Pivoting around Chickens Rabbits and Zip Lines

Drew SchmitzSales Recruiter (Blue Octopus LLC) | SalesContingent Coach (Grow Faster LLC)… See more74 articles

Since “pivot” has been a common theme of mine the past month, I thought I would share a couple stories about personal pivoting – which is obviously a key strategy in any organization trying to make a profit.

We use the verb version of the word pivot in business to describe a rotation, turn, spin, swivel, twirl or whirl in our business strategy. You might be selling to European truck drivers in 2018 and suddenly you find there is a better market for plumbing and HVAC companies in 2019. It often doesn’t make any sense until it starts to happen to us…

PART 1: HOOPS & ZIP LINES

About four weeks ago, I was putting the finishing touches on a basketball hoop for my 14-year-old son, Jonah. It had literally taken me a YEAR to complete – the pole needed to be cemented into the ground… then I had to fill it with cement which took four additional days (when it wasn’t raining). But slowly, and surely, we were building the world’s coolest basketball hoop for my future NBA All-star (hopefully he turns out taller than me)!

The last step was attaching the glass backboard, rim and net. I was beyond bored with the process and had other backyard tasks, so I hired David, a handyman, for a 1/2 day to help finish it as well as assist me with a couple of other projects.

As they were tightening the bolts on the backboard (my son holding it, David attaching it and me running back and forth with tools), the basketball hoop’s post snapped in half and almost killed my son. Jonah walked away with a bruising scrape on his back but was otherwise, entirely intact. I have no idea what happened and had an attorney come out and take pictures; I followed every bloody step of the instructions (and I hate instructions) and even re-examined the process after-the-fact.

A week later, I asked my son, “Jonah, how about we skip the stupid hoop and I finally build that zip-line off the treehouse that I’ve been promising for years?”

“That would be pretty cool…” Time to PIVOT!

PART TWO: CHICKENS

About three weeks ago, my 12-year-old daughter, Amelie, asks me “Dad, can we get chickens?”

“Huh, what?” I asked.

“Well, we are raising chickens in science class and we can buy one for $5 and bring it home at the end of the year.”

“Cool!” I stupidly respond. “Let’s do it! Get two but make sure they are hens,” All she had to do was bring a permission slip signed by a parent to class and come up with $10.

My fiancé rolled her eyes at me as soon as I excitedly shared the news. “We’ll have to build a chicken coop…” I was already running ahead to raising chickens.

“What in the world do you know about raising chickens? What are you going to do with them in the winter? Have you Googled or researched anything?” she asked me.

“Um… it will be fun. If we don’t like them, we’ll just get rid of them at the end of the summer!”

And… so it began (we’ll finish this story after Part 3)…

PART 3: RABBITS

About 2 weeks ago, I stopped by a bar that serves up my favorite burger and the bartender overheard my fiancé and I discussing our pet rabbits (we have two “free range” bunnies that have roamed the backyard for the last 2 years and we almost never lock them in their hutch).

Kevin, the bartender, starts asking us questions leading to… “Do you want my rabbit, Winchester? I’m pretty sure he’s fixed… I got him from a lady that didn’t want him any more…”

A week later, Winchester arrives at our home. He wasn’t fixed and immediately started mating with our male and female rabbits (Jonathan & Domino).

PART 4: BACK TO THE CHICKENS…

My daughter failed to turn in the permission slip (or get me the teacher’s contact info) and so the last day of school came and went and we were chicken-less.

So, Winchester is now in the half-finished chicken coop. We have a vet friend that has fixed the other two rabbits, but she’s gone for the summer. I’m going to build a better coop and am shooting for autumn chicks… that way we can actually have adult, egg-laying hens next spring.

PIVOT! I wanted a basketball hoop and chickens this spring… but I end up with a cool, new rabbit (albeit a bit randy) PLUS I will have a zip-line by the 4th of July.

Have you considered pivoting your sales strategy of late? If you don’t, life has a way of forcing you to pivot. Ideally, you are planning ahead, and you’ll experience less chaos.

