By Melanie Parish @ 1:00 pm
1. Keep the information flowing. Don’t hide your head in the sand and pretend the recession isn’t happening. People will jump ship and look for a new job if they hear rumors about lay-offs and don’t know how they may be affected.
2. Offer as much security as you can in the midst of uncertainty. You may not be able to promise that people will keep their jobs for the next five years, but you may be able to say, “We feel certain we will not have any lay-offs for the next six months and we will re-evaluate then.”
3. Allow people to be human and to have feelings during lay-offs. After lay-offs have occurred, allow a time for the people left behind to talk and express what they are feeling. Help them to recognize that the organization cares that they are feeling strong emotions and understands that their workloads have increased. This will help your employees become productive again sooner. (more…)
By Melanie Parish @ 1:00 pm
1. Make your goal incredibly specific. If you are setting a goal for cold calls, make the number specific. Decide whether it means calls or contacts or conversations. For example, “I will make 100 cold calls where I talk to a new potential client by phone or email.”
2. Set a “complete by” date. A goal without a deadline is like a fishing line without a hook. It looks great on the surface but you won’t catch anything! We all need targets and timelines so that we can pace our progress and establish when we’ve met our goal. Again, make your goal specific, like “I will make 100 cold calls where I talk to a new potential client by phone or email in the month of October.”
3. Imagine the impact of your goal. What is the expected impact of the new activity? How will completing the goal improve your sales in the long term? Short term? This will help motivate you to achieve your goal, and also give you a good sense of whether your goal is worth pursuing. (more…)
By Melanie Parish @ 2:28 pm
Steve Wheatly, the manager of a successful luggage and travel accessories store, recently cut off a Google ad campaign that promoted a product on the company’s website. He was paying as much as $93 per sale, but the product retailed for only $53. That kind of upside-down ROI was the impetus for immediate action, right? Nope. Wheatly reluctantly admits that he’d been watching the situation for more than 18 months before finally pulling the plug.
“I just didn’t want to give up on the sales,” he says, sheepishly.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example. Wheatly’s tale—the story is true, though his name has been changed to protect the guilty—is not uncommon. Many business managers are much more focused on—and have a much better picture of—their revenue than they do of their profit. The focus on the top line versus the bottom line is an issue for companies of all sizes. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that one of the Fortune 500 was reviewing its cost structure for the first time in 10 years. But it is a more pernicious problem for many small businesses that don’t have the luxury of deep pockets and complacent investors. (more…)
