A New Years Resolution

January is here and many of us are making New Year’s Resolutions. I am guessing by now some of us have already broken them too!

As for me, I love this time of year.  It is a time to reinvent yourself into the person you wished you were last year.  My main goal for this year is to give more back to the community.  I always come up with great ideas of what I could do to help others and give back, but I never quite follow through. This year I am going to really do it. 

So far, I have volunteered to be a mentor to college students at my alma mater (Penn State)  looking to start their own businesses.  I am also  signed up with my daughters to have a booth at a craft show and sell small handmade items and donate all our proceeds to one of our favorite charities, Operation Smile.  Our goal is to raise enough money for one operation. ($250)

The biggest venture I am trying to orchestrate is a walk-a-thon to benefit Kiva.  Kiva is an organization that lends money to entrepreneurs around the world who need money to keep their small business afloat.  Most of the business owners are from poor countries and their business is the only way they have to support their families.  Check it out:  http://www.kiva.org/

How, you ask, am I going to achieve this goal?  Here’s how… I walk all day on a treadmill desk.  I bought the desk to help my health issues and I decided I could also use it to help others.  Each day I walk between 4-8 miles depending on how long I work and how fast I walk.  I plan on charting my miles and my own company will donate $1.00 per mile for every mile I walk for the entire year.  If possible I will give others the chance to sponsor me.  All of the money I raise will go towards loans for . 

I have heard many times “You get back more than you give” This year I am putting that to the test.  Care to join me?

Show me the Money

Obviously I am very interested in what makes good employees leave their job in hoped of finding something better.  Since I am in the business of finding people who are happy or just starting to think about looking for something new, I wanted to spend some time examining what makes people want to find a new job.  After doing some research here is what I have come up with.

Most people are motivated by money.  As much as we talk a good game and say that “the money isn’t the most important thing” it really is one of the most important factors.  I can remember early in my sales career when I realized that I was making less money than my friend, how motivated I became to change that.  I felt at the time that my only option was to find a new job and get a bump in pay.  Now that I am “slightly” older, I realize that I probably could have gone to my boss and made a good case for him to give me a raise. 

Thinking about salary objectively, if you are at a company who is giving the standard 3% raise it will take you 4 years to get a 12% bump in pay.  If you leave and take a new job that pays you 15% more than you are currently making you are 5 years ahead immediately. 

 What you need to know to maybe get yourself a raise without leaving your position is that it will cost your current employer 150% of your base salary to replace you.  If you love your job, but just want more money, think about arming yourself with the facts of how much it would cost to replace you and go have a heart to heart with your boss.  (It may not work but at least you know where you stand)  If he is unable or unwilling to do anything then you can decide if you want to start looking.

There are many other reasons that people start to look, but so far more money seems to be the number one reason. I guess Rod was right when he asked his agent Jerry Maguire to “SHOW ME THE MONEY” in order to keep him as a client.  Are you ready to ask?

A Consulting Position… Is it Right for You?

The economy seems to have had a hand in creating a new hiring practice. 

In the last year as there are a glut of candidates on the market and not the

What the job seeker feels like these days.

same number of jobs, it has become a company driven market.  I have had quite a few companies start off looking to fill a full time position and then once they find a candidate who appears to be a fit, get cold feet.  To help themselves feel more comfortable, they have made consulting offers for a temporary assignment that will turn permanent if the fit winds up being right.

Is this a safe move to make if you are the job seeker?  You have to decide that for yourself.  All I can offer are some observations. 

• If you are confident in your abilities, this is the way to prove that you are the right person for the job and work your way towards a permanent position where your value is realized by your employer.
• If you have been out of work for a while, this is a great way to get back to work and make some fresh networking contacts to help with the search for a permanent gig.
• You know the old saying…It is easier to find a job when you have a job.
• If you are not sure this is the right position for you, a consulting offer may give you a chance to be sure.  There is nothing worse than having to start a search all over again once you make a bad decision.  It makes you look like a “job hopper” where as a consulting gig is easy to explain.

No one can decide what the right decision is for you, but a consulting gig if offered may fit the bill for right now.

Location

This weekend my daughter’s elementary school had their 4^th annual Harvest Festival.  This is the PTA’s biggest fundraiser of the year.  For the last four years, I have been in charge of organizing the craft area.  My job is to come up with 10 crafts, figure out a price point,  and figure out my staffing needs for each craft.  The event coordinator places the crafts throughout the festival where she things they fit best.

Since I examine everything in life for what it can teach me about good sales practices, I figured I would examine what I did to maximize sales with the elementary school crowd.  They are after all some of the most finicky consumers.