It’s time to grow faster~ Drew

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

What is a Salesperson Exactly?

I was having coffee with someone last week that does online sales assessments. We started to break down what a B2B salesperson really means in 2018. I tend to oversimplify and think of salespeople as an inside or outside employee. Smaller companies tend to only have those two positions – but let’s break down the roles into individual sales skills sets (this blog will not cover the growing list of marketing & social media roles).

In an ideal situation, you have all these people on your team. If not, it’s important to think of these nine roles and who takes on these responsibilities inside your sales team. Some people can do 2-3 of these positions, but almost no one is very good at more than a couple.

1. Sales Leadership: it could be more than one role depending on the size of your organization.
2. Sales Trainer: someone in the company that teaches the product or service (and company culture) to the sales team. Typically, “how to sell” (and close) is still taught by the manager.
3. Sales Admin: they are the organizer and support for all the roles on this list.
4. Sales Channel Manager: this position focuses on managing and selling to distributors. Many companies obviously don’t need this title depending on how their product or service is sold.
5. Account Manager: I have a hard time calling this a sales position unless they are servicing and focused on account penetration (or else this is simply customer service). They typically work full time at a desk. In many companies, the inside salesperson has this responsibility.
6. Inside Salesperson: works the phone and email and converts conversations into appointments or demos. They focus on generating leads at the top of the sales funnel.
7. Technical Salesperson or Sales Engineer: they are the topic expert. In software, they do the demos and discuss content. In other technology companies, this is the Sales Engineer.
8. Outside Salesperson: someone that opens the door to a proposal stage. They work the entire sales funnel from lead to close.
9. Closer: sometimes it’s the sales leader that comes in to help close all the deals. Often it is the responsibility of the outside salesperson. Regardless, closing is a trait that many do not have and separating this role should be considered.

It starts at the top. Many companies end up promoting their best salespeople into sales leadership. I’m guessing a promotion to Sales Manager/Director/VP is successful half the time at best (unless the executives above are matching their other abilities to the position). Sometimes effective sales leaders are only average salespeople, but they understand the science of sales and how to motivate a team.

Regardless of how many different sales titles you have in your organization, it starts with the sales leader. He or she is going to have a lot of input into how these roles are divided. In an ideal scenario, they look at every individual on the sales team and place them in the right role to suit their talents.

I’m a big believer in Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept; there are 3 circles for defining what someone is best at: (a) Passion (b) Skills and (c) Money. If you are skilled and passionate about a certain area of sales, that is where you will have the most value. Understanding someone’s passion, skill set and economic engine lead to more success and less stress. These three circles help define where someone best fits into a sales team.

There are a lot of assessment tools that I use for hiring but start with the Hedgehog Concept and you have a quick litmus test of how to design your sales team.

Forward, never straight~ Drew

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

Better sales recruitment. Better sales coaching. Better sales. 

It’s time to grow faster.

 

A Foolproof Hiring System for Salespeople?

Salespeople are great at interviewing. I, too, have been fooled by someone who looks good on paper, tests well, writes well and is personable. They look great and are hired… but fail.

Over the last nine years, our success rate at Blue Octopus is over 90%. That’s pretty darn good – actually amazing (if I can pat myself on the back), in comparison to most companies hiring salespeople in any B2B industry. But no matter what, we can all make mistakes and our new hires can fail.

Bad hires cost company time and money, hurt internal morale and sometimes damage your external reputation. The most expensive can be the average hires and the marginal performers that hang around for 2-3 years and never really make the company money. Here is an out of the normal paradigm idea…

Need to hire 1-2 salespeople? Hire 8!

• Start interviewing. Upfront, tell every candidate about the entire process below in the first interview. In order to run the experiment with integrity, make sure that candidates will not be surprised along the way.
• Hire 8 salespeople that you believe will succeed and pay them a $50K base + commission.
• Fire 2 of the salespeople after 3 months and give the remaining 6 a $5K raise.
• Fire 2 more after 6-9 months and raise the other 4 salaries an additional $5K.
• At 12 months, you have 4 left standing; fire 2-3 of them and you are left with 1-2 high-performing champions.
• Don’t bother creating new goals for them in their second year. They were fighting for survival in Year 1, so they have already defined their lofty goals for Year 2.
• Give them another raise and let them run.

