How to handle Stress in your Workplace

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Like most callcenter managers, you are probably ready for a relaxing weekend (as long as their are no emergencies at the site). Here is an article by Greg Frost in which you will find tips for relieving Monday's stress.

With the fast advancement of technology, the stresses faced at work have also increased. Many people dislike going to work, hence the term “Monday Blues”. What is the reason for this? There is partly the fear from being retrenched during strenuous times, leading to greater job insecurity on the part of those who remain. Undoubtedly, occupational stress is one of the most commonly cited stressors faced by people all over the world.

Stress refers to the pressure and reactions to our circumstances around us which results in psychological and physical reactions. While some stress is beneficial for motivation and increasing efficiency, excessive stress can result in negative impacts such as lessened effectiveness and efficiency. There is an increasing number of people are feeling isolated and disrespected at work, and this has led to greater occupational stress. Many companies have taken to consulting experts and professionals on ways to improve connectedness and morale of their employees.

Some companies organize parties and make an effort to allow their employees feel valued at work. These are methods to encourage employees and help them to feel secure at their jobs, which would translate into greater productivity. However, not every company have such measures in place, and some have not gotten it quite right. Hence, it is your choice to ensure that you can cope with stress at your workplace, and utilize it to help you work better. Here are 3 simple steps to help you with coping with stress in the workplace.

Step #1: Raising Awareness
Help yourself to identify when you are facing rising levels of stress, tipping the scales from positive to negative. This is important, as being able to identify signs of being stressed can help you to take the necessary precautions to ensure that your overall quality of life does not drop. If left unacknowledged, the problem will only grow bigger, leading to dire consequences to your health and overall wellbeing.

You can identify if you are stressed up by checking if you have any physical or psychological reactions, such as excessive sweatingor increasing heart palpitations, or the onset of headaches, being irritated or the want to run away. If you experience any of these reactions, identify if you are feeling any overwhelming negative emotions, and if you are constantly worried.

Step #2: Identify the Cause
You have to be able to analyze the situation and identify what is causing the rise in stress. These stressors can be both external and internal. External stressors refer to things beyond your control, such as the environment or your colleagues at work. Internal stressors refers to your personal thinking and attitude. Often, we only start reacting to stress when a combination of stressors working together goes beyond our threshold.

Keep a diary or a list of events that have caused you to experience strong negative emotions, or those that are likely stressors. This will help you to identify the reasons behind your stress. While it is not always possible to eradicate them, we can change the way that we cope with it.

Step #3: Coping with Stress
In order to tackle the situation that is causing you stress, you need to calm your mind and body so as to stave off the reactions and cope with it in a positive way. This can be through different methods, such as taking time off. If a situation is causing your stress and you are unable to calm down, move away from it. Head outside and take a walk to calm down. Alternatively, you can try implementing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing. If it is an internal stressor, stop your thought process until you are able to deal with it logically.

The key to making these 3 steps work for you is to practice them. These are not instantaneous solutions, and you need to condition your mind and practice them so that you can implement it when you are feeling stressed.

What Everybody Should Know To Be An Effective Public Speaker

Many managers (call center and others) will say that they would rather have a root canal than speak in front of a conference. Here are a few tips for you to use if and when it is your turn to take the podium.

Public speaking is not easy. It is a challenge, both an art and a science and to deliver a good speech it has to be effective and make an impact on your audience. These are the steps which you need to take to ensure you make this impact.

Public speaking is not easy. It is a challenge, both an art and a science and to deliver a good speech it has to be effective and make an impact on your audience.

These are the steps which you need to take to ensure you make this impact:

You need to be prepared

You need to understand fully what you are talking about. Research and familiarise yourself with the topic and make sure you are presenting only one main idea, so that your audience are not sidetracked when listening to you and therefore forget what you are presenting. A good way to check your take on the topic, is to see if you would feel confident in answering any questions that you might get asked after your talk.

Make sure your speech is organised into a logical sequence. This will make it easier for your audience to follow and understand you, therefore keeping them interested. They will also find it easier to remember. If you also back your speech up with solid evidence it will help to add credibility to your talk.

The two most important parts of a speech to help captivate your audience are the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is the first contact the audience will have with you and needs to be strong and tempt them to want to listen. The conclusion of the speech will sum up your talk and be the last part that the audience hear. This needs to remind them that you were a great speaker and one that they would recommend to others and come to see again themselves. Therefore it is a good idea to write down on paper, your opening and closing words. It is also good to add real life stories as much as possible into the speech, as they go down well too with the audience.

