Economic Development Marketing Tricks to Watch Out For
Anyone who knows about Economic Development Associations realizes that they are forever trying to put a good spin on things. For instance if their city is the number one city for car thieves, they will find some other statistic to plug. Such as our city suburbs have the lowest murder rate of any city in the state. In fact sometimes it is what they don't tell you which is actually very telling.One interesting trick that suburban areas use is that they will take all the business licenses in the city many of which are home based business licenses and read the names and tell people the percentages of International Businesses in the area. In actuality most of these so-called international businesses are really multi-level marketing companies, which put the "International" on the end of their business name to impress the down-line they try to sign up.Pretty sneaky trick isn't it? Well indeed it is and most business owners or people moving into the area never have a clue and never think about it again. Still it is plugged as a plus for the city and its ability to cater to the International Business Person somehow suggesting wor

Inventory Management - One Size Does Not Fit All
If there is one great myth in inventory management it is that one single technique will solve all inventory problems. Not that people believe that one technique will solve all problems in all situations but that in any given company one approach is all that is required to manage all inventory.For the inventory manager this is very attractive as it means that there is only one approach to manage. For the software vendor, consultant or advisor it means only one solution to sell.There is a wide range of techniques and approaches that people use to manage inventory. These include JIT, MRP, DRP, SCM, Risk Management, safety stock and EOQ’s Sometimes they are used on a stand alone basis and sometimes in conjunction with each other. All are worthwhile techniques when used appropriately.Problems arise however when the approach to identifying the appropriate solution starts by looking at the solution rather than the inventory. This approach starts from the assumption that because solution x works at company y it must be good. Or because the software suits our enterprise wide planning system it is appropriate. In fact it is

An Effective Resume Objective Can Make a Big Difference
A missing or lame Objective section can get your resume tossed in the trash in a matter of seconds. There are quite simply too many better resumes out there to bother. Yet most job seekers screw this up terribly.The basics are thus: toward the top just above or just underneath your "Keyword Competencies" paragraph, put your "Objective" section which is quite simply the object of your job search, the title of the job you are seeking.Here's a Bad Example: Most people put in a title (like "Software Developer" or, "Lighthouse Keeper" or, "Marketing Director" or "Product Manager" or "NASCAR Pit Boss" in some long droning sentence that reads like:Objective: "Challenging opportunity as a (title) where I can effectively use my managing and sales skills in my ongoing effort to help grow an organization, blah, blah…"This is not only boring, it’s also highly ineffective. Your resume has only so much available space and your potential reader so little available time. This sort of verbiage does not transmit key information that will widen your net.Use the "Objective" to do one thing, focus on your objective.e:

Step 1: ‘Run the Numbers’ for any realistic ROI opportunity
Step 2: ‘Run the Numbers’ hypothetically for a ‘Specific’ improvement
Step 3: ‘Run the Numbers’ for a ‘Reality Check’
Step 4: Set the Goal and ‘Train to It’

In our first example, we looked at a sales organization’s performance silo of ‘New-hire Ramp-to-Quota and determined (1) a sales performance issue and (2) a worthy sales training objective and (3) a realistic sales training return on investment.

Let’s take that same sales force and utilizing our (4) step process look at the remaining two Sales performance issues; ‘Sales Employee Turnover rate’ and ‘Time spent versus Result achieved’ to see what the X2 Evaluator™ system turns up.

Step 1: ‘Run the Numbers’ for any realistic ROI opportunity

Our example sales force has 350 sales reps that are responsible for securing new business each month. They currently have a sales employee turnover rate of 45%, or 155 reps per year. I’ve found in the sales industries I partner with, my clients average between 30%-70% sales employee turnover per year, so these folks are right in norm. But the ‘norm’ doesn’t have to be the ‘Future’.

Here’s another important point. In the sales arena, 95% of sales employee turnover is due to Low 1st appointment activity. And in our example sales force, it was nearly 100%. Simply, if you’re not creating enough sales appointments each month, you either go out the door or you are ‘Shown the door’. Now let’s run the numbers to see exactly what this sales employee turnover is costing them and attach a weight of priority to consider ‘pin-point’ sales performance training.

Here are the numbers relevant to costs:

• Average Salary: $30,000
• Recruiting Costs: $ 2,000
• Training Costs: $ 3,500
• Monthly Sales Quota: $ 3,500

In sum, this sales management team is looking eye to eye to a total of $4,512,200 going out the door each year, a combination of revenue ramp up costs on the front end, revenue production loss on the back end, salaries and benefits, then again revenue ramp up costs and salary for the replacement new hire. It’s a vicious circle. And once again that total ‘Penalty cost’ number is an attention getter. Simply put, each sales rep going out the door, due to low sales appointment activity, is costing the company $29,300 of lost revenue.

Does that portray a legitimate sales training Return on investment opportunity? Well, in less you need to invest $29,300 per sales rep in the training of choice to remedy the sales performance issue… it certainly does.

Step 2:

t versus Result achieved’ to see what the X2 Evaluator™ system turns up.

Step 1: ‘Run the Numbers’ for any realistic ROI opportunity

Our example sales force has 350 sales reps that are responsible for securing new business each month. They currently have a sales employee turnover rate of 45%, or 155 reps per year. I’ve found in the sales industries I partner with, my clients average between 30%-70% sales employee turnover per year, so these folks are right in norm. But the ‘norm’ doesn’t have to be the ‘Future’.

