Tag Archives: Successes

How Do You Jump-Start Sales in the New Year? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has been working with his team to jump-start sales to set the company on a positive growth path. His team has come up with some interesting ideas. He would like to hear from others as to what they have done to set their companies up for a year of positive growth. How do you jump-start sales in the new year?
Advice from the CEOs:
• Set up a focused, manageable revenue target list of 30-100 existing and desirable new clients. Focus sales efforts on these clients. This is much more effective than a shotgun approach.
• Touch-up and refresh the target list on a consistent basis. Create and lay out a schedule of contacts by email, telephone or meetings and stick to it.
• Schedule regular meetings with the team to share successes and insights gained from their efforts. Compliment this by awarding points and recognition for the best contributions to the meetings. Rather than deciding on the awards yourself, have the team vote on the best contributions. This will increase the camaraderie of the team and will encourage them to support each other
• Develop a focused network to link to former colleagues. For example, if you’ve worked at other companies join or create an alumni group for those individuals on Linked-in. This can develop unexpected new opportunities.

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How Do You Get and Keep the Right People on the Bus? Four Solutions

Situation: A company is experiencing an employee turnover rate of 12%, vs. a company target of 6-7%. This has occurred due to a change in the company’s business environment during the recent downturn as they sought to optimize business practices. Long term employees no longer felt like the office was the “same place.” How do you get and keep the right people on the bus?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Turnover has been a problem principally in the home office – the largest office – but has not been a problem across the rest of the country.
    • Has the company looked at what works in the other regions, vs. what has not been working in home office?
    • Could the problem be related to size and structure of the home office operation? The home office has 55 people whereas the other regions are composed of smaller working groups of 12-15 employees. Does it make sense to look at smaller working sub-groups within the home office, or some different structure that more closely mirrors the regions with low turnover?
  • What can be done to boost morale in the home office?
    • Try creating smaller working teams to mirror the smaller team atmosphere of the other regions.
    • Create a “small office” atmosphere. Build walls to visually separate subgroups – creating their own “space” to foster subgroup affiliation and bonding.
    • Increase the autonomy of the subgroups – and enhance the career path possibilities within the subgroups.
    • Focus on successes, what the “Teams” are achieving, and the contributions that they make to customers and the company. Express Team successes in terms of the impact that they’ve had on customers.
    • Look at the Olympic Team model – individual performers who support each other ferociously to accomplish Team performance goals.
  • Create a visual mural on a large wall representing – perhaps with some humor added – the vision of growth for the company and the opportunities that will accompany this growth.
  • Ask the home office team for input on how to build strong functioning teams or challenge them to define and build the teams.

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