Every company has a slacker, and it’s no big deal, right? It’s a very big deal, according to one study.

An analysis shows that one bad employee – even among several good employees – can ruin your numbers.

A study — by Stanford professor Robert Sutton and detailed in several publications, including the Wall Street Journal – indicates that “bad apples” are contagious. They can drag down even the best groups. That runs counter to the common belief that an overall solid group will perform well even if it includes an occasional slacker. In other words, even a small negative can undo the good of a large positive.

The study even puts a number value on the bad-apple effect: Quality and productivity drop by 30% to 40% when a slacker joins a top-notch group.

The real villain isn’t the poor work done by the low performer; it’s the emotional effect the low performer has on others. Industrial psychologists call it the “affective” influence. People tend to sink to the level of the low performer, but it’s rare that the low performer rises to the level of the top people.

The consequences: Managers have to rethink the idea that they can pull up workers’ performance by teaming them with top people. In fact, the effect may be the opposite – good performers get pulled down.

It happens. That new recruit who looked so good now has you wondering whether you made a mistake. Here are some sure warning signals.

Mr./Ms. Sociable: During work time, this newbie likes to visit others, or maybe spend a lot of time on the smartphone – talking, updating a Facebook profile, other important stuff like that. If someone who’s new on the job doesn’t know better, the situation is unlikely to get better.

Tardy Tom/Tina: Scads of studies show that an employee who is late or absent within the first few weeks of being hired will often be chronically late or absent. Yes, there are exceptions – sometimes someone really does get a flat tire on the way to work. Just be careful that what you’re seeing is, in fact, an exception and not a pattern.

More, more, more: The employee who starts out complaining about a lack of resources or using a perceived lack as an excuse for poor performance is trouble: “My workstation is in a bad spot.” “My equipment is old.” “It’s too noisy.” Expect this employee to keep blaming something or someone else for failure.

Assertive on steroids: Of course, you want employees to give their opinions, ideas and reasons – even new employees, to a point. Watch it, though, if the newbie is a bit too loud, argumentative or even confrontational. We’re usually talking about someone who wants to change the system, without yet knowing what the system is. Ask yourself if you’re prepared to put up with years of that type of behavior.

The good, ol’ days: You often hire people based on their experience. Some of those people can’t get past their experience. Every time there’s a problem or challenge, you hear, “When I was at Ajax, we used to …” At some point, the employee is supposed to make the transition to your business and what you’re doing.

Providing a great customer experience requires managing many diverse elements. Fail on even one performance dimension, and it can make the whole experience negative for customers.

‘Backward serve’

Caretakers have a clear picture of what the outcome should be, and then work backward from that goal to ensure the reality matches the vision. They develop a sixth sense for anticipating what can go wrong in service encounters.

The caretaker knows that it’s not the lions and tigers that usually doom service quality. It’s the gnats and mosquitoes that are easy to overlook but often deliver pain or aggravation out of proportion to their size.

5 paths to caretaker service

Here’s what caretakers do to that creates loyal customers:

1. They create made-to-order service experiences. Caretakers believe every customer should be treated like the only customer. They are always on the hunt for ways to make the customer’s experience go smoothly and as hassle-free as possible.
2. They plan well and show enough resourcefulness to impress a military intelligence unit. Ever-vigilant and armed with a protective mentality, the caretaker has an abiding attention to detail and acute loyalty to the customer. They are always on the prowl for a service hiccup in the making.
3. They are masters of detail. Caretakers remember the little things about customers. They make mental notes of preferences so they can improve service on the next encounter. They are always looking for ideas they can give to customers to make them feel special.
4. They view policies and processes through the eyes of customers. They don’t see the customer through the lens of the organization. They refuse to accept concepts like “acceptable error rate,” “adequate,” or “satisfactory.” They prefer “precision,” “error-free,” and “excellence” instead. They can quickly size up a prospective service breakdown, spot the weak links waiting to happen and adjust accordingly. Hand caretakers a flawed service process, and they may offer practical ways to repair it or make it more customer-friendly.
5. They are voracious learners and effective teachers. Caretakers are eager learners who are always looking for ways to make things work better. They are usually the first to know what competitors are up to and have their own special methods for delivering good service. They turn many customer relationships into opportunities to offer advice and money-saving tips. They know that if they instruct customers, they will be instructed by their customers in how to provide the most effective service.

