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Articles by and/or for our members.Topics: HR, Leadership, Sales Management, Miscellany, Travel Several of our members are published authors and speakers. From time - to - time, we will post articles here written by and for our PSP members and the visiting public. Feel free to contact the member should you have questions, concerns, comments or wish to discuss the topic. Click on the topic heading above to take you to that section, or simply browse down the page. Then click on the article title to view the whole document. Click on the author’s name to view a brief biography for that author. Human ResourcesDiversity; Headache or Head Start? We live in a society often defined by its differences. Multiculturalism, gender politics, affirmative action, preferences and mandates have become part of our national vocabulary. Where once we celebrated the “melting pot” of America, we now seem more concerned with identifying the separate ingredients that make up the stew. LeadershipHave you participated in a business initiative that your company never completed? Did you watch key business goals suffer as teams missed deadline after deadline? By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Would you want to have an employee who is extremely good at his or her job but has a bad attitude or an average employee who has a positive attitude? Experienced CEOs understand that bad attitudes can reduce the effectiveness of their organization. Skills can be taught. Attitude is difficult to change. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Wise leaders know that they will generate organizational best thinking that is far above what one person can accomplish alone when they draw on the wealth of knowledge that employees, with their differing professional interests, experiences and perspectives, bring to their jobs. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Today’s global business environment changes constantly. Yet too often companies develop their processes and procedures as if change will never affect them. Managers and employees work in habitual patterns and will resist change unless they buy into it. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Building Excellent Customer Service Companies have only three ways to internally grow their business, all of which involve that one element no organization can live without: customers. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) The paramount challenge for a CEO is to improve revenue and profits. Successful CEOs do this year after year because they understand that people implement improvements. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Many CEOs of small to medium sized companies think they can do it all. They built their companies to current levels by trusting their abilities and instincts and see no reason to change what worked for them. They lead others by controlling work output. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Strategic planning is the most important activity a CEO and his management team can undertake. Effective planning focuses the team. Focus drives performance and performance drives results. Effective planning will produce consistent results. Profitability and revenue will increase year after year. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) What did Winston Churchill, Lee Iacocca and Bill Gates have in common? Certainly they were great personal leaders who knew what they wanted and how to get it. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Closing the Gap Between Success and Significance Think of the person you most admire. This might be a teacher, a business associate, an inspirational leader, a mentor or friend who made a significant impact on your life. You remember them for what they did for you at a time when you needed their direction. By Tom Northup (Back to Top of Page) Sales ManagementWhat separates good presentations from great ones is the ability to use everyday words to express your ideas no matter whether they are simple or complex ones. Using unfamiliar, uncommon or rarely used words almost always results in a confused prospect. Here’s why. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Ball of String Sales Management Supervision How many times have you hired a new sales manager and because he or she was experienced and successful somewhere else, they understand how to be successful in your organization? Moreover, did you take for granted that the new manager understood what was expected of them on the very first day they began with you? And unfortunately sometime later discovered they do not have your company’s sales process, policies, procedures and prices well understood? By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Research supports the importance of sales lead management According to several recent Business-to-Business (B2B) company research studies, effective Sales Lead Management pays off big time. Not only in terms of increased sales and profits but also with increased business valuation for an exit strategy. Experienced sales managers are always on the lookout for new sales representatives who, among other attributes, possess good people skills and are pleasant to be around. There are two fundamental reasons they should select incoming sales representatives who have sound social skills. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) As everyone knows when you first get going in any new job, much less a career, you are for better or worse, subject to the influence of your immediate supervisor. Yet, without one who pays attention in guiding your activities properly, you can develop undesirable traits, which if left unchecked turn into career limiting habits. Years ago upon starting my professional sales career I was extremely fortunate to have as my first sales manager a superb teacher, mentor and coach. