Cultivating Confidence

This post is a continuation of my last blog in which I responded to Nick Summers’ article in Newsweek titled Chaos Theory: The New Rules of Management for People Who Hate Rules. In my first post, I addressed the first 5 items on his list of “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.” Here, I’m responding to items 6 – 10. I encourage you to read the entire article to get the full gist of each item, but hopefully my musings offered here will stimulate a thought or two for you. 

1.       Retire the term ‘entrepreneurs’ – News flash!! The world is flat and technology has completely leveled the entrepreneurial playing field. Anyone can float a new product or idea out to the world and prosper. Traditional strategic planning methods fail to recognize the “threat” that this kind of new world order presents for more traditional companies.

2.       You need less than you think – Fancy brick and mortar office space is becoming a thing of the past. Working from home, virtual office space and tools like Webex and GoToMeeting have revolutionized the whole notion of needing a permanent, physical space to gather. However, this increased virtual connectivity does present real challenges in terms of truly engaging employees and managing difficult people.

3.       Pick a fight – Should you desire to point out the flaws of your competitors, the Internet certainly provides a powerful stage for doing so. People who agree with you will have the opportunity to jump on your bandwagon. A blogging platform, in particular, allows you to create a tidal wave of propaganda. Beware, however, that knife cuts both ways. Consider letting consumers “pick the fights” and focus your efforts on how to create customer loyalty to begin with. 

4.       Build an audience – Blogging vs. buying ads. Becoming a thought leader is becoming a very powerful way to market. That is, writing about what you know and what you have done. If your message is compelling and people can easily find your blog, the viral marketing impact can be staggering. Blogging is far less expensive and, when it really takes off, is much more powerful than buying advertising spots. They key is whether you have anything relevant and thought-provoking to say and whether you’re creating fans or CUSTOMERS. If blogging is part of your strategy for improving sales performance, then you better be measuring how many LEADS you actually get through the blog. An adoring audience who never buys anything from you isn’t real useful.

5.       Be a curator – Museum curators make artistic judgments about what art gets displayed and (perhaps more importantly) what art gets left out of particular exhibits. The business impact of proactively deciding what not to do and what not to be is catalytic. Strategic planning methods must challenge leaders to define and communicate their mission, vision, values and unique competitive advantage which forces the conversation about what an organization will or won’t do and why. 

At ADVISA we specialize in helping organizations perform better by maximizing their talent potential and adopting a strategic planning framework that drives daily execution.  Contact us for a conversation. 

If you read Nick Summers article in Newsweek titled Chaos Theory: The New Rules of Management for People Who Hate Rules, you will recognize the following list of “how to succeed in business without really trying.” As I read the following list, I evaluated my own organization against his somewhat unorthodox, but incredibly intriguing criteria. You’ll have to read his article to get the full gist of each but I’ve offered my two cents based on my experience. I’m tackling the first 5 of his list of 10 in this post.

1.       Avoid workaholics – I want people who understand the importance of balance and perspective in life. Too much of anything is unhealthy. While everyone knows this, only wise and disciplined people are successful living accordingly. I want wise, disciplined people working for me. Anyone who’s interested in improving employee morale should consider the toxic effects that workaholics bring into the workplace.

2.       Hire the better writer – Madeleine L’Engle said "We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually." Writers "get" this truth and they bring a certain type of mental processing that allows them to wield the power of words to get results. The expertly written word is often a catalyst for reflection, analysis, debate and action – all really important things in engaging employees in achieving desired business results as well as improving internal and external influence.  

3.       Forget formal education – While I’m a huge proponent of education at every level, I also believe social and interpersonal skills are often more important than “book smarts” to long-term business success. For example, a manager’s understanding of the importance of motivation to an employee’s productivity is more valuable to the success of the business than his MBA.

4.       Drug dealers are onto something – From a marketing perspective, there’s a lot of wisdom here. Great companies’ products and services should be as addictive as crack cocaine. The “try it once and you’re hooked” approach doesn’t require millions of dollars in advertising campaigns and marketing collateral. It only requires salespeople to get out and offer up the best of what you do. If you’re interested in improving sales performance, consider how addictive your product really is.