Of course, you were measuring their activity, results and ROI throughout the year. My last bullet above assumes that they are in the neighborhood of 2-3X ROI (gross margin / cost). If they are under 2X, then the experiment potentially failed (but I attribute that to poor hiring, sloppy on boarding and bad training – feel free to challenge my stupid idea).

The experiment cost: $378,128 + commission paid. Here’s my rough math:

• 1Q, $125K ($50K/4 = $12,500 * 1.25 benefits+ = $15,625 * 8)
• 2Q, $103,128 ($55K/4 = $13,750 * 1.25 = $17,188 * 6)
• 3Q & 4Q, $150K ($60K/4 = $15,000 * 1.25 = $18,750 * 4)

I made some assumptions, but my little experiment will probably cost you about $500K (when commissions are included) in order to identify a star.

A lot of businesses would pay $500K for one guaranteed salesperson. If all of the salespeople brought in $1 million in margin over the course of the year, you certainly made money.

And I think every business would pay that if they found two strong salespeople producing 3x in year two.

Crazy idea? If the team is given good training and has a hands-on manager, it’s a hiring system that could work.

Forward never straight~ DREW

It’s time to grow faster.

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

www.blueoctopusllc.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

If interested in a free copy of my eBook, Sales Neutrinos, please let me know. My next book for sales management is coming soon…

Is a Phone Call Old-Fashioned?

Every day, you only get a few phone calls – probably no more than twenty? Also every day, you probably get 100+ emails from clients, co-workers, friends and others.

So I ask the question – are phone calls a thing of the past? I’ll give you my perspective and I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

YES, I think the phone call is old school. I hate it when someone interrupts my work day with a call on something that isn’t urgent or important; most people don’t want to answer a phone call when they are in the middle of something. Paying clients – YES PLEASE – call me! Candidates, friends, colleagues, vendors and co-workers? I’d prefer an email or text. Then we can schedule a time to talk by phone or in-person (in the near future).

When to make a phone call:

• It’s urgent and something needs to be done within the next couple of hours.
• It’s a pre-scheduled call.
• I can’t really think of a third reason!

Once I end my work day, I find myself too exhausted to call my friends and family. Reason being? I’ve already spent too much time that day talking to people over the phone. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy working with people and helping them out. But I’m a borderline introvert/extrovert so my loved ones usually get texts; often planning a future rendezvous in person. From my experience, most people get exhausted by consistently being on the phone during the day. 

Read this article on why Coca Cola decided to discontinue voicemail last December: http://www.businessinsider.com/coca-cola-just-killed-voicemail-2014-12

When to send an email:

• Just about any time and for any reason. You can send them in the middle of the night regarding something taking place tomorrow or 3 months from now.
• It’s always appropriate to send emails. In fact, it seems more polite as the recipient decides if they want to respond and also when they have the time to respond.

Bonus – When to send a text:

• Just about any time. Think of it as a faster email. Just make sure you know that it’s their cell phone.
• If I haven’t been able to reach a person by email or phone, I’ll often text.
• If they are under 40, you are almost always guaranteed to get a better response rate.

People selling products or services to me, call more than anyone. If I don’t recognize the number, I don’t answer it. Instead, I get a transcribed text message of their voicemail via Google Voice. I’m not saying that the phone isn’t a necessary tool but it isn’t as necessary as it was just a few years ago. I’ve found that some of my friends don’t even listen to their voicemail messages for days at a time. Generation X and Y are up and coming so be prepared for more change… For all I know, Facebook Messenger and Instagram will be the only ways to reach young Americans in the future.

For now: Urgent matters – call. When in doubt – email.

If you are a regular reader of my posts on WordPress, I apologize for my “disappearance” of late. My bi-monthly posts have now returned! Last quarter, I wrapped up my sales eBook “Sales Neutrinos” – feel free to request a copy. Also check out my recent blogs on LinkedIn.

