There is a fine line that has yet to be determined when it comes to blogs, social networking and other web 2.0 tools. Case in point, this post from Podcasting News: Last year, she was dismissed from the student teaching program at a nearby high school and denied her teaching credential after the school staff came across her photograph on her MySpace profile. She filed a lawsuit in April this year in federal court in Philadelphia contending that her rights to free expression under the First Amendment had been violated. No trial date has been set. Her photo, preserved at the “Wired Campus” blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education,… Read More
Continue ReadingOvertime Pay for Salespeople?
From our local Pioneer Press – Drug company sales reps sue for overtime wages. Her lawsuit, part of a series of class action claims filed in November against nine major drug companies, seeks tens of millions of dollars in back pay for the thousands of drug company salespeople across the country. Honestly, I have never in my life heard of such hogwash. The victim mentality of the plantiff is only outdone by her lawyer’s quote in the article. If you employ an outside sales force, you need to read this article. The one bit of common sense comes at the end of the short article: Not all sales reps support… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat’s Not In It
Just a quick thought to start this new year – one way to spot a suspect opportunity is if the employment ad spends more words describing what you don’t have to do as opposed to what you do have to do. I just read an ad that spent multiple sentences and bullet points explaining what the position did not entail. Mainly, it sounds like you don’t have to work.
Continue ReadingHappy New Year!
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. –Alfred Lord Tennyson
Continue ReadingTime-Wasting Miscommunication
The information topic seems to be appearing everywhere we look this week. Now this article from Selling Power – The Cost of Poor Communications – attempts to put some metrics to inapt communication between managers and employees. While managers are off worrying about sales trends and marketing plans, they often overlook a primary drain on productivity: poor communication. 55 percent say their employees are not easily able to find information they need. 44 percent say the information they use lacks appropriate detail. What amount of money could this miscommunication be causing your company? There is a way to neutralize this problem – assess your team and provide your sales manager… Read More
Continue ReadingExtended Sourcing Times
Inc.com has a 3 paragraph article titled Job Seekers Expect Long Search. The article briefly reports on a “call-in survey.” I’m not sure how reliable that approach is, but the results are consistent with our present-day realities. Job seekers expect to spend seven to 14 months searching for work, according to a call-in survey conducted by outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Anyone who has been sourcing of late knows that it is a tight market.
Continue ReadingA Line for Sales Managers
I got this military quote from my brother-in-law: Good luck is often with the man who doesn’t include it in his plans. That sounds like a great line for a sales manager when reviewing his or her team’s forecast this new year.
Continue ReadingWorkplace Fibs (in Britain)
From Yahoo News – Gadgets seen as best way to tell white lies: More than four out of five people admit to telling little white lies at least once a day and the preferred way of being “economical with the truth” is to use technology such as cell phones, texts and e-mails, a survey on Thursday said. I’ve never seen the phrase “economical with the truth.” What a pathetic turn of phrase. This survey was conducted in the UK, for what that is worth. No surprises here: The workplace was a favorite location for fibbing with 67 percent of the 1,487 respondents admitting they had lied at work.The top lie… Read More
Continue ReadingInformation Motivation
Yesterday I posted on an interesting article involving the importance of providing information to your employees. Now I as I catch up on my RSS reading for this week, I have kicked up a complementary Selling Power article with a quick reference to the same topic – Low-Budget Motivation. From the article: 4. Keep them in the loop Your people often depend on you to be the intermediary to the corporate powers that be, and the information that may affect them and their jobs. You need to honor that role by keeping them abreast of whats going on as much as possible. In the midst of bad times, your candor… Read More
Continue ReadingUpward Mobility
Thomas Register has a blog. If you have worked in the industrial market, you probably are familiar with their encyclopedia-like register. I used to be a sales manager for a high precision sheet metal fabricator and was quite familiar with researching the Thomas Register. The fact that they have a blog today speaks volumes. ThomasNet.com (online name) has a post that plays off of the CareerBuilder.com 2007 Job Forecast that was released earlier this week. Their 7 tips are all excellent including number 7: 7) Better training In light of a seeming shortage of skilled workers within their own industries, employers are looking for transferable skills from other industries. Seventy-eight… Read More
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