5.       Emulate chefs – Summers asserts that great chefs share everything especially their recipes. One of the aspects often overlooked in grand, formally designed employee development programs (i.e. The Company “University”) is the simple power of getting colleagues together to share experiences, ideas and just plain talk about what they do and why. Some of the very best learning happens during these less formal opportunities for employees to connect. And often, the very best ideas for continuous improvement come not from fancy, expensive training programs, but just people “trading recipe cards.”

A colleague recently sent me a note referencing Marcus Buckingham’s remarks at an international conference. As you may know, Marcus Buckingham is one of the authors of the world-renowned management books First Break All the Rules and Now Discover Your Strengths. The basic theme in both books is that people perform better (and organizations perform better) when people are cast in roles where they get to use their strengths. Buckingham’s research and work with companies around the globe has substantiated the importance of employee motivation and engagement to bottom line results.

What I found most interesting that my friend shared was that 10 years ago when Marcus worked for the Gallup organization, he asked Americans if they could improve themselves more by increasing a strength or improving a weakness.  Only 24% said increasing a strength; and now 10 years later, there is only slight improvement. Further, the average American only spends about 14% of their time each day using a strength.

So, what is the implication of this? Why is this concept of using our strengths at work so hard to grasp? Is it that companies don’t have the organizational alignment of talent to business objectives? Is it that most strategic planning methods and continuous improvement methodologies ignore the importance of motivation and employee engagement? Is it that leaders and managers don’t care or understand the foundational importance of this truth?

Whatever it is, I hope you’ll take a moment (as my friend encouraged me to do by sending her email) and reflect on what it is that you do best. Then, think a moment more about how often you get to do that very thing. Chances are, it’s not often enough. If that’s the case, I encourage you to speak up, take action and seek out opportunities to put your best self out there. Your employer will thank you, your family will thank you, and you, yourself, will be strengthened and energized by the natural high that results when we get to use our strengths to accomplish something. We, at ADVISA, believe that understanding our strengths and using them is the root of confidence, and that confidence is the currency of success.

There’s no question that companies have had to ask all their employees to do more with less. The question is, “What toll is that overwork taking on employees, organizations and society and what can you do about it?” 

 This column in the May 22^nd – 28^th issue of the Economist cites a group of important statistics from a number of different surveys that point to some very startling work realities:

• The average “job footprint” (what a worker is expected to do) has increased by a third since the beginning of the recession.
• Two-thirds of workers are reporting that they are putting in unpaid overtime.
• 63% of workers say that their employers do not appreciate their extra effort.
• 57% of workers feel that they are treated like dispensable commodities.
• The proportion of workers that are willing to put in “discretionary effort” has dropped by almost half since 2007, while the share of workers who claim that they are “disengaged” from their jobs has risen from a tenth to a fifth.
• 59% of workers are either considering leaving or are actively looking for a new job, and more than 85% of those who are not in the job market are staying only because that market is so dismal.

If you are interested in combating the negative effects of “overwork” in your organization, consider the following interventions. 

My 5 year old daughter takes swimming lessons. I swam competitively, coached youth swimming and still love the sport. Thus, it was important to me that she learned to swim as early as possible – both to keep her safe around the water and to develop her confidence and physical fitness.

There is a lot involved in learning to swim. You must:

1.       Trust your instructor in order to overcome fear of the water

2.       Master a series of physical skills including floating, kicking, breathing, arm strokes, starts and turns.

3.       Perform combinations of those skills simultaneously using proper timing and form.

4.       Practice your strokes until the movements become automatic and you can focus on developing speed and strength.

Put those 4 things in any other order and it doesn’t work. You can’t learn to relax and float face down in the water until you overcome your fear of drowning. Similarly, you cannot improve speed and strength if you don’t have the right timing and proper form. And so on. The progression in learning to swim can’t be re-ordered. Each skill builds on the previous one.  Interestingly, the phrase “sink or swim” doesn’t paint a realistic picture of the progression that must occur to go from unable to keep one’s head above water to real swimming. You can’t just flip a switch and “be a swimmer.”

Similarly, you can’t just flip a switch and become a high performing organization.  You can certainly survive with a successful product or service that meets a market demand, but creating an environment where success is predictable and sustainable is an entirely different process.