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz

How to Close More Deals

The one question that I’m asked most often is simply “How can I close more deals?“. It’s a loaded question, but if I had only one response it would be that you have a specific sales process which gives you control throughout the entire sale.

Sales is completely different than customer service. In customer service, you bend over backwards to take care of the customer. You react to their needs.

In sales, you only bend over backwards if there is a high probability of closing a deal. As the salesperson, you drive the deal and the prospect reacts. You still want to help people but only if you get something in return. If this sounds selfish than you probably aren’t wired for sales.

1. Call the decision maker(s). “If you can send over some more information, I can ask my manager…” How many times have you heard this? You are calling the wrong person and need to be talking to that manager directly.

2. Don’t waste time on maybe’s. Sometimes it is hard to tell if people are seriously interested. It’s your job to always ask questions that identify the following:

• Am I speaking to the right person?
• Do they need my product or service?
• Do they understand my offering?
• Is this the right time?
• Do they have the budget for my product or service? (see below)

3. You have a series of questions prepared for every phone call or meeting. That means having a series of questions prepared for every phone call or meeting. I repeat – have a series of questions prepared for every phone call or meeting. This requires preparation. Are you putting the work into it?

4. There is always momentum. From the first phone call to inking the deal, there is always a next step. Whether it’s a phone call, meeting or a simple answer, it’s on the calendar and both parties are in agreement on those deadlines. You are continually dictating or asking for the next step. This weekly or daily momentum is where a salesperson is essential.

5. Every meeting has a preset agenda. It’s your job to make it a good one. Do you know everyone involved in making the decision on their end? Figure out who should be there and don’t hold the meeting until everyone can be present. Prior to the meeting, speak to every person involved and simply ask them directly what they’d like on the agenda.

6. At the meeting, use a version of this script.

• Meeting Opener: “I’m not sure if I’m visiting at the right time, but what I’d like to do is just ask you a number of questions about your business. I’d also like to answer any and all of your questions. I can take whatever time you need today or in the future to go as deep as you wish. If it looks like there is no value, we will probably both realize that at the same time and we can end the discussion and get on with our days. Are you comfortable with that approach?”
• Pain Probing Questions: “I’m never sure which is more important, but usually when I’m talking to a CEO, they’re often dealing with X issues and it’s usually one of two things:” (next should be a money and time problem that is related to your product or service’s solution).
• A Catch-All Question: “Is there anything else keeping you up at night in regards to X?”
• Summary: “In regards to evaluating X, what were you planning to do next?” OR summarize issues and ask “What would you like to discuss first?“

7. At the meeting, discuss the budget. 

• “What do these issues cost you per month“?” They won’t know. “How could we find out?” What do you think that problem is costing you every year?” They answer and you respond “Interesting. Where did that come from?” (their best guess or an actual number). “On a scale of 1-10, 1 not being a problem, 10 being a must change, what number would you give your intention to fix the problem?”
• “What is your process for making a decision on this in the present quarter?” Somewhere in here you should find out their process for vendor decisions. If there are a lot of steps and decision makers, ask “How long can you wait through this process while it’s costing your business even more?“
• “Assuming we came back with a solution that (1) fixed the problem(s) (2) stayed within your budget and (3) includes answers to all of your questions – What action would you take?” If you don’t get a commitment, say “Tell me more about that” or “I’m not sure I understand.” Shut up and work through an often uncomfortable moment. Let them think and elaborate a complete response.

8. The Proposal. It should include unique solutions catering to a prospect’s needs. It’s your “canned” proposal with specific answers to their business so that it doesn’t look like your competitors’ template. By the time you are pulling this together, the deal should already be 90% closed and this is only the window dressing.

This process has worked well for me for a number of years even though my prospect doesn’t always like it. You aren’t in sales to make prospects happy, you are selling to close deals and make clients happy.

