We are fond of comparing success in business with success in the kitchen, and alluding to the 'recipe' for business success. Specifically, we would say that you can make many things with flour, eggs, milk and sugar … but not all of them are desirable!
One small error in execution can be the difference between a raving success and utter failure. When it comes to our clients, we want your cake to continue to rise, and never sink!
So please click on this YouTube video for a different take on the usual TV Recipe segment, and see what we mean when we say it's not just about having all the right ingredients, it's very much about the skill you have in 'putting them together'!
Emotional intelligence accounts for between 24 and 69 percent of performance success, according to recent studies. But what exactly is emotional intelligence and should it be used in the recruitment process?
W hen university graduate Benjamin Leopold applied for a position as a network analyst with Oliver Wyman in New York, he didn;t think he would get the job.
The position was advertised as seeking someone with three or five years experience, and as Leopold was fresh out of University, his only work experience was an internship he had done while in college.
However to his surprise, Leopold was selected above other candidates with the required experience. Two years later Leopold was again chosen over experienced colleagues for a coveted transfer within the company to Sydney. Leopold attributes a lot of this success to a high level of emotional intelligence.
"When I was first hired, one of the things we discussed in my interview was EQ (emotional intelligence)." says Leopold. "My manager said when he interviewed me he knew right away [I was his choice]."
Decision clarity key to executing strategy
CLEAR DECISION rights and effective information flows have the greatest impact on company's ability to successfully execute its strategy. However, senior executives more often rely on reorganising an organisation's structure when trying to fix lagging performance. The study of 125,000 found that eight of the top ten traits for top-executing organisations relate to either decision-making or information flow, and two to motivational practices. None of the top 10 traits relate to changes in the organisations chart. Of those companies who said they were strong in execution, 71 percent report that "everyone has a good idea of the decisions/actions for which he or she is responsible." However, in weak-execution organisations, that figure drops to 32 percent."
"While I didn't have the same technical skills as everyone else did, he said he knew he could mould me and work closely with me and that I would enjoy working for the company," he says.
According to Leopold, employing people based on emotional intelligence is very common in the IT sector in New York.
"It's the main thing you would be hired for in IT in New York. You obviously have to prove that you know your IT skills and everything, but the Resumes look very similar in the long run in IT - you know this, you know that. But the main point is going to be: "Who are you as a person?" Let's see if you'd fit in with us and this firm and our values," he says.
The job of a sales manager is a multi faceted one. Effective sales managers need to be effective leaders. Moreover, to improve the company's sales, they should be good at inspiring, motivating, coaching and holding their sales people accountable for their individual selling behaviours.
Unfortunately, the skill set for an effective manager is not the same as the skill set for a successful salesperson. Often the top producing salesperson is 'rewarded' with a 'promotion' to sales manager without being given the proper management training. It does not surprise that the results are usually less than satisfactory and sometimes disastrous!
Sandler Training in Australia have spent over 30 years training and coaching sales managers and salespeople to be more effective in their roles. Time and again Phil Lee, master frachise of Sandler Training in Australia, has seen previously successful salespeople commiting similar errors once they assume the role of sales manager. Almost always, they are unaware that a combination of these errors is the reason that company sales fail to increase despite their previous success as a salesperson.
In Phil's experience there are at least ten serious errors that many of these sales managers make:
1. They do not accept personal accountability for the behaviours and production of the sales force. This means that they often accept their team's usual excuses to explain sluggish sales performance eg economy, increased competition, the company, or other external factors. They do not realise that accepting excuses from underperforming salespeople cheats both the salesperson and the company.
Employers change view on social networking
THIRTY-THREE PERCENT of managers in their 20s and 30s embraced social networks such as MySpace and FaceBook as business opportunities, compared with just 16 percent of managers aged over 40. The survey revealed that there is an increasing amount of bosses more reluctant to block the sites at work, despite initial scepticism about lost work productivity.
Source: Konica Minolta
2. They neglect to develop the people in their team. The main role of the sales manager is not to "get sales up", it's to get the best out of each individual in the team. Successful salespeople are often not aware of why they were successful, let alone able to transfer this success to others they need to manage.
3. They place too much emphasis on results and ignore behaviours and attitudes. ie the things that salespeople can control and that allow results to happen.
4. They do not profile their people and hence are not aware of their natural selling style and how and why they sell the way they do. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your people, by using professional assessment tools, is the key to helping them develop in their role.
Lack of workers in WA
A lack of skilled workers is restricting growth in some sectors in Western Australia. A survey of 458 West Australian hiring managers revealed that more than one in two (58 percent) employers intend to increase their staff numbers during the coming quarter, while just 6 percent intend to decrease their headcount. However, the survey revealed that with an average annual increase in business investment in WA, there is a lack of the required workforce to push the growth further.
5. They tend to manage each individual in the team the same way, which can lead to frustration and missed opportunities for growth in sales effectiveness.
6. They tend to focus on sales volume versus profitability. Not being able to impart a common sales process, they accept discounting as a fact of life and send a clear message to their people that reducing margins is an acceptable strategy to win business. This often leads to more frustration and a lean bottom line.
7. They try to be a friend and not a coach. To be effective, salespeople need a mentor who can aid them to leave their comfort zone to find new levels of success, not someone who they can commiserate with.
8. They fail to set clear standards and rank sales effectiveness only by revenue. Individuals in the team need clear expectations and the knowledge that there are varieties of ways to succeed to be free to contribute productively to the sales effort.
9. They do not believe in providing their team with professional sales training. As mentioned earlier, most salespeople are not able to effectively transfer the reasons for their success. This is because they are limited in their knowledge of the true reasons why they may have been successful. Even if they are aware, they often lack the skills required to impart this knowledge in a useable and systematic way.
