Top Managers Get Advice on Social Media, Workplace Issues From Young Workers
By LESLIE KWOH

Workplace mentors used to be older and higher up the ranks than their mentees. Not anymore.

In an effort to school senior executives in technology, social media and the latest workplace trends, many businesses are pairing upper management with younger employees in a practice known as reverse mentoring. The trend is taking off at a range of companies, from tech to advertising.

Mentors are teaching their mentees about Facebook and Twitter.
The idea is that managers can learn a thing or two about life outside the corner office. But companies say another outcome is reduced turnover among younger employees, who not only gain a sense of purpose but also a rare glimpse into the world of management and access to top-level brass.

Reverse mentoring was championed by Jack Welch when he was chief executive of General Electric Co. He ordered 500 top-level executives to reach out to people below them to learn how to use the Internet. Mr. Welch himself was matched with an employee in her 20s who taught him how to surf the Web. The younger mentors “got visibility,” he says.

Fast forward a decade and mentors are teaching their mentees about Facebook and Twitter.

At Ogilvy & Mather, world-wide managing director Spencer Osborn, 42 years old, says his younger mentors have taught him how to jazz up his Twitter posts, which had a reputation for being “very boring,” and tell him what’s hip on playlists these days. He finds the knowledge valuable in the fast-moving business of advertising and says he believes the program has also helped boost morale and retention at the firm, with many young mentors saying they feel their voices are now being heard.

The younger mentors have learned how to ask candid questions of their mentees. One young mother asked Mr. Osborn for his input on balancing her career with motherhood and child care.

Ultimately, Mr. Osborn says he envisions making Ogilvy’s reverse mentoring program global, using Skype and videoconferencing to connect mentors and mentees at the firm’s more than 450 offices.

Technology and global thinking are changing so quickly that older executives want to catch up, says Lois Zachary, president of Leadership Development Services LLC, a Phoenix-based consulting firm that helps companies implement mentoring programs. “But it also helps younger people get comfortable in a company. It promotes loyalty, it generates trust.”

That’s got younger employees at Hewlett-Packard Co. clamoring for reverse mentoring. While some workers there have already arranged their own informal reverse-mentoring relationships, the company’s Young Employee Network says it wants to formalize the process in the next few months, starting with the several thousand members who belong to the world-wide group. Logistics haven’t been ironed out yet, but they will likely involve virtual communication over the Web.

“This is a great avenue to speak with decision makers,” says Odile Kane, who sits on the network’s leadership board.

Andrew Graff, CEO of Allen & Gerritsen, a Watertown, Mass., ad agency, says he was one of the first to volunteer when his company launched a reverse mentoring program last year. Under the program, mentors and mentees meet every three weeks for 90 minutes over lunch or coffee.

The 47-year-old has since come to lean on his mentor, 23-year-old Eric Leist, for guidance on everything from the latest smartphone apps to the layout for a new office. Mr. Graff says the most important lesson he has learned is how to be flexible, including allowing employees to work unconventional hours and to check in from home or a coffee shop.

“There’s an assumption that if you’re senior, you have a lot to teach, and if you’re junior, you have a lot to learn, and I’m saying let’s challenge the status quo,” he says.

Mr. Leist says he was surprised when Mr. Graff began sharing management tips during their lunch sessions. “This allows me to take a step back and see what he sees,” says Mr. Leist.

When Cisco Systems Inc. started its Gen Y Reverse Mentoring Program nearly two years ago, “it became a badge of honor,” says Jeanette Gibson, director of social and digital marketing. “When the word got out that a few execs had a [junior] mentor, others wanted one, too,” she says.

Still, it’s not all smooth sailing. Many older workers bristle at the idea of being mentored by someone younger, especially since they usually have many more years of career experience, says Sanghamitra Chaudhuri, a senior lecturer at Ohio State University who recently co-wrote a research report on the topic.

“It’s a mind-set,” Ms. Chaudhuri says.

Accustomed to Updates, New Generation of Workers Craves Regular Feedback

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

The status-update era is changing the annual performance review.

With many younger workers used to instant feedback—from text messages to Facebook and Twitter updates—annual reviews seem too few and far between. So companies are adopting quarterly, weekly or even daily feedback sessions.