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz

 

 

 

Evaluating Your Sales Team

Annually, every company should be grading their sales team. I’m not suggesting that we follow Jack Welch and fire the bottom 10% every year but sales leadership should know where everyone rates beyond just their sales output. Your organization has performance metrics but is your evaluation of each individual well-rounded? Before you hire one more person, it’s time to understand your entire sales force. Following are my eight suggestions in examining your present team.

1. Sales Assessment. Through an external company, have your sales team take a brief online evaluation. I have my favorite tool but there are multiple sales assessments that will benefit your analysis. It will help identify your team’s strengths and weaknesses.

2. Metrics. The following are the three performance metrics that I believe are the most important:

• Annual and quarterly sales/gross margin. The closer you can get to a “real” gross margin or bottom line number, the better for calculating ROI.
• Number of deals pitched / percentage closed. Are they bringing enough opportunities to the table and closing a healthy percentage?
• $ deals in their pipeline 6 months into the future. If they haven’t done as much lately, this provides a glimpse ahead before judging their productivity.

3. Territory and workload. Territories are never completely “fair” and you should take that into consideration. Senior reps also often build up repeat customers and may not be landing a lot of new accounts. Also, consider if they have unique responsibilities beyond business development so that you have a balanced view of their value.

4. Price tag. Are they expensive based on their base salary? Do they have a gracious commission plan with repeat business that makes them more expensive? The quickest way to rank their cost is by dividing their annual gross margin production by their total compensation (going back as far as three years).

5. Continual improvement. I don’t care how green or tenured the salesperson – do they show promise for better production every year? When you challenge them, do they step up?

6. Teammate. Do your salespeople bring positive energy to the sales meetings? Or are they a pain that brings everyone down? Do they pass one another leads?

7. Leadership. Without a manager title, does a particular salesperson’s words and actions cause the entire group to hit higher marks? Do they make your team stronger through mentoring and helping their peers? Are there other intangibles in some of your salespeople that make the company better?

8. Manageability. Is the salesperson easy or difficult to manage? Are they self-reliant or constantly demanding your time for reasons that don’t involve customers? Do they follow the rules, document their calls, finish their paperwork and taking accountability for their results?

Now put it all together and label everyone “great”, “good”, “average” or “under-performer” and let them know where they rank based on all of the above. Everyone on the team should know their strengths and weaknesses and what it takes to climb into the “great” category.

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz

 

 

 

8 Ways to Warm up Cold Calls

Baby it’s cold outside… First off, I will suggest that seasoned salespeople probably shouldn’t be making cold calls. I’m hoping you have developed an extensive list of past clients or prospects and you already know which 200 people to contact this month. Option two is that your marketing department and/or junior salesperson is generating leads for you. With that said – SOMEONE still probably has to make cold calls and I have some ideas for you.

8 Suggestions to WARM it Up!

1. Targeting. I rant about this on an ongoing basis. If you don’t have a focus, you are losing – so practice the art of targeting businesses that you can help most. Wouldn’t it be great to have a conversation starter as you are calling on 100 banks (or insert industry here) this week? After reading up on banking on a Monday, you’ll already have a lot of intel and understanding of their present needs.

2. Find their email address. Today, you will usually get a hold of prospects on the phone after an email conversation. You know the name of the person and their website (i.e. Drew Schmitz and blueoctopusllc.com). You can always guess “dschmitz@blueoctopusllc.com”, but in this instance, you’d be wrong. I usually Google the following:

• “*@blueoctopusllc.com” to figure out the typical prefix for emails within a company.
• You can also try Googling “Drew Schmitz” and “*@blueoctopusllc.com” to possibly find the specific person’s email address.

I’ve found over half of my prospects’ emails just using a search engine this way. The internet is loaded with surprising information and you will even bump into a few direct dial numbers online as well…

3. Get their direct phone number. If you call the front desk and ask for Joe Blow, you will get Joe’s voice mail about 95% of the time. If he/she is important, they already have multiple salespeople calling them every week and they don’t answer phone calls from people and phone numbers that they don’t already know. Get a referral (LinkedIn is a great tool for this), start with the email (you may get an auto-response with their phone number attached) or just ask the receptionist. If you get their direct line, the odds of them answering skyrocket.