The good news is that if you find yourself in a desperate “sink or swim” mode, this blog post will serve as a life preserver of tips and recommendations for making real progress toward organizational success.

·         Successful Strategic Planning – While there are a variety of strategic planning methods out there, the bottom line is that every successful organization has a sense of where it’s headed into the future and why. This vision guides future action and serves as a touchstone for organizational alignment.   Clearly articulating where you’re headed, where you’re not and getting people aligned behind that vision is what makes a strategic plan “successful.”

·         The Importance of Motivation – People do the work. Motivated people do better work. Better work leads to customer loyalty which is a sustainable competitive advantage in any economy. Getting the right people in the right roles and training managers to create an effective, engaging work environment is paramount to long term success. The importance of motivation is that it directly impacts the bottom line. High performing organizations are made up of employees who trust their supervisors, have the resources to do their best work and are encouraged to grow and develop. 

·         Balanced Scorecard Metrics – What gets measured gets done. Identify performance metrics and/or success indicators at the business, department and individual level. When individuals know what targets they need to hit, they perform better. When managers know what targets their team needs to hit, they manage better. When organizations know what targets they need to hit to achieve their goals, they are more profitable. The best companies define success in measurable terms and then assign clear accountabilities and deadlines. This and only this can create the organizational alignment that’s essential to thrive long-term.

Click here to learn even more about how to progress from a “sink or swim” reality to a confident, high performing organization.

The Organizational Alignment Trifecta

The word “align” means to “to bring into line.” A “trifecta” is a bet in horse racing in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first, second and third in the exact order.  And so, the title of this post, The Organizational Alignment Trifecta is a deliberate attempt to highlight how business leaders can get 3 very important things in the exact right order for maximum payout. Here are those 3 things: the strategy, the work and the people. 

First, the strategy. While there are a multitude of strategic planning methods and organizational development theories out there, I want to focus on one very simple truth. Every business needs to understand and make explicit (both internally and externally) its unique, competitive advantage and create a plan for maximizing that advantage into the future given the business reality. Another truth is that strategic plans must be verifiable and measurable in order to be truly effective. Once you’ve identified what business you’re in, what business you’re NOT in (and why), as well as decided upon a strategic position for the future, then you can set measurable targets and performance goals and begin the process of organizational alignment. You must start here. This is your ticket to the race. 

Next, the work. Once you know where you’re headed in measurable terms, you can unpack the tactics, initiatives, projects, tasks and activities at each level down through the organization that are essential to achieving your high level objectives. Leaders must also identify what to stop doing; that is, what is no longer value-added relative to corporate direction. When work objectives and goal setting starts at the top, it is entirely possible to create a meaningful line of sight for the front line contributor to see how his/her work connects with the vision/mission of the organization. Strategic planning methods that don’t create that line of sight do not create a long-term framework for execution. Clarifying and defining the important work that happens down through each level in your organization is precisely HOW you will get from the start line to the finish line. 

Finally, the people. Once you have clarified your most important work in order to achieve your strategic goals, you can begin to match talent to tasks. Each person in your business is uniquely talented and uniquely motivated. No two employees are alike. Understanding the importance of motivation is absolutely critical to designing the human architecture of your organization in a way that maximizes both the achievement of business targets and fosters employee engagement. People excel when they are called upon to use their strengths in performing their jobs. People go above and beyond the call of duty when their managers understand the importance of motivation on an individual level and when they communicate in ways that encourage organizational alignment.   Picking the wrong horses and jockeys will not produce a winning ticket. Not ever. No matter what.

So, if you’d like to place your bet on creating an Organizational Alignment Trifecta, that will pay long-term dividends for you, your employees and your customers, contact me at hhaas@advisausa.com. 

Helpful in achieving the right mix of engagement and accountability is an acute awareness of the importance of motivation to employee engagement and the importance of organizational alignment to effectively holding others accountable. 

·         The Importance of Motivation: As managers, we have the most direct and long-term impact on our employees’ motivation. People work hard for managers who care about them, understand their needs and regularly offer praise and recognition. The busier we get and the more pressure we’re under to perform, the easier it is to forget about the importance of motivation.   Engaging others starts with a focus on what each employee needs to be at their best and most confident every day. 