Once you have your speech outlined and your notes written out, you need to practice your speech, to make sure you are happy with the content, the flow of the words and check whether the timing is correct, ie. fits in the timescale allotted to you. Also, the more you practice, the more confident you will feel when you deliver. To make sure you don’t just read from your notes when you present, outline the main points on you sheet that you will need to prompt you. That way you can scan the whole room whilst you present your speech, involving your whole audience whilst speaking loudly and clearly.

You should now be ready to go out a give the speech the audience want to hear and you can be proud of!

Andrew Rondeau transformed himself from a $4 an-hour petrol-pump attendant to a highly successful Senior Manager earning $500k every year.

Discover how you can remove your fear and reduce your stress of being a new manager by receiving Andrew's free Management e-Course and report: http://www.greatmanagement.org/

What New Managers Should Know About Managing Their Time

Here is an article written by Andrew Rondeau to help new managers manage their time more effectively. Sounds like a gift for new call center managers!

Do wish there were 27 hours in every day instead of 24? This article will give you some tips to help you manage your time.

For some people it doesn't seem to matter how long their day is. They just never seem to have enough time. The clock is ticking and it's ticking too fast for comfort. It feels like they have a million things to do, a couple thousand of which were actually due last week and every new task is urgent and can't wait…

Sounds familiar? Well if it does, you might be one of those people who just don't have a very good relationship with time. It is often a sign that you're not in control of your own day-planner. You may have some things on your to do list that you set out to accomplish, but anything and everything that you come across interferes with your plans. Someone or something else seems to be claiming your time to the extent that you never seem to get anything done. You might be asking yourself: "How can I possibly get everything done?" Good question. The answer is very simple: "You can't and you shouldn't want to".

Wanting to get everything done is probably the main reason why so many people are short on time. They're trying to do too many things and fail to realise that there are only so many tasks that one person can accomplish in a day. Instead of focusing on getting everything done, focus on those things that really need to get done. Separating what's important from what's not important will help you prioritise your tasks. In addition, once you've done this, just remember that priorities are in order. That means that when you're working on something with a high priority it is okay to turn down someone asking you to do something that has a lower priority. Learning to say "no” is a huge time-saver. Of course, you can also say "no" to yourself when you find yourself tempted to interrupt your work for another task that pops up. You will find that if you focus on the most important task that needs to get done during the day, the major things, you will probably have enough time left to fit in some of the minor things.

Time is an area where we can be absolutely sure that everyone is treated equally. No matter where you're from or what your background is, everybody has the same amount of hours in a day. The difference is in how we choose to spend those hours. And that is why some people are considered miracle workers while others never get anything accomplished. Perhaps you've heard the story of the business consultant giving this simple piece of advice to one of his clients. His client was a CEO of a large corporation who felt he and his management team wasn’t performing to their best abilities. They just didn't seem to get the work done. The consultant listened intently for a while and then gave the following advice:

"Every night before your head hits the pillow, take a piece of paper and write down the six most important tasks you must accomplish the next day. Write them down in the order of importance. Then the next day, it at all possible, start on the first task and don't move on to the next task until the first has been finished. This may not always be possible because sometimes the most important thing can be something that comes up later during the day. For instance your most important task may be a certain presentation that is scheduled to take place somewhere late in the afternoon. In that case, you would move on to point number two. You wouldn't want to be sitting idle all day, right?"

When the client asked for the price of this advice, he was told to simply put in into practice and then determine the value himself. After a certain period of time had past the client wired an amount of $25,000 to the business consultant. Apparently, this little piece of advice had worked out quite well for him and the members of his management team. Do this for a while and you will see your effectiveness soar. A great side effect is that people around you are bound to see it too.

Become more efficient in your communication. This means: on the phone, in emails or letters, and of course in face-to-face conversations. A lot of time spent in communication is very inefficient. This is especially wasteful because you're not just wasting your own time but also somebody else's.

Touch everything only once. This can be a really great time-saver. Every piece of information should preferably pass through your hands only once. This goes for mail, email, but also things like certain websites, articles, newspapers and other sources of information.

In order to do this successfully you will need to learn how to take decisions quickly. Some decisions just aren't worth too much of your valuable time. The ability to take decisions is the key to becoming successful anyway. So why wouldn't you want to speed that process up a little. The ability to take decisions quickly, especially minor ones, will free up a lot of time that can be spent on things that are more important. Aside from that, it increases self-confidence, which will help you when making decisions on issues that are more important.

Making Average Managers Into Outstanding Ones

Becoming a successful manager is easy…just copy those who are already successful. Check out these tips…

Do you want to be the best manager around and earn the respect you deserve?

