I was facinated by Management Today’s article: “Directors seem to have a very different view to the hoi polloi on how business is going…“ and that most senior executives feel secure in their current job and even if they were to be made redundant that finding a new job would be easy.

However, what caught my eye was almost the final line of the article that said, 74% of directors reported a strong collective sense of purpose, compared to a mere 47% of those below them. Not because I disbelieve the statistic but because, in my experience, almost all Directors feel a greater sense of purpose than subordinates.

Most subordinates, on the other hand, have to wade through encouraging and often meaningless “visions, goals and objectives” to determine what’s happening. This was reinforced by a friend who told me last week “There’s no point in being too upbeat and enthusiastic about the company’s prospects, it saves time, tears and disappointment in the long run!”

Perhaps it’s why so many Directors will sigh, run their brow and ask “Why is my team so difficult to motivate?”

I’ve just had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about business qualifications being one way to improve job prospects during a downturn in job opportunities. However he pointed out that Training Journal reports that the National Skills Academy for Financial Services (NSAFS) is launching a  qualification aimed at senior financial advisers wanting to upgrade their skills that doesn’t have a written examination. The FSA is expected to approve the qualification on 6th February.

Simon Thompson, CEO of CIOBS, which is awarding the qualification, said: “We know the great majority of existing advisers provide high quality advice to their clients day in, day out, but some may struggle to demonstrate this in a traditional, written examination”.

I may be mistaken, probably am, but if they find a written exam difficult then writing reports to clients advising on pensions, investments and so on to look after their client’s money is probably also a struggle?

It’s great when someone comes along and pricks the bubble of management pomposity that is part of business today. It’s why I just love listening to Lucy Kellaway on the radio and on her blog and reading her regular column in the Financial Times. Lucy’s talent for stripping away and laying bare the stupidity of puffed up management makes her required reading and listening.

Each year she awards prizes for companies and managers who have butchered the English Language.
Like the Executive at Amazon who renamed books “Reading containers” and Toyota who now call cars “Sustainable mobility solutions”

Other awards go to HB Fuller coaching who state that they “invested in several key talent additions”

I don’t want to spoil Lucy’s adio blog for those who have yet to hear it but firmly believe that it should be required reading and listening for all executives, MBA students and Business school lecturers. Listen to it HERE and enjoy

How to motivate the sales team to achieve target is a topic that keeps sales managers awake at night. Yesterday a group of sales managers in my network talked about retaining and motivating salespeople at one of our regular meetings.

Their insomnia was the thought of their top sales people leaving the team. In the past huge rewards could be given to top salespeople but in these times throwing money at saslespeople to retain their loyaly is more difficult and in any event in the long run it will fail as, one day, all the best salespeople will leave.

A lot of suggestions were made and the group asked if I could put some of the ideas on film for the one absent member of the group. Having made the first I think it’s worth sharing with everyone in my network and, if popular, then I’ll create a series on salesteams.

Motivating A Sales Team For The Long Haul

I’m not a fan of Lord Sugar but one has to admire his ability to generate controversy. His article in the Daily Telegraph where he says that networking events are a waste of time and only profit the organisers has certainly stirred up a hornets nest of comment within my network.

Lord Sugar wrote:
“I am sick and tired of hearing people asking what to do, going to networking meetings and seminars expecting to glean some gems of wisdom. These events are money-making exercises and benefit one party and one party only: the organiser.

As usual he’s has managed to polarise opinion with networking organisers, thinking he’s talking nonsense and others who think that he’s right. For my part I feel both have a valid opinion. For my part and, this is where I agree with Sugar, I avoid networking groups that give a piss poor product, and unfortunately there are too many of them!

Too often people are invited to a networking meeting without any idea of who else is attending and with no one to manage introductions. Time is wasted listening to sponsors and the organiser promoting their own business and when the speaker does satnd up it’s an anticlimax of mediocrity. However a well run event will always stand out from the crowd.

The rest of Sugar’s article talks about being self-reliant and in this I hope that his fee for writing the article was huge because it’s had the desired affect of generating discussion.

 Managing top talent so that they are engaged and remain with a business is a problem. Yesterday I found myself in a long discussion with with a friend who is concerned that he might lose some of his best talent.

1. The first thing that we could both agree on in that true talent is in short supply and is worth keeping at all costs and even when it leaves is worth maintaining contact in case one can attract it back!
2. Too many talented people become dissolusioned after having their expectations dashed with broken promises of personal learning, clear career path or making a contribution.
3. Often talent will be suffocated in large organisations and will prefer ambiguity and uncertainty because it fuels their thought processes and will therefore gravitate towards small business or even self-employment.

