To motivate employees to do what management wants them to do is a critical element of the overall compensation program. Putting it another way: A great compensation program is the best job description and visa verse. Savvy companies understand this and recognize that developing a sound program that motivates an employee to do what is in their best interest to do is one of the major reasons why large companies get bigger. And it might be a reason why small companies stay that way – small. They may not fully grasp the “how” and the “why.”

Unlike flowers returning in the springtime, conferences and conventions have been few and far between over the past 3-4 years.

The 9/11 event literally stopped a large number of conferences all at once. I, personally, attended a convention in Orlando, FL two weeks after 9/11. The expo halls were empty except for sales & junior management personnel “manning” the booth. Even more interesting, you could have rolled a bowling ball down the middle aisle of the expo and not hit a single attendee. The only people there were exhibitors. Remember those days?

No time to build a training program for your salespeople? Here are the steps you’ll need to get started – quickly.

One of the first things that sales and company executives ask us when we meet them is; “We need to grow our sales, what can you do for us?” To that we always respond, “If you’d share with us some of the processes that you have in place now for the sales team to follow – we can then take a look at them and see if there might be a way that we can help.” What we’ve found is that most of the time the issue is always the same: There simply isn’t a process in place for us to look at – period. The salespeople almost always seem to be autonomous from the rest of the company. There are well thought out processes in place for finance, personnel and administration – but not for sales. When we ask the question of why the building of a business development process for the salespeople seemed to be pushed to the wayside, we almost always got the same response:

I don’t have to tell anybody in business that competition today is stronger, more aggressive and less sensitive to the impact it has on local competition. We only have to look at category killer stores (BestBuy, CompUSA, Linen N Things) together with big-box stores (WalMart/Target/etc) to get a sense of how different today’s marketplace is from that of even as recently as 20 years ago.

The difference is most heavily felt with retailers whose cost of product they buy from vendors is significantly higher than that of their mega competitors. How big a difference? It can be as much as 20-30%. This explains why clients and friends in business often say that “X competitor” is selling product at less than I can buy from my vendors”.

Y2012 looks like a real winner for business that can break the RECESSION MINDSET! What do I mean by Recession Mindset? I refer to a pessimistic through process that suggests that the future is likely to be “more of the same” or “worse”. The result? A passive marketing/sales effort that relies on little, if any, change and a even more conservative willingness to invest in growth.