Do you want to motivate your staff, increase their productivity and be a super-successful manager?

Top successful managers never overlook this fact: loyal, productive employees are one of your biggest assets. From corporate cubicles to the factory floor, it's the collective skills and efforts of YOUR staff that keep your operation going. Thus, mastering the art of employee motivation techniques is crucial to maintaining a work environment that is good for both the company and the employees.

You can easily set the right tone in the workplace by learning to respond to a basic need we all share… which is to be respected and valued.

Everyone wants to be treated with respect. And as a company owner or manager, your words, body language, even your facial expressions can make a huge difference in how employees perceive your opinion of them. For instance, extending common courtesies such as a "Good morning" or a nod as you pass workers in the hallway says to them that they are not invisible to you. Other demonstrations of respect could include asking employees for suggestions to improve operations and/or management. It's another way of saying, "I respect and value your opinions." Even offering constructive criticism, in private, to a worker who may have missed the mark says, "I respect you enough not to embarrass you in front of your co-workers…"

Two powerful words are important in employee motivation… "Great Job!". By recognising the work of others, you motivate them to keep working. You'll find that regularly giving verbal or written praise for a job well done goes a long way in making employees feel appreciated. If workers feel that they play an important part in the company by the work they provide, then they are much more likely to seek ways to improve their performance.

While cash incentives are a sure way to put a smile on an employee's face, there are other creative ways to motivate employees through "thoughtful" gestures. For individual rewards, how about gift certificates for DVD rentals, music CD purchases, theme park tickets or "Dinner for 2"? For group or departmental appreciations, consider a "Leave Work 30 Minutes Early Next Friday" reward. Or once-a-month, provide treats in honour of those celebrating birthdays in that calendar month. You are limited only by your imagination and budget.

Placing respect, recognition and reward at the heart of your employee motivation efforts will serve to boost morale, increase productivity and positively affect the company's bottom-line.

Cheer Leaders Inspire Others

One of the many hats that a call center team leader wears is the cap of a cheer leader!

"I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval, than under a spirit of criticism." — Charles Schwab, legendary steel industry pioneer

It has been said that there are only two types of people who thrive on being recognized for their achievements: men and women. (I guess that covers most of us!) Reflecting on a life of pioneering work, 19th century American philosopher and psychologist William James said, "I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology – the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

Effective leaders understand the power of sincere recognition, genuine appreciation, and celebration. These are what provide the atmosphere of encouragement that develops confidence and builds on strengths. This encouragement needn't come from the leader. It can be just as meaningful coming from peers, customers, team members, and other partners. But it's the leader who sets the emotional tone and atmosphere for recognition, appreciation and celebration in his or her organization.

Recognition, appreciation, and celebration continually show up near the top of most lists of motivational factors. In an article entitled "Rethinking Rewards," published in the Harvard Business Review, Andrew Lebby of The Performance Group reports, "Year after year we ask employees what motivates them, and year after year they reply (in order of priority):

A sense of accomplishment in performing the work itself
Recognition from peers and top management
Career advancement
Management support
Salary

"All leadership is appreciative leadership. It's the capacity to see the best in the world around us, in our colleagues, and in the groups we are trying to lead." — David Cooperrider, Professor, Case Western Reserve University

Most of us know intuitively whether someone is being a genuine leader, or is simply "doing their leadership thing." One of the major indicators is how much we feel that person cares about us and our opinions. In my experience, there are hundreds of little ways to tell how much managers care about the people in their organization. Do they use disparaging or objectifying language? Do they involve people in decisions which affect them? Do they try to make the workplace as healthy, safe, and pleasant as possible? Do they ensure that managers are well trained and held accountable for the leadership they provide? Do they openly share "confidential" information? Do they actively practice servant-leadership? Do they individualize rather than generalize? Finally – and this is one of the biggies – do managers ask for, carefully listen to, and act on input from everyone throughout their organization?

Too often managers think they're showing that they care by giving people patronizing pats on the head. These may take the form of goodies such as gifts, parties, long-service trinkets, trivial newsletters, or "royal visits" (occasional "touring of the troops" with much bowing and scraping). Not that these things are necessarily bad. Like anything, they are neither bad nor good in themselves, but in how they're used. When they substitute for treating people as respected and highly valuable partners, they increase cynicism and widen the we/they gap between management and people on the front lines.

One study of U.S. business school graduates shows that a growing number – it's now over half – are turning down higher-paying jobs for those that offer more room for personal growth. But too often personal growth is left completely up to the individual. Many organizations do a poor job of helping people grow. In a survey of 13,000 managers, only three percent strongly agreed that their companies were good at developing people!