·         Organizational Alignment – Managers cannot effectively hold others accountable for results if there is not clear alignment of business objectives with corporate strategy. Every employee has to make choices about how they spend their time and energy each day. You want each of your employees to have a line to sight from their job function to larger objectives and business results. The more clarity employees have about WHAT they need to do (key performance metrics) and HOW they need to do it (behavioral competencies for success) the easier it is to both coach and correct.

To learn more about how to navigate the engagement / accountability paradox, visit www.advisausa.com .  
 

We are in the hyper-information age.  More information is not always better.  Information overload leads to confusion, analysis paralysis and bottlenecks in decision-making not innovation and creativity.  Today's best and brightest excel and innovate because they are more selective about what data is relevant and meaningful, and they are more rigorous about defining what problem/issue they are trying to solve in the first place. 

So, let's be clear.  What data is essential to high performing organizations? Data about their most important asset, THEIR PEOPLE.   Personnel assessments / hiring assessments provide information about how people are driven to behave, and subsequently perform, at work.  View this Predictive Index® case study to catch a glimpse of how a valid personnel assessment provides clarity to managers about engaging their employees in their work and how to supervise people for maximum performance. 

Clarity is an accelerant.  Take hiring, for example.  Often we are clear about the knowledge, skills and certifications someone needs to do a job, but we haven't considered the BEHAVIORAL expectations for someone to truly excel.  A personnel assessment / hiring assessment like Predictive Index allows us to clarify how much tolerance for risk, or attention to detail, or sense of urgency we need someone to have.  Using the Predictive Index tool as a hiring assessment helps you better define the performance target for success so you can better determine which candidates bring the right mix of professional and behavioral assets.

If you want more clarity and relevant information about taking your orgnaizaion to the next level, click  to download a free whitepaper.
 

Nothing feels better than when we get to use our natural strengths to accomplish something.  Not only does that feel great, but it follows that our performance of the task, as well as our attitude before, during and after the task, would be great too.

Managers who understand this truth about people and performance are masterful at engaging their employees in getting desired business results.  In fact, that is the essence of management - engaging employees in work that furthers the mission of the larger organization.  The best managers understand the importance of motivation and they view their job as unlocking what makes each individual tick and trying to provide a work environment that meets people's needs.  The use of a reliable, valid personnel assessment can make this process more effective.  The reality is that we're not all wired the same and therefore, a one-size-fits-all management approach doesn't work.  Unfortunately, the importance of motivation and engaging employees gets lost in most "new manager training programs."
 
What new managers need are tools to help them understand the unique personality differences and motivating needs present in each of their employees and then strategies for linking each employee's job to larger organizational goals.  There are lots of hiring assessments and personnel assessments that claim to accurately measure personality characterstics.   A note of caution however:  any personnel assessment that is not used as part of a larger effort to improve and align human performance with business goals is a waste of time and money. 

If you're serious about creating an effective, healthy work environment where everything from recruiting to hiring to management training to employee development and organizational design is laser-focused on creating a workplace where people get to use their strengths, then contact ADVISA to learn more about the Predictive Index(r) system for increasing employee engagement and business results.  Our raison d'etre is helping organizations understand the importance of motivation and engaging employees and we provide proven tools, training and consulting support for leaders and managers at all levels. 

Or click here to download our Leadership Whitepaper.

 

1. Use a valid personnel assessment to identify the drives and motivators for each employee.  This data is essential to best HR practices that include casting people in roles where they get to use their strengths and managing employees in ways that meet their needs.  One size fits all management doesn't work anymore.  Conflict and bad behavior result when people's needs are not met in their job.
2. Hold people accountable for behaving in ways that uphold the Core Values of the organization.  If you don't have a values statement, it's worth the time and effort to create one - even if just for a department.  Clarifying right and wrong; appropriate and inappropriate is critical.  Then, so is holding people accountable to the standard.
3. Create an employee retention program.  That is, identify what steps your organization, department, or just YOU as a manager are going to take in order to retain the very best and brightest talent.  The foundation of that strategy will be understanding what your employees want, need and expect.  Managers can learn that through personality assessment as well as good, old-fashioned conversation.  People work long and hard in an environment that meets their needs.