Adapted from the book Customer Loyalty Guaranteed by Chip Bell and John Patterson. Bell is the Founder of the Dallas-based Chip Bell Group. Patterson is President of the Atlanta-based Progressive Insights.

The majority of managers at Fortune 1,000 companies never become effective leaders, according to a ConceptReserve study.

Why not? Well, the largest contributing factor is the fact that 50% of managers who are promoted from within still feel a constant pressure to fulfill the duties of an everyday employee, in addition to their new role – a reality which isn’t only distracting, it also makes them feel overwhelmed and reluctant to delegate tasks to others.

Here are the top five misconceptions that cause managers to think that way:

1. “Being a great player will translate into me being a great coach”: Being a top performer may cause other employees to respect your ability, but successful leaders need to place more emphasis on big-picture initiatives that have a more significant overall impact (e.g., New ways to attract prospects, tap into new markets or increase annual revenue, etc.).
2. “It’s not my problem”: Front-line employees are generally responsible for their own results, and no one else’s. As a leader, you may not create the obstacles, but it’s ultimately up to you to come up with effective strategies for dealing with them.
3. “The people I manage are just like me”: It’s often said that the toughest part of being an effective leader is managing a wide array of personalities. Rather than try to change people, great leaders work to understand what motivates them, using that as a means of inspiring them to do great things.
4. “Great employees don’t need my help.”: In most departments, 80% of productivity is the direct result of 20% of that department’s top staffers. Top managers spend the bulk of their time keeping those employees motivated and on top of their game, rather than focusing all their efforts on chronic low-performers who have very little impact on the bottom line.
5. “Being an expert is the key to winning respect”: There once was a manager who said to his mentor, “Every day I tell employees what they need to do to be successful, but nobody ever listens to a word I say.” The mentor replied, “Instead of telling them, why not ask where they feel they have the most opportunity for improvement and then ask how you can help.”

There are intricacies to every situation, but here are two common ways good managers make the transition into great leaders:

1. Develop and delegate: In most organizations, there’s pressure from upstairs for the manager to take on too much (and/or still perform the duties of a salesperson). Great leaders create new roles that energize employees by making them feel like they’re moving up in the organization. Managers can delegate tasks like training and development to those salespeople, which frees up more time for the manager to focus on big-picture initiatives.
2. Relinquish some control: Most managers are unwilling to trust others to handle what they view as their responsibility. Here’s a great way to overcome that: Choose two responsibilities for veteran employees to handle. Once you see how much more successful you can be by building a management team around you, the more apt (and motivated) you’ll be to getting others involved.

A three-year study of salary increases (and decreases) shows what employers have been paying and are planning to pay.

The study consists of a survey of 2,200 companies, done as part of annual research by compensation consultant World At Work. In part, the study asked HR and compensation pros to give their salary-budget increases for their companies in 2010, for 2011 and for what they project in 2012. Here’s what came out of the survey:

Mean increase for non-union nonexempt hourly employees

• 2010: 2.4%
• 2011: 2.9%
• 2012 projected: 2.9%

Mean increase for exempt salaried employees

• 2010: 2.5%
• 2011: 2.9%
• 2012 projected: 2.9%

Mean increase for officers/executives

• 2010: 2.5%
• 2011: 3%
• 2012: 2.9%

Some highlights from the survey:

• In 2009, about 35% of those surveyed said they were under a salary freeze; this year only about 8.5% said they were under a freeze.
• Total salary budget increases were consistent across states and metropolitan areas; no single region stood out as being exceptionally low or high.
• Pay for performance continues to be emphasized. With small salary budget increases, the respondents reported that the bulk of the increase will go to high performers, and very little or no increase will go to low performers.
• As shown in the figures above, there’s little difference in percentage pay increases among categories of workers; however, some execs might get enhancements such as stock options.

Even if you think you know what the answer will be to a demand for a raise, you can make the situation better by first following a simple procedure.

In his book, How to be Good at Performance Appraisals, management consultant Dick Grote warns that your biggest mistake could be the policy-directed snap denial, such as:

• “We’re having a pay freeze.”
• “No one gets a raise until after the annual performance review.”
• “That can’t be done until we get a budget increase.”

