Small business owners who are members of The Alternative Board (TAB) get hands-on interaction with other owners who are dedicated to solving your business challenges. By working with your peers to create, implement, adjust and stay on track to meet your goals, you will learn new ways to run your business more efficiently and effectively. With TAB, there is strength in numbers. In fact, 4 out of 5 TAB members are optimistic about their business in their local economy.   When you become a TAB member, you can expect: Different and refreshing perspectives on the common challenges all owners face Accountability to and from a board of peers to help you develop and maintain your results-driven momentum Accountability to and from a board of peers that help you achieve your personal and professional goals
Start solving your business challenges today.
Call Joe Zente today at 512-331-1822 or visit TheAlternativeBoard.com/investinyourself.
© 2008 TAB Boards International, Inc. All Rights Reserved  |  www.thealternativeboard.com  |  1.800.727.0126

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A Recession-Proof Sales Pipeline

After every big party, there is often a hangover.  At least twice each year, many Salespeople, Sales Managers and Business Owners find themselves on the headache side of vacations.  In September, they return from a summer of sun and fun, only to learn that their pipeline from June isn’t going to cut it.  They must start filling it from scratch.  In January, they return from the holidays, only to learn that their November pipeline was deficient and the filling process must begin again. 

This pattern is so common that it has become boring.  During good economic times, managing this pipeline roller coaster can be costly.  During tough economic times, managing this way can spell disaster.

Why do we let this happen?  What about urgency?  Lack of urgency prior to vacation is why the opportunities are still in the pipeline instead of closed, and the elapsed time since then may have been enough for your prospects to forget about their compelling reasons for wanting your help in the first place.  We know this phenomenon as The Law of Diminishing Pain.

What can you do about a measly and inconsistent pipeline?  First and foremost, RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS and COMMIT to fixing things for the near term and long haul.   Get on the phone now, call former and current clients and learn what they’re struggling with today.  While you’re at it, get some referrals or introductions.  Plan your next 3 prospecting events, set dates in stone for the next few months and take immediate proactive action to fill the top of your funnel.  Finally, commit to refuse to accept mediocrity and to upgrading your sales organization for good.

Today’s activities are your leading indicator for tomorrow’s results.  Take control of your destiny by developing a right-sized pipeline.  What is a right sized pipeline?  It is a funnel that is the correct size and shape to withstand any external or economic force.   It requires contact definition.  Here is a guide: 

Suspects (obtained an initial appointment)
Prospects (have need, pain, compelling reason to buy, you are differentiated)
Qualified  (you meet their criteria and they meet yours)
Closable (indicated they will buy)

As an example, John Q. Salespro calculates that 3 closed sales per month are required to achieve his goals.  If John closes 60% of his closable opportunities a right sized pipeline would have 5 at the closable stage.  If half of his prospects don’t make it to closable, he might need 7 qualified and 10 prospects.  If half of his suspects don’t convert to prospects, 20 suspects are required.  So John needs a minimum of 42 opportunities in his pipeline at all times (even during vacation)

Now it’s your turn. Using the criteria above, complete the 3rd and 4th columns.

Is your actual much better than your desired?  If so, congratulations.  You are prepared to start 2009 with a bang.

Is your actual as good as desired?  If so, congratulations. You’ll probably outpace your competitors.

Are you short of where you need to be, or do you need help figuring out how to create a right sized pipeline?    Email me and I’ll try to help you get you where you need to be.

© Copyright 2008 Joe Zente

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As sobering economic news continues to permeate people’s airwaves and 401Ks, I receive dozens of calls from business owners about the increasing number of stalls they are hearing from their sales prospects and salespeople. 

Forecasts continue to be pushed out and people are wondering how to get clients to “pull the trigger” on pending projects.  Many are having a tough time closing business in the face of “wait and see” attitudes.

As a business owner, this economic climate makes it even more imperative to manage attitudes and paradigms (both your own and those of your salespeople).  In the face of various delays, spending “freezes”, discount requests, cancelled appointments, and other forms of increased resistance, it is essential to keep mindsets within the Circle of Influence and outside of the Circle of Concern.

