Monday, January 21, 2013

Want Success In Your Sales Org? Look to the Middle.


Want Success In Your Sales Org? Look to the Middle.

To build a great company, it's important to have strong executives leading the sales organization. But just as in the military, talented top officers can't make up for weakness in the ranks of frontline leaders, the mid-level managers who are vital in driving day-to-day sales performance. "In any sales force, you can get along without the vice president of sales, the regional sales directors, and the training manager," a sales leader once told us. "But you cannot get along without first-line sales managers."
First-line sales managers (FLM) are the most critical players in a sales organization because they serve three important management roles — and successful ones excel at all three.
People manager: They select, build, manage, lead, and reward a team of salespeople.
Customer manager: They participate appropriately in the sales process to drive success with key customers.
Business manager: They act as a conduit for information flowing between headquarters and the field to keep sales force activity aligned with company goals.
Here are some common mistakes that FLMs make in each of these roles, and what sales leaders can do to avoid these mistakes.

As people managers, weak FLMs:
•Hire the wrong salespeople.
•"Feed the chickens but starve the eagles" by spending too much time with low performers.
•Manage by results only and demand improvement without coaching on how to get there.
•Take credit for the team's success rather than giving others the recognition they deserve.
As customer managers, weak FLMs:
•Fail to put customer needs first.
•Take over customer relationships themselves and undermine salespeople's motivation and confidence in the process.
As business managers, weak FLMs:
•Spend too much time on low value activities just because they are urgent or within their comfort zone.
•Put off important tasks that keep headquarters and the field aligned.
Sales leaders can strengthen the FLM team and its activities by improving the management support, tools, and training they provide. For example, leaders can enable FLMs in a people manager role by providing coaching tools and training, setting performance standards for how much time to spend coaching high and low performers, and creating a salesperson hiring process with screening tools (e.g. case studies and behavioral interview questions) and training on how to use them. Leaders can also enable FLMs in a business manager role by providing tools and support to make administrative tasks easier.
But most of the mistakes that FLMs make aren't corrected through better management support, tools, and training. Rather, the mistakes are the result of selecting the wrong person for the FLM job - usually someone who was a great salesperson but who doesn't have the characteristics to succeed as a manager. Most successful salespeople, even after they are promoted to manager, are driven by a strong motivation for personal achievement. Unfortunately, this can impede their willingness to:
•Let others take the lead with customers, especially when it comes to closing sales
•Show discipline and patience when it comes to dealing with headquarters
•Take a backseat while giving team members credit for success
As a salesperson, you win through your activities; as a sales manager you with through the activities of your people.
Excellent managers are a must if you want to consistently recruit the best sales talent. Remember the aphorism: "First-class hires first-class; second-class hires third-class." It's hard to recover from bad hiring, which is why it's so important to make hiring (or promoting) the right front line managers who'll oversee so many hiring decisions such a priority.

Friday, January 18, 2013

10 Things Extraordinary People Say Every Day

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January 18th 2013

They're small things, but each has the power to dramatically change someone's day. Including yours.


