DECEMBER 2009: In this issue...

For most companies, the down economy equaled staffing cuts. Tough decisions were made, layoffs became commonplace, and holding on to teams became an imperative. And, as any one staffing up to ride out the economy has learned, talent recruitment, management and training are three of the toughest tasks many of us in sales and marketing face today. There is a ton of talent out there, many of whom are ready, willing and eager to start today.

Talent management is clearly, and justifiably, a huge concern for managers today. We exist in a fast-moving and ever changing world. A year ago, if you told me I would be asking people about their proficiency in social media or that we worked in a world that included a Chief Listening Officer, I would have declared shenanigans. Today's business landscape requires that managers be able to shift and change on a dime, and bring our talent along with us for the ride lest we part ways and re-staff to meet the need.

This requirement for a constantly improving and innovating talent pool also means balancing training versus hiring. Where is the line when we can't train our existing staff and we realize we need to bring on a new specialty or new talent mix? If you believe the marketers who participated in CMO Council's 2009 Marketing Outlook study, 63 percent indicated that they would train or develop existing staff to meet the growing need to have digital, online or interactive competencies. Only 29 percent claimed that they would recruit new talent or resources to meet the need.

As managers, be it in sales or in marketing, talent brings up a whole raft of issues that must be discussed. How do we compensate talent -- especially in tough times when every penny is counted? How do we train our teams to make sure they are at the top of the curve in knowledge, insight and ability? How do we motivate and inspire when we are holding on for dear life to our own jobs? These questions just touch the tip of the talent iceberg, but I hope that this month's eJournal helps start the conversation.

Until next year!

Liz Miller

Upgrading Talent

By Matthew Guthridge, John R. McPherson, and William J. Wolf for McKinsey Quarterly

A downturn can give smart companies a chance to upgrade their talent.

Downturns place companies' talent strategies at risk. As deteriorating performance forces increasingly aggressive head count reductions, it's easy to lose valuable contributors inadvertently, damage morale or the company's external reputation among potential employees, or drop the ball on important training and staff-development programs. But there is a better way. By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic conditions improve.

Companies can maintain their attractiveness to internal and external talent by using cost-cutting efforts as an opportunity to redesign jobs so that they become more engaging for the people undertaking them. A job's level of responsibility, degree of autonomy, and span of control all contribute to employee satisfaction. Head count reductions provide a powerful incentive to use existing resources better by breaking down silos and increasing the span of control for challenging managerial roles--thus improving the odds of engaging key talent in the redesigned jobs.

Consider Cisco Systems' approach to downsizing during the last recession. In 2001, as deteriorating financial performance forced the elimination of 8,500 jobs, Cisco redesigned roles and responsibilities to improve cross-functional alignment and reduce duplication.1 The more collaborative environment fostered by such moves increased workplace satisfaction and productivity for many employees. Initiatives like Cisco's succeed when companies focus on redesigning jobs and retaining talent at the outset of downsizing efforts.

In addition to redesigning roles, companies cutting jobs should carefully protect training and development programs. These are not only essential to maintaining workplace morale and increasing long-term productivity, but they also give people the skills necessary to carry out redesigned jobs that have greater spans of control. During the last recession, International Paper continued offering classes at its leadership institute by replacing external facilitators with the company's senior leaders.2 This approach not only reduced the cost of delivery but also, thanks to the involvement of senior leaders, redirected the content of the leadership program by tying it more closely to decisions and skills affecting the company's current performance. Similarly, IBM retained its employee-development programs during its major performance challenges in the mid- to late 1980s. It took the arrival of Lou Gerstner as CEO and a new strategy to turn the company around, but the historical investments IBM had made in developing its people helped achieve a successful turnaround.

Before undertaking widespread layoffs, companies should use their performance-management processes to help identify strong employees. Companies that conduct disciplined, meritocratic assessments of performance and potential are well placed to make good personnel decisions. These companies should also bring additional strategic considerations to the decisions. They should assess which types of talent drive business value today and which will drive it three years from now, as well as which talent segments are currently available and which will be in the future--keeping in mind, for example, that new MBAs will be equally available in two years. They should also look at which types of talent would take years to replace or develop--for instance, skilled electric utility engineers in an environment where retirements are dramatically reducing supply. Performance management well informed by key strategic questions can minimize the negative cultural impact of downsizing, improve the bottom line, and help identify talented people the company should try to retain.