Grote cautions that even if the request seems outlandish, don’t give a firm answer immediately. Instead:

• Fairly assess the situation, keeping in mind the difference between the value of the role that employees perform and their value as individuals. They’re not the same. Every job is worth a certain amount. That amount is determined by the market, not by the quality of the individual’s performance or their need for a greater income. Consult with other managers if necessary.
• If the person has reached the limit of the value that can be placed on a particular and a refusal is in order, explain to the person that the refusal is not a reflection on the person’s value as an individual but the worth of the job to the company, no matter how well it’s performed.
• If a review of the individual’s job tells you that a pay increase is appropriate — that the person is, in fact, underpaid compared with others in the company who are doing similar work, or whom it would be difficult to replace: Don’t immediately grant the increase. If a salary increase is granted directly following a request, word may spread that all individuals in the organization are underpaid or that someone just needs to gripe to the boss to get a raise.

Instead, initiate a second conversation. Explain how the amount of money paid an individual is a function of two things: the value of the job itself and the quality of performance of the person doing the job. Ask the individual to examine both how she might enhance her performance and how her job can be made more valuable to the organization. What additional duties might she assume? How much extra responsibility is she willing to take on? How much extra effort is she willing to put forth? In other words, ask for a little extra from the person before granting the increase.

In doing so, you’re accomplishing three positives:

• Granting the raise request
• Getting a deeper commitment from the person in exchange, and
• Showing you’re part of a high performance organization – not just one that goes by the book — that takes into account a person’s value.

The study, conducted by CareerBuilder, found 39% of organizations don’t have any plan in place for dealing with the loss or promotion of managers and/or supervisors.

While that may seem like a minor issue, especially in small organizations where the management team has been in place for several years, the recent spike in layoffs, along with the even more recent spike in managers who are testing the job market, has resulted in a crisis of leadership for many organizations.

Managers who took part in the study acknowledged the loss of a top-level sales manager with no specific successor or succession plan resulted in:

• the absence of strategic direction
• decreased productivity, and/or
• a dip in financial performance and sales.

Twenty-seven percent of managers claimed the recession was a major factor in terms of them not being able to put a succession plan in place. The combination of an exorbitant workload, as well as high turnover in key sales positions, meant managers had to maintain focus on training, development and several other tasks that fell into their lap as a result of companies trying to accomplish more with less.

When managers were asked what was lacking from their current training and development program for existing employees, they cited the following:

• Not enough opportunities for employees to learn new skills: 39%
• No formal development process: 36%
• Not enough investment in training and development: 30%
• Management initiatives only focuses on top executives: 30%
• Not actively involving employees or seeking their input: 23%

Sales organizations that maintain high levels of employee engagement generate 19% higher revenues than average companies, according to a recent Hewitt Associates study.

Meanwhile, companies with low levels of engagement average 40% less revenue than their competitors.

The question today’s sales managers need to ask themselves is: How can I engage my reps in such a way that it drives higher levels of performance?

Here are three ways to do just that, and, ultimately, generate more sales:

1. Create a culture of empowerment. Employee satisfaction levels have reached an all-time low, according to an annual Conference Board study. One of the biggest contributing factors: Employees feel they have little (or no) stake in the company’s success. That feeling’s been magnified over the past few years as employees have been asked to take on additional duties with little or no reward. Most managers who have overcome that problem (or avoided it altogether) have one thing in common: They empower their employees to pitch and pursue new, innovative ideas. For sales managers, that means giving reps an active voice in how the department is run.

A few key strategies:

• Offer a monthly incentive to the rep who comes up with the most effective way to help boost sales.
• Schedule town hall meetings once a quarter, during which salespeople can air their grievances, and/or suggest new ways of doing things.
• Create senior titles and positions so salespeople have an incentive to develop their leadership skills (and you can start delegating low-priority tasks to reliable subordinates).

2. Establish shared responsibility. One of the main reasons sales pros fall short of their goals: A lack of mutual accountability (between manager and rep) for results. Research shows managers who excel at developing average reps into superstars follow these three steps:

• They take an active role in helping reps succeed. Some managers ask reps to write down three goals they want to achieve. Then the manager adds three action steps he/she’s willing to take to help the rep accomplish those goals. The shared responsibility builds trust, boosts morale and increases the probability goals will be met.
• They offer rewards and enforce consequences. Ask sales pros what would motivate them to reach their goals, and then develop specific incentives based on that feedback. Also, make sure reps are aware of the penalties for low performance (and enforce those penalties).
• They schedule firm follow-up dates and adjust goals accordingly. Top managers make it a point to meet and reevaluate goals on a regular basis. Salespeople who know the manager will be “checking their homework,” so to speak, are much more prone to stay on top of their goals.