Conventional wisdom is that management is getting things done through people. Strong leaders do that well. But they go further. Strong leaders coach and develop people through their work. Sometimes that means helping people do what they don't want to do so they can be the person they want to be.

Jim Clemmer’s practical leadership books, keynote presentations, workshops, and team retreats have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide improve personal, team, and organizational leadership. Visit his web site, http://jimclemmer.com/, for a huge selection of free practical resources including nearly 300 articles, dozens of video clips,  team assessments, leadership newsletter, Improvement Points service, and popular leadership blog. Jim's five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing on All Cylinders, Pathways to Performance, Growing the Distance, and The Leader's Digest. His latest book is Moose on the Table: A Novel Approach to Communications @ Work.

Now You Can Really Motivate Your Staff To Go The Extra Mile

Andrew Rondeau provides a startling statistic about the average employee. Hopefully your call center employees are part of the 75% that do know what is expected of them while at work.

25% of your staff do not know what is expected of them, while at work. Are you shocked at that figure - 25%. I was, so I did something about it. Read the tips and techniques I used to reduce that figure.

To be an Effective Manager and tell Them to have a successful career in any company you must know how to build relationships.

The most important relationship is between the manager and their direct reports. The strength of this relationship can have a direct result on the success of a team. Yes the relationship between the manager and their staff must be ‘open and ‘trustworthy, that's a given – but what else should you expect from your staff as their manager?

During my 20 years plus management career, I've observed and experienced that certain behaviors, on the part of both the staff and the manager, are conducive to productive and rewarding relationships.

I share my views below and I hope that I can help other managers, leaders, staff and teams to improve their relationships and as a consequence, their performance.

What I Expect from My Direct Reports Get involved Successful managers know how to delegate. But even more important, they know when a situation calls for their immediate involvement, whether it's in redirecting resources to a major crisis or visiting their staff at a remote site. If you see a problem rising, there is no excuse for not taking responsibility. I expect my reports to take the blame for things that go wrong and give credit for positive developments to their employees. That is part of being a manager – take the blame but praise the staff/team when things work out well.

It is the manager's judgment call to know when your involvement is necessary and will have the most impact on the business. I have found that effective managers generally get involved when one of these three types of circumstances arise: when somebody is falling behind in their commitments; when important personnel matters arise and in a crisis.

Generate ideas A person who is innovative and creative is rare. I actually encourage individuals to come up with ideas. I listen to what they suggest and say. Together we decide which ideas are taken forward and implemented.

Be willing to collaborate and share The number of people I come across who resist collaboration or sharing credit amazes me. Individuals think by keeping ‘things to themselves' they will become infallible or irreplaceable. The team, department, company can achieve improved results if individuals share their good ideas, practice, ways of working.

As a manager, you have to take this very seriously and I do. Several years ago, I was hired to improve the turnaround time of customer orders for a large blue-chip company. Two of my direct reports just did not get on; they didn't talk to each other; they didn’t turn up to each other's meetings; they argued in front of customers. All this meant they didn't and couldn't work together and because they didn't work together well, neither did their teams. As a result, service was not improving. The three of us met and I told them that it didn’t matter whether they liked each other or not, but the way they worked together had to change. They left the meeting with the agreement they would overcome their differences. I don't know if they ever learned to like each other, but they learned to work well together – and more important, so did their teams. Our overall performance improved considerably.

Be willing to lead initiatives I love change and as a manager, I am always impressed when someone volunteers to lead new initiatives. It shows courage, confidence and flexibility. New initiatives often means new skills, new relationships and new environments, for the individual who volunteers. Most individuals won't put their hand up to volunteer because of the unknown. All I can say, it that those that do, it will be their careers they will accelerate and their profile will increase tremendously.

Develop your staff as you develop You need to manage your own development. However, even more important is the development of your staff. Early in my career, I worked for a great manager. He told me one day, he was going to do everything he could to help me reach my potential. From that moment on, he was more interested in my development than in his own. He went out of his way to criticise or praise me when I needed it. I'll never forget him; he played a very meaningful role in my career.

Drive your own development Keep your own skills up-to-date. Your company may not offer all the development you need. You may have to do your own research. In my career I have read many, many management/leadership/business books (some bad, some good, some excellent). I have also had many mentors.

Ask your boss and peers for feedback. Get yourself a mentor (inside or outside the company). Accept and volunteer for new types of work – learn from the new skills, relationships and environments.

Remember your own development is your responsibility.

A last word…..