Not surprisingly, Facebook Inc. exemplifies the trend. The social network’s 2,000 employees are encouraged to solicit and give small nuggets of feedback regularly, after meetings, presentations and projects. “You don’t have to schedule time with someone. It’s a 45-second conversation—’How did that go? What could be done better?” says Lori Goler, the Palo Alto, Calif., social-networking company’s vice president of human resources. More formal reviews happen twice a year.

For most companies, employee reviews are still an annual rite of passage. Some 51% of companies conduct formal performance reviews annually, while 41% of firms do semi-annual appraisals, according to a 2011 survey of 500 companies by the Corporate Executive Board Co., a research and advisory firm.

And increasing frequency may not make much of a difference if the performance appraisals are ineffective to begin with, say some. One academic review of more than 600 employee-feedback studies found that two-thirds of appraisals had zero or even negative effects on employee performance after the feedback was given. “Why is doing something stupid more often better than doing something stupid once a year?” asks Samuel A. Culbert, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles and the co-author of the book “Get Rid of the Performance Review!”

Some firms have found that the traditional once-a-year review is so flooded with information—appraising past performance, setting future goals, discussing pay—that workers have trouble absorbing it all, and instead dwell on criticism without really hearing constructive ways they can improve.

When Grasshopper LLC, was founded in 2003, the company conducted annual reviews. “We very quickly realized that it was impossible and foolish to sum up an entire year of someone’s work in one meeting,” says David Hauser, Grasshopper’s co-founder and chief technology officer. The Needham, Mass., company, which provides virtual phone systems, then moved to quarterly reviews, but found that employees would spend anywhere from four to eight hours at the end of each quarter preparing and writing their reviews, which seemed like a waste of time.

Now, every two weeks, managers and employees of the 50-person company meet one-on-one for 30 to 40 minutes to discuss issues big (“I want new job responsibilities”) or small (“Can I move my desk?”). They also discuss performance during the previous two weeks and set goals for the next period.

“Instead of these big scary meetings, there are frequent meetings with much less pressure,” says Mr. Hauser. Mistakes have been caught more quickly and tensions have decreased between employees and managers, he says.

The downside is that the biweekly meetings are time-intensive for managers, but Mr. Hauser says that being in regular communication with reports is part of a manager’s job.

Mike Morris, Grasshopper’s vice president of customer acquisition and retention, says he blocks out every other Wednesday afternoon to hold feedback meetings with his six direct reports.

At first, he says, employees were worried that the biweekly meetings would be punitive, but he stresses that they are really about providing feedback and setting goals. “I do think it took a little bit of adjustment,” says Mr. Morris. “There really isn’t anything in those discussions that comes out of left field. As a manager, I’ve tried hard to make sure that it becomes much more of a regular conversation, as opposed to a scary review.”

New software programs are also making it easier for workers and their managers to share instant praise and criticism.

Facebook uses Rypple, a program that resembles the social-networking site and allows workers to give each other real-time feedback (“stop interrupting customers” or “great presentation at the last meeting”). Users can “like” co-workers’ activities, solicit reactions to their work or reward colleagues with virtual “badges,” says Daniel Debow, co-CEO of Rypple, a Toronto-based firm. Twice a year, Facebook managers pull summaries of the feedback to discuss performance, pay and promotions, says Ms. Goler.

Some managers, though, think that even the annual review is too much. Paul Purcell, chairman, president and chief executive of Robert W. Baird & Co., a Milwaukee financial-services firm, says that for his 12 direct reports, he does formal reviews every two years. Most of the company does reviews annually. Doing reviews more often is “redundant,” he says. “You’re spending too much time filling out paperwork.”

by Steve W. Martin

If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, “What makes you different from the average sales rep?” you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world’s leading companies. I’ve also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.

The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.

The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers’ selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style.

1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.

Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece.

2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results.

Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny.

3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals.

Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they’re selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves.

4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person’s hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts.

Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible.

5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.

Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson’s recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance.

6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness.

Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.

7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness.

Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.

Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success.

Once you know your clients’ fear factors, you can find ways around them.
By Mark Stevens | November 4, 2010

We’ve all heard it a thousand times: “I like what you’re proposing, but I need a week to think it over.”

