The Employee Life Cycle model has been around for a long time and can take various forms but generally consists of the following phases:

Recruitment and Selection
Orientation and Onboarding
Retention
Performance Management
Development
Separation

Taking a good, hard look at each phase of the model is a great checklist for managing your business and employee needs. The model can and should be used regardless of the size and complexity of your organization and can flex to changes in your business landscape. Each phase should be evaluated from top to bottom in great detail, keeping what works, eliminating what doesn’t and adding what you don’t have. For example, under Performance Management, processes such as employee appraisals, ranking/rating exercises, performance distribution, high and low performer identification, performance tracks for low performers, might be utilized. Forming employee groups to help in this phase ensures buy-in and aids in any subsequent workforce delivery communication. Take the time necessary during this vertical evaluation to arrive at process details for each phase. Most importantly, hold your leadership accountable to follow through on both the employee and business focus of the outcomes.

While each phase is rich in content, it is important to understand they work hand- in- hand to create the culture you desire. To ensure a solid foundation on which to build this model, you should start by evaluating and building a solid core consisting of your mission, values and vision. Make sure you take the time to do this right as these form the building blocks on which your culture will reside. This is a GREAT opportunity to leverage your organization as your market differentiator while branding yourself as an employer of choice. You want the buzz on the street to reflect all the good things you do in designing, developing and delivering the business results through your employees due to a robust, rich employee life cycle.

Rick Fuelling

Fuelling Associates

http://fuellingassociates.com/

Have you ever invested time to prepare and send a proposal to a sales prospect, only to have them not respond to your follow-up calls?  

When is the best time to send a proposal and what is the most effective way to deliver it?

The best time to deliver a proposal is after you have qualified the prospect to determine if they are someone you can and someone you want to help.  Before investing your valuable time or offering up free consulting in the form of a proposal, you should also determine if you need to send them anything at all.   Not all sales require a proposal to close. To qualify, you must have spoken with the true decision maker and uncovered a perceived need, a willingness to fix it, and URGENCY (aka: PAIN).  Unlike need or want – Pain is personal and emotional.  You must also have  developed an MVP (Most Valuable Player) Quality in the perception of the buyer.   Without these components, no transaction will take place.

Once you have qualified your prospect, the best way to deliver a proposal is to first review it verbally with the decision maker.   Whether you speak over the phone or face to face, reviewing the proposal verbally gives you the ability to listen to their tonality, their pitch and pace, and to observe body language.  This conversation also gives to you the ability to ask and respond to questions BEFORE firing off a written proposal.  Review the problem they are trying to solve first to make sure that you are both crystal clear about the problem.  Then review your solution.   Again, make sure that there are no questions or concerns about the solution and that it completely meets their needs.  Finally, review the investment that the prospect is willing to make to eliminate their pain and discuss whether or not your solution will fit.  If not, does it really make sense to send a proposal anyway?

If you insist on sending proposals, it’s vitally important to make the proposal part of the conversation.  Once you put the solution down in writing, the prospect may not need you anymore and may refuse to take your call.  They go dark.  By including the proposal in the sales conversation, you have the ability to confirm that you are on the same page with the prospect with regards to the problem, the solution and the investment.

Jorge Chavez

When you are buying a product or service…:

• Do you trust salespeople?

• Do you like to be sold?

• Do you prefer to deal with a salesperson who is sincerely interested in helping, who asks questions to facilitate mutual discovery, and who listens intently to where you are and where you want to be, or do you prefer the type who can’t wait for you to stop talking so they can tell you all of the wonderful things about themselves, their product and their company?

Most people do NOT trust salespeople.  They need and want to buy, but hate to be sold.

Now let’s be brutally honest.  When you are in a selling role…:

• Are you anxious to share why your product and company is great?
• Are you more comfortable talking about your product than asking tough questions?
• Are you listening more selectively than actively?
• Does your blood pressure increase when you perceive a “buying signal”?

• Do you try to convince people to buy your product or service?   If so, why?

• Is it possible you are addicted to Convincing?  

If you answered yes to one or more of the questions above, you may be a Convince-aholic^© .   If so, you are likely exhibiting a variety of behaviors that is dramatically reducing the quality of your relationships, your selling effectiveness, and your income.

ADDICTION IS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR that temporarily fills a void created by unmet needs.  Most existing sales literature and training programs actually FEED the Convince-aholic Addiction^© by keeping you focused upon asking “leading” questions, manipulation, and slight-of-hand.   Each of these convincing techniques will diminish a salesperson’s ability to develop TRUST, the cornerstone of any successful relationship and the foundational skill of the world’s most successful salespeople.