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Shifting the Sales Compensation Paradigm Before us is the thorny question of how to protect cash positions while balancing the seemingly contradictory problem of keeping cost of sales under control and your sales force intact while revenues decrease. Compensating sales efforts appropriately is one solution for protecting margins, profit and cash. Solving this issue may take creating a new paradigm for sales representative compensation. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Have you ever had it happened that you received a request for quotation or proposal that you knew you could easily fulfill with your product or service but sensed the same request was out to a number of other competitors. Does your sales force seem to be treading water on certain sales opportunities? Is the same information coming to you each month when you ask penetrating questions about prospects? Does it appear progress moving an account to closure is bogged down? You say ‘there must be a way to break this logjam’. You feel just as stymied as your sales representatives. You wonder what moves to make and how to do them. Maybe a new (or revisited) approach is in order and an additional step or two needs to be taken. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Unless you hold a mirror to your face each time you speak with someone, you really have no way of identifying what messages and signals the listener is receiving. This, by the way, applies not just to face-to-face sales calls, it applies to telephone conversations too. You see our face tells just as many things about us as our voice. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Over the years you will be asked by both prospects and customers to have your company create, build or supply a product, service or capability that is not part of your standard line. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Piloting the Hiring of Top Sales Performers Without question the most critical skills in sales management are recruiting, selecting and hiring the best sales representatives. Yet why do so many sales managers come up short in these vital skills? By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Unless you are in the top 2% of sales professionals worldwide it's pretty hard to create need. Only those who are able to ask questions which surface a subliminal need and then develop that need into want will be able to make that sale. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Don’t you get a little weary listening to all the experts trumpeting, then droning on-and-on that ‘it’s all about relationships’. It troubles me since no one has taken time to analyze what it takes in developing quality long term relationships. It’s important because all of us count on our referral network in one way or another as a lead source. And as we know, getting a referral is the surest way to a new customer. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) How to Retain Top Sales Talent Of constant concern in senior management ranks is the turnover rate of their sales members. If your goal is to stabilize the sales team, improve their performance and retain your top performers, then you will want to read on. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Superior Sales Management Coaching Long before coaching became a recognized niche of and by itself, there was a long-standing belief in many sales organizations that coaching of employees was a fundamental management responsibility. Moreover, every professional sales trainer you spoke to, every textbook you read and every sales manager who had several years of experience would verify that coaching was a fundamental cog on the sales manager success wheel. But what has happened since? By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) At one time there was a long-standing belief in many sales organizations that coaching of sales representatives was a fundamental sales management responsibility. Moreover, every professional sales trainer you spoke to, every textbook you read and every sales manager who had several years of experience would verify that coaching was a fundamental spoke on the sales manager success wheel. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Sales textbooks are filled with examples of trial and final closes, and if you are a student of the art and science of professional selling you have read many, if not all of them. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) Upgrade our Terms, Upgrade our Image Professional speaker Brian Tracy has an expression that is timeless. It is “everything counts.” And in the world of professional selling, everything does count, including our use of terms and language. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) I recently posted a version of this essay on my company web site. Within one month, that article was driving over 50% of the hits on our web site. Several directory listings picked up the article and that drove even more folks to our site. Then I started receiving e-mails from managers interested in this topic as well as many students in MBA programs researching corporate ethics. By Dave Kinnear (Back to Top of Page)
When planning a family vacation to Europe several years ago an idea sprung to my head. Why not surprise my children by having them be Lord and Lady of a Knappogue Castle, Ireland medieval banquet. After consulting with my wife, we agreed on the date that we wished they be honored. Thereafter I meticulously prepared a complete itinerary through the continent so we would arrive in County Clare on the evening of August 16th. The following day is a special day; it is my daughter Amy’s birthday. By Don McNamara CMC (Back to Top of Page) There are some 29 million people living in Peru. Of those, about one million people enjoy some meaningful level of discretionary spending. Those one million have the ability to purchase cars and clothing and to take vacations to other countries. The other 28 million can’t afford to do so.
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