And then the week turns into a month. And an army of advisors come on the scene. Accountants, lawyers, spouses, employees — suddenly the would-be decision-maker can’t make a move until a town hall is convened, a vote is held and the count is certified.

And all the while, you know the deal is going south. Those prospects are engaged in a delaying tactic, sitting squarely on the fence. Your challenge is to push them off. And I do mean “push,” because the conventional approaches of coaxing, begging, pleading and cajoling don’t work. In fact, they have the inverse effect. As you look weaker and more desperate, prospects become that much more determined to nail themselves to the fence.

“OK,” you ask, “how do I accomplish this push without being overly aggressive?”

Well, you need to start by understanding that the prospect is refusing to make a decision because of one primary reason: fear. Your goal is to identify the fear, and then dismantle it.

The following are the top five fear factors and how to remove them as obstacles to your sale:

1.I’m spending money that I think I’m better off saving.

Response: You won’t ever make money by saving it. I know you may be concerned about making a purchase at this time, but this isn’t a purchase; it’s an investment. If you believe it’s a quality product or service, as you say you do, there’s no reason not to invest now and reap the rewards going forward. Good investments start to pay dividends immediately. Why should you wait to start collecting returns?
2.There are far more attractive pricing options on the internet; I’d be overpaying if I accepted your terms.

Response: It’s true that you get what you pay for. The online vendor you’re contemplating likely has no direct service support, no history with you and your brands, you’ve never heard of them or they are not as well regarded as we are. Saving pennies now to give back dollars later never makes sense. By thinking this over endlessly, you’re failing to put the asset you need or want into place. That means you’re denying yourself personally by failing to arm your business with a competitive weapon, and you’re acting as your own worst enemy.
3.My whole team is not onboard with the purchase. The final decision is mine, of course, but I want it to be a consensus.

Response: Consensus is just another word for a committee. You’re right, you are the leader. The best way for leaders to lead is to take action while others are paralyzed. I assure you, given the superiority of this product, once it’s in place your team will appreciate your wisdom and foresight. In fact, I’m going to ask a fellow manager who purchased this from me to contact you and share his experience to date. He too faced resistance internally — some people always say “no” — but he forged ahead and now the decision is widely viewed as a game-changer.
4.What if a new model comes out shortly that makes this version obsolete or second best?
Response: I give you my word that we don’t have any new models ready for market any time soon, nor do our competitors. What’s more, when we do get ready to release a new version, you’ll be among the first to know, and I will work with my company to offer you an attractive upgrade opportunity, if you so desire. You’ll get the best of both worlds: our current state-of-the-art offering and a great trade-in deal as soon as a new version is available. There’s no reason not to act now. You’re protected.
5.This economy is so shaky; it doesn’t seem to make sense to do anything until we have a clearer picture of the macroeconomics.

Response: One of the worst things you can do is allow macroeconomics to dictate how you do business. The world, the economy, is not going to collapse. It may stay weak for longer than we’d both like, but when the pie shrinks, the winners move proactively to claim a bigger piece of it. Those who sit in bunkers waiting for the dust to settle always fall behind those who took immediate action. (If the delayed purchase is for fun or personal use, remind the prospect that he can give in to fear or enjoy life and buy what he loves. Point out that he’s not being reckless in any way. The proposed investment is well within his means.)
Led by the rules of traditional selling, the tendency is to try to entice fence-sitters with sales, deals, special offers, etc., but I say no to that. Find the fear, and demonstrate through a firm rebuttal that the object of concern is really a paper tiger.

Great salespeople don’t try to charm fence-sitters into action. They make it uncomfortable for them to keep stalling by forcing them to confront their fears.

Discover the correlation between the aura you project and your sales success.
By Barry Farber

How important do you think your attitude is to the sale? And I’m not just talking about a positive attitude alone. I’m talking about a presence that’s fired up with enthusiasm and passion for what you do. It’s having the physical and mental energy to keep on going after many people would give up and go home. It’s how you move, how you approach another person, it’s in your handshake and how you stand and face the person. Your energy can make or break the sales call.

When you call on a customer with energy and enthusiasm, it means that you believe in your product or service, and are excited about what you have to offer your customer. This isn’t bravado; a sincere belief in yourself and your product can’t be faked. You don’t have to take my word for it; these are comments from real customers:

“A sales person needs to stimulate me into buying his products. He needs some energy, some enthusiasm, some pizzazz.”