Want to make a huge difference in someone's life? Here are things you should say every day to your employees, colleagues, family members, friends, and everyone you care about:
"Here's what I'm thinking."
You're in charge, but that doesn't mean you're smarter, savvier, or more insightful than everyone else. Back up your statements and decisions. Give reasons. Justify with logic, not with position or authority.
Though taking the time to explain your decisions opens those decisions up to discussion or criticism, it also opens up your decisions to improvement.
Authority can make you "right," but collaboration makes everyone right--and makes everyone pull together.
"I was wrong."
I once came up with what I thought was an awesome plan to improve overall productivity by moving a crew to a different shift on an open production line. The inconvenience to the crew was considerable, but the payoff seemed worth it. On paper, it was perfect.
In practice, it wasn't.
So, a few weeks later, I met with the crew and said, "I know you didn't think this would work, and you were right. I was wrong. Let's move you back to your original shift."
I felt terrible. I felt stupid. I was sure I'd lost any respect they had for me.
It turns out I was wrong about that, too. Later one employee said, "I didn't really know you, but the fact you were willing to admit you were wrong told me everything I needed to know."
When you're wrong, say you're wrong. You won't lose respect--you'll gain it.
"That was awesome."
No one gets enough praise. No one. Pick someone--pick anyone--who does or did something well and say, "Wow, that was great how you..."
And feel free to go back in time. Saying "Earlier, I was thinking about how you handled that employee issue last month..." can make just as positive an impact today as it would have then. (It could even make a bigger impact, because it shows you still remember what happened last month, and you still think about it.)
Praise is a gift that costs the giver nothing but is priceless to the recipient. Start praising. The people around you will love you for it--and you'll like yourself a little better, too.
"You're welcome."
Think about a time you gave a gift and the recipient seemed uncomfortable or awkward. Their reaction took away a little of the fun for you, right?
The same thing can happen when you are thanked or complimented or praised. Don't spoil the moment or the fun for the other person. The spotlight may make you feel uneasy or insecure, but all you have to do is make eye contact and say, "Thank you." Or make eye contact and say, "You're welcome. I was glad to do it."
Don't let thanks, congratulations, or praise be all about you. Make it about the other person, too.
"Can you help me?"
When you need help, regardless of the type of help you need or the person you need it from, just say, sincerely and humbly, "Can you help me?"
I promise you'll get help. And in the process you'll show vulnerability, respect, and a willingness to listen--which, by the way, are all qualities of a great leader.
And are all qualities of a great friend.
"I'm sorry."
We all make mistakes, so we all have things we need to apologize for: words, actions, omissions, failing to step up, step in, show support...
Say you're sorry.
But never follow an apology with a disclaimer like "But I was really mad, because..." or "But I did think you were..." or any statement that in any way places even the smallest amount of blame back on the other person.
Say you're sorry, say why you're sorry, and take all the blame. No less. No more.
Then you both get to make the freshest of fresh starts.
"Can you show me?"
Advice is temporary; knowledge is forever. Knowing what to do helps, but knowing how or why to do it means everything.
When you ask to be taught or shown, several things happen: You implicitly show you respect the person giving the advice; you show you trust his or her experience, skill, and insight; and you get to better assess the value of the advice.
Don't just ask for input. Ask to be taught or trained or shown.
Then you both win.
"Let me give you a hand."
Many people see asking for help as a sign of weakness. So, many people hesitate to ask for help.
But everyone needs help.
Don't just say, "Is there anything I can help you with?" Most people will give you a version of the reflexive "No, I'm just looking" reply to sales clerks and say, "No, I'm all right."
Be specific. Find something you can help with. Say "I've got a few minutes. Can I help you finish that?" Offer in a way that feels collaborative, not patronizing or gratuitous. Model the behavior you want your employees to display.
Then actually roll up your sleeves and help.
"I love you."
No, not at work, but everywhere you mean it--and every time you feel it.
Nothing.
Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. If you're upset, frustrated, or angry, stay quiet. You may think venting will make you feel better, but it never does.
That's especially true where your employees are concerned. Results come and go, but feelings are forever. Criticize an employee in a group setting and it will seem like he eventually got over it, but inside, he never will.
Before you speak, spend more time considering how employees will think and feel than you do evaluating whether the decision makes objective sense. You can easily recover from a mistake made because of faulty data or inaccurate projections.
You'll never recover from the damage you inflict on an employee's self-esteem.
Be quiet until you know exactly what to say--and exactly what affect your words will have.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Some Great Quotes to Start the New Year!


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Jan 2, 2013

12 Great Motivational Quotes for 2013

This set of inspirational thoughts for the new year will galvanize you into action.


At the start of every year, I create a list of quotes to guide and inspire me for the next 12 months. Here are the quotes I've selected for 2013:
  1. "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."
    Napoleon Hill

  2. "The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear."
    Brian Tracy

  3. "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get."
    Dale Carnegie

  4. "Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats."
    Og Mandino

  5. "A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided."
    Tony Robbins

  6. "If you can't control your anger, you are as helpless as a city without walls waiting to be attacked."
    The Book of Proverbs

  7. A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves."
    Harvey Mackay

  8. "Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience."
    Jack Vance

  9. "Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live."
    Jim Rohn

  10. "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
    Zig Ziglar

  11. "The number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying."
    Tom Hopkins

  12. "You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself."
    Seth Godin

6 Things Really Productive People Do



Have you noticed that some people just seem to accomplish tons and still appear happy and relaxed? Here are six tips for becoming more productive.



People often ask me, amazed, how I manage to do so many things. Aside from writing two columns every week, I speak regularly, travel, create videos, manage my business, write books, consult with five companies, network, socialize, cycle, run, read, cook, sleep six to seven hours a night and have dates with my wife. Oh yeah, I watch a lot of television while hanging out with my dog as well.
Okay, I know it sounds ridiculous. But accomplishing my preferred future requires this level of activity. I have the same 24 hours in a day that you do, but I have made specific choices that allow me to make the most of every day, and still feel happy and relaxed. Perhaps these tips will help you make the most of your time as well.

1. Pick Your Priorities

Make choices about the activities in your life. With most endeavors, you can either go deep or go wide. Focus on spending time that for you is fun and productive. If you like big families, have them, but recognize up front that kids require time and you'll have to choose a lifestyle that supports quality time with them, for you to feel satisfied. I chose the life of a consultant because I like to work with companies, but don't want the life of a big company CEO. My choices are based on the lifestyle I want.