4. Lie. There’s one place in my life where I blatantly lie and that’s when I’m trying to reach a prospect. Some of my favorite lines are “I’m calling him back”… “I lost her phone number”… or “I met him at a function last week”. When they ask for your name, tell them “Drew”. Drew who? “Schmitz”. Drew from where? “Blue LLC”. They’ll get tired and stop asking. If you are stern/direct with the receptionist, I’ve found them more likely to put you through because you sound important. These are the stupid games we need to play in sales in order to get decision makers on the line.

5. Control your voice. Keep in mind, they are hearing half of your words (at best), so vocal pitch, volume and rate (not too fast) are keys to piquing their interest. It’s something that can be practiced and perfected.

6. Memorize your script. Your call sounds natural. You are shooting for 5 things: (a) a clear/direct opener (b) it’s somehow personalized (c) they are targeted/chosen (d) the pitch or voice mail message is less than 30 seconds in length and (e) it ends with a question.

7. Use their name. Dale Carnegie once said “A person’s name is the sweetest sound“.

8. Get them to talk. How do you make this happen? If your call continues past the first minute, you are prepared with five good questions to ask. They automatically like you more when they are talking and you are attentively listening.

Here is what a good script sounds like:

“Hello Name, my name is Drew (no last name or company in order to save the precious opening seconds of the call) and I’m a sales recruiter with my own firm here in Minneapolis. We focus on filling sales positions for small and mid-size organizations throughout the country. Our recruitment and pricing approach is unique and we only focus on star talent. Have you worked with a recruiter in the past?”

If they respond positively, I’d roll into your questions. If he/she starts asking you questions, you probably have yourself a bona fide prospect.

On voice mails use a similar opener (but keep the entire message at 30 seconds) – then follow with “Please contact me at 612.234.2175; I’ll try you back again on Thursday afternoon if I don’t hear from you – again, it’s Drew at 612.234.2175. Have a great day!” (“threaten” a call back, repeat your phone number, end it positive).

Try some variations on these scripts until you find what works best for you. Good luck!

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz

 

 

Service Recovery

We all screw up. It’s okay to make mistakes but it sometimes affects your customers. How do you recover?

It’s obviously easier and cheaper to keep a client than to go out looking for a new one. Are we focusing as much energy on retention of clients as we are on gaining new ones? If it’s more than twice as expensive to find new ones, shouldn’t we be spending a lot more??

I will use Comcast/Xfinity as an example. They’ll sign up new customers for $30 a month but their long-term customers have to pay about $85 a month for the same channels. Are they rewarding the right people or just encouraging people like me to stick with Netflix?

It’s easy to find bad examples of poor service but below is a great example of one company that apologized and quickly satisfied it’s customer (I just so happened to be working on my monthly newsletter the day it happened so it was a pain for me).

The day after it happened, I received an email from the CEO of Constant Contact (no, I wasn’t the only one!). I was impressed with its immediacy, honesty and thoughtfulness, so I thought I would share it with you.

To Our Valued Customers and Partners,
 
Wow. It has been a difficult few days – most especially for you. I know some of you lost some work in progress during the site instability and others were unable to send your email campaigns.  I cannot begin to express my most sincere apologies. You don’t have time to waste. We know that. We aim to make your life easier. And the product issues we have had this week have not done that.

I know a lot of you have questions. Our first priority has been you and making sure that everything is back up and running.

We experienced an infrastructure issue that cascaded into a service interruption.  Had we tested the roll-over for failure of this component?  Yes.  But in real-world scenarios sometimes things unfold in unexpected ways.  The team responded with urgency focused on recovery and the issues are fixed.  

At this point, everything is up and running, and campaigns are being sent.  No data was compromised.  Again, very sorry.  We know your time is precious.  If there is anything we can do to help, please reach out. 

Gail Goodman, CEO 

Your business will make mistakes. Will you recover as gracefully? How will you retain your clients?

