S&MM SoundOff

Butt Out, Employers!

Fired for smoking?!  Sounds like fiction but it's true.  It happened to Anita Epolito, at Weyco Inc., an insuance benefits administator company, according to a previous news story from this year. 

Many states allow companies to legally hire and fire based on your life outside of work. Now with the push for health conscious staffers, companies have expanded the list of taboo off-hours endeavors to include smoking.  Weyco started testing its employees for nicotine last year and stopped hiring smokers entirely.  Employees who test positive are suspended without pay for a month and could lose their jobs with repeated violations. Weyco also recently expanded its regulations to include employee spouses, making the employee pay a fine if their spouse tests positive.

This “at-will” law is imposed in 20 states (the other 30 limit an employer's judgment to inside the office), but it's 20 too many.  How is that legal? I'm an adamant non-smoker and I am all for companies encouraging employees to be healthier--we all need a little push in that area. But to base someone’s job and livelihood on a non-work related habit is utterly preposterous. 

The CRM Challenge

By Dave Stein, CEO & Founder, ES Research Group

CRM is not a sales methodology.  CRM is not a panacea for all sales-related problems.  And in too many cases, CRM does not help people sell more effectively, and that's why it's resisted.

At the present time, my firm is auditing the sales capability of a number of companies. Without exception, CRM is an issue--even sales leaders don’t initially see it. What one client company told us is typical. "Our salespeople use Salesforce.com to input their pipeline data right before pipeline reviews.  That's the only time they touch it."

ESR had requested a fair amount of information about critical sales opportunities from this company as part of our audit.  The VP of Sales Operations told us that he had to call individual sales reps on the phone so they could provide him with what we were looking for.  Basic information was not to be found in their CRM database.

Is Salesforce.com capable of storing that information?  Sure.  In fact, the fields that should contain that data were added as part of this company's implementation.  But the data wasn't there  because the salespeople hadn't been motivated, cajoled, threatened or rewarded for inputting it.

But that's not the answer. The real reason that data wasn't stored is because that company's implementation of Salesforce.com wasn't focused on the salesperson.  Salesforce.com to that company is simply a  reporting tool for management.  It isn’t even used by customer service or account executives. Since there is no value for the sales rep, compliance across the organization is minimal.

We Want You To Blog!

Back in August, the S&MM SoundOff started posting reader's blog posts -- now, we want more!  We want to hear more of what you have to say about today's current sales, marketing, and management topics. 

Have a fail-proof sales strategy, think management needs to change its focus, or is that new commercial really not hitting the mark in your opinion?  We want to know about it.  We’ll select one lucky reader’s submission each week to be posted.  It's time to sound off and start blogging today! 

Write. Submit. Be Heard.

(Submissions should be approximately 200-500 words in length.  Selections based on datedness of ideas and topic appropriateness. Personal contact information will be used for editorial purposes only. Please refrain from naming specific people and companies when relating personal experiences. Submissions promotional in nature will not be considered. Deadline for submissions each week is Friday at 5pm. Selected entries will be posted the following week.  Winners will be notified by email. ) 

Be sure to check out the topics others are sounding off on and share your comments on the blog, S&MM Sound Off.

Diversifying During a Slowdown

In an effort to make up for business lost amid a cooling housing market, Home Depot is taking a big step to diversify. It's adding new products and services outside of its traditional home-improvement market. At various retail locations across the country, customers are starting to see candy bars and sodas at checkout, special room in the aisles for seasonal decorations, and even parking-lot convenience stores that sell gasoline and car washes.

The new strategy goes against the gospel of Home Depot’s founders, who were adamant on keeping a singular focus on home-improvement related wares. Nonetheless, CEO Bob Nardelli sees this as a necessary step to keep its retail division afloat during a housing slump, and he isn’t afraid to invest some $350 million to makeover 500 stores, according to the New York Times.

Work/Surf Balance

An unwelcome blast from the past popped up on my computer screen recently: a "blocked Web site" message from my company's IT department. I was trying to check my Gmail account as I do every day. By the time a colleague sitting nearby (who had encountered the same problem) called our IT department, they had already recieved several calls and were fixing the glitch.

In six years, this was only the second time I had been blocked from a Web site at work. The first time was in 2000, when I was working as an intern for this very magazine. While researching a story about Gore-Lieberman yarmulkes (they really existed—I promise), I was blocked from www.judaism.com because it was "religious content/not work-related." I had to go to some mysterious office three floors up from mine, explain why I needed access, and was cleared for takeoff into a world of religious tchotchkes.

Bring Out the Paddle

Are leaders born or made?  That particular question remains unresolved in a recent article published in USA Today that interviewed 20 CEOs and other organization leaders to see if they had been spanked as children to determine whether corporal punishment was linked to later success.  Astoundingly, most of the CEOs responded in the affirmative. 

Of course, USA Today did its background work and found that this majority isn’t surprising based on the decade most CEOs today were raised, the 1950s – 60s, when spankings were viewed as a necessary form of punishment and used frequently. Although not much has changed--90 percent of parents today still spank their children and 55 percent agree that it is sometimes necessary.

