Price Tag for Lost Productivity: $544 Billion. I’m always intrigued about how these calculations are made through a simple survey. How about some stats from the article? Employees spend an average of 1.86 hours per eight-hour workday on something other than their jobs, not including lunch and scheduled breaks, the survey found. More than half (52%) of the 2,706 people surveyed admitted that their biggest distraction during work hours is surfing the Internet for personal use. Other distractions cited by respondents included socializing with co-workers (26.3%), running errands outside the office (7.6%) and spacing out (6.6%). I remember seeing something about this survey since “spacing out” made me laugh. I’ve… Read More
Continue ReadingConnects-to-Close Ratio
Boost Your Conversation-to-Appointment Ratio from Selling Power reads like a companion piece to our post from yesterday. Conversation-to-appointment ratio is what we take a step further and refer to as a connects-to-close ratio. We wrote about this topic in great detail back in January of last year (click here to read the article). The Selling Power author speaks of a truth we have encountered many times: Do you know your conversation-to-appointment ratio? Most sales managers don’t. Moreover, most sales managers probably couldn’t define the metric without some thought. This fact is something we see play out time and time again when we are defining a sale. Many sales managers can… Read More
Continue ReadingTelecommuting Town?
I haven’t heard of the phrase “The Creative Class” but I think I will have to read the book. This BusinessWeek article – The Easiest Commute of All – ties in to the previous post regarding telecommuters. This is fascinating: Mesa del Sol, designed by New Urbanism guru Peter Calthorpe, will be the first place of its kind built from scratch and targeted at the creative class. A big marketing push will be made to coastal knowledge workers looking to cash out of their million-dollar split levels, move inland, and work remotely for their companies. Mansionettes will carry price tags of up to $400,000, about the same as the average… Read More
Continue ReadingTelecommuting Trend
We have discussed telecommuting on many occassions and this morning’s JustSell.com email referenced this survey. Some points of data to consider: While only 23 percent of U.S. employees work from home or are given that option, most of the work force (59 percent) believes that telecommuting at least part-time is the ideal work situation. This includes the 38 percent who think a mix of coming into the office and working from home is preferable and the 21 percent who say working at home is the best. We are seeing this play out in our current sourcing activities. The younger generations are highly receptive to telecommuting and view it as a… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat We Cannot Have
Dan Tudor has a great post on his Landing the Deal blog – “The Takeaway Close”. The takeaway close is a powerful tool for a salesperson when used properly. I used to work for a sales trainer who taught this technique and it is most effective. Here is the gist of why it works: Human psychology is funny: The more you tell somebody they can’t or shouldn’t have something, the more they want it. As powerful as it is, let me explain when it doesn’t work. I’ve gone on sales calls with many salespeople to observe their techniques. The takeaway close is an embarrassingly clumsy technique if there has not… Read More
Continue ReadingText Message Terminations
I understand the younger generations are voracious consumers of text messaging. This fact became clear to me when I tagged along to pick up a new Treo phone. The phone has an Internet connection almost everywhere so you can receive email at any time. The sales rep was pushing an add-on package for unlimited text messaging. Our question back to him – Why do we need text messaging when we have email? We must of looked like dinosaurs to the young sales rep. At any rate, here is an article about text messaging that is out of control. I think you will see what I mean: She turned on her… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Development Plan FAQ Page
We have added a new page in regards to our recently released Sales Development Plan. Some specific questions have arisen so we put together a FAQ page to address the most common questions. We’ll expand the page as we encounter more questions. Please click here to go to the FAQ page now
Continue ReadingReviews and Development Plans
CareerBuilder.com approaches an important topic that is often placed on the back burner – Why Do Quarterly Employee Reviews? I suspect most companies perform an annual employee review that is primarily tied to a salary review. Many companies may not even do that much. A scheduled, quarterly review is insulation against bad habits taking root in the employee’s performance. From the article, a real truth: Almost everyone performs better when held accountable. Employees who are not given performance benchmarks, goals and a vision will often fail. This fact is our first topic when coaching sales managers. Sales managers simply need to hold their team accountable. They don’t need to be… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Development Plan
Finally – our new Sales Development Plan is now available. This tool will take the volumes of assessment data we gather on a salesperson and transform it into a tactical game plan to develop their sales skills. And now for our shameless plug – No sales manager should be without one for each member of their sales team. Please click here to learn more about this product.
Continue ReadingSales Development Plan
It’s Friday so time for a little housecleaning. We will be releasing our new Sales Development Plan on Monday. After a couple delays for last minute feedback, we have finalized it and will roll it out on Monday. The idea behind the tool is to give sales managers a document for tracking their salespeople’s skill development. Each plan will be customized to the salesperson and will identify areas for the sales manager to focus on when working with them. The scope of this project is increasing and we will add further functionality to the development plan in the fall. More to come on that topic later.
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