The Herman Trend Alert has a surprising report on a survey looking at employee perks for 2008. The economy may be tanking, but employers are aware of the need to retain talent. In spite of the drastic effects of the economy on the labor market with announced workforce reductions up 30 percent, a surprising majority of companies (66.7 percent) have chosen to preserve their employee perks. Ten percent of those employers said they had considered trimming perks, but decided to leave them at current levels. Despite their need to reduce their expenses, almost 55 percent still plan to distribute year-end bonus checks this year (2008). Only 20 percent of the… Read More
Continue ReadingKnow Your Customer
If a salesperson’s customer relationship is based in the purchasing department you have trouble. It is difficult to build a strong relationship with purchasing in that they are incented to cut your margins, shop your competition and demand ever-improving terms. Clearly you have to have a good relationship with purchasing if your typical sale goes through that department. However, it is high risk to base your customer relationship on that department. Selling Power offers up an article that discusses the importance of knowing your end customer – the one who actually uses your product or service. Consider this statement: Once you know your core customer as a person and not… Read More
Continue ReadingAre You Really Running A Behavioral-Based Interview?
Behavioral-based interviewing has been the buzz in hiring for the past few years and rightly so. This technique brings real-world clarity to a sales interview as opposed to theoretical, positional answers. Selling Power provides a good article to assist you in your interview strategy. In order to ensure you are using a behavioral-based approach (emphasis mine): “A lot of people think that they are conducting behavioral-based interviewing when they’re really not,” says Wolf, who defines behavioral-based questions as questions that allow candidates to relate real situations and demonstrate how their strengths and weaknesses are exhibited on the job. “Many times hiring managers are asking theoretical questions, such as, ‘How would… Read More
Continue ReadingJob Churn
The Career News newsletter has a short article about “job churn” that provides some good news for our present economic situation. The immediate reaction of companies, in a slumping U.S. economy, is to pull back on hiring activity, declare hiring freezes and even make layoff announcements. But these are only short-lived strategies as employers soon realize that they are deficient on talent in a competitive job market. After a period of reactionary cutting and freezing, hiring activity will return to a level of normalcy. Hiring is largely a function of ‘job churn’ and there is no evidence that churn will do anything but accelerate in the coming quarters. Churn is… Read More
Continue ReadingProper Pipelines
Here is a terrific article from Selling Power titled Pare Down Your Pipeline. Let me give you the opening paragraphs: One key differentiator between your top 20 percent of performers and everyone else on your team is the way the superstars find and qualify leads. Let’s be honest: most of your reps – especially these days when business is agonizingly slow – are working feverishly to fill their pipelines. Their goal is to cram in as many leads as possible, knowing that a certain percentage of them are bound to come out the bottom as closed deals. Top producers, on the other hand, “are more interested in disqualifying prospects than… Read More
Continue ReadingQuoting Is Not Qualifying
I run into this topic often and it is one worth defining. Many companies value quotes as strong sales activity. Now don’t get me wrong, quotes are a step in the sales process and typically one that occurs before a close. However, companies that have under-defined sales processes often choose to substitute quotes for qualifying. Here is what I mean – just because a suspect asks for a quote does not mean that they are a prospect. This applies to customers too. First, let’s define suspects and prospects. A suspect is a company that shows some interest in your product or service but you are not sure of the level… Read More
Continue ReadingProbing For Pain
Saleshq.com has an excellent article for any salesperson in any market – Do You Probe For Pain? We use the term “pain” in our discussions though it sounds a bit dramatic. Even so, it is the most descriptive word for qualifying. The article explains why: People are fundamentally motivated in two main ways: 1. What problem or pain they can avoid and move away from 2. What pleasure or benefit they can move towards That is absolutely true. The key here is that people move away from pain faster than they move towards pleasure. As described later in the article: If a prospect feels content with their current supplier or… Read More
Continue ReadingPrice Perception
I have seen the price issue play out among many salespeople and there seems to be one simple, philosophical difference between those who close high margins deals and those who are serial discounters. The key difference is understanding that pricing is based off what the buyer will pay for the product or service, not what the cost is to produce it. I’ve seen this difference first-hand as one salesperson prices his product at a fairly high margin. However, the product is highly engineered and relatively unique in the market. One last helper – the company has a strong reputation in the market which certainly helps…greatly. The other salesperson for the… Read More
Continue ReadingActual Excuses For Missing Work
CareerBuilder.com usually runs some sort of “unusual reasons for missing work” story every year. This year’s offering is refined down to 8 entries, but is still fairly entertaining. Thanksgiving karma | Employee hit a turkey (yes, a turkey) while riding a bike. Author’s Note: Animals – turkeys in particular – seem to be a hot topic this year. See our “Unusual Jobs” survey results for more on this phenomenon. Near-death experiences | Employee said he had a heart attack that morning, but that he was “all better now.” Just can’t find a thing to wear | Employee’s wife burned all his clothes and he had nothing to wear to work.… Read More
Continue ReadingRecession Retention
The economy is foremost on almost every business leader’s mind right now, and rightly so. Many leaders look to entrench their company in a full defensive posture. This approach has to be incorporated, to some extent, during these economies. However, this is an excellent time to be aggressive in the market and to cut against the grain of conventional wisdom. BusinessWeek.com offers up specifics of this approach in their article Managing Employees in a Downturn: For many managers, recessions prompt a near-autonomic reflex: Hunker down, reduce head count, and cut every cost you can. While a certain dose of those bitter pills is unavoidable, smart leaders see downturns as having… Read More
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