25% of all staff don't know what their boss expects of them. As a manager, make sure 100% of your staff know what you expect of them. It's easy to do – the behaviors I expect are listed above. You may have different ones. It doesn't matter – just make sure your staff know. If they do, you will see an improvement in your team's service.

Andrew Rondeau transformed himself from a $4 an-hour petrol-pump attendant to a highly successful Senior Manager earning $500k every year.

Discover how you can remove your fear and reduce your stress of being a new manager by receiving Andrew's free Management e-Course and report: http://www.greatmanagement.org/

Celebration is the Pause that Refreshes

There is a line in this article by Jim that hit home to me and reminded me of life as a call center manager. Jim says  "The relentless drive for ever-higher performance and reaching our next goal often leaves us too numb and exhausted to enjoy what we have achieved". 

"Success is every minute you live. It's the process of living. It's stopping for the moments of beauty, of pleasure; the moments of peace. Success is not a destination that you ever reach. Success is the quality of the journey." — Jennifer James, Success is the Quality of Your Journey

After 45 years of hard work, the grizzled old rancher decided it was finally time to sell the ranch, retire, and really enjoy the rewards of his toil and sweat. So he called a real estate agent to list the place for sale. The agent spent most of a day with the rancher, riding the range and getting a feel for the ranch he would be selling.

A few days later, the agent returned to finalize the listing and get approval for an ad he'd prepared. It was written to attract a city dweller from the large metropolitan area less then 100 miles away. The ad described the freedom of the open range. It talked in poetic terms about the river that happily babbled to the lush green hills as it meandered by. The ad described heartbreakingly beautiful sunsets that painted the big open sky with an awesome array of reds, oranges, and crimsons. It spoke of the deep satisfaction and contentment of sitting on the big front porch and watching the young colts play in the corral.

After reading the ad, the seasoned, old rancher walked over to the huge picture window and silently gazed out. A few minutes later, he softly whispered, "This ranch isn't for sale after all." As the rancher turned to face the agent, a tear ran down his wrinkled, leathery cheek. "All my life I've dreamed of a place just like this. Now I finally realize what I've got here."

The relentless drive for ever-higher performance and reaching our next goal often leaves us too numb and exhausted to enjoy what we have achieved. Rather than pausing to appreciate what we have accomplished, we become narrowly focused on what we haven't yet attained. Dale Carnegie once observed that "One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon — instead of enjoying the roses that bloom outside our windows today."

I've been as guilty of this as anyone. By not slowing down to savor successes along the way, each accomplishment becomes less fulfilling. When I have paused to savor and celebrate, life becomes richer and much more satisfying. I also find that it's a great "battery recharger." Savoring and celebrating is highly energizing. Paradoxically, it's when things are darkest and our goals seem farthest from reach that a focus on what's gone right and what we have to be thankful for can be the most invigorating.

Radical change and aggressive breakthrough targets are often quite daunting. Continual change and constant improvement can be exhausting. That's why effective leaders break the endless improvement journey into a series of short exciting trips. A key element of that is celebrating and savoring successes. It's how effective improvement leaders reenergize everyone to strive for the next goal.

Energizing leaders employ a multitude of creative ways to foster appreciation and recognition, giving among all team and organization members. They also find numerous ways to hike energy and enjoyment levels by marking and celebrating milestones along the way. Energizing leaders constantly search for ways to make change and improvement fun and rewarding. They know that the Laughter Index is a key indicator of the health and vitality of a team or organization.

Taking on this important leadership role means you'll need to overcome deep conditioning that business is very serious stuff. Tom Peters has speculated on the cause of this energy-sapping view of organizational life. He claims that over the entrance to most business schools there's a giant stone lintel with these words deeply inscribed in it, "All ye who enter here shall never smile again." If suppressed laughter does spread the hips and produce gas, that may explain a few things.

Jim Clemmer’s practical leadership books, keynote presentations, workshops, and team retreats have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide improve personal, team, and organizational leadership. Visit his web site, http://jimclemmer.com/, for a huge selection of free practical resources including nearly 300 articles, dozens of video clips,  team assessments, leadership newsletter, Improvement Points service, and popular leadership blog. Jim's five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing on All Cylinders, Pathways to Performance, Growing the Distance, and The Leader's Digest. His latest book is Moose on the Table: A Novel Approach to Communications @ Work.

Which of These Time Management Skills are You Missing?

The one thing most call center managers would ask for is more time in their day. While we can't help you with that request; this article by Wendy might help get you started on better time management.

For many people, time management is difficult as a concept; however, if you take the time to learn some time management skills you can manage your time well so that you get everything done you need to. Here are three time management skills for you to consider and identify which you need to be implementing now to help you reach your goals much more quickly.

