This is bad – straight from Online Media Daily: NEARLY 9 OUT OF 10 email messages delivered to large enterprises in November were spam, according to the latest stats from Proofpoint. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based data security company released its Proofpoint Spam Index and found that while overall spam levels dropped slightly (from 89% in October to 88% in November), large companies were still receiving an extremely high volume of spam–with an upsurge in attachment-based spam of almost every kind. If they think that is bad, they should see how much comment spam a blog can generate.
Continue ReadingTop 10 Travel Blunders
Since I suspect many of you will be hopping on an airplane within the next few days, here is an article from Yahoo Finance titled 10 Biggest Bonehead Moves at Airport Security. It is a funny article especially if you have been caught in one of these scenarios. I usually cause one of these scenarios: 4.) Sporting Lace-Ups When Loafers Will Do You don’t need to wear your father’s slippers, but you shouldn’t wear his army boots either. Nowadays, everyone — and that means you, Your Honor — has to take off their shoes for X-ray inspection. So wear shoes that can be easily put on and taken off. And… Read More
Continue ReadingManaging A Remote Salesforce
We talk about this topic at length because it is more than a trend. ManageSmarter.com’s Long-Distance Teambuilding addresses this topic in a real-world manner: “Sellers by nature like to be in a team environment—they want a high-five and a talk around the water cooler,” says Cowitt, vice president of national advertising sales for Freedom Interactive, the Internet division of Freedom Communications, a media company in Irvine, Calif. So Cowitt implemented a daily phone call, which lasts about 15 minutes, to allow salespeople to exchange ideas, successes and challenges. That is the right approach. We initiated a weekly conference call earlier this year with one of our customers with whom we… Read More
Continue ReadingGreen Monday – Better Than Cyber Monday
I didn’t know this: FORGET CYBER MONDAY. NIELSEN ONLINE has confirmed that Monday, December 10th was the biggest online shopping day this season, based on its Holiday eShopping Index. The index comprises data from more than 120 online retailers across 12 categories. The Index showed 34.9 million at home and work unique visitors on “Green Monday”–a term recently coined by eBay to describe the second Monday in December as the heaviest online shopping day of the season. Spending hit $881 million on Dec. 10, according to comScore, up 33% from last year. (From Online Media Daily)
Continue ReadingHiring Is About Margins
This post from the Pondemonium blog at Inc.com explains the rationale behind hiring from a corporate and employee perspective. What is interesting is that the blogger is the decision maker who had to let people go last week. I thought these graphs cut right to the core of employment: I don’t know about other companies, but every time I’ve ever hired someone to work here, it was because I fully believed I’d be able to make more money with them than without them. In other words, if I pay someone $1 to do something, I expect to make $2 from their efforts or services. It’s really that simple! Unfortunately my… Read More
Continue ReadingChristmas Price Index
This info is trivial, but entertaining. From the JustSell.com daily newsletter – the 2007 cost of the 12 days of Christmas from the CNNMoney.com website: Here’s the breakdown of the 12 days… 1. Partridge in a Pear Tree – $164.99 2. Turtle Doves – $40 3. French Hens – $45 4. Calling Birds – $599.96 5. Gold Rings – $395 6. Geese-a-Laying – $360 7. Swans-a-Swimming – $4,200 8. Maids-a-Milking – $46.80 9. Ladies Dancing – $4,759.19 10. Lords-a-Leaping – $4,285.06 11. Pipers Piping – $2,213.40 12. Drummers Drumming – $2,397.85 I had no idea the price of Lords-a-Leaping had gone up so much.
Continue ReadingCube Rage
ManageSmarter.com offers up this article – Cubicle Conniptions – that discusses office behavior that mirrors road rage (emphasis mine): Workplace violence is increasingly common in offices, and it isn’t limited to physical injury or assault, but includes any act in which a person is abused, threatened, intimidated or assaulted at his or her place of employment. Thirty-three thousand workers are assaulted on the job each week in the U.S., and 17 employees are murdered, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. I’m speechless.
Continue ReadingMediocrity In The Hiring Process
Hiring salespeople is the difficult combination of science and art weighted perfectly to select the right person for the position’s requirements. Obviously, knowing the position’s requirements is the preeminent step. Many sales managers believe they know what it takes to be successful in the position and they do to a certain extent. Yet, their knowledge often consists of themes as opposed to specifics. This reason drives us to profile the sale as the very first step in our sales hiring process. ManageSmarter.com’s Is Hiring Mediocre Good Enough? approaches a hiring process with some valuable insight and other items I wouldn’t recommend. First, the reason astute hiring is mission-critical to corporate… Read More
Continue Reading2008 Workforce Forecast
The Herman Trend Alert offers up their 2008 forecast in this week’s electronic newsletter. Since I do not have a link, here is the forecast in it’s entirety: This year, once more, we offer you our full forecast for the coming year: 1. Recruitment in a Tightening Labor Market Even the coming economic slowdown will not completely stop the creation of jobs. Moreover, stimulated by job creation and the fact that skilled workers in many occupations are in short supply, time-to-fill openings will also continue to increase as will the costs. 2. More Employers Turning to Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) In an effort to reduce costs, more large employers will… Read More
Continue ReadingSports And Selling
Older article here from our local StarTribune paper – Sales Skills Hiring Managers Seek. There are some interesting points from the quotes in the article, but one thing that stands out to me are these quotes from different recruiters: …and have achieved in athletics. and A sports background also helps. This background is couched around the competitive nature of sports transferring to successful selling. I’m not sure I buy into that correlation, but it does intrigue me. I played sports throughout high school and college and can envision many self-centered teammates I would not recommend for any sales position. Still, I am probably over-focused on the exceptions. However, I do… Read More
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