Companies that are reducing staff must focus relentlessly on the internal cultural and external reputational implications of cost-cutting efforts. Although strong employer brands are resilient, it's difficult to reestablish brand strength once the culture has been damaged. The way many companies conduct large-scale downsizing decreases efficiency, morale, and motivation on the part of remaining employees. It also increases voluntary turnover among high performers and compromises a company's ability to attract strong talent in the future, as potential employees wonder how risky it is to take a job there.

Counteracting these tendencies requires creativity. In 2001, Cisco gave generous severance packages and assistance with job searches to the workers it laid off and launched a program that paid one-third of salary, plus benefits and stock options, to ex-employees who agreed to work for a local charity or community organization. Steps like these protected Cisco's employer brand by attempting to make departing employees feel better about Cisco and underscored the company's commitment to its people for those who remained. The results were measurable: employee satisfaction remained high, and Cisco retained a prominent spot on Fortune magazine's "Best Companies to Work For" list.

A strong employer brand is also important for companies undertaking selective recruitment even as they cut personnel costs elsewhere. Using slowdowns to uncover and hire displaced talent is often fruitful. Studies have shown that although overall levels of recruitment may level off or even fall, the quality of workers hired rises in recessions. And opportunities to find and hire displaced talent may be particularly valuable during this downturn, as massive downsizing in the financial-services sector makes available to nonfinancial companies a large pool of highly educated and motivated professionals who previously might not have considered jobs outside their previous employers or industries. Some organizations are moving surprisingly quickly in response to these opportunities in the talent market. In late October 2008, the US Internal Revenue Service hosted a Manhattan career fair targeted at displaced financial-services professionals. More than 1,300 people attended, many standing in line for three hours to learn more about an employer that offered a newly interesting brand of "job stability."

Cost cutting during a downturn is often necessary to ensure a company's current profitability and future competitiveness. Rather than freezing all hiring and employee-development programs, companies should use this period as an opportunity to upgrade talent and better engage existing staff. This means reinvesting a percentage of the capital liberated from cost cutting into, for example, selective recruiting and development programs and in efforts to safeguard the culture and to redesign jobs so that they are more engaging to the remaining employees.

This article was originally published in McKinsey Quarterly, www.mckinseyquarterly.com. Copyright (c) 2009 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Get That Prospect Off Your List!

By Geoffrey James for BNET

Congratulations! You've got a real live prospect on the line. Your first task is to start selling, right? WRONG! At the very beginning of the sales cycle, your most important task is to find out if you can eliminate the prospect completely from your to-do list.

Yes, you heard me correctly.

Many sales pros (particularly novices) are so thrilled simply to be talking to a real live prospect that they don't want to burst the happy bubble. So they pretend that the mere fact that a prospect has shown a little interest (by not hanging up) means that they're a potential customer.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are at least half-a-dozen reasons a prospect might show interest but never buy. For instance, the prospect may:

1. feel bored or lonely and just want to talk to somebody.
2. hope to have the offering ... someday in the far future.
3. be looking for a catspaw to play against your competitor.
4. be confused about their firm's real needs.
5. think your pricey offering fits within their teeny budget.
6. be looking for new contacts for a future job hunt.

Look, the last thing that you want to do with your valuable time is to waste it on somebody who's NOT going to buy.

So it's a BIG WIN for you whenever you eliminate a prospect from your to-do list. And it's an even BIGGER WIN if you can do this within the first five minutes of talking to the prospect. Here's what you need to know:

• Do they really need your offering?
• Is the financial impact big enough to justify a purchase?
• How do they buy this kind of product?
• Do they have a budget or can one be secured?
• What's their time frame for addressing this issue?
• Who says "Yes" and who can say "No"?

If you can't get a decent answer - or a process to get an answer - to any of these questions, then you're WASTING YOUR TIME.

On the other hand, if you can get answers - or a process in place to get those answers, you've got a real opportunity.

But let's be clear: if that prospect ain't gonna buy, you wanna exit ASAP.

The original article can be found here.