3. Be a strong and loyal advocate. It’s never been more crucial for managers to stand behind their people, providing reassurance to both customers and the C-Suite that every salesperson is doing the best job he/she possibly can. In a more-with-less marketplace, where salary increases and bonuses are difficult to come by, loyalty may be the only thing that keeps a top salesperson from testing the job market.

Look for opportunities to go to bat for your salespeople, and consider sending a departmental email every Monday, acknowledging something positive a rep did the week before. A good manager knows how to discipline an employee for doing something wrong, but a great manager knows how to reward an employee for doing something right.

Based in part on “Create an Engaged Organization,” by Richard Axelrod, Bloomberg Business Week, 2/4/11.

It’s the age old question: How do you build a compensation plan that encourages salespeople to close deals for the right reasons? 

The answer, according to Wharton management professors Adam Grant and Jitendra Singh, is to provide a unique combination of monetary rewards and non-cash incentives.

According to their research, financial rewards can increase performance by 42-49%.

But, as most sales managers know, salespeople who rush to close sales simply to reach the next bonus level or earn more cash aren’t necessarily doing so for all the right reasons.

That’s where non-cash incentives come in. The majority of successful sales organizations offer non-cash incentives that reward positive behaviors that lead to positive results (i.e., employee of the month incentives, customer loyalty incentives, repeat business incentives, referral incentives, etc.).

Grant and Singh argue only providing cash rewards can lead to the following negative behaviors:

• Salespeople cutting corners
• Resentment from consistent salespeople who follow the company’s selling process, while fast-talking scammers are taking advantage of the system, and/or
• Undermining the sense of collegiality, because some salespeople will only be interested in taking part in activities that will lead to them earning more bonuses. For this reason, they tend to skip meetings, ignore admin tasks and/or any other required tasks that don’t directly contribute to higher closing rates.

Four ways Grant and Singh suggest sales managers reward salespeople without cash:

1. Provide more autonomy for salespeople who have proven they can be trusted to manage themselves
2. Offer the opportunity to earn certification, attend seminars or take sales mastery courses (for salespeople whose behavior warrants those rewards)
3. Hold public recognition ceremonies, and/or
4. Extend a sense of job security by offering senior positions and/or tenure for veteran salespeople who have contributed a great deal to the organization.

Source: “Why executive compensation needs non-financial incentives,” by Anne Field, CFOZone, 4/1/11.

Sometimes, it’s easy to wonder whether ego-driven salespeople are really worth the trouble. The reality is — in most cases — they are.

But the more they know that, the less leverage a manager has to work with.

From a managerial perspective, there are three steps you can take to keep your superstars concentrated on selling, while keeping their personal issues (and their egos) in check:

1. Set behavioral expectations. The same way it’s important to have salespeople understand what’s expected of them on a performance level, it’s also a good idea to discuss what type of behavior is acceptable (and what type of behavior will not be tolerated). Every employee has his/her own quirks, but the key is to keep them under wraps during office hours, so they don’t become a distraction (for the salesperson or anyone else).
2. Create consequences, and then follow through. There’s no change without consequence. Once you’ve laid down strict behavioral ground rules in a group setting, it’s important to enforce them at all times. No one’s above the law, and following through sends a message to everyone that the policy isn’t just talk.
3. Be consistent. As basic as it may sound, managers simply cannot play favorites. Stellar performance isn’t an excuse for breaking the rules. Letting the big dogs get away with bad behavior not only causes others to question your authority, it sends a message that policy means nothing as long as you produce good numbers.

Based in part on “Managing Frustrating Salespeople,” by Frank Lee at Sales Academy, Inc.

A well-known business specialist breaks down the most common pitfalls today’s sales organizations face. 

In a recent article, sales consultant Michael Treace pointed out five common “afflictions” that hurt sales teams. According to Treace, he’s noticed these specific problems time and again throughout his career.

Below are the five “afflictions” on Treace’s list, along with our own commentary on each.

The question today’s sales managers need to ask themselves as they read through this list: “Which of these five am I guilty of … And what can I do to rectify that?”