“My favorite rep is incredibly energetic and enthusiastic. She does her job really well and she makes me feel good at the same time.”
Here are some key points to keep in mind about the correlation between energy and your overall success:

Energy = motivation: William Clements, the former governor of Texas, told me, “Energy is the secret to everything. You can be a person of great integrity, character and all these other wonderful things, but if you don’t really put your shoulder to the wheel, so to speak, and start pushing, you’re not going to get to first base.”

Top sellers are pro-active, not reactive: When you look at high achievers in any field, the first thing you’ll notice is their high energy. They are pro-active personalities; these people make things happen instead of sitting back and waiting for things to happen to them. They have a positive attitude–based on a belief in themselves and their abilities–which keeps them going even when they encounter rejection and setbacks.
If you’re wondering how you can maintain your positive attitude, try these energy action steps:

Appreciate the good. We need to remind ourselves to focus on the positive. Sometimes we get so bogged down by the things that are “wrong” in our lives that we forget to be grateful for the things we have that are right. Every so often, take a step back and look at everything you’ve achieved so far. Celebrate how far you’ve come, without worrying about how much there still is to do. As the late, great Earl Nightingale said, “We become what we think about all day long.”

Increase your physical activity level. Physical activity–whether it’s a sport, a workout at the gym or a brisk walk around the block–revitalizes and regenerates us in body and mind.

Fish for compliments. When you feel like your attitude needs a check up from the neck up, and all else has failed, call some of your satisfied customers to hear their positive comments about their experience. This not only keeps you pumped but keeps the relationship strong by staying in touch.
Energy, enthusiasm and a positive attitude can go a long way in forging long-lasting customer relationships. We sometimes underestimate the power of our attitudes and energy level when making sales calls. And your customers appreciate your positive approach more than you realize.

The Future Of Selling: It’s Social
Brian Fetherstonhaugh, 12.03.10, 11:18 AM ET

 In the era of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yelp, buyers have as much control over the flow of information as salespeople. Buying, once a one-way interaction between an informed seller and a curious buyer, has become a conversation between equals, and the revolution in buying behavior is still ongoing.

To find out just what was changing, and why, OgilvyOne did research among 1,000 sales professionals in the U.S., U.K., Brazil and China.

What we learned: Social media has had an enormous impact on buying behavior with 49% of sellers seeing social media as important to their success. In fact, among the most successful salespeople, over two-thirds believe social media is integral to their sales success.

But companies are not adapting fast enough. Sixty-eight percent of sales professionals say they believed that the selling process is changing faster than their own organizations are adapting to it. Companies are not providing solid training to sales professionals in social media. In fact, many are actively discouraging the use of social media despite the fact that customers are buying that way. Nearly half of sales professionals surveyed believe their companies are afraid of letting employees use social media.

Many U.S. companies claim to have a social media strategy, but only 9% of U.S. salespeople say their company trains or educates them on the use of social media for sales. This stands in stark contrast to Brazil where 25% of salespeople surveyed receive training on social media usage. Thirty-eight percent of the salespeople we surveyed in China use personal blogs in their selling process while only 3% of U.S. salespeople do the same.

If salespeople are to continue providing solutions to their customers, selling must evolve in lockstep with buying. There are several significant initiatives that salespeople can adopt in order to remain the ideal partner to an interested customer. The one thing that unites all of these new ideas is the centrality of the customer. This new world of distributed information doesn’t loosen the focus on the buyer. If anything, it sharpens it.

1. New Buyer Journeys
Customers create their own buyer journeys. They take many steps without the seller’s involvement, and they may not always start at step one. A tremendous amount of action happens after the sale, especially when customers experience the brand and then share their experiences with others. Sometimes they talk with a few friends and family, or perhaps they will self-cast their thoughts to hundreds, thousands or millions of others through social media. Salespeople need to find out exactly where their customers are in their journey right now and advise them on the best way to get there.

2. A New Role for Content: Digital Bait
In a disintermediated media world, customers are eager for professionally produced content, and we can use that desire to draw customers to our messages by creating digital bait. There are three main kinds:

–Beliefs and Points of View - Put out what your company believes and what it stands for. Not everybody will like it, but it will attract the kind of prospects already aligned with what you have to sell.