Some characteristics that come out of Recovery Literature follow.  Please consider the parallels:

The Additive Experience

1. Creates predictable, reliable sensations.
2. Becomes the primary focus and absorbs attention.
3. Temporarily eradicates pain and other negative sensations.
4. Provides artificial sense of self-worth, power, control, security, intimacy, and accomplishment.
5. Exacerbates the problems and feelings it is intended to eradicate.
6. Worsens functions, creates loss of relationships.

If you believe you may be a Convince-aholic and would like to assess the severity of your addiction, please email me and write “I May Be Addicted” in the subject line.

I’ll send you a confidential test that will allow you to determine the extent of your addictive convincing severity and, if you are committed, to begin a recovery program leading to richer relationships and more sales.

Continued Success!

Joe

Copyright ©  Joe Zente  2011.   All Rights Reserved.

What if you, the CEO of your business, were able to spend 50%, 80% or even more of your time doing what you do best – the things that bring the greatest results to your organization? You know the answer. Your business would become more profitable, more fun, and your life would bring you more joy.

Reality paints a different picture. After having interviewed hundreds of CEOs, Larry Linne, author of “Make the Noise Go Away”, learned that CEOs on average spend only 21% of their time doing what they do best. “It doesn’t take a very creative or intelligent consultant to conclude that utilizing the strengths of a First in Command 21% of the time is not a great business strategy”, says Linne. What can be done to allow these incredibly talented people to spend more of their time doing what they do best?

The skills and talent needed to attack the new and complex issues that confront a business reside in the CEO and his Second in Command. When the First in Command does what he does best and confidently depends on his Second in Command to handle “The Noise” (employee issues, problems, client issues, process breakdowns, poor decisions, failed results, and strategic concerns), the First in Command can spend more time on creating value for the business and sleeping better at night. Making matters worse, this noise often snowballs and captures too much time from the first and second in commands. “They deal with one issue, get involved in things they don’t do best, create new problems, de-motivate teams, read additional reports, and get bogged down in the NOISE” reports Linne. How can you work with a Second in Command to get the greatest results?

A strong First and Second in Command relationship will eliminate the noise if they have the right strategies in place. Moving away from traditional thinking and bad habits into noise reducing strategies is the only way out of this mess.

What is it worth to a company to eliminate the noise and get the First and Second in Commands doing what they do best 80% of the time? First in Commands who have answered this question say anywhere between a hundred thousand and multiple millions of dollars.

One of the biggest risks in our business economy today is the lack of availability of our best talent. We need to get our First and Second in Commands back.

To learn more about the Noise Reduction System™ workshops for Second in Commands, email us at Z|three.

What is your most Challenging Closing Scenario?  How are you going to deal with it?

The economy is uncertain.  Business leaders tell us more and more that their targeted sales prospects are becoming increasingly resistant to part with their money.   This translates into longer sales cycles, lower revenues, shrinking margins and growing frustration.

The same stalls and objections come up over and over, and executives want to know how to overcome them.  Do these sound familiar?

“I can’t afford it.”

“We don’t have it budgeted.”

“Can you offer me a better price?”

“It’s on the radar, but it’s not a priority this month.”

“I need to check with my (committee, boss, board, partner, etc..).”

“We’re really busy this month, so I don’t have time right now."

“Can you call me back next Tuesday…?”

“Can you send me some references?”

                                                                     and everyone’s favorite…

“I need to think about it.”

Each of these objections are quoted directly out of The Traditional Buyer’s Handbook for Dealing with Untrustworthy Salespeople.

 Salespeople ask me all the time: “What can I say to overcome these objections?” Unfortunately, this is the wrong question.  Here are some better questions:

• Who is CREATING the objections in the first place?

• What is it that your buyers are objecting to?

• Why are they really objecting?

• Instead of overcoming objections, wouldn’t it be better to AVOID them?

Salespeople are looking for simple phrases or silver bullets.  But this mindset and thinking is exactly what creates the problem in the first place.  They want to know how to SELL the buyer, instead of simply listening, understanding, facilitating mutual discovery, and helping solve problems to make people feel better.

What salespeople really need is a completely new paradigm.  They need to THINK differently.  Prospects only act like traditional buyers by tossing out objections when salespeople try to convince them to buy.  In other words, if you don’t act like a Salesman, they won’t (can’t) act like a Buyer.   

Objections all begin with YOU.   You create objections by your thinking and behavior.  You can ELIMINATE them in the same way.  

If you give Buyers nothing to object to, how can they object?

Stay tuned. I’ll be blogging more on this in coming weeks…

Copyright ©  Joe Zente  2011.   All Rights Reserved.