1. Poor use of salespeople’s time. Time management is a major concern for sales managers, especially in cases where salespeople waste a great deal of their time trying to close stalling prospects or dealing with low-priority tasks that, while important, aren’t urgent. Perhaps the best solution is to make a list of the critical tasks salespeople are expected to complete each week.
2. Poor use of sales meetings. It’s amazing how many sales organizations continue to have regularly-scheduled meetings with no real agenda or outcome. Sales meetings can be incredibly beneficial, provided the manager (or moderator) knows what he/she expects salespeople to do differently as a result of the meeting and salespeople are given a clear goal to shoot for. The best question to ask yourself before each meeting: “What do I expect salespeople to do differently, and how will I gauge their effectiveness in that area?”
3. Poor strategy. How long has your current sales strategy been in place? How effective has the organization been at meeting each of its goals? You may want to take the most effective aspects of your overall strategy and combine them with some new tactics, provided you have specific metrics in place to gauge the overall effectiveness of new initiatives. A lot of sales managers naturally assume it’s the sales team that’s coming up short, when the real problem lies in the fact that salespeople don’t have the infrastructure they need to succeed.
4. Capping or killing bonuses. Nothing is more disparaging to a salesperson than finding out he/she’s no longer entitled to a bonus or commission he/she was in the past. Perhaps second to that is closing the deal of a lifetime only to find out the company has a nonsensical ceiling on commissions that forbids salespeople from getting the percentage they truly deserve. It’s worth going back to look at your comp structure to determine if there are ways to make it more effective in terms of maximizing revenue (and motivating salespeople to do so).
5. Playing favorites. It’s easy to get behind your sales superstar or the salesperson who follows every one of the company’s policies. But part of the job of being a manager is to remain objective and treat every salesperson with the same degree of respect. When/if salespeople feel there’s favoritism being shown, you won’t only have a morale problem on your hands, you may also have — in extreme cases — a full-blown mutiny on your hands.

Source: “Five Common Afflictions of Sales Teams,” by John R. Treace, author of the book Nuts & Bolts of Sales Management.

The retired CEO of Hanover Insurance has seen every business mistake. Here are some of the worst.

The observations come from former CEO Bill O’Brien and others in a new book, The Dance of Change:

1. Everyone should live by your values (except for a few prima donnas who bring in a lot of the revenue). Yes, everyone should have basic values — honesty, integrity and all the others you’ve heard throughout your life. That’s a given. But expecting people to live according to your special set of values is demeaning. And if you set rules for everyone except the chosen few who can behave any way they want as long as they bring in cash, that’s doubly-demeaning.

2. Act as if great companies are built to last. Despite the name of the popular book, a lot of great companies haven’t lasted. That’s because they were once great but didn’t change and adjust. They thought greatness would breed more greatness.

3. When times are tough, cut out training and development. If you say you’re committed to training and developing your people, what does it say about company culture if training and developing are the first to go when money’s tight. Yes, your first obligation is to make payroll. And yes, you may have to do a bit less in the development area — as you might have to do a bit less in all areas. Still, it’s a mistake to cut employee development altogether.

4. Make turning a profit your only goal. Hey, no one stays in business without staying in the black, right? Right. But if that’s all you’re interested in — at the expense of employees, family, community — you’re going to be disappointed, and maybe not even profitable.

5. Assume that tight management is the key to high performance. This one’s simple: Leadership is the key, not management. Can you lead people to change, to make tough choices, to sacrifice? Management doesn’t do any of that, and management alone is just about chasing numbers.

6. Just incentivize people to boost performance. Isn’t that true for salespeople? Actually, it generally is, because of the their values and culture. But not everyone is in sales, and not everyone responds the way salespeople do.

7. Create a new strategy, and empower employees to implement it. So you’re going to dictate strategy and then “empower” employees to do what they’re told to do? The best strategies usually come as a result of a collaborative effort within the company. And if you say your employees don’t have the know-how or understanding of the market to help develop a strategy, then you probably have the wrong employees.

1. Who are my customers?
2. What are their needs?
3. What do they consider value?

Drucker understood that customers, their evolving needs and their perception of value are the motivating factors behind every sale.

Remaining relevant

If you stay up with their changing needs, you’ll remain relevant to them. If you focus on short-term financial measures, you run the risk of pushing them away.

To remain relevant, here are three other questions your company should be asking:

1. How are our customers’ needs and consideration of value changing?
2. Where do they see their world going?
3. Where could we imagine their world going?

