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Competitive Advantage Ezine
Formerly Sales & Marketing Strategies and News Ezine
September 8, 2005 http://www.thecompetitiveadvantage.net
Janine Nunes, Editor JNunes@DouglasPublications.com
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You have received this newsletter as part of your subscription to Sales & Marketing Strategies and News Magazine. Information on unsubscribing to this email newsletter is located at the bottom of this email.
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CONTENTS:
* Career Enhancement: Tackling Procrastination
* Sales Management: Are You Addressing These Four Pressure Points?
* Customer Service: Five Top Errors that Drive Customers Away, by Renee Evenson
* E-mail Marketing: Tips for Improving Response and ROI, by Dan Lok
* Motivation: Making Incentives Relevant to Gen X and Gen Y, By Rick Blabolil
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Career Enhancement
Tackling Procrastination

Be honest with yourself. Are you as productive as you could be? Take a close look at your personality, and assess where it gets in the way. Here’s how to improve your habits:

• Do more of what you’re good at and less of what you’re not. Play to your strengths. If you’re not an inspiring speaker, prepare the presentation, introduce it, but let a stronger speaker deliver it.
• Know when you are most productive. If you’re energetic in the mornings, arrive at work a bit earlier before the rest of the staff. If you’re an afternoon person, discourage interruptions during that time to concentrate on work.
• Set deadlines, even if you don’t need them. A sense of urgency helps you complete projects … and complete them on time.
• Turn drudgery into fun. Do the unpleasant part of a task first, so that you can look forward to the more enjoyable part. You’ll also end on a positive note.
• Build in a reward. Everyone needs incentives … even you!

From Manager’s Edge newsletter, available by subscription only at Briefings.com. Adapted from Procrastination, Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
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Sales Trianing/Management
Are You Addressing These Four Pressure Points?

Organizations that want to achieve and sustain higher sales should pay greater attention to four make-or-break “pressure points,” according to a study by The Forum Corp., an organizational learning consultancy.

The survey of 111 executives from 96 of the world’s leading companies found that four strategically-integrated areas can dictate a sales organization’s success in today’s highly competitive sales environment. They are:

• Sales managers’ skills: Forum’s research determined that sales managers at higher-performing sales organizations are significantly stronger in each of three critical management roles -- strategy executor, motivator and coach-- than their colleagues at lower-performing organizations. The implication: high-performing organizations will equip sales managers with the skills needed to become the versatile leaders they must be.
• Internal sales climate: Higher-performing sales organizations are significantly stronger on four of six important climate factors: clarity, commitment, responsibility and recognition. (Both higher- and lower-performing organizations rate equally well on the two remaining factors of standards and teamwork.) The implication: high-performing organizations will equip sales managers with the skills to model expected behaviors, establish a tone of cooperation, teamwork and excellence, and enable salespeople to accomplish their goals while stretching their abilities.
• Sales organization processes: Higher-performing organizations rate higher on four important processes: opportunity management, performance management, strategic account management, and reward and recognition systems. The implication: high-performing organizations will adopt systems for managing both the opportunities in their pipelines and the performance of their people to ensure new leads are qualified and closed.
• Salespeople’s skills: Forum’s research found that high-performing organizations are stronger at identifying qualified prospects and landing them as clients. The implication: organizations that regroup around the basics will improve their chances for the competitive challenges ahead.

“Our research clearly shows that an organization’s people and the way in which they are managed distinguish successful sales organizations from the also-rans in this increasingly challenging sales environment,” says Ron Koprowski, who heads Forum’s sales and service practice. “Paying attention to the four pressure points can create positive effects, unleashing potential that translates into more effective sales teams and managers, deeper customer relationships and – most importantly – more sales.”

The Forum Corp. is a global organizational learning consultant serving medium-sized and large companies. Visit Forum at http://www.forum.com.
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Customer Service
Five Top Errors that Drive Customers Away
By Renée Evenson

The most common reason customers take their business elsewhere is due to mistreatment by frontline employees. The sad news, for business owners, is that most of the time customers won’t even complain. They just won’t come back.

Research indicates there are five top recurring complaints. These focus specifically on employees who:

1. Don’t listen to what the customer is saying.
2. Don’t do what they say they will when they say they will.
3. Ignore customers completely.
4. Aren’t knowledgeable about their company’s products/services.
5. Don’t follow up or follow through.

It isn’t a matter of doing what you think your customers want, it’s a matter of doing what your customers want.  Here’s a quick teaching tool for managers. To customers, frontline employees present the face of your business. Build strong relationships with your customers by teaching your employees to get FACE-to-FACE.” 

When you put your best face forward, customers will give you:

Renée Evenson is the author of Customer Service Training 101, AMACOM Books, www.amanet.org.
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Direct Marketing
Tips for Improving Response & ROI
By Dan Lok

E-mail has resulted in an explosion in messaging. For some it is a godsend--a technology and a method that allows people to sell products and services quickly and effectively. For others, it’s a doomsday machine, resulting in a spam-filled mailbox filled with angry mail from people who will never again be customers.

You have to learn several special techniques before you can truly leverage and make maximum use of e-mail -- the Internet’s wonderchild.  