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz

 

The Average Person has 5,286 Emails in Their Inbox

PandoDaily did an extensive examination of 38,000 email inboxes back in 2013 and found that the average Outlook user has 5,286 emails in their inbox. If you look at the Pandodaily statistics, the numbers get even worse for non-Outlook users: http://bit.ly/1vmCwrt. I would argue that emails are the #1 issue in regards to time management in the office.

On Monday morning, I sat down to my desk and had 147 new email messages and it was an uncomfortable start to my week. I deleted about 75% and acted on or filed the rest in about an hour. As I write this on Tuesday, I have 34 emails in my inbox (90% of users have more than 75 emails).

I know there are hundreds of systems, but this is the one that I’ve mastered and strongly suggest that you use if your inbox is out of control: TRAF

Gimmee a “T” for Toss:

If you can delete it, don’t hesitate.

Gimmee an “R” for Refer:

Give it to someone else. The ball is in their court – so you can delete it.

Gimmee an “A” for Act:

Don’t leave it in there. Get it done (when it is on someone else’s plate, you get to… delete it).

Gimmee an “F” for File: 

The average Outlook user has 75 folders. I have a LOT of file folders – over 1,000 that I’ve slowly created for every client and everything else in between. I will argue until I’m blue in the face that my system is a lot easier and faster than doing a search through your deleted emails or sifting through an overloaded inbox. When in doubt, file it – just get it out of your inbox.

* Only read your emails at the beginning, middle and end of the day and get your life back.

*99% of your emails should only be “touched” once.

*Delete and sort quickly so that your inbox has meaning again.

*Create more folders (they are free, free, free!!).

*Dedicate one evening a month to getting your inbox back under 25.

Worst case scenario, just delete everything that’s over a month old and spend a half day sorting through anything that’s come in over the last few weeks. Wouldn’t it be great to have a clean inbox once again?

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz

 

 

Overcompensated?

Are we overpaying salespeople? The short answer is no.

A great friend of mine and I have this discussion on a regular basis. He works for a Fortune 1000 company and is sick and tired of the salespeople who make big commissions. “They aren’t that smart…  they are always out of the office goofing around… they whine about everything…” I am biased, but my question in return is always, “Then why don’t you get into sales?”

Salespeople usually have a “survivable” base income but they are in the game to make big money. They are the aggressive, persistent risk-takers that almost every business needs. There are a lot of bad salespeople who make the good and great ones even more valuable. Their territory, commission plan or even job can change at any point. So I’m not here to debate my friend’s question even if the average salesperson may be a little spoiled. My message is defending their importance.

A salesperson is easy to measure. What did they pull in that translated to net income? Was the bottom line larger or smaller than their expense? I love metrics. I would hate having to figure out the value of operations people who don’t have interaction with the client. It’s easy for all of us to see the return on salespeople. If their performance is accurately measured, an organization can see their ROI better than any other position in their company. If the numbers don’t add up then it’s time to retrain or fire.

What is the alternative? You can boost your marketing efforts, but can you offshore a salesperson? Do you want to hire untrained rookies at a lower price tag? Can technology somehow reduce your number of salespeople?

The consultative salesperson adds tremendous value to an organization and can hunt down opportunities that didn’t previously exist. Why are you worrying about paying them $200K this year? Intelligent leadership is willing to pay productive salespeople more than themselves because of their immediate return and ability to increase the overall value of the business.

• Hire the best salespeople.
• Pay them and DO NOT CAP their commission structure.
• Give the higher level salespeople leads so they can spend most of their time in front of prospects closing deals.
• Train them and retrain them. Inspire them with occasional outside help.
• Retain them by making them feel important and needed.

Hiring, training, aiding and retaining salespeople is the only answer for most businesses. I hope you are one of the smart companies that recognizes this.

It’s time to grow faster.

~Drew Schmitz

drew@blueoctopusllc.com

http://www.blueoctopusllc.com

www.linkedin.com/in/andrewschmitz/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-Octopus-LLC/176668965728096

Twitter: @drew_schmitz