The Global War on Sales Talent - How to Hire and Retain Great Sales Talent

By Kathleen Chester

"Do not demand accomplishment of those who have no talent. Do not charge people to do what they cannot do. Select them and give them responsibilities commensurate with their abilities." -- Sun Tzu, Great Chinese Military Thinker

We cannot blame our sales managers if this thought is lost on them. Sun Tzu had written these words 2500 years ago in an essay "The Art of War" and moreover it was in China. But it is wonderful to note that how appropriate and useful are these words in today's business world, especially in sales.

Improved legislation from the WTO and other international trading organizations have facilitated smoother trading relationships between economies. With the crumbling of protectionist barriers today's business world has become truly global. It makes sense to hire the best possible talent to succeed in a competitive business environment that transcends national boundaries.

Businesses would admit without much hesitation that often their hiring decisions have proved too costly for them. At times they have hired "sales personalities" and found that they had only posited faith in a popular myth. Wrong hiring decision costs much more than actually estimated by sales managers. Unsuitable and incapable sales staffs do not only impede growth of the organization, they drag it back. It takes two years to rectify the problem of hiring the wrong sales person. If hiring the right sales persons is difficult it is a challenge to retain them on a long term basis.

It is possible to hire and retain the best sales talent. The following steps would help a great deal in that direction.

1. Attract the Best Talent: Whether hiring locally or globally the challenges posed are similar -- how to attract the best talent. Offering the best possible compensation and perks as well as an encouraging work environment will create a premier pool of applicants. The challenge is to separate the suitable from the unsuitable. From posting the advertisements for filling up sales vacancies to the final handing over of the employment letters, organizations should plan everything to hire the best possible talent. They should know where talented sales achievers would look for a change of job. Campus interviews are good if raw talent is the target. Referrals from dependable employment agencies and current employees work well in the case of experienced hands when the referring parties know the exact nature of job expectation of the sales position.
2. Creating the Right Profile: The desired profile of the candidates should be created by observing the current lot of outstanding sales performers that the organization has. Some of their traits, if not all, are what the organization should look forward to have in the candidates. Of course, the candidate should have the potential and willingness to develop the remaining traits that are absent in them. Candidates must have multiple profile characteristics such as: high self- motivation, good sales skills, intelligence, empathy, and integrity. Candidates strong in a single characteristic profile or lacking any characteristic profile should be avoided.
3. Having the Correct Selection Method: The HR department that has the primary responsibility of screening candidates should work in perfect tandem with the sales department, which is often not the case. Psychologists Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter have determined in a study about the effectiveness of different employee selection techniques that work sample tests, which simulate important parts of the job are the most accurate predictor of job success. Structured interviews with a predetermined set of questions and a consistent method of scoring candidates is the second best predictor of job success. The sales and HR department should work together to design the tests and questionnaires.
4. Seal the Deal: Once suitable candidates are identified negotiations should be made to get the signed copy of the employment offer. Delay could result in the desired candidate opting to join elsewhere.

Retaining talented and efficient sales staff on a long term basis is a challenge. Sales people have vast contacts and have information about openings in other sales organizations. Dissatisfaction with their current organization would prompt them to explore a new sales opportunity with another company. To avoid this, the following tips will be helpful.

• Giving the True Picture: While recruiting candidates the HR personnel and the sales manager should give the correct nature of the job and not hide anything that may latter cause disappointment on the part of the new hires. It works against an organization when it tries to drum up the pluses and hides the minuses of working with it. The policy of non-discrimination on the basis of gender, nationality, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or ethnicity should actually be in practice.
• Adequate Appreciation and Compensation: Achievers in sales should be praised for their efforts by way of appreciative compliments and adequate incentives and perks. When the times are tough achievers may consider forgoing monetary compensation. But what no human being can do without is the recognition of his/her achievements. Give generous doses of positive reinforcements to achievers.
• Ignoring occasional failures and not being overly critical would help a lot in this direction. Having a Long Term Plan: Having a long term career plan for achievers with the prospect of promotion, employee stock option plans, and possible retirement benefits would encourage sales personnel to stick with the organization for a long time.

Efforts towards hiring the best talent and retaining them should be robust. Financially , it makes a lot of sense and saves precious time as well as energy.

Having good recruitment and employee retaining practices would yield tangible results if they are implemented with the spirit with which they are created. The willingness to implement the practices must come from the top management.