The answers to these questions may give you a lot of options for making changes in your sales approach. For example, they may direct you to deliver:

• The most uniquely valuable products, services and solutions
• A whole new level of quality and performance
• A quantum leap in responsiveness or speed
• Knowledge that makes the customer smarter and more powerful, or
• Vision to move them into the future.

Delivering compelling value

But what matters is that you’re delivering compelling value.

All you need to do that it is gain an understanding of the customers in your market better than other your competitors, and show a willingness to think about where the market — as well as customers’ needs — are going.

5 basic rules

Here are five basic rules for identifying and delivering compelling value:

1. You can’t win unless you are different in a way that really matters to the customers you choose to serve.
2. Understand the customer better than anyone else, and craft a solution specifically for that customer.
3. Deliver a combination of tangible value (that which can be measured monetarily) and intangible value (that which can’t be measured monetarily).
4. Develop a passion about the value you offer, and give customers the support to make it work for them.
5. Commit to continually raising the bar.

Source: Dr. Alan S. Gregerman, President, Venture Works, Inc., Washington, D.C.

Darleen DeRosa and Rick Lepsinger, co-authors of the book Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance, conducted extensive research to determine what the best practices were for managing an entire sales team of off-site employees.

“Today it isn’t uncommon for companies to have as many as 50% of their employees working on virtual teams,” Lepsinger pointed out in a recent press release, asserting that the rules of engagement are very different when you’re managing an outside sales force.

One of the biggest management pitfalls, according to DeRosa: Recycling the same best practices that seemed to work well when all of your employees were working in the same office.

OnPoint Consulting, the company which DeRosa and Lepsinger represent, conducted a study of 48 off-site teams to understand the success factors of top-performing organizations.

The good news: More than 70% of virtual sales forces included in the study achieved better results than they had when all of their salespeople worked out of the same office.

The study revealed four specific things every manager must do in order to develop and manage a successful off-site sales team:

1. Have clear goals, objectives and direction. Goal setting (and effective follow up) is much more difficult when you don’t have salespeople in the office on a regular basis. Remedy that by scheduling regular conference calls or meetings (either in the office, at home or even at a local coffee shop) to review key goals and objectives. Also make sure reps have instant access to key metrics, reports, updates and other statistics that keep them focused on the right things.
2. Make sure salespeople understand their role. Salespeople are supposed to be a reflection of the organization they represent. With that in mind, make sure your salespeople understand the company’s mission and values. With an off-site team, it becomes even more important for managers to join reps on sales calls from time to time and make sure they’re not only on point, but also representing the company’s core values in an appropriate manner.
3. Instill a strong sense of trust and collaboration. A whole should be more effective than the sum of its parts, which is why it’s important to have off-site salespeople work with one another on specific projects, creating a cohesive unit where everyone has a positive feeling about the company. Encourage salespeople to partner with one another on major accounts, and schedule events so everyone can be in the same place at the same time and everyone gets an opportunity to know one another. More importantly, communicate with each of them as often as possible to strengthen the bond between manager and employee.
4. Watch out for performance peaks. One of the most alarming trends DeRosa and Lepsinger uncovered was that the sudden freedom and change motivates salespeople in a whole new way — but only for a short period of time. After the one-year mark, a lot of these operations tail off, as salespeople begin to take short cuts, get lazy, lack discipline or simply start to miss the day-to-day structure of an office environment. The keys to succeeding long term with a virtual team are very similar to the keys to succeeding with an on-site team — consistently look for new ways to engage and motivate employees, while spending a significant amount of face time with each member, training and developing them so their skills (and their desire to get the job done) remain intact.

Source: The book Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance, by Darleen DeRosa and Rick Lepsinger.

Standing in the middle between two changing forces — their companies and their customers — the learning required by today’s sales professionals has more than doubled in recent years.

Change with the times

There is a popular saying that states: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been.

Sales is not a profession that allows you to coast. You have to keep finding new and better techniques, novel ways to tell your story, more effective ways to prospect and more efficient ways to manage your time.

The Renaissance Salesperson

In some ways today’s sales professional is expected to be like the Renaissance Man of the 15th century, the person who understood everything about the world — its art, its music, its literature, everything society was built upon.

