Growing Your Sales Capacity

Grow your sales efforts in tough economic times, don’t shrink them like everybody else does.  On the surface, it seems to make sense that when business slows down, we let some of our sales staff go.  Now maybe you let the bottom feeders of your team go, which is a good thing.  I might point out that showing the bottom feeders (in terms of sales performance) the door is something that should be done on a regular basis, not just when ‘hard times’ fall on a business.

When it gets down to letting good or better than average sales performers go, that’s when we shoot ourselves right in the foot.  Short term gain for long term pain.  When most of your competition (except the smart ones) is shrinking their capacity to generate revenue by cutting sales expenses down to the people, we should go on the offense.   Reducing your capacity to generate sales revenues is a vicious cycle.  Once you do that, then you really have reduced your ability to generate revenue.  Sure, you cut short term expenses at the cost of long term growth.

Instead, look to hire the best available sales talent you can, give them the resources they need to produce and turn them loose.

Now, there are some who will say that what I’m saying is too simplistic.  That’s a cop out.  It takes vision, leadership, and some hard work to expand your sales capacity when every bone in your body is telling you to shrink it in order to ’save the business’.

Sometimes you just have to go the other way and avoid the herd mentality.

Your Own Web-based Radio Show

If you follow this blog, you know that I’m a big fan of leveraging web-based resources like blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, and social/business networks (like Linkedin and Facebook).  I also want to introduce your business to web-based radio.

Imagine if you will, that you could host your own daily or weekly radio show and do it LIVE each time?  You can even do it for free.  If you understand that one of the keys to business growth and success is to continually find ways to give your business a ‘voice’ that allow you to find new customers (and add-value to those that are already your customers), then radio webcasting is for you.

BlogTalkRadio.com is a great example of this kind of service.  Within about 10 minutes, you can start hosting your own radio show on the web in live format.  Sharing your expertise and that of others in a weekly show is in addition to using a blog and your website to do the same.

Another great thing is that you don’t need any special equipment.  You can conduct your show from the comfort of your own computer.  All you need is high-speed access to the web from any location of your choosing.  Talk about portability!

The BlogTalkRadio format is also easy to set up and use.  It also has a revenue sharing component that allows you to split the revenues from ads placed on your radio site with BlogTalkRadio (you need an active PayPayl account to do so).

Like anything else, if you decided to host your own show, remember these things:

1.  Promote, promote, promote.  It will do you little good to host a show and then not promote it well.  Let everyone you know spread the word about your show.

2.  Keep to a regular schedule of shows.  It will serve you well if you pick a day & time to broadcast your show.

3.  Spend a little time planning your show.  Pick a topic within your business realm that is newsworthy, valuable, timely, and interesting to potential listeners.  You don’t have to sound like a professional broadcaster but it helps to sound like you spend more than a minute on planning your show format.

4.  Keep it short.  A 30 to 60 minute show is a fine.  Anything longer is a bore.  Remember, most people have the attention span of a gnat these days.

5.  Promote yourself on the show.  While your show shouldn’t sound like an infomercial, you should carefully plan to promote your business.  Have a blog?  Website?  Podcast?  Special event?  Promote it…it’s your show!

Radio webcasting in a live format is just another excellent way to differentiate your business from your competitors.  Like Nike says, just do it.

Discovering a performance issue in a global team

The Big Dogz know that the biggest problem with managing performance of a remote worker is to identity that there is a performance problem.  Time, culture and technology can mask the signs that a remote employee is having a performance problem. The effective global leader is aware of potential performance problem signals. What do you look for?

Here are some specific signals your global team member may send you:

• Does not respond to email or voice mail
• Does not make regular contact with you
• Deliverables are late, does not notify you
• Other members of your global team complain to you about the work products or delivery schedule
• Does not participate in team conference calls
• Misses status reports
• Tries to redirect the performance conversation
• Turns off the IM software
• Is absent unexpectedly
• Becomes defensive about questions
• Updates are unclear or poorly worded
• Claims computer systems problems keep from getting the work done
• Describes problems in email rather than a phone call
• Spending more time surfing the internet
• Tell you everything is going “great”
• Productivity is dropping
• They are excelling at mundane tasks — ignoring major project tasks
• They do not have awareness of project or company news

Observing these signs does not guarantee there is a performance problem. A general principle to follow is “Is there something unusual happening?” When you see behavior that is not normal, this is a good indicator that something is awry. If it is not a performance problem, then it is probably something you need to become involved with anyway.

The Big Dogz use these signs as guidelines — something to start investigating. As with all performance problems, you will first want to check the person’s ability to do the task assigned. Of course, the Big Dogz do that when they give a SMART objective; but if that assessment was incorrect, now is a good time to adjust. Use the performance feedback process to get the person’s action plan to bring performance back in line with your expectation. Include in your analysis, the workload, the priority in the team for this task and other factors that may affect the person’s ability to perform. Help the person to take action to fix these issues.

If the cause of the performance issue is not ability, then explore the willingness or motivational component of performance. They may have a confidence issue relative to the task. Perhaps you will have to increase your relationship activity with this person, such as encouraging them.

Responding to remote performance issues requires the use of the same techniques and approaches you would use with a co-located performance issue. Of course it will take more time, require the use of technology and adaptation to some cultural issues. The Big Dogz know that paying attention to the potential performance issue signs will pay off in the long run.