1 - Make Things Simpler. Even though it might seem you have a lot of things streamlined, you can usually simplify a lot of things so that you can manage your time better. For example, if you have a lot of clutter, get rid of anything you don't use, need or love; alternatively, perhaps you have too many tasks "cluttering" up your day and don't have time to get everything done, so that eliminating or rescheduling some of these things can remove some clutter and make your day simpler. If you do this, accomplishing what you need to in your daily life will be much more simple and straightforward; you'll also take less time to do this, which can save you a significant amount of time every day.

2 - Review and Reevaluate Weekly. Once you've established your time management techniques, you need to sit down every week at a scheduled time and determine how effective your time management techniques

have been that week; by doing this, you can change what's not working for you so that you make it more effective. If you do this every week and make a plan to consistently reevaluate the time management techniques you've put in place, you can change what's not working and keep reevaluating them so that they continue to do well for you. Figure out what's working and what's not, so that you have an excellent foundation to build further time management skills and fine-tune the ones you have in the future.

3 - Love Your Routines. Develop and learn to love your routines, so that you'll always have a very good idea about what you need to accomplish and by when. Establishing a routine will help you stay on track and keep action and momentum going; therefore, if you feel like you're not getting enough done in a given day, or if you think your time management strategies could use some revamping, routines might just be the way to give you the boost you need. Create routines for different areas of life, such as what you have to do every morning at work, or as a weekly cleaning schedule. When you don't have to figure out what you need to do next because you've laid a schedule out already, you'll find that you save a lot of time.

Discover how to get more done in less time, "5 Quick Tips For Dramatically Improving Your Time Management", by clicking here now =>

time management

Wendy works with business owners to be more effective and successful, achieving a more profitable business in less time using time management skills

Migrating from Vendor to Partner

While Lee Salz did not write this article directly for the call center industry, he does understand the vendor/partner relationship.

    There is no bigger insult to a sales person than being called a “vendor.” Are you the reason why prospects see you that way? In this article, you will learn how to be seen as a partner.

    So, it’s been another round of price squeezing. Very painful! They want it cheaper and your company has tasked you with protecting margin. To make matters worse, the prospect called you one of the worst things possible… a vendor! At this point, you have probably decided that sales really isn’t fun. There is hope! You can change the entire playing field by changing your style, your approach, and your game.

    Let’s look at two restaurants… McDonald’s and Morton’s. When you go to McDonald’s, you are there because you are hungry. When you go to Morton’s, you want a dining experience. McDonald’s offers value meals. Morton’s offers a high cost a la carte dining experience. If you are concerned about price, Morton’s is not for you. The McDonald’s experience involves you ordering a meal and the order is provided quickly and accurately for you. The question asked of every order at McDonald’s is, “would you like fries with that?” (Apparently, fries go with everything.) At Morton’s, the wait staff make initial recommendations, listen to the diner, make additional recommendations based on the dialogue, finish receiving the order, and the end result is a stellar meal. While both are successful restaurants, this is a metaphor for the vendor/partner relationship.

    With that in mind, consider these definitions courtesy of Websters.com…

    Vendor: someone who promotes or exchanges goods or services for money.
    Partner: one who participates in a relationship in which each member has equal status.

    Now consider these…

    Customer: one that buys goods or services
    Client: one that depends on the protection of another

    So if you put this together, customers have vendors, but clients have partners. Let’s make a deal, we won’t call them customers anymore and they won’t call us vendors because at the end of the day, people really want to be treated as clients. Vendors don’t have clients. I suspect that this isn’t overly revolutionary for you, but let’s contrast the vendor/partner relationship.

    Vendors provide data, but partners interpret the data, analyze it, and make recommendations. For example, if you were having a business review meeting and told them how many widgets and gadgets they bought, you behaved as a vendor. If you asked them why the location in Missouri bought 30% more than the past, you behaved as a partner.

    Vendors take orders, partners inquire as to why they want what they want. Out of the blue, you are asked to provide a different service than you have previously provided to your client. The vendor gets it done, and probably pretty quickly too. The partner asks questions to understand why this is desired and determines the optimum way to solve the business challenge at hand.

    Vendors are reactive, or even responsive, but partners are proactive. Many sales people confuse handling issues quickly as being a partner. However, a true partner looks at the business and makes recommendations before challenges are experienced by the client.

    Vendors take a narrow look at the world, but partners see the world in totality. If you were selling windows and your discussions exclusively focused on the windows and their benefits and functionality, you function as a vendor. If you discuss the entire house in conjunction with “the how” the windows purchase is related, you behave as a partner.