But is this really a determining factor in career success?  I think that the basic enforcement of discipline, whether corporal or verbal, is the key factor that should be analyzed.  Discipline teaches patience, accountability, and responsibility. And when enforced properly it can be a source of encouragement to do better the next time and persevere--all the building blocks of a leader.

What early experiences and lessons do you think helped you pave the way to career success?

Be sure to visit our Management Strategies section on ManageSmarter.com to find best practices and leadership tips.

19 Months!

By Dave Stein, CEO

Recent research tells us the average tenure of a sales manager/VP is 19 months. That's down from 24 months a year ago. Why is that? Well, it's not because all those VPs and managers are doing such a good job that they decide to retire with their pockets stuffed with money. Periodically I speak with a sales VP who has been at the same job for 10 or even 20 years, and consistently over-delivers against quota. But it is increasingly rare.

The fact is that a large percentage of sales managers and VPs are just not delivering [cut: to] on their commitments. Think about this: The sales department of most organizations lags other departments in the areas of compliance in documented processes (think GAAP for accounting and ISO 9000 for manufacturing), performance measurement, technology support, and in many cases the employment of best practices.

Here are reasons that some sales managers and VPs serve 19-month stints:

* They use sales training to fill an open day at your kickoff meeting.
* They don't have a documented, institutionalized sales methodology.
* They allow every sales person to have his own approach to selling.
* They think that having only 5 or 10 sales people is a good reason to not have processes.
* They don't provide technology support and tools for their sales people that help them win business.
* They hire whom they believe are winners and then neglect to train them.
* They hire on instinct without carefully matching candidates to the job.
* They depend on internal training resources or external training providers that just don't get the job done.

...and the list goes on.

Visit Management Strategies on ManageSmarter.com for more management best practices.

Keep Blogging!

Back in August, the S&MM SoundOff started posting reader's blog posts -- now, we want more!  We want to hear more of what you have to say about today's current sales, marketing, and management topics. 

Have a fail-proof sales strategy, think management needs to change its focus, or is that new commercial really not hitting the mark in your opinion?  We want to know about it.  We’ll select one lucky reader’s submission each week to be posted.  It's time to sound off and start blogging today! 

Write. Submit. Be Heard.

(Submissions should be approximately 200-500 words in length.  Selections based on datedness of ideas and topic appropriateness. Personal contact information will be used for editorial purposes only. Please refrain from naming specific people and companies when relating personal experiences. Submissions promotional in nature will not be considered. Deadline for submissions each week is Friday at 5pm. Selected entries will be posted the following week.  Winners will be notified by email. ) 

Be sure to check out the topics others are sounding off on and share your comments on the blog, S&MM Sound Off.

Would you buy it?

I've sold cashmere sweaters, matte velvet blazers, broken-in chinos, corduroy jackets, little black dresses and basic tees. I sold them because it was my job, but it was easy to sell something I would buy (or want bought) for myself. J. Crew wanted a lot of green for its garments, but customers got what they paid for. The quality and design of the merchandise was excellent and J. Crew made sure its sales associates were aware of the quality-cost ratio. For me, selling a $200 blazer at J. Crew was easier than selling a $15 cheese ball in high school for fundraisers.

I used to think I was bothering people with the product at previous retail jobs. At J. Crew I realized I was adding to their wardrobe. It’s easy to sell a product when you can stand behind it. But can you sell well when you don’t see the usefulness for your customer? My dad has been selling funeral and burial packages for over 10 years. It’s a hard sell because people want to ignore the reality of death. People like the vacuum cleaner salesman better than my dad. But he is absolutely convinced that the customer will benefit from his product. He knows that a customer with a pre-arranged funeral plan can mourn for their loved one at death rather than worrying about a casket color.

It is not the likeability of the product but the salesperson’s confidence in what he sells that can make or break the deal. How many people don’t see the value of what they sell? Would numbers improve if your sales team liked what they sold?

--Jackie H.

The King Hits the Big Screen

The first movie ever produced by an ad agency for a client is not far away. Burger King is planning to make a $5 million dollar movie entitled "Above the King,"  a teen-oriented, quirky flick about a misfit teenager who lives above a BK restaurant. The company hopes that the story line will have a cult-like appeal among the fast-food consumer community, similar to the way Napoleon Dynamite became an underground success with younger audiences. The flick is part of the company’s strategy to "catch up with its consumers" in a recently endeavored ad push.

A Burger King movie? I can’t help but envision an uncanny parody of the "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" movie—the same fast food and stupid humor but with an added dash of strangeness. We have all seen on TV how Burger King has been prominent on a unique (or for the lack of a better word, weird) advertising initiative. BK’s renowned mascot, a plastic-faced king with a strangely happy, almost creepy smile has appeared in 24 commercials and has a fan following, including its very own page on MySpace.com filled with comments of adoration.

From my point of view, I don’t see how or why it has evoked such popularity. I associate the face with an evil doll from a horror movie, like Chucky. And after watching the commercials starring the King, I feel a little disturbed (especially the one where a sleeping BK customer wakes up to find the King in bed with him). But whatever eeriness the King conveys, I can’t ignore that the peculiar mascot appeals to the masses of fast-food fanatics.

So the question is whether Burger King’s King mascot is clever or just plain creepy . What do you think?

(For more on marketing strategies, visit the marketing strategies section at ManageSmarter.com)