2. Go For Efficiency

You don't do everything well. The things you do well usually give you greater joy and require less time. Don't take on something with a steep learning curve if you don't have the available bandwidth. Design your life to meet your wants, and recognize when to say no to opportunities that are outside the scope of your desires. Live your life by design, not default.

3. Integrate Your Activities

Many people go crazy trying to figure out how to spend time with friends, family, work, play, etc.  Stop trying to balance time between them all. Find ways to enjoy them in a combined manner. Build your social life around people in your work environment. Find people in your company who share common interests and develop your career around the people and activities you love. If everything is out of synch to the point where you feel pulled and stressed, a change is likely imminent one way or another.

4. Actively Manage Time-wasters

Social media, family, friends, employees, co-workers and general whiners all under certain circumstances can suck precious time from you if you let them. Budget your time for necessary activities. Make a choice to limit non-supportive interactions that don't energize you. As for social media, it can easily be a black hole for time and productivity. Use it appropriately and sparingly as a tool to support your endeavors and social needs, but lay off the Farmville.

5. Be an Active Learner

You would think learning takes more time from you, but actually there are always new tools and new ways of doing things that can save you time on mundane tasks freeing you up for your priorities. Always be looking for a new way to gain back an hour here or there. Just try it and dump it quick if it starts to drag on.

6. Lighten Up

No need to beat yourself up if you can't do all the things you want because you are handling other stuff that needs attention. It happens. The world won't come to an endin most cases just because you left a few things undone. Celebrate progress and keep refining toward a happy productive existence. This is why making lists and crossing off items is a staple in any productivity handbook. Every completion is a small victory that adds up in a big way.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Google Becomes More Social And It’s Hurting Your Business

Google Becomes More Social -Jeffbullas's Blog http://ow.ly/gKhUd

Conversations in bars and dinner parties about who is right or wrong are often solved by the smart phone being drawn from the pocket or handbag with a subsequent mobile search on “Lord Google” with the question being answered from Wikipedia or another website with authority. Problem solved… using a blunt mobile instrument without a fight breaking out at the bar or the tipping of wine into someone’s lapThe online search industry is embedded in our daily lives with up to 90% of all buying decisions starting with an online search and 89% of all clicks through to  a website occurring from websites that appear on the first page of Google.
Google has been with us for over 10 years now (the company started in 1998) and has just announced a continuing evolution of its search algorithms to maintain its relevancy and that includes more integration with social media that has been occurring since 2009, though you may not have noticed. Google has also added other tweaks such as increasing visibility and ranking for content that is more recent and this puts fresh unique content right in the frame and blogs are essential for companies to maintain  regular published online content.
If you haven’t taken close notice of  Google’s search page recently beyond just looking at your results, just take a look down the left side when you do a Google search and you will notice this refined search banner that has 5 social network elements.
5 Major Social Media Elements In Google Search
  1. Images (which includes social media channels such as Flickr)
  2. Videos (which includes a well known social network YouTube”)
  3. Realtime (this is the feed from Twitter.another social media channel you may have heard of but conveniently renamed by Google)
  4. Discussions (this highlights social channels including forums)
  5. Blogs (another social web platform)
Google’s Latest Announcement
Google has included some significant changes in its latest announcement including
  • Increasing the priority and prominence of search results from platforms such as Twitter, Flickr and Quora (a new social network kid on the block)
  • Blending results throughout the page instead of only at the bottom
  • Adding friends social media interactions into search results
This is done by an annotation system that lets you know when a friend has shared a specific link or search result. If your friend writes a blog about how to create honey, that result will have an annotation that your friend has “shared this,” either via Google or through one of Google’s three major social integrations.
This will produce a massive increase in social results appearance in search with friends results turning up in if they have tweeted a reference to that particular search term. You can also connect your Google account to social networks like Twitter if you choose either publicly or privately as you may not want to reveal that you are a @spongebobsuperfan on Twitter.
Google On How It Works On YouTube

What Are The Implications For Business?
The implication for business from the latest announcement and the continuing refinements is that if you want to increase your chances of appearing high in a Google search, that just pursuing a SEO link strategy is not going to be as successful as in the past.
It is now a necessity and a priority to be participating on the major social media channels or you are reducing your brands chances of “being found online” high up on search results.
If you are not active on social media because you think it’s all hype then you may be damaging your business because Google is making social search a priority and your potential customers will find it increasingly hard to find you when they do their next online search and you can’t be found.
The reality is that social media integration into search is here to stay and you need to learn the rules of the new social web or you will reduce your organisations visibility and no one wants to be invisible unless you are a super hero or a dinosaur.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/03/02/google-becomes-more-social-and-its-hurting-your-business/#kDoVtmsvbbZdExoG.99 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