    Vendors ask for the business, but partners share their perspective of the synergies that have been identified and ask how to put a marriage together. One of my favorite vendor questions is, “what will it take to get your business today?” There was a lesson I learned at a very young age when using a similar approach. I was selling to someone and we offered a point of sale incentive for buying on the initial visit. After presenting this, the man stood up and said if the deal isn’t good tomorrow, it isn’t good today. It was over seventeen years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. No one wants to be sold. Trite sales expressions create the vendor aura.

    Vendors make sales, but partners formulate mutually beneficial relationships. This is all about matchmaking which will be explored further.

    In the movie “Wedding Crashers,” true love is defined as the soul’s recognition of its counterpoint in another. Wouldn’t it be great if client relationships worked the same way? Well, they can and they do. When true business partnerships are formulated, both parties grow as a result. In essence, one plus one equals four. But how do you find a match?

    As a sales person, it is all about the mindset. If you wake up each morning with the goal of selling something to someone, the likelihood that you will formulate a partnership is probably equal to, or less than zero. Your mindset is about peddling your wares, not understanding and solving business problems. Business partnerships come together by identifying the synergies between organizations resulting in strong benefit for both.

    The mindset of a matchmaker is very different than that of the traditional salesperson. Matchmakers wake up each morning with the goal of finding common bonds with business associates. Think of Velcro. The tighter the bond between the two surfaces, the more difficult it is to separate them. Thus, the ideal business partnership is created.

    But what does it take to do this well? First, you have to master your half of the equation. You need to know every bit of what your company does and who the right audience is for it. You need to understand industry challenges and issues impacting your users. The best sales people are often viewed as industry experts because they understand the pertinent issues impacting their clientele. They have invested time to study and learn what is important to their clientele and mastered those elements. Most sales people never do this. They continue to repeat the same boring sales mantra over and over again. “Can I have your business, please?”

    The second component is the ability to ask key questions of the potential business partner and synthesize the information. Launching questions into the air and failing to process the information is a common mistake. When preparing for the meeting, you should know what questions you will ask and the possible responses that you might hear. You can then prepare the appropriate direction for the conversation based on those responses. Another common mistake is asking questions that have little or nothing to do with matchmaking. There are just so many questions that someone will tolerate in one session, and in totality. Therefore, you need to ask the most relevant ones. Again, proper preparation on your part will help you to avoid this pitfall.

    As a salesperson, there are a number of things you can do to establish partnerships instead of vendor relationships.

        * Learn and understand your company’s capabilities so you can clearly articulate them.
        * Study the industry you are in. Become well-versed on the issues impacting users of your product or service.
        * Ask global questions to understand the overall perspective and direction of the company, not just relative to your solution.
        * Analyze your client’s data. Ask questions of them and make recommendations based on responses.
        * Focus on match-making, not selling.

     
Lee B. Salz is a sales management guru who helps companies hire the right sales people, on-board them, and focus their sales activity using his sales architecture® methodology. He is the President of Sales Architects, the C.E.O. of Business Expert Webinars and author of “Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager.” Lee is an online columnist for Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, a print columnist for SalesforceXP Magazine, and the host of the Internet radio show, “Secrets of Business Gurus.” Look for Lee's new book in February 2009 titled, "The Sales Marriage” where he shares the secrets to hiring the right sales people. He is a passionate, dynamic speaker and a business consultant. Lee can be reached at lsalz@SalesArchitecture.com or 763.416.4321.
 

Motivate Your Sales Team to Crush the Tomato

 In the Call Center world, some would say that sales agents have the toughest job of all of us. In this article by Lee  Salz, you may find a few tips to help your sales agents improve their sales performance.

Motivation is one of the biggest keys to developing successful teams. Every day strong skilled teams are beaten by lesser skilled ones loaded with heart and desire. But who creates the motivation for that to happen?

One of my favorite hobbies is playing baseball with my kids. I'm very involved with their Little League teams and volunteer to help teach baseball skills to the kids. My 7-year old son, Steven, is playing his first year of coach-pitch baseball. Prior to that, he played T-ball which is a very different game.

One day at practice, I was pitching to the team of 7-year olds. Boy after boy came up to home plate and swung the bat as if it were a wet noodle. They picked up the bat, barely swung, and, as soon as they made contact with the ball, stopped swinging altogether. The ball dribbled a few feet in front of home plate and then the process began all over again. It wasn't fun for the kids to play, and even more painful for parents to watch.