Someone recently suggested I read an article titled, Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made by Ian Mount.  Given that I'm in the business of helping executives understand the importance of motivation to their employees' performance, I found the discussion of whether certain entrepreneurial tendencies are innate and passed down genetically or learned very interesting.  I do think certain personality drives are hard-wired into us.  I also think certain skills can be learned, perspectives broadened and expertise deepened.  So, what's a well intentioned executive to do with regard to the importance of innate motivation to workplace performance and productivity?  I offer some thoughts below. 
 

• The longstanding nature vs. nurture debate has provided a polarizing backdrop for the use of hiring assessments, personnel assessments, 360 assessments and best HR practices, in general.  There has also been a good bit of research into the psychology of selling and what characteristics separate the best salespeople from the rest.  While you can teach sales closing tips to someone all day long, if they are aren't innately comfortable with the risk and uncertainty that comes with the job, the odds are slim of actually improving their closing percentage long term.  The

  Predictive Index® tool can give you the reliable, valid data on your people that you need.

• And so, it comes down to the importance of motivation.  People perform better when they get to use their inherent strengths at work.  For example, if I'm a natural communicator who loves the stage and easily builds relationships and rapport with others, then I'd love a job where I got to do those very things.  Conversely, if I had a job that required me to pour over spreadsheets and compile data with very little social interaction, I'd be miserable - EVEN IF I had the intellectual aptitude and experience to do the analytical work.
• People perform better when the behavioral requirements of their job match their natural disposition.  In thinking about promoting people and how to supervise people for best results, it just plain makes sense to try to understand the motivational drives and natural tendencies that employees bring to their work.  Click here to learn more about how to supervise people in accordance with best HR practices to maximize performance.

In order to successfully operate a vehicle, the driver relies on the dashboard to provide a picture of the car’s performance. A car’s dashboard displays critical data such as fuel and oil supply, mileage, temperature, system warnings etc.   These signals allow the driver to react, plan and take appropriate action to ensure a safe, timely arrival. These signals also alert the driver as to how to “care for” their car to get the very best performance.

Driving to better sales results also requires a dashboard.  Sales managers need critical information at their fingertips to successfully support their teams.  Unfortunately, most corporate sales training curriculum is not designed to be sales leadership training.  Sales leaders need data in order to develop their people.

Most of our clients have some or all of this data about their sales reps housed somewhere. Consider the power of having all this data displayed side by side for each rep on a Sales Dashboard Report. Our sales leadership training is the most important part of the sales training curriculum we offer.  That's because we weave personality and skills data into the training we give managers on coaching their reps.  Sales leadership training is effective only when the manager can be be both diagnostic about what reps are struggling with and prescriptive about how to get better.  Most motivational sales training lacks a sales skill assessment and a personality component.  These components help create the "dashboard lights" that managers need to drive to better results.

Lest you abandon further reading for fear of philosophical torture, I wato focus this article specifically on the space between what is currently required of your leadership team and what will be required in the future.   This "leadership gap" is a shortfall between current and forecasted leadership capacity and PI® can add tremendous value as you try to fill this gap. For example, do your leaders need team building skills?  Will they be relied upon for doing career pathing?  Which of your leaders will be counted upon for creating a strategic plan?  If an employee retention program is important to your future, who owns it?

Filling the Space Between

Sourcing, selecting, and developing leadership talent is a key business battleground, a C-level strategic imperative. Here’s how ADVISA can help.

Creating a strategic plan requires you to spend some time analyzing where your business falls along both the Vision and Execution continuums. Consider the following if you are debating whether the the benefits of strategic planning are worth the investment.

·         Perhaps you have a vision and/or a documented strategy, but you haven’t realized the results you set out to achieve. Or, circumstances have taken you way off course. 

·         Perhaps the vision was YOUR vision and your people never bought in or weren’t held accountable to work in new ways. 

·         Maybe you are operating without a vision but you have a set of core competencies that you’ve proven you can profitably execute. Is there a cost to not knowing what’s next? Are you at risk of your value proposition becoming obsolete? Are you bored?  

·         Are leaders at all levels of the organization wrestling with these questions and engaging the hearts and minds of their people to help answer them?