Sales pros must understand the products and services they sell, the needs and wants of customers, the psychology of the sales process and their customers — and, in general, have an understanding of the universe that operates around those customers. And change in each of these segments seems to come faster and faster.

Personal mastery

There is only one way to keep up with these changes: developing a lifelong dedication to learning and a commitment to constant improvement.

Top performers know the power of information, and know their success depends on constantly feeding their knowledge and skill base. Sales stars have an intense drive to improve their performance and a passion for their products, industry and customers.

As technology and the business environment become more complex, the value added by salespeople will increasingly be their ability to solve problems for their customers.

Future sales stars will not only build strong relationships through uncommon service and support, they will generate breakthrough solutions for their customers. They will use new techniques and technologies to gather information, and apply their creative skills to finding solutions that advance their customers’ goals. They will become star solution sellers.

Source: Author and sales consultant Barry Farber

The study, conducted by Hewitt Associates, found employee engagement levels have plummeted to their lowest level in 15 years.

Yet, organizations with high levels of engagement outperformed the competition and posted total revenues 19% higher than the average company.

Companies with low levels of employee engagement averaged 40% lower profits than their competitors.

Some keys to achieving high levels of engagement/employee satisfaction:

• Allow employees to develop flexible work schedules
• Provide company-issued cell phones and laptops that allow employees to stay in contact with one another (or customers) from anywhere.
• Ask yourself what type of incentives (above and beyond salary and bonuses) would cause employees to think twice about leaving the company to work for a competitor.
• Give employees a voice in the mission and direction of the company.
• Hold “town-hall” style meetings where employees can speak their mind and have their grievances addressed.

Can you think of any other ways to engage employees? How does your company keep employees motivated on a regular basis? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Source: “Nurtured employees lead to a healthier bottom line,” by Cindy Krischer Goodman, The Miami Herald.

The four studies, led by a professor at Washington State University, found that “unselfish workers who are the first to throw their hat in the ring are also among those that coworkers most want to, in effect, vote off the island.”

The phenomenon is widespread, having negative impact on everything from group projects to non-profit initiatives to military units to boy scout troops.

The reason: Colleagues feel that these employees “raise the bar” on what’s expected of others by constantly volunteering to take on extra tasks without asking for any additional compensation (or anything to be taken off their plates). In other words, the do-gooder makes everyone else look bad.

Some co-workers also feel that do-gooders pick up the slack for employees who aren’t getting the job done, thereby causing the bad employee to keep his or her job, while everyone else is working harder to get results.

Long term, it creates an atmosphere of resentment, each of the studies found.

Bottom line: Nice guys may not finish last, but they’re not helping anyone else finish first either.

Do you have any do-gooders in your workplace? How does everyone else respond to them?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Source: “Do-Gooders Get Voted off the Island First,” ScienceDaily, 8/23/10.

If you can help your customers achieve that goal, you’re all but assured that they’ll not only keep buying from you — but they’ll buy even more.

Here are nine strategies to help your customers do more with less:

1. Be bold. Offer innovative ideas and insights. Customers are so busy dealing with their own competitive pressures that they don’t have time to discuss the same old solutions — nor do they want to. What have you learned from some of your other customers that’ve had similar issues that can relieve your present customer’s pain? Presenting these insights is key to increasing your business with an existing customer.
2. Be a true consultant. Talk business strategy with your customers. Show how your offerings advance their strategies. Create solutions that solve your customers’ problems. Customers expect solutions that support and drive their central business goals.
3. Talk results with customers. Show how your product or service can positively affect a customer’s performance. Identify the appropriate needs and create a compelling case for your solution. It’s also smart to talk about some specific results your product or service has achieved recently for some of your other similarly-situated customers.
4. Be innovative. Increase credibility as a trusted advisor by bringing to the table innovative, highly differentiated solutions that respond to customers’ unique business challenges. This will show your customers that you want to be a partner in their future success — not just a supplier.
5. Do your homework. New conditions demand new strategies. Know more and turn that knowledge into value. Customers want insight. Go beyond asking good questions about your customers’ situations. Before getting in front of your customers, be ready to answer questions about the strengths and weaknesses of their own customers and competitors.
6. Resist the pressure to just sell something. Overpromising to customers is a frequent trap that some salespeople fall into. Gaining the sale in the short term may create havoc downstream. The outcome is predictable. Customer trust is eroded, and future business that should’ve been won is lost.
7. Focus on results and relationships. Show commitment to your customer by adding value. Conduct periodic account reviews to summarize the value you’re providing and pinpoint areas for improvement.
8. Learn about competitors. They have never been more aggressive or more vulnerable than right now. Develop defensive strategies and points of view. Help your customers develop strategies for dealing with their competitors. Be proactive in providing advice and insight.
9. View each customer’s company as a market. Focus efforts on segmenting and capturing share of this market. Then leverage successes and relationships within that market.