Here is the biggest piece of sales wisdom I gained from this year’s Harvest Festival.  Location can make or break your business.  In this case it was actual location, but this lesson applies to mental location as well.  Being in the right place at the right time is crucial. Most people who do this well make it look like luck.  I think it is probably more that we don’t notice what they are doing until they actually succeed.  Since we don’t always know what the right place and time is going to be a good sales person needs to keep analyzing the situation and trying different locations until they get it right. 

This became evident early to me on Saturday.  The site organizer had put three of my crafts in a back hallway.  They were not near a major entrance or exit and saying things started off slowly is an understatement.  I monitored the situation for a short time and made the executive decision to move the tables to a busier section of the festival. 

Did it create some navigation issues for the festival goers? Most likely.

Did those three craft tables boost business because of the new location? Without a doubt! 

Was the change midstream worth it?  No question. 

• Lesson learned: If you are approaching your customers in a way that is not working, take a step back and change tactics to see if that helps.  If not change again.  If you continue doing what obviously doesn’t work your success rate will be much lower than someone who keeps modifying. 

There was a motivational poster on one of the walls at the school that sums it all up.  Perseverance is about what you do on the second and third try.  I think if you check with most successful sales people, they try things many different ways until they find out what works. Do you?

Learning from Personal Experiences

When you hire someone to do a job for you and don’t get what you want what do you do?  If you have read any of my past blogs, you know I am going through a renovation at home so my mom can move in with us.  If you have ever been involved in a renovation you also know that people not doing what you asked is par for the course!

This past week has been an interesting week in a couple of ways.  The people who the contractor brought in to do my tile taught me a few key lessons that I won’t soon forget.

Let me explain.  They showed up last Friday to tile two bathrooms.  I had already purchased all of my tile and was very ready to have my master bathroom back in operation, so when they told me they were planning on being finished the following Monday I was overjoyed.  It is now Friday and they are no longer here.  Unfortunately, I still don’t have a master bathroom or any other bathroom for that matter. 

They most definitely over promised and under delivered.  They made a total mess out of my master shower.  The shower floor that they poured the first day did not set up and crumbled.  (They blamed it on the mortar.)  The tiles for my shower walls were put in uneven and unlevel and needed to be all ripped out.  (They blamed it on the expensive Italian porcelain tiles and miscommunication.)  The upstairs shower has almost two walls complete.  (They blamed their lack of speed on the fact that I changed tiles.)  I did not.

Needless to say I had no choice but to fire them.  The next day after being fired they showed up asking to try and fix it.  I was a softie (totally out of character for me) and said I would give them the day to finish the upstairs bathroom.  NO surprise, but they were unable to get more than half a wall tiled.  I am now back to square one.  I have picked a new tile (at my expense) and I have another hopefully more professional tile person coming this weekend to do the job right.

What I learned… and how it relates to sales people everywhere.

• Make sure as a sales person, if you say you can do something, you are actually able to do it!
• Make sure you ask the customer lots of questions about what they want and what they are expecting. It will hopefully prevent miscommunications.
• Over deliver if at all possible.   Your customer will be very appreciative.
• Check references and collect references so you have them to share.
• Don’t make excuses if you can’t get the work done.  Take responsibility and own up to your mistake.   At least you will maintain some credibility.

Once again, real life teaching me how to be a better sales person!

Buyer’s Remorse

I am currently involved in a home renovation. During this renovation I have come to understand the importance of itemized bills.  How many times as a sales person have you upset a customer because your pricing was not communicated properly or because they could not understand what you meant by something.  I have that situation right now. 

As I am doing this renovation, I am trying to reuse and recycle to not only save the environment, but to also save the pocketbook.  The builder I chose agreed to reuse as much as possible and so far he has lived up to that promise.  We have been able to reuse 4 doors, almost all the lumber for framing, light fixtures, fans, shower fixtures, vanities and mirrors. 

The problem for me starts when I try to get the costs itemized so I can see how much we are saving, spending and have to spend.  As a customer (and this may just be me) I want to know where every penny is going.  I want to know what I need to bargain shop for to stay within budget and what I have a little wiggle room to buy exactly what I want.  I don’t think that is asking too much.  My builder, had he done that from the start, would have had a much more invested and informed customer (me).  I would have been much less upset as the project progressed because I would have had the information I needed to feel in control. 

As I take this knowledge back to my customers, I am going to think about how I can more clearly lay out my costs to my customers upfront.  I want to be able to show them different options to control costs or when they can splurge a little without breaking the bank.  If everyone is on the same page from the start, it will make the whole project run much smoother with no surprises at the end.  Based on my experience, I also predict that I will save both my customer and myself some anxiety along the way.

On the personal side, if I ever do another building project I will be much more insistent that the builder walks through the project with me and explains all the costs before he starts so we are both on the same page.

It is all in the Presentation

As I work in the recruiting world each and every day helping companies connect with the “perfect” candidate to fill an open position, I think about presentation quite often.  What makes one candidate stand out to a company while another falls short? 

