An article on Six Sigma in Selling Power’s newsletter caught my interest. We are all quite familiar with Six Sigma in manufacturing and engineering, but Six Sigma and sales? It seems a little far fetched. The article is based on Michael Webb’s (founder of Sales Performance Consultants) sales process which is broken down into 5 steps. Webb contends that Six Sigma “applies science to the art of sales to consistently improve results.” The 5 steps are: Step #1: Define Step #2: Measure Step #3: Analyze Step #4: Improve Step #5: Control Interesting. There was a link to his website so naturally I clicked on it and poked around a bit.… Read More
Continue ReadingTop 50 Sales Websites
Selling Power’s September issue has a compilation of the Top 50 Sales Websites. They have it broken down into the following categories; Sales Training, Lead Management, Sales Meetings, CRM, Sales Technology and Hiring & Testing. It’s a great resource for anyone in sales to add to their tool box. Selling Power provides the website, a link to get to their site and a quick summary of the service they provide. However, the thoroughness of their list must be called into question. Select Metrix did not make the list. Hopefully they will have this oversight corrected by next year. 😉
Continue ReadingEmployees Leaving Through the Back Door
Good post here from MN Headhunter regarding hiring and retaining top-level talent. There is nothing I can add so here is a tease: Let me bust this down to the simplest of levels: If you are bringing employees in the front door make sure you have the back door blocked with proper pay, work conditions, and job satisfaction. Retain your current talent and recruit your hard drive off and you can have one of the best staffs around. Fail to do so and you will be lucky to maintain staffing levels and at best average talent.
Continue ReadingEffective Communication for Managers
Uncommon to most of our Labor Day weekends, we relaxed and visited with family instead of the usual getting kids ready to start school on Tuesday. So with that enjoyable break, I am finally catching up on my reading. One of my RSS feeds is from Keith Rosen, author of Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling. His post on The Best Managers Are Fully Accountable For Their Communication is definitely worth reading, but let me share his 7 Tips to Strengthen Communication with you. Am I taking full responsibility for the message being heard by the other person? (Remember that it doesn’t matter what you say, it only matters what… Read More
Continue ReadingUltimate Accountability
The most important sales management action may be to hold your salespeople accountable. We constantly preach this responsibility to sales managers with whom we work. Salespeople are independed animals but they still need to answer to their manager in regards to their activities. The remarkable thing here is that sales managers don’t have to be good at holding their salespeople accountable, they just have to do it. I caught up to this quick post from What Would Dad Say and got quite a kick out of it. Some times exaggeration is the best method for making a clear point.
Continue ReadingHow To Change Behavior
You can’t. How’s that for a start? Selling Power has an article titled It’s All About Changing Behaviors. I bring this topic up since core behavior, or natural style, is typically static. Some people can adjust their behavior (style) for short periods of time even up to 90 days or so. However, someone’s core behavior or style does not drastically shift over their lifetime. This chameleon ability partly explains why certain candidates can appear to be something they are not in the interview process. From the article: 1. Determine what’s working. Evaluate your top performers with an eye toward identifying which behaviors set them apart and help them achieve high… Read More
Continue ReadingRadio Shack’s Junk Mail
Ok, maybe electronic communication has gone too far. I posted some Termination Tips a week ago that apparently were not read by Radio Shack’s upper management team. Before that, I posted about Text Message Terminations – an employee was fired through her cell phone text messaging. Granted, it was from a body piercing shop, but the approach was still laughable. Now Radio Shack has decided to enter this infamous club by using email to terminate employees. This is no joke: Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters received an e-mail Tuesday morning telling them they were being dismissed immediately.”The work force reduction notification is currently in progress,” the notice stated. “Unfortunately… Read More
Continue ReadingManaging Other Communication Styles
Monster.com posted this article last week – Adapting Your Management Style. There isn’t a lot of meat in this thing but it does address an important principle: Moniot helped the manager better understand different personality styles and then devised an innovative visual cue of a color-coded piece of paper, correlated with their assessed personality style, that was taped to the top of each worker’s computer monitor. This served as a reminder of each staff member’s communication needs as the manager entered their workspace. I suspect . . . no, I guarantee this manager has a High D style. The High D has long been cherished for management because of their… Read More
Continue ReadingHow to achieve success
I came across this article that is almost a year old on EyesOnsSales website this morning. It is titled Why Success is a Science (membership required). It is a short read but the author makes some great points. First, your current thinking regarding your abilities, your product and your industry is habitual – and we call that programming. This programming is buried in your subconscious mind, and it drives your behavior on a daily basis. These programs, or paradigms, came from outside sources and we often accept them without question. Many times our paradigm contains lack and limitation because a parent, teacher, coach, or another person we respected wanted to… Read More
Continue ReadingTermination Tips
Firing an employee is usually a difficult task unless things have degraded to a point where you are eager to terminate them. Nonetheless, there are some tips available for doing it the “right” way. CareerBuilder has a solid, basic article that hits the high points of terminating an employee – What to Know About Letting an Employee Go. Here’s a good tip from the article: It’s About Time It used to be the general consensus that late Friday afternoon was considered the ideal time to drop the hammer on an employee. But experts in the Human Resources industry now believe that earlier in the day, or even the week, is… Read More
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