It’s during this critical time that customers determine if the product or service being offered is right for them.

Your salespeople can get the meeting off on the right foot by demonstrating they understand customer problems and goals, and have the ability to solve and fulfill them.

Prospects become customers when your salespeople solve problems for them. Customers also want — and need — to be educated. Don’t assume they know the difference between good and poor quality products and services, and how quality affects achieving their goals.

It’s the job of your salespeople to point out the relative advantages of your product/service, and how it will help prospects solve problems.

Motivating prospects to buy

Sales interviews need to motivate prospects to buy. This process centers on three things:

1. Getting a clear picture of the prospect’s objectives and showing how the product or service will meet those objectives.
2. Getting a feel for the prospect’s motivation behind agreeing to talk. Does the person believe that buying will lead to a beneficial outcome? And if so, what does he or she want that outcome to be?
3. Getting a sense of the prospect’s personality and selecting a sales approach that matches the way the prospect likes to be sold to.

If a customer feels that the opening remarks lack merit, the salesperson will be dismissed after a short, polite discussion. If the proposal is deemed worthy of consideration, the customer will explore it in greater depth.

Training tip: Ask a salesperson to role play an opening, and then ask for comments and suggestions from the rest of your reps on how it could be improved.

Identifying prospects’ objectives

A salesperson must have a clear picture of both the organizational objectives and personal objectives of the prospect. Look for things that include increasing performance, reducing cost, improving quality, increasing sales, reducing turnover, modernizing the office, etc.

Personal objectives usually will be related to promotions, raises, respect, power, influence and acceptance. The chances of making the sale are limited unless the salesperson can help the prospect achieve both a personal and an organizational objective.

Getting behind prospects’ objectives

The way to get a good sense of what’s behind a prospect’s objectives is by asking good questions and listening. It starts by simply having one or two questions that you feel comfortable with, such as:

• Can you give me a feel for your objectives?
• What do you want to happen?
• Why did you decide to see me?
• Can you give me a sense for what you’re trying to accomplish?

It can even help to soften some of these questions. Some examples:

• When we talked briefly by phone to set this meeting, you said my call was timely in view of something new you’re trying to accomplish. Could you tell me more about what that is?
• To get started, could you tell me what prompted you to meet now?
• As we discussed earlier, I’m here to talk with you about ___ . What are your objectives regarding this?
• You mentioned a couple of problems you wanted to talk about. Could you tell me about them?

Remember that gathering information is the secret to selling and that additional questions usually result in a rush of information. Even simple follow-up questions like these can help:

• Is there anything else?
• Anything else I need to know?

Final word: Top salespeople accept no excuses for poor performance. They view themselves as completely in charge of everything that happens to them. If they don’t like what’s going on, they decide it’s up to them to change it or improve it in some way.

1. Am I forcing people to do things my way, or encouraging them to play to their strengths?
2. Am I reinforcing good behavior by praising people in public, and correcting bad behavior by criticizing them in private?
3. Am I asking good questions that lead salespeople to draw the right conclusions, or am I telling them how to sell?
4. Do I have regularly scheduled coaching sessions that encourage reps to improve their performance, or do I only hold impromptu sessions when an issue needs to be addressed?
5. Do I continue going in circles, always focusing on the same skills, or do I build upon past successes and move on to other skills?
6. Do I set clear, attainable goals while providing clear metrics that allow salespeople to gauge their performance in those areas?
7. Do salespeople trust and want my leadership, or do they fear meeting with me?
8. Am I taking the time to coach everyone or just those that are struggling?
9. Do I approach every rep differently, based on his/her needs?
10. Do I react harshly to negative words and attitudes, or do I respond in a way that encourages salespeople to listen?

Source: “Is My Team Uncoachable?” by Keith Rosen, Small Business Solutions Blog.

What would you think managers should be asking themselves? Share your thoughts in the Comments Box below.