Yesterday I posted on communication blindness. Today, I stumbled upon CareerJournal.com’s Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy? A stunning thought that I have never considered. Yet, I suspect Gen Y has some ideals that favor this approach. Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary’s 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited. Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year. At first blush,… Read More
Continue ReadingCommunication Blindness
Anyone who has managed salespeople knows how difficult a task that can be. We see it often in companies where clouded communication occurs daily. I think most of you could name numerous situations throughout your career where management communication simply broke down or worse, did not even occur. SellingPower.com’s article – There€™s No Communication Around Here! – dives right into this topic. Clear communication covers many transgressions. We’ve posted about this topic numerous times since it is so important. In case you had doubts: The latest Watson Wyatt Communication ROI Study found that companies with effective communication practices have a 19 percent higher market premium and a 57 percent higher… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Enabling Freedom Of Accessibility
We’ve posted about no-email Fridays and those companies that want to encourage face-to-face meetings and phone calls that day. Now ManageSmarter.com offers a different perspective on being accessible – Office Vs. The Field: Accessibility. The premise of their article is to pit one sales manager’s opinion against one salesperson’s opinion on a specific topic. This time the question is: Should salespeople be accessible 24 hours a day? Both manager and salesperson agree that they should be available. I concur. Technology today allows for salespeople to be responsive in ways that solidify the customer relationship. I particularly like the sales manager’s take on technology: It€™s a salesperson’s responsibility to keep on… Read More
Continue ReadingRise Of The Introvert
I’ve been beating this drum regularly but conventional wisdom takes time to change. CareerJournal.com offers up a Jurassic quote in Want to Work on Commission? Make Sure You Have a Nest Egg (emphasis mine): The inconsistent nature of working on commission doesn’t suit everyone. Here are some tips for those considering the switch: 1. Evaluate Your Personality Working on commission requires establishing relationships, massaging deals and building trust with clients. In order to be successful, it helps to be a “people person.” “Introverts will not succeed on commission,” says Rick Gold, vice president of Strategic Workforce Solutions Inc., a full-service search firm in New York. “Clients don’t necessarily do business… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Skills Always Trump Style
There is a myth regarding strong salespeople that they have to be outgoing. I contributed a short piece to an article earlier this year in regards to this exact error. And then I read this quick blurb for Selling Power’s Identifying the Skills You Want in a Candidate: Sure salespeople need to be outgoing and driven €“ those are a given, but what about qualities that people need to have to fit in your particular position? No, that is not a given and not a truth. Writing in such generalities is not accurate because selling style is not as important as sales skills. Style is simply a matter of how… Read More
Continue ReadingGo To Your Strengths – The Art Of Playing Dumb
Red Bird and myself are fighting over the chance to claim this CareerJournal.com article – The Art of Playing Dumb To Deter Unwanted Tasks. Jared Sandberg is an entertaining writer and I highly recommend this article. At first I thought it was tongue-in-cheek, but it is not. This ability is a real artform. Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn’t want to do — without ever having to admit it. For junior staffers, it’s a way of attaining power through powerlessness. For managers, it can juice their status by pretending to be incapable of… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen CEO’s Don’t Communicate
Communication is the balm of corporate success in that it helps maintain cohesiveness. I have worked for companies that had excellent communication throughout the chain-of-command. Although there were problems and disagreements, communication from the leadership team was always thorough and timely. That fact made the culture far more pleasurable a work environment. In many companies, this need for strong communication is devalued. MarketingProfs.com has this article – Wanted: Leadership and People Skills. The gist of the article is the need for finding CEO’s with strong communication abilities. When asked “what do you look for when recruiting talent” at the recent Leaders in London conference, Richard Branson gave this answer: “People… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Dawn Of Corporate Text Messaging
We are gradually moving towards instant messaging for our internal communications at Select Metrix and away from email. Speed is a big part of this move for us, but email spam is also driving the change. I have a difficult time imagining email disappearing all together, but this article from Inc.com provides some insight: Due to increasing levels of spam, companies may soon have to look beyond e-mail as the primary method of communicating with employees and customers, according to a new study. In 2007 alone, it is predicted that nearly 97 billion e-mails will be sent daily worldwide, 40 billion of which will be spam messages, the study found. In… Read More
Continue ReadingHow To Get Your Sales Copy Read
Writing effective sales copy is difficult, time-consuming and financially rewarding once you master it. We have not mastered it at Select Metrix. Earlier I posted on the effectiveness of using “P.S.” in your voicemails and written correspondence. Now MarketingProfs.com offers Want Better Sales Copy? Take a Tip From Zig Ziglar. There are many tips in this article, but I want to focus on one tip about what not to do: Want to set your sales copy and your business apart from the overwhelming majority of organizations you’re competing against? Here’s a simple but powerful strategy you can start implementing today. Specify exactly what you mean when you use such words… Read More
Continue ReadingHow To Get Your Voicemails Returned
ManageSmarter.com offers some excellent suggestions for making your voicemails far more effective. Their 15 tips include a couple that I cannot stress enough: 11. If you can’t say it briefly, don€™t say it at all. Voicemail is not “story time.” Leaving a long message is an invitation to have the entire message skipped. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds. Few things in life are more tiresome than a rambling voicemail. My view is if the topic required a call to discuss, then mention the topic in one sentence, leave your contact info and hang up. And this gem: 13. Leave a “P.S.” at the end of… Read More
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