–Expertise – Customers and prospects are hungry for high-quality expert information. They want to be smart shoppers and be informed. They appreciate factual expert opinions about the category and about you. They will generate this information regardless, and you would be well served by having a hand in creating their narrative.

–Invitations and Offers – You need to extend appealing invitations and offers to make it easy for people to engage.

3. New Listening Skills: Digital Footprints
Customers and prospects are throwing off billions of digital buying indications every day. They signal their intentions through the search keywords they use, the blogs they read, the whitepapers they download, and the shopping baskets they fill.

They are leaving digital footprints for the savvy hunter to observe and act upon. IBM, for example, used digital traces to create sales leads for their software group. They studied the exact language that IT buyers used in their searches about software topics and then custom designed a whole raft of inexpensive “how to” videos around these topics. IBM posted them on YouTube and tagged them with exactly the same words that buyers use when they search.

4. New Marketing Skills: Behavioral Economics
Behavioral economics studies why and how consumers make choices as well as the economic impact those choices have. It combines the rational and the emotional side of buying decisions into one view and can produce some surprising insights:

–Creating a default option is one of the most effective ways to make a sale. With out one, human inertia stands in the way of selling.
–Sometimes, increasing the price will increase volume, not reduce it.
–And in another counterintuitive example, adding more choices will often result in fewer yeses, not more.

5. A New Way to Sell: Social Selling
Selling is, now more than ever, a social enterprise. Great salespeople use all their allies to propel customers along the new buyer journeys to close a sale.

To launch the new 2010 Explorer, Ford created a community of advocates and enthusiasts on line. They shared their plans for the new model, previewed the car, and gave their fans first dibs on seeing and test driving the new model. They looped in dealers in 11 major cities, getting them excited about the new vehicle and ready to take pre-orders. Ford can boast of 10,000 pre-orders, eclipsing expectations.

6. A New Partnership: Selling is a Team Sport
Just as sellers are collaborating with buyers in new ways, sales and marketing need a new arrangement. But who should lead and who should follow? Should marketing join sales in having a quota? Regardless of the uncertainties, one thing is clear: Successful selling requires new and deeper collaboration.

---

Great salespeople use all their allies to propel customers along the journey and close a sale. Sales collaborates with marketing; sales uses social media to create momentum; sales works with customers to create solutions.

Your 30-Day Plan
Now, let us leave you with five things you can do in the next 30 days.

1. Walk in the Buyers footprints.
–Write down the exact journey you followed to make the last three big purchases in your personal life.
–What role did a live salesperson play?
–What role did the media play, including search and social media?
–Do the same for your business. Talk to the last three people who bought from you. Exactly how did they buy? –Write it down. Draw the journey.
–Do you have an arsenal of great offers and a systematic way to personalize them?

2. Use digital bait.
–Can you do a compelling 2-minute you Tube video?
–Do you tell people what you stand for?
–Are you providing true expertise and category insights for your buyers and helping them make good choices?

3. Sell something using social media. Maybe it’s something simple like an upcoming event or more complicated like a new product. The important thing is to try it and then to measure it.

4. Get Marketing and Sales in the same room. Take half a day and share a heart to heart session.
–Are you on the same page?
–What more can marketing do for sales?
–What more can sales do for Marketing?
–How can you turn the tennis opponents into a winning basketball team?

5. Join the new selling conversation.
This is the most important time in the history of marketing and sales. Buying has changed dramatically, and we as sellers have fallen behind so far. But our customers want us to catch up. They depend on us, especially as they try to navigate a confusing new world awash in more information than they can handle.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh is chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide.

Be sure to check out the latest issue of Sales Pro Magazine….http://www.salespromagazine.com/index.cfm