Here are some of the most important keys to successful email marketing campaigns:

1. Get permission.  Use Web page sign-up forms or post card return cards, but get permission in a valid way. Create and offer incentives for people to sign up online to receive value-added information. 
2. Target carefully and make it relevant.  Send only relevant e-mail to opt-in subscribers. Develop and give people what they wanted and what you promised. Don’t send e-mail that is outside the scope of what was promised to people who opted in. Target and segment your subscriber base and tailor your messages to specific demographic characteristics.
3. Your subject line is critical. Don’t make it look or sound like spam. The purpose of the subject line is NOT to sell, but just to get people to open the e-mail, that's it!  Be careful of the words you select. Check your e-mail against a spam checker to see that it doesn’t contain words that will automatically result in deletion. 
4. Use your personality. Talk in the first person. Develop your persona as a friend or as an expert. Define your persona based on your customers’ needs and desires and based on professional behaviors.
5. Don’t sell.  Advise, advise, advise. Offer value-added problem solving information, advice, tools and help. Use e-mail to get people to use your e-mail as a reason to call you or visit your Web site.  Offer people more of what they like to build and your personal relationship and their satisfaction and your personal connection with your customer.
6. Create a single, clear and benefit-laden call for action.  Focus on getting people to take one action. Don’t offer more than one action. Identify the action clearly and persuasively and track the results. Get them to click and go to a relevant landing page to net them to take further action.
7. Create a life-cycle campaign.  Design a program that results in you sending out four to six messages over a six- to eight-week period. These recurring campaigns can be created in advance and operated in a totally automated fashion. 
8. Use triggered e-mail.  Design and set up automated e-mail campaigns so that when clients order product or sign up for items or request information online, a suite of e-mail messages are then sent to them periodically, automatically.
9. Use e-mail to get them to Click! Keep the e-mail short - no more than 3 or 4 pages. Relate the first paragraph to the subject line. Drive people to a Web page and then close the sale, don't try to close the sale with an e-mail. Don't mention price or cost in e-mail.The purpose of the e-mail is to PRE-SELL, not to sell. Again, it's to get them CLICK, then to go to your Web page. You can sell them there.
10. Comply with CAN-SPAM Act requirements.  Send from a valid address. Respect all removal requests promptly. Never send a second e-mail to someone who has requested removal. 

For more information visit http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com.
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Motivation
Making Incentives Relevant to Gen X and Gen Y
By Richard Blabolil

Be fluid. Be frequent. Be relevant. If you allow these words to guide your next Gen X/Gen Y employee merchandise incentive program, you’ll likely be successful.

Generations  X and Y are comprised of workers between 18 and 40 years old. With 60 million Gen Yers in and entering the workforce and 18 million Gen Xers already in it, every manager should understand what makes them tick and communicate to them effectively. The looming labor shortage combined with a shortage of Gen Xers to fill jobs means managers will have to be particularly savvy at attracting and retaining Gen Y employees.

Yet Baby Boomers are often at a loss to understand either of these younger groups. Consider two huge cultural differences between Boomers and Gen X and Yers.

1. For Baby Boomers, television was the primary external influence on their childhoods with three networks airing fairly homogenous, predictable programming and commercials. As children, Generations X and Y were not only exposed to the Internet, hundreds of television channels, electronic games and other intense visual stimuli, but also were able to self-select precisely what interested them at any given moment.
2. One in three Gen XYers is not Caucasian as compared to the Boomer generation, which is about 83 percent Caucasian.

Gen XYers are far more individually independent and psycho-graphically diverse as a group. Incentive program administrators need to be sensitive to these differences and respond accordingly both in communication delivery and in their choice of merchandise offerings.

Fluidity
Today, fluidity is key when motivating younger workers. The business landscape changes constantly. Program administrators need to be able to turn on a dime and adjust programs along the way to keep them fresh and to keep enthusiasm high.  It’s not simply about longevity or contrived milestones any more, because employees shift jobs and careers far more frequently than their parents and grandparents ever did. It’s all about merit and accomplishment at any point in one’s career. This means you may need to reward at unexpected junctures.

Furthermore, younger employees crave interaction; they’d rather “do” than observe, so the communication format is critical. Tied into this is their desire for frequent feedback. They don’t want to wait six months or a year for a job review to hear how they’re doing. And because they don’t just communicate with words and numbers, the more visual and dynamic the communication, the more effective it will be. Web-based programs are ideal for this demographic group because they empower administrators to customize incentive initiatives for individuals as well as groups of workers and invite feedback from participants.
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Frequency
It’s a myth that younger workers have shorter attention spans than their more seasoned brethren. It’s just that they’re able to process information faster and from multiple sources simultaneously. They’re “on alert” all the time. Boomers may view the constant bombardment of information as distracting noise, but GenXYers are accustomed to it and seek it out. With hand-held devices, GPS systems, MP3 players and cell phones, the only time many of them are not plugged in is when they’re asleep.

Frequency and integration are the keys to communicating successfully with younger workers. That means the message is delivered often, via different vehicles, such as email, intranet, online newsletters, voice mail, in person, etc.

Relevancy
In the past, incentive programs were standard and fairly constant within companies and across industries. You reached a stated goal, such as a work anniversary or sales percentage, and were rewarded with a management-determined gift. We’ve found that it’s best to reward younger employees with their own buying behavior. What does this mean? In days gone by, workers were delighted to receive luxury-item merchandise incentives (remember the ubiquitous gold watch?). Today’s younger workers are interested in lifestyle-enhancing rewards. But because of diversity among GenXYers, it’s more than a little challenging to pinpoint precisely what any given employee’s lifestyle is!  Perhaps this is why we’ve seen such an explosion in the gift card category.  

Mangers who try to understand what makes the younger generations tick will be more successful at attracting, retaining and motivating them.

Richard Blabolil is president of  Marketing Innovators, Rosemont, Ill., www.marketinginnovators.com.
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Competitive Advantage e-zine, formerly Sales and Marketing Strategies & News E-zine, is published by Douglas Publications LLC.
Visit us at http://www.thecompetitiveadvantage.net.
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