As people get whipped up inside their Circle of Concern, it will not take long for your weaker players to believe all the “bad news”.  In the face of externals forces and chatter, they become demoralized and expect to fail.  You cannot allow this to happen.  Make every discussion you have with your salespeople positive.  Discuss only those things that they can control.  Also, find something to celebrate inside each situation.  Can the economy be better?  Sure.  However, business is still being conducted.   Even companies who are proclaiming project delays or spending freezes are still making purchases.  Whether inside a company, an industry, a country or an entire global economy, there is a Bull Market inside every Bear Market.  The job of a great leader and salesperson is to find it and seize the opportunity.

Some of the things your salespeople are listening to are situations that cannot be controlled or addressed, but most of the things they hear absolutely can be.  Superior salespeople already know this.  Encourage all your salespeople to listen more actively.   How much of what they are hearing are simply first-line excuses or pre-programmed objections, something prospects hope salespeople will buy into so they can get leverage?  What percentage of your prospects are simply bluffing?  How many of those objections, stalls and put-offs can be overcome with better strategies, better sales management and a more effective sales process?   How many of your salespeople are REALLY equipped to sell in an economy as difficult as this one?

It is easy to tell your salespeople what you need them to do and then fall into the trap of  hoping for the best.  Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy.  The fact is the great majority of salespeople simply not capable of doing more than they’ve done before in the face of tougher competition and resistance, without some fairly dramatic change.   So what needs to be changed?  You can learn by assessing your sales force.  There are great tools available to diagnose things and let you know exactly what needs to be done to fix it.

© Copyright 2009 Joe Zente

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WORK & FAMILY
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 30, 2008

Work at Home?
Your Employer May Be Watching

The clipboard toting, clock-watching, quota-setting productivity expert,
peering nosily over your shoulder at work, has been out of fashion in
business schools for decades.

Now he’s back, in electronic form — in the home office.

In a budding trend some employment experts say is invasive, companies
are stepping up electronic monitoring and oversight of tens of thousands
of home-based independent contractors. They’re taking photos of workers’
computer screens at random, counting keystrokes and mouse clicks and
snapping photos of them at their computers. They’re plying sophisticated
technology to instantaneously detect anger, raised voices or children
crying in the background on workers’ home-office calls. Others are using
Darwinian routing systems that keep calls coming so fast workers have no
time to go to the bathroom.

In a budding trend some employment experts say is invasive, companies
are stepping up electronic monitoring and oversight of tens of thousands
of home-based workers. WSJ’s Sue Shellenbarger reports.
Peter Weddle, an author, consultant and researcher on employment Web
sites, calls the trend “21st Century Big Brotherism” that risks being
“horribly intrusive.” Skilled workers “don’t need someone looking over
their shoulders,” he says. But while the monitoring can put a damper on
home life, many people are so eager to avoid commuting hassles that they
see the practice as an acceptable tradeoff.

The technology so far affects mainly freelance information-technology
workers, writers, graphic-design artists and call-center agents. But as
telecommuting grows amid soaring fuel costs, more people will find
themselves on an electronic leash. The monitoring itself may speed the
growth, because it tears down one of the biggest obstacles to working at
home — employers’ fear that remote workers will slack off.

Electronic monitoring is built right into freelance transactions at
oDesk.com, which links 90,000 computer programmers, network
administrators, graphic designers, writers and others with about 10,000
clients world-wide. The system takes random snapshots of workers’
computer screens six times an hour, records keystrokes and mouse clicks
and takes optional Web cam photos of freelancers at work. Clients can
log into the system anytime and see whether contractors are working,
what they’re doing and how long it’s taking them; clients’ weekly bills
are based largely on the data. A small computer-screen icon pops up at
the bottom of workers’ screens each time a screen shot is taken.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Sue Shellenbarger answers readers’ questions about work-at-home
pitches, finding a trained emotionally- focused therapist, and
explaining résumé gaps during job interviews.ODesk Chief Executive Gary
Swart says a client paying a freelancer likes knowing, “You can’t play
Blackjack. You can’t watch YouTube. Why? Because I’m watching you work.”
When one oDesk client questioned an inflated bill from a freelancer, a
check of the screen shots revealed he’d been watching a cricket game
online. The freelancer reduced his bill.