Here’s another important point. In the sales arena, 95% of sales employee turnover is due to Low 1st appointment activity. And in our example sales force, it was nearly 100%. Simply, if you’re not creating enough sales appointments each month, you either go out the door or you are ‘Shown the door’. Now let’s run the numbers to see exactly what this sales employee turnover is costing them and attach a weight of priority to consider ‘pin-point’ sales performance training.

Here are the numbers relevant to costs:

• Average Salary: $30,000
• Recruiting Costs: $ 2,000
• Training Costs: $ 3,500
• Monthly Sales Quota: $ 3,500

In sum, this sales management team is looking eye to eye to a total of $4,512,200 going out the door each year, a combination of revenue ramp up costs on the front end, revenue production loss on the back end, salaries and benefits, then again revenue ramp up costs and salary for the replacement new hire. It’s a vicious circle. And once again that total ‘Penalty cost’ number is an attention getter. Simply put, each sales rep going out the door, due to low sales appointment activity, is costing the company $29,300 of lost revenue.

Does that portray a legitimate sales training Return on investment opportunity? Well, in less you need to invest $29,300 per sales rep in the training of choice to remedy the sales performance issue… it certainly does.

Step 2:

our example sales force, it was nearly 100%. Simply, if you’re not creating enough sales appointments each month, you either go out the door or you are ‘Shown the door’. Now let’s run the numbers to see exactly what this sales employee turnover is costing them and attach a weight of priority to consider ‘pin-point’ sales performance training.

Here are the numbers relevant to costs:

• Average Salary: $30,000
• Recruiting Costs: $ 2,000
• Training Costs: $ 3,500
• Monthly Sales Quota: $ 3,500

In sum, this sales management team is looking eye to eye to a total of $4,512,200 going out the door each year, a combination of revenue ramp up costs on the front end, revenue production loss on the back end, salaries and benefits, then again revenue ramp up costs and salary for the replacement new hire. It’s a vicious circle. And once again that total ‘Penalty cost’ number is an attention getter. Simply put, each sales rep going out the door, due to low sales appointment activity, is costing the company $29,300 of lost revenue.

Does that portray a legitimate sales training Return on investment opportunity? Well, in less you need to invest $29,300 per sales rep in the training of choice to remedy the sales performance issue… it certainly does.

Step 2:

ar, a combination of revenue ramp up costs on the front end, revenue production loss on the back end, salaries and benefits, then again revenue ramp up costs and salary for the replacement new hire. It’s a vicious circle. And once again that total ‘Penalty cost’ number is an attention getter. Simply put, each sales rep going out the door, due to low sales appointment activity, is costing the company $29,300 of lost revenue.

Does that portray a legitimate sales training Return on investment opportunity? Well, in less you need to invest $29,300 per sales rep in the training of choice to remedy the sales performance issue… it certainly does.

Step 2: ‘Run the Numbers’ hypothetically for a 50% improvement

In this case, I showed the sales management team what return on investment they would get by retaining just half of the sales reps going out the door due to low sales appointment activity.

Using their numbers my diagnostic system showed them a ROI of $2,256,100 just by reducing their sales employee turnover due to low sales appointment activity from 44% down to 22%. That’s keeping 77 sales reps from going out the door and adding to the sales productivity pool.

Step 3: ‘Run the Numbers’ for a Reality Check

Remember in Part 1 of ‘Does Your Sales Training Program Address Your Sales Performance Issues?’ we ran this sales force team’s key sales performance indicator numbers in the X2 system to see ‘if and where’ there were leaks in the ‘KPI ship’. And we discovered not a leak, but a big ‘ole fire hose.

Two ‘KPI issues’ were apparent. First, their ramp-to-quota for a new-hire took 7 months when the average sales cycle is 17 days? Second, they were only setting 3 new appointments per week when they needed to set 6, based on their other KPIs and a subsequent sales appointment activity number. Thus, their sales appointment ‘activity barometer’ was only running at 50%. And that we determined dictates a longer ramp-to-quota.

Then we dug a bit deeper in the X2 system and out popped a 6% conversation-to-appointment ratio; they had to conduct 15 prospect conversations to get 1 new appointment.

We then asked the ‘Reality Check’ question. Is it realistic to focus on reducing the sales rep turnover due to low sales appointment activity in half, from 44% to 22% for a sales training ROI of $2,256,100 or $29,300 per rep?

And we answered ‘yes’ if they addressed the front-end of their sales process; setting targeted sales appointments. Again as before, they needed to (1) establish an activity standard to reach quota based off of individual KPIs and (2) develop a sales prospecting methodology and supporting system to spend less time in achieving it.

Because most sales employee turnover happens in the new hire ramp-to-quota issue silo, the same pin-point sales skill training initiative kills two birds with one stone.

And if you add those (2) ‘sales training initiatives birds’ up, it points to $14,532,100 of realistic revenue recovery.

Step 4: Set the Goal and ‘Train to It’

Reducing sales employee turnover due to low sales appointment activity now appears to be a worthy one. It makes good business sense for this sales organization. And if we measure our results, we will probably add some more revenue back on the table