And a little more on the impact of Showrooming


ENTREPRENEURS 
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How To Convert Showrooming Customers - Forbes http://ow.ly/gIDbo

How To Convert Showrooming Customers



Showrooming seems to be the hot buzzword this shopping season. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it basically refers to the action of customers coming into your physical store, touch and feel the merchandise then jump online to make the purchase (typically elsewhere at the best price available). Seems like a bad deal for retailers, right? Well, 80% of the retailers surveyed by Edgell Network and eBay Local said they expect their sales to be negatively impacted by an average of 5% because of showrooming. Even worse is that 49% say they are not prepared, with only 12% saying they have a strategy.
As a customer who’s done his fair share of showrooming, I have a suggestion for all the retailers out there looking to minimize the damage: provide real knowledge and service when you have the customer in your store. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stepped into a store and asked a simple question and watched the sales rep stumble in their response. On one occasion, I asked the difference between two similar products and the response I got was, “…that one is more expensive so it must be better.” Wow, thanks for the sharp analysis.
The survey above offered many suggestions for retailers to combat showrooming, from price matching and better delivery options to providing a better online experience and loyalty programs. In my survey of one, I want all retailers to know that I want to give my money to the company that has earned it. That means they’ve helped me in my decision-making process. I don’t need a sales rep to tell me they will match the price, I can get that information on my phone. I need them to explain the difference between two products I’m deliberating between. Online I get crowdsourced reviews. I need a sales rep to provide customer opinion on a product (if need be study up on your own website’s online reviews so you can engage me). I need a sales rep who understands when a technology, for example, is being eliminated so I shouldn’t waste my money getting that computer with a floppy disk drive.
This all seems very simple, but the reality is that I can get more relevant information online in five minutes from my smartphone on the showroom floor than I can all afternoon talking with the typical sales rep I come in contact with. The best they seem to do these days is locate a product on a shelf—and even within the past two weeks I had to point one sales rep in the right direction because I knew their store better than they did. I do have hope, though.
Deloitte anticipates retail store sales influenced by customers using their smartphone for research, price comparing and other activities will account for 5.1%, or $36 billion, during the holiday season this year. The number that pops out, however, is that shoppers who use smartphones as a tool during their showrooming experience are 14% more likely to make a purchase in the store than those who do not use a smartphone. This means when your sales rep catches a shopper on their phone researching, engage them to help with their purchase decision. Provide insight that’s difficult to glean from a jargony online review or description. If a shopper is looking for the best price and your shop can’t compete with some of the online deals, a sales rep who understands the merchandise may be able to navigate the customer to alternate options that are better and more affordable. Remember, sometimes the customer doesn’t even know what they want until they’re told.
This holiday season I plan to use my smartphone a lot while I’m shopping. If you see me  scanning barcodes or searching for a review, surprise me with helpful service. It’s the gift that will get you my business year after year.


More on "ShowRooming"-The fight against online retailers




LIFESTYLE 
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1/09/2013 @ 1:38PM |1,808 views  Forbes http://ow.ly/gICq6

Target's New Price Match Arrow Headed Straight for the Showrooming Bullseye




On the heels of a holiday selling season fraught with retailers trying to best each other on prices, Target’s announced it will implement a year-round price match program. Target’s Price Match Guarantee takes direct aim at such e-commerce competitors such as Amazon.com as well as brick and mortar stores rocked by consumer’s comparison shopping (better known as showrooming) likeBest Buy as well as local retailers.
Target’s plan is to combine its previous efforts to offer the lowest cost on items by refunding the difference for products that go on sale soon after the original purchase as well as matching rivals’ advertised sale prices. Consumers have 7 days to contest a price on purchases made on Target.com.
Target’s CEO Gregg Steinhafel touted an additional advantage for dedicated customers who participate in the retailer’s REDCard loyalty program. “We know that our guests often compare prices online. With our new Price MatchPolicy and the additional five percent savings guests receive when they use their REDcard, Target provides an unbeatable value.”

Steinhafel hints at the challenges faced by Target and most other brick-and-mortar chains in the wake of competing e-commerce giants like Amazon. Consumers are often comparison shopping right in the store thanks to their smartphones. As a result, recent industry research conducted by the Edgell Knowledge Network (EKN) and eBay Local found that eight in 10 retailers expect such showrooming to average about a 5% loss of sales during the 2012 holiday season.
The takeaway from the research indicates that “price-matching needs to go from a policy decision to a transaction value decision – i.e. what is the value of this transaction in the context of the lifetime value of the customer,” a bullseye Target will hit with its RedCard customers and the additional 5% discount per purchase on their card.
REDCard holders also get free standard shipping on purchases made on Target.com. without a fee. While it’s not exactly Amazon Prime in that it doesn’t extend into streaming movies or Kindle Books, it doesn’t carry a $79 price tag per year, either.