Do you ever feel like a “quick change artist” should be part of your job description as a manager?  We are in a new economy and the Age of Information.  The economy is shifting more toward services and knowledge based work.  Computers and technology have created an intense, worldwide competition for business.  Soon, competition for your job could come from practically anywhere on earth.  Careers just don’t develop the way they did ten years ago and that is no one’s fault.
The Age of Information doesn’t care about our opinions, feelings or fears.  The world rewards only those of us who catch onto what’s happening and invests energy into seizing the opportunities that will be brought about by change.
In order to take care of your own career and those individuals who work for you company, you need to manage perpetual motion.  Your organization needs to reshape, shift and flex to fit the rapidly changing world.  These are the only ways to flourish in a fiercely competitive economy.
You can expect flexible ways of working.  Duties and job descriptions being constantly realigned.  Short-lived assignments will become ordinary.  Change can be painful.  When it damages careers, emotions such as grief, anger and depression come naturally, making it hard for people to “buy in” and be productive.  Mobility makes you a valuable member of the management team that has continual interaction with employees.  Your goal should be rapid recovery and instant alignment to changes regardless of the impact on you personally.  Take personal responsibility for adapting to change just like you would if you were accepting a new job and watch how quickly your responsibilities grow within the organization.
Finding and retaining top talent through a changing environment is one of the greatest challenges Corporate America is facing today.  When you establish the reputation as a change agent, you will have a seat at the table for all Strategic Meetings because they will need and welcome your input!

By Jeremy Ulmer

I have worked successfully from a home office in various sales roles in the past, and there are many benefits from working at home; however, there are also many dangers.  Sales managers and sales professionals need to be aware of potential pitfalls. Avoid the following dangers and you will be able to create a highly productive home office environment.

Never Shutting Off The Work
One of the main problems with working from home for sales people is that you are technically always at work. It becomes very hard for your mind to separate your free time and your work time. This can result in an unbalanced life-style and addictive work behaviors. Some common negative habits that are formed consist of constantly checking emails, always taking calls even during non-working ours, and working well into the night.

To help prevent these negative habits, set up a separate office space, maintain set working hours with a clear start and end time to your day, shut your computer down, and turn off your work phone during non-working hours.

Not Getting Any Exercise
Sitting on your butt for 8+ hours a day is never a good recipe for physical fitness and health. If you do work from home, then make sure you are scheduling time for your workouts or participating in some sports or activities to stay active. The body and mind are all connected. Without a strong body, your mind will lack the energy it needs to be productive day in and day out. Without energy and a high level of fitness, you will not produce the same results.

Lack Of Sales Motivation & Procrastination
When you are on your own working from home, it can be easy to slip into procrastination mode. You can help prevent this by setting weekly and daily goals. Make sure you complete your toughest work activity first thing in the day. Consider finding some accountability partners to help you stay on track.

Distractions
This can range from laundry, to cleaning, to TV, to personal calls, to running errands, and to nice weather. I have heard of sales professionals and sales managers who simply were so distracted at home, that they wanted to find an office away from home, even if it meant driving well over an hour each way. You must minimize your distractions and set clear guidelines of what you should be doing and should not be doing during working hours.

Not Feeling Like “Real Work” Was Accomplished
Despite working from home being more popular than ever before, a lot of people still don’t see it as “real work.” They think if you don’t commute an hour each way, dress up in a suit, drink coffee with your peers in the morning, and sit in a daily sales meeting, that it isn’t “real work.”
To others, working from home means you have a license to do what you want, when you want. Although this is not true, you need to make sure you set the boundaries with your friends and family. Just because you are at home, does not mean you are free to help them with favors. They need to understand the hours you work, and that you are serious and disciplined when working and can not be disturbed.

Trouble Getting Up Early
Most people don’t like getting up at 5:30AM or 6:00AM to get ready and drive into work. Working from home will often give you some degree of flexibility in this regard, however, be careful that you don’t take advantage of this too much. Make sure you are getting up, taking a shower, getting dressed, and eating before the time you want to start working. Give yourself a solid hour to prepare for the work day. So, if you want to start work at 8AM, make sure you have an alarm going off at 7AM.

Trouble Sleeping
The fact that you can feel like you are always at work means it becomes hard to shut down. Too often sales professionals will check email a few minutes before going to bed. This means the last thing on their mind are emails from their management, clients, and prospects. This is not a good way to prepare and relax the mind for sleep. To avoid this, make sure you do not log into your email within 1-2 hours before getting ready for bed.

I love working from a home office, but it is not the paradise that many people presume it is unless you are very disciplined and regimented with your approach. Avoid these dangers, and you too can enjoy working from a home office productively and successfully for many years to come.

The New Sales Pro Magazine Site Is Live!  You can sign up for FREE.  Please check it out here…http://www.salespromagazine.com/