Today, I was in my second grade daughter’s classroom and I think I found the answer.  My daughter’s teacher has a special knack for making every student in her class feel like they are her favorite student and they are the smartest student in 2^nd grade and quite possibly the school!  What a skill.  Making people believe what we all really want to believe about ourselves deep down, that we are the best!

If you take that concept and apply it to interviewing just think how successful you would be.  Most companies deep down are like the rest of us.  They want to be recognized as “the best” at whatever it is they do.  Imagine the impact you will have on the person interviewing you, if you arrive at an interview knowing everything there is to know about the person you are interviewing with, the company as a whole and even their competitors?  You could make them feel the way we all want to feel.  That feeling, in my experience, will be returned ten fold.  Have you ever noticed that it is much easier to like people who think you are great?  The same concept applies for interviewing.  If it comes down to two candidates with very similar backgrounds, the one who gets the offer is the one the interviewer felt knew the most about them and understood the company.  Stop going into an interview worrying about what’s in it for you and focus on making the interview feel like it is all about what’s in it for them.  You will get much further in the process.  After you receive an offer you can start to evaluate what’s in it for you?

Here are some resources you might use in your quest for information:

• Social media- check out the company as well as the people who will be interviewing you.
• Google alerts- Sign up for Google alerts as soon as you find out about the opportunity. This will help you stay current on all company happenings that are made public.
• Your recruiter- If you are working with a good recruiter, they will share everything they know about who will be conducting the interview and hopefully their interview style.  Just ask.

So remember on your next interview perception is everything.  How they think you see them is as important as how they see you.  Be prepared.

Communication

As I focus on my own business and my level of communication with my clients, I realize that everyone has room for improvement in this area.  Close your eyes for a second and think about the last time you were waiting to hear about something.  Whatever it was that you were waiting to hear about was the most important thing on your mind, right?

 I have been waiting for two years to purchase a treadmill desk.  I coveted from afar and then set some goals that if I hit my reward would be the desk.  Last month I hit those goals and I finally ordered my desk.  The website talks about how long it should take to get your desk based on where you live.  I looked at the map and was pleased to see that it would take roughly four days for me to receive my desk. Well it has now been 8 days and no treadmill.  I am very disappointed and even more upset that I have not heard anything from the company I ordered from.  Don’t they know that I have been waiting for two years?

If I take this experience and translate it into any other sales I make or you make and see the sale from the buyer’s perspective.  I don’t care as a buyer that they were having production problems or phone problems or got busy.  Those are all excuses I catch myself using when I miss a call or forget to follow-up.  The buyer is really only concerned with their own life and their own needs.  In order to be a sales person who stands out from the crowd we need to see the sale from the buyer’s perspective. 

You never know when someone has been waiting for your product or service for two years like me and my treadmill.  Set a schedule, stay organized and communicate.  If the treadmill company gave me a call with an update about when to expect my desk, I would be happy and probably writing about a different topic!

Writing a Powerful Resume

When you are looking for a new position, no matter what type, you should consider yourself a sales person.  What are you selling you ask?  You are selling yourself to your potential employer.  They have a lot of people to choose from these days, so you need to polish your marketing brochure,otherwise known as your resume!   

You may think that your resume is just a vehicle to pass on your basic information and that it doesn’t really matter.  You couldn’t be more wrong.  Your resume is the first impression you will make on a potential employer.  If you can take this opportunity to stand out above your competition you may take the first step to getting your new job. 

Think about what makes you special and incorporate that into your resume.  STOP, before you go adding the fact that you love to salsa dance and you own 60 cats, to your resume, stop and think about what makes you special at work.  Have you personally helped increase the  business with your outstanding customer relationships?  Did you find a way to save the company money?  That is the type of tidbits you need to add into your resume to move you to the top of the pile.   Help a potential employer envision what you could accomplish at their company. 

If you are trying to figure out how to effectively add these accomplishments to your resume try putting them highlighted as bullet points underneath each position.  If you can think of two or better yet three accomplishments that you quantify with figures you will already be ahead of the pack.  Bullet points grab the attention of a person skimming a resume.

There are many different ways to make your resume stand out below are some you should try to avoid.

• Typos
• Inconsistency in your dates
• Personal referances to family, church affiliations, hobbies, political party etc.  These are things that a hiring manager may not take into account when considering you and better kept to yourself so they are not held against you even subconciously.
• An objective.  If your objective does not exactly match what a company is looking for you could be out before you even start.
• Funky Colored Paper.  Most companies scan in resumes these days and the color gets lost and sometimes distorts your resume so it cannot be read.

I hope these tips help you as you try to improve your marketing brochure aka resume. If you need more specific help on developing your resume you can visit www.greenspringsonline.com.  There is a resume service that can help.

Happy hunting.