One big oDesk competitor, Elance.com4, says installing “spyware,” as one
Elance executive calls it, is going too far. Elance recently unveiled a
monitoring system of its own that allows freelancers to document their
work electronically, but leaves control entirely in freelancers’ hands.
“We don’t believe in having a camera on your computer, taking pictures
and tracing every move,” says Elance Chief Executive Fabio Rosati.
Several of oDesk’s own programmers quit several years ago when the
company insisted they submit to monitoring.

At first, it seems like “Oh, this is Big Brother” watching, acknowledges
Russell Tweed, a St. Helens, Ore., computer-network administrator who
works on oDesk. But he says none of his oDesk clients has tried to
micromanage his work. Freelancers like oDesk’s payment system; it takes
clients’ credit cards up front and, barring a veto from the buyer, pays
workers promptly every week, eliminating slow-pay problems.

DOES WORKING AT HOME CREATE GLOOMY HOME LIFE?
How does working from home affect your home life? Do work pressures cast
a pall? Are your spouse or kids stressed by your workaday tensions? Or
have you found a way to keep home-and-hearth the relaxed “safe haven”
most people desire? Join a discussion on The Juggle, WSJ.com’s Work &
Family blog.7One oDesk buyer, Juliana Carroll, a Manhattan
financial-services consultant, says she has saved as much as 25% using
oDesk freelancers because they turn out more work faster than
contractors she has found on her own. Menlo Park, Calif.-based oDesk,
which charges clients 10% on top of freelancers’ fees, says its June
2008 revenue was 2.8 times year-earlier levels.

Corporate managers with work-at-home employees also worry about
potential slackers, and some have tightened ties with home-office
workers by monitoring their use of instant messaging or corporate VPN
links. However, employers typically resist Web cam or keystroke
monitoring of their own staffers as too invasive, relying instead on
screening telecommuters carefully and setting measurable work
objectives.

In another sector, call-center companies are tightening the electronic
leash on home-based agents, who handle calls for retailing, travel and
other clients. Call-routing technology at Arise.com8, Miramar, Fla.,
helps keep its 8,000 home agents so tightly tethered to their phones
that they have to schedule unpaid time off to go to the bathroom. Calls
flow fastest to the most productive workers. Arise home agents, who are
all independent business owners, have incentives to take a lot of calls;
their base pay starts at about $8 an hour, but commissions are added for
selling cruises, computers and the like. Top performers also get more
flexibility, in the form of first dibs on work shifts.

To keep calls flowing, Arise agents are discouraged from leaving their
desks. Instead, Arise recommends they anticipate when they’ll need a
bathroom break and schedule a half-hour off the clock, without pay, at
that time — usually every two to three hours.

Another call-center outsourcer, Working Solutions, which has 4,000
active agents, is applying sophisticated speech-analytics technology to
tune an omnipresent electronic ear into numerous home-office
conversations at once.

It’s not unusual for call-center companies to record and spot-check
agents’ calls by listening in now and then. Working Solutions’ new
system goes beyond that to instantly detect and flag such trouble
signals as cancellation threats or angry voices, enabling supervisors to
jump in on the conversations right away, says Tim Houlne, chief
executive of the Plano, Texas, company.

Home agents’ slipups, such as dogs barking or children crying in the
background, are frowned upon. Like most call-center operators, Working
Solutions says it has “zero tolerance” for background noise.

The trend suggests the home office, long regarded as a calmer place to
work, may evolve into just another office, fraught with the same
constraints as a corporate cubicle. Maggie Torres, a longtime home agent
for Arise in Southwest Ranches, Fla., says her children, 17 and 18, have
learned over the years to “stay out and be quiet” when she works. Even
her little dog stops running and jumping; “when he sees me go to that
seat, he goes to his bed and lies down and that’s it.”

But the rewards, she says, warrant the sacrifices. “If you do good on
all your stats you get to pick your hours early. I usually do — and
thank God, I get to pick the hours I want.”