Most companies have gone through the exercise of creating a strategic plan.  They host an event facilitated by a consultant where the team comes together for a few days at the local country club to create their mission, values and vision for the future. This is generally time well spent and people feel energized coming out of it. Then, however, it’s back to reality where daily pressures and the demands of our jobs suck us back into fire fighting and survival mode. Mission statements and core values that reside in pretty frames on the wall are generally not top of mind for people on the front lines of getting product out the door, serving customers and hustling for business. We, at ADVISA, know that. And that’s why we stick with you well past the creation of your Mission, Values and Vision to build execution into the daily DNA of your organization.  Put simply, we stick by your side to support strategic planning implementation.

To this end, the benefits of strategic planning with ADVISA include the creation of 1 Year Measurable Objectives that serve as milestones for progress and as a framework for accountability. Our process also includes an Organizational Talent Review where we examine the current org chart in relation to your vision. We help you analyze the leadership pipeline, examine horizontal and vertical job fit and we challenge you to think about what future org design and career pathing will be necessary to accomplish the vision. Most strategic planning processes ignore the “human architecture” of the organization which is what leads to “change management issues.” Managing change is, very simply, managing people. Your people are the conduit to the successful execution of your strategic plan. In order to achieve your vision, your people have to work in new ways, adopt new paradigms and behave differently. Culture trumps strategy every time, hence why PI® data is absolutely critical to strategic planning implementation.

Once we have carefully assessed the people and culture, we begin the process of integrating the 1 year objectives into the performance expectations at every level of the organization. We help you create Key Performance Requirements for your people that provivde a line of sight to the larger organizational goals and objectives. And here’s the best part, once all that hard work is done, your consultant is your long-term partner in helping you get where you want to go. We don’t hop on a plane and say, “Good luck! Nice working with you.” 

So, wherever you find yourself - Wonderland, Blunderland or somewhere in between - we can help you make sense of it. Contact your consultant to discuss the benefits of strategic planning. You’ll be glad you did. 

Crafting a vision for the future is important. It’s the space between happenstance and intentionality. It’s a stake in the ground that says, “We’ve made an intentional choice to do this and not that; or go here and not there; or be this and not that.” This is what creating a strategic plan is all about. 

Consider the following excerpt from Alice and Wonderland between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. 

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.
The Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

Of course, it’s silly to think one could arrive at an unknown destination or hit an invisible target. But organizations (and people, for that matter) do this all the time. Many organizations have not invested the time and money in creating a strategic plan.  The Cheshire Cat challenges us to think about whether the risk of “walking long enough” to “get somewhere” is worth it. Consider that somewhere may not be profitable, relevant, desirable or fun. Somewhere may actually be nowhere. Many organizations deprive themselves of the opportunity to continuously improve, evolve with purpose and actually accomplish their goals because they don’t take the first step which is engaging their employees in creating a strategic plan that provides direction for the future. 

Conversely, having a vision doesn’t, in any way, guarantee improved execution of anything, or the achievement of results. Knowing where you want to end up has nothing to do with getting there. It has nothing to do with the challenges and surprises you’ll encounter along the way, nor the research and planning that’s required to actually map out the best route.  Strategic plan implementation is even more important the planning process itself. 

ADVISA is committed to helping our clients both create strategic plans and implement them.  Contact me to learn more.

We work to help our clients improve their businesses in a variety of ways, one of which is sales assessment and training.  Not surprisingly, since the ecomic downturn, sales is an area that companies are clamoring to shore up.  Many leaders are realizing for the first time that they have serious gaps in both sales talent and skills which had been previoulsly obscured by reasonable profits and growth.  This realization is fueling sales leaders across all industries to seek out sales training curriculum and sales process training.