10. They condone below-expectation performance and are reluctant to proactively deal with the situation and terminate based on incompetent performance. As a result other team members begin to believe that incompetent performance is acceptable.
So, what do you do to avoid putting yourself or your company in this position? The answer is to ensure that the right training is provided so that effective sales management skills are learned and imparted.
Business owners and upper level management must reinforce that the major role of the sales manager is to develop the sales team. There must be a tip-down belief that developing the individuals on the sales team together with strong coaching and regular tracking of required behaviours will produce the desired increase in sales.
Extracted from My Business magazine July 2008, page 18.
Read further about improving sales and sales management tools or call us on 08 9271 7661 for a comprehensive diagnosis and proposal to ensure your valuable personnel are being effectively deployed.
We also offer alternative forms of personality profiling to assist in the development and deployment of your team.
Reward and recognition programs often feature as the cornerstone of attraction and retention strategies. Here are the stories of two companies that are leading a recent trend by using these programs to drive behavioural change.
In Europe 50,000 white-collar workers were asked the question: "When looking for a new job, what motivates others and what motivates you?" Eighth in the list of what they thought motivated others was: "A full appreciation of work done" but that answer was ranked first of their list of what motivated them. (See diagram below).
What factors motivate when seeking a job?
Motivates others when looking for a job:
1. High wages
2. Job Security
3. Promotion
4.Good working conditions
5. Interesting work
6. Personal loyalty of a supervisor
7. Tactful discipline
8. Full appreciation of work done
9. Help on personal problems
10. Feeling of being in on things
Motivates them personally when looking for a job:
1. Full appreciation of work done
2. Feeling of being in one things
3. Help on personal problems
4. Job security
5. High wages
6. Interesting work
7. Promotion
8. Personal loyalty of supervisot
9. Good working conditions
10. Tactful discipline
Most organisations that run rewards programs do so to reward or thank employees for achieving a particular result.
Candidates demand respect from recruiters
CANDIDATES THROUGHOUT the land are saying that they are being treated poorly by recruiters and are not being shown the respect they deserve. According to a survery of 1800 Australian employees, communication in the recruitment process is reaching a critical point with a third of Australian employers and recruiters failing to acknowledge receipt of applications from potential candidates and 47 percent not calling back on enquiry. The top three things that annoy candidates about recruiters are:
The survey also found that candidates most appreciated being treated with respect, being called back, and the recruiters actually trying to understand the needs of the candidate.
Source: LinkMe.com.au
These may include such things as achieving a sales target, referring a new employee, completing a project, or winning a new client.
For more than two years, BigPond and Manpower Australia and New Zealand (Manpower) have been using reward and recognition schemes to drive behavioural change among employees and, in BigPond's case, among the staff in its supply chain as well.
Manpower Australia is part of the global employment services firm that provides services across the entire employment and business cycle.
Telstra BigPond is Australia's number-one internet service provide, with 3 million customers and a 48 percent market share in the broadband market. It is in the process if transforming itself into an internet media communications company.
Why Change? What are the key for the design and implemention of a successful recognition program in order to recognise values in action, engage people, and create great culture? Read on to find out ..
Extracted from the Human Resources magazine, July 2008, pages 18-19.
The Edensilk website contains a wealth of information about alignment of staff with organisational goals.
SIXTY-TWO PERCENT of former Scouts believe that being a Scout has helped them be more disciplined and organised in their career. A recent survey found the key Scout attribute of "reliability" was highlighted by 89 percent of respondents as the most important factor in employability. Respondents who were formerly Scouts cited how it helped them in various ways incuding:
Communication skills, responsibility, being a team player, punctuality and respectfulness were also cited as highly valued Scout attributes.
Source: LinkMe.com.au
We believe it is. It's worth much more than a gift voucher, or an iPod, or some other trinket which would only trivialise your contribution.
So we're going to invite you to participate in a comprehensive investigation of the practices of 'Managing Customer Facing Personnel' ... and you will get immediate access to the results, ongoing!
That's the measure of the worth we place on your opinion ... we want to give back hundreds of times what you give us and other participants, by returning the results directly to you, packaged up with online tools to answer your own specific questions.
You may not feel the same way; but I'm sceptical of many generalisations about levels of job satisfaction, management practices, reward schemes, recruitment sources, etc. Surely what we'd all really like to know is 'what actually applies to me, in my situation, for my kind of company, in my industry?'
By participating in this survey, you'll be able to immediately 'drill-down' into the results to answer your own specific questions. For example:
what is the typical educational background of a customer service manager in the finance sector who is successfully running a team of 5 or more people?
what are the normal working hours and holidays taken by someone like me in other companies?
how do people in jobs similar to my staff typically spend their time, and are they succeeding?
how do others succeed at recruitment and selection? Or do they?
do successful teams really use job descriptions, or is that just hr hype?
is my teams' labour turnvoer rate high or low compared to my peers?
what are the typical practices of successful businesses in comparable situations to my own?
add your own here!
Once you start the survey you'll soon see how valuable the information will be.
While we will make the aggregate information freely available to participants, individual identities are will be protected, so you needn't worry about privacy.
So keep an eye on your email inbox over the next few days for the subject line 'Is your opinion worth anything?' because a few minutes spent in providing your opinion will give you ongoing online access to data that we promise will inform many of your decisions and actions this year.
"When I was first hired, one of the things we discussed in my interview was EQ (emotional intelligence)." says Leopold. "My manager said when he interviewed me he knew right away [I was his choice]."
Comments
Post has no comments.