Having watched a few kids swing the bat like a piece of cooked linguini, I got an idea. I picked up the ball, walked over to the hitter, and asked what I was holding in my hand. The boy, looking puzzled, said, "It's a ball, Coach!" He resisted all temptation to finish that statement with, "you dummy." I contradicted, "No, it's not! It's a tomato. And the next time I throw the tomato over home plate, I want you to crush it with the bat. Crush the tomato!" A dastardly smile appeared on the boy's face. He went back to home plate to hit again. Ball after ball sailed into the outfield as the boy crushed the tomato. And it wasn't one boy. It was hitter after hitter crushing the tomato with a big grin on their face.

What changed? We didn't teach hitting technique so they were not better-skilled hitters. We didn't change their stance, nor did we alter their swing. It was the same group of kids with the same skill-level using the same old bat and ball. All of these factors were the same, but the results were drastically different.

What changed was a shift in the player's mindset. That shift changed their performance. For one, the kids had a visual in mind when they were hitting. And, that visual was something fun. It also had a little naughty in it. Wouldn't these kids get into trouble if they were crushing real tomatoes? Mom wouldn't like the mess! This real-life story was really Motivation 101 at its core.

This same issue happens on sales teams every day. Sales people show up to work without really being there. They are there in body, but not in mind or spirit. They work the hours, collect a paycheck, and begin the process all over again. Whose fault is it that this culture exists in your company? In my mind, a leader is responsible for inspiring their team to perform. Their job is to inspire success! How many sales people on your team stop their swing as soon as they make contact with the ball? How many balls are sitting in the dirt a few feet from home plate?

There are three reasons why the strategy with the Little Leaguers worked.

The motivation was fun. Sure, technique is important, but that's not the only ingredient of the success recipe. Successful teams have leaders that motivate the group to want to excel. The team relies on its leader to make work fun.

Perspiration without inspiration leads to frustration. Inspired teams don't even notice that they perspire.
 

They could visualize the metaphor. When I spoke with the kids, I didn't toss out meaningless, trite expressions. "Win one for the Gipper" would not have worked with these kids. The tomato was a metaphor that created an image in their minds. I probably could have use a piñata and had the same effect. In either case, a picture was created in their mind that they could replicate.
 

They had a focus for their energy. As you can imagine, many of the fathers were bellowing at the kids; "Lift your elbow!" "Turn your foot." "Move your hands." None of those worked, just like yelling at workers to work harder doesn't yield productivity improvement. The "crush the tomato" expression gave them one thing on which to focus. We just wanted them to swing the bat as hard as they could without directly telling them to do it. We wanted them to swing the bat because they wanted to, not because they were told to do it.

These same three ingredients can be used as a motivation recipe in the workplace.

• Pick a specific area of the business in which you desire an improvement in the results the sales team is producing.
• Create a fun program to inspire the team and create awareness of the issue.
• Develop visuals to promote the program.

One of the most rote sales functions is prospecting. Sales people, fundamentally, despise it, but every sales person needs to do it to be successful. Sales managers have an opportunity to reduce this pain and make the exercise fun. For example, create a team prospecting time where everyone makes calls at the same time. Have prizes for, not only the best results, but also the funniest story about a prospecting experience. Every sales person has one of those, if not a bunch of them.

Years ago, I managed a lead creation channel that was underperforming. Yelling at the partners was not a prudent strategy. So, to get them up to snuff, I created a mock, fantasy football league where the channel partners played against one another each week. Points were awarded for different lead types and standings were kept for the season, and more importantly shared amongst the channel partners. They quickly forgot about lead generation and became focused on winning the championship. Needless to say, very quickly, we were drowning in qualified leads.

Leadership, at its core, is about motivating a team to perform at levels they never dreamed possible. You see it in sports every day. The team that wins the championship isn't necessarily as skilled as the others, but they are driven to achieve. Get creative and inspire your team to crush the tomato!

Lee B. Salz is a sales management guru who helps companies hire the right sales people, on-board them, and focus their sales activity using his sales architecture® methodology. He is the President of Sales Architects, the C.E.O. of Business Expert Webinars and author of “Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager.” Lee is an online columnist for Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, a print columnist for SalesforceXP Magazine, and the host of the Internet radio show, “Secrets of Business Gurus.” Look for Lee's new book in February 2009 titled, "The Sales Marriage” where he shares the secrets to hiring the right sales people. He is a passionate, dynamic speaker and a business consultant. Lee can be reached at lsalz@SalesArchitecture.com or 763.416.4321.

Keywords: sales, sales management, sales consulting, sales training, leadership, motivation, management, sales manager, vice president of sales, sales leader

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