A word of caution, corporate sales training is a multi-billion dollar industry and if you're serious about putting the wind back in your SALES, you must start by doing a thorough assessment of your salesPEOPLE.  Sales training is a tactic that may or may not pay dividends depending on the strategic goals of your business, the unique strengths and limitations of your salespeople, and the coaching capabilities of your sales managers.   Consider these realities

• Sales performance is a function of one's natural proclivity to enjoy and be motivated by the nature of the work.  Some people are inherently more comfortable with the risk of cold calling and asking for business.  Some people are drawn to relationship building and networking and are naturally good at it.  Some people enjoy and are motivated by the unpredictability and variety of a sales role.  Some people relish the challenge of being told no.  You can provide all the motivational sales training in the world and not move the performance needle at all for some people.  The Predictive Index ® tool accuratley and reliably measures the inherent personality drives and needs that directly impact sales performance.  Casting the right types of people in sales roles can have a dramatic impact on performance. 
• Sales performance is also a function of people having command of core sales skills and confidence in using them consistently.  Sales skills are distinct from product training and industry expertise.  Today's salespeople need mastery of the top dozen consultative sales skills in order to navigate successfully through a hypercompetitive marketplace and in order to build credibility with much more savvy buy;ers.  Skills such as setting a verbal agenda at the opening of a call; or the use of thought provoking questions to uncover buyer's needs; or using link statements to differentiate the value of your solution; or the use of an objection handling process to navigate the close; or use of a targeted campaign to harvest referrals from satisfied customers.  The Selling Skills Assessment Tool™(SSAT) can demystify how your salespeople are arriving at their results by providing a diagnostic picture of individual, group and salesforce strengths and weaknesses.

Put simply, an understanding of your salespeople in terms of both personality and skills is a prerequisite to corporate sales training. 

The word pop conveys energy and impact.  Nothing brings more energy and impact to your business than the people you choose to hire.   According to a recent article published by the Harvard Business Review, the need for companies to have a recruiting plan as well as robust employee retention strategies is more important now than ever before.  

HBR research and our experience with our clients is consistent.  Multi-national companies are already experiencing bottlenecks in recruiting employees in emerging markets, and they are also struggling to find and/or develop talented young managers to replace baby boomer retirees. These issues are compounded by the fact that many companies slashed HR budgets and personnel in an effort to hunker down and survive the economic upheaval.  Thus, personnel selection practices are more disjointed and ineffective than ever.   

So, whether you are contemplating a relationship with an executive recruiting firm or you are trying to tighten up your own internal process for recruiting employees, I recommend the following tips for ensuring that your personnel selection practices POP rather than FLOP as the economic dust continues to settle around the globe.

• Create a job profile before you start recruiting.  Many personnel selection decisions are made without a clear picture of what success looks like in the job.  Job descriptions are outdated and performance metrics may or may not exist.  Take the time to quantify WHAT the job holder will be held accountable for doing as well as HOW the job holder should behave for maximum positive impact. 
• Utilize a behavioral assessment.  The Predictive Index® tool is both reliable and valid for use in the hiring process.  The use of PI® builds objectivity and rigor into the often highly subjective and haphazard process of recruiting employees.  The PI® system allows you to quantify the behavioral requirements of the job BEFORE you begin assessing candidates.  Check out how other companies have improved their personnel selection through the use of PI®.
• Create questions that differentiate the best candidates from the rest.  The best interview questions are those that force candidates to be specific about how they have done or would do a particular task that is critical to the job.  Probe deeply for specific details and press candidates to quantify the impact of the actions they took rather than just describe what they did.  Eliminate fluff questions that don't yield answers that highlight real differences in breadth and depth of experience as well as intelligence.  Better questions yield better information; better information leads to better decisions.

1. Get the right people around the table for the event.  Any plan you create isn't worth much if the people who have to execute it don't understand it or buy into it. 
2. Host a strategic planning retreat.  The word "retreat" means refuge or safe haven.  Getting off site increases your odds of protecting the time so people can truly engage and focus on the future.  You can best engage the hearts and minds of your people when they have a safe harbor from the pressures of day-to-day business operations.
3. What gets measured gets done.  Strategic PLANNING is the easy part.  Strategic DOING is actually much harder.  Recognize that the off site event is the beginning of a process of strategic planning that must include translating broad organizational goals into departmental and individual performance metrics.  Recognize also that your plan may require you to provide your managers with different training and tools for how to supervise people.  If you are striving for different, better business results, then it's likely that your managers will need to manage in different, better ways.  While measuring the right things is essential, equipping your people with new skills is mission critical to achieving milestones efficiently.