork, they fine-tune tasks…essentially their behavior goes into cruise control.

When hiring salespeople, it is important to dig for this set point.  Typically a candidate will not provide it willingly, but you can pursue their past successes.  It is perfectly legitimate to ask for a previous W2.  It is always valuable to delve into the largest deals they closed and the commission they earned.

A candidate with enough of a history will show distinct financial set points that you can then determine if they are a fit for your position.  One last thought is that this set point works 2 ways – you won’t retain a salesperson in a $75K position when their set point is $150K.  If your compensation plan is inflexible, capped or unattainable, they will leave once they realize the ceiling.

Comments(0)

That is a tough question since I think values are primarily hardwired into each of us.  We assess this trait in sales candidates – call them motivations.  Each person tends to have two of these motivators that drives their behaviors (some people have 3 primary motivators).

We have assessed salespeople who were in slumps, who were unemployed and who were candidates.  These are stressful situations that should impact their values.  When we had the opportunity to assess the same people at a later date (years later), we did not see an appreciable change in their values/motivations.  Granted, this was no scientific study, but rather a consistent observation.

BusinessWeek.com provides this article – Value-Based Motivation – that discusses how values change in a recession.

One thing that makes motivation particularly difficult to manage is that individuals differ significantly in what they value and events can change what they value. What is very rewarding for some individuals, say, a day of golf with the boss or even an all-expenses-paid vacation trip to Hawaii, may not be seen as a reward by others. The same thing goes for praise by the boss and most forms of recognition.

Recessions can have a significant impact on what people value. Not surprisingly, job security, and financial rewards tend to become more important in periods of recession. It is particularly important that organizations skillfully manage these two drivers of employee motivation during recessions. How they manage them needs to be fine-tuned to the business strategy and how a company is affected by the recession.

Interesting point in that recessions have a global impression – the recession is outside of my control so my motivations are influenced towards monetary and security rewards.  That seems like a logical assumption…perhaps a macro-level influence like a global recession can sway motivations.

As a manager, it is important to know what motivates your salespeople and what rewards them on an individual basis.  This point is valid no matter what the economy is or isn’t doing.  These two factors provide the beginning of a roadmap to gaining the most production out of your sales team.

If you haven’t discovered these motivators in your current team, may I suggest a test assessment?

Comments(1)