Motivating talent is difficult when they seem to be always ahead of the maingroup, with too many ideas and too little time and feeling that they are having to maintain their energy levels in the face of others who are lazy and have no vision.

After our discussion my friend came to two conclusions. The first was that talent is often complex and therefore needs to be understood and managed on an individual basis. Secondly that appropriate learning and stimulus programmes need to be in place in order to keep the talent engaged.

If you would like to hear more of our conclusions them please email me: stephen@assimilating-talent.com

Now that christmas is over and the snow’s melted many retailers are counting the costs of a poor trading season. Next, Waterstones and HMV have all announced fewer sales compared to the same time last year and store closures are expected. With families feeling the VAT rises and inflationary pressures sales are unlikely to improve quickly.

Many companies have been telling me that 2011 will be the year where sales will be vital to survival. The tactic to improve sales team results seems to be to increase targets and take the sales team on an away day to “align sales with core functions and client needs for the next twelve months”.

In my experience, away days where management sweeten a bitter pill of increased sales targets and restructured sales territories with “improved and innovative marketing initiatives” don’t increase motivation nor improve the way sales people approach potential customer’s needs and certainly don’t last more than a week, far less twelve months.

If one must have an away day then it needs to be linked with a measured programme of change that covers a long period and where changes in direction can be identified and implemented more easily.

My electricity and telephone/broadband contacts are up for renewal and in the run-up to the festive season I was receiving three or four phone calls a day from salespeople who expected to be able to “move my account” after a brief and cursory quote promising to save me money.

However, I’m a buyer who takes the attitude that if it’s going to cost less then what am I going to have to “give up”. The salesperson phoning me often seemed aghast when I asked for more details such as proof of their after-sales service claims, websites so that I could check their boasts and a confused silence on the other end of the line when asked to email me details of the contract so that I could study them at my leisure.

I’m much more used to dealing with sophisticated sales-teams selling Banking, Financial Services and large ticket products and I’ve been thinking how these salesteams are changing. The coming year is going to be hard and will result in agreement times between sales proposal and acceptance or rejection being extended by twenty percent or more. This could mean that some sales may take many more months to complete than before.

Already I’ve observed Sales Directors being instructed by their Boards to reduce “Toxic costs” even more vigorously than before. These “Toxic costs”  include travel (car costs), telephone charges, training budgets, sales offices and even admin back-up. I know of three well known companies who are gearing up their HR Departments to advise them on processes for removing future “non-fertile salespeople”. (A description that’s likley to casue confusion at some futue occasion, I think!)

It’s wrong to suggest that all people believe that the less a product costs the more attractive it is. People want to buy reliability, after care service, consistency and results as promised as part of their purchase.

If a company is really planning to grow sales it’s hard to understand why it needs to reduce product quality.   

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who leads a sales team about his plans for the coming year. He outlined significant change for his team and quoted targets, market penetration and corporate expectations to cope with the difficuties that will befall all sales teams in 2011 with great ease and I will admit to being very impressed.

After a short time it seemed to me, however, that he was talking about the “Sales Team” as if it was one unit instead of a group of individuals with different attitudes, work expectations and personal goals. When I asked how the individuals in his team would react to the plans I was surprised by the answer. “Some won’t like it but there will be no choice”.

He was forgetting that a team isn’t like a machine with a series of machine cogs that when turned on rotate at the same pace and produce what’s required. Instead it’s ensuring that a group of spinning plates keep turning on their sticks and impress the audience at the dexterity of the man in charge. some of the plates will turn faster than others and possibly a couple will be in danger of falling off their sticks.

Yesterday I was talking to four university students majoring in Engineering. An essential skill if the UK is to pull itself out of the downturn we are entering. No, I did say entering because I believe that with future bank and national failures things are going to get worse for students finding a job after gaining their degree rather than better. But that’s another discussion!

The four comoplained to me that their three-year degree course could be reduced to two because the first year was so basic that they had covered most topics during their last year as secondary school. They also questioned the value of having just two lectures a week available to attend and no tutorials. They were obviously unhappy about the quality of the course.

I can understand that if education is free then one might be reluctant to complain about the frequency of lectures and tutorials but if I were paying £9000 a year then I would battering the doors down for better quality lecturers, more frequency of attention to my future. I might make myself unpopular but then I would hope that “he who pays the piper…”

How in future will students demonstrate their financial power to make their courses more effective to source the best jobs? And how long will it take univerities to listen?