Thursday 7 June 2007

Self check for a SalesManager

Attributes of an excellent Sales Manager:
  1. Hold the sales profession in high esteem.
  2. Never take credit for a salespersons’ accomplishments
  3. Do not attempt to teach “attitude.”
  4. Understand and apply the perpetual formula: Preparation + Professionalism = Productivity.
  5. Recognize when people go beyond the call, and find a unique way to thank or encourage them in front of their peers.
  6. The Ultimate Sales Manager understands, and communicates consistently, that vision precedes everything
  7. Maintain actions consistent with your character.
  8. Listen and interview well, and know who you are hiring
  9. Always work to earn the trust of your folks, one by one.
  10. Hire people you think will amaze you. Develop them into people who amaze themselves
  11. Work to maintain high morale, through consistency, attitude, and compassion
  12. Never ask a salesperson to do something you have not done or would not do
  13. Attract top talent, retain team players, appreciate the people you have, and do not delay in removing those people who do not fit.
  14. Attract top talent, retain team players, appreciate the people you have, and do not delay in removing those people who do not fit.
  15. Establish and maintain an environment of trust, hard work, fun, enthusiasm, and confidence
  16. Lead with the intent to elevate the team
  17. Spend time looking for a suitable replacement for yourself.
  18. Understand that your job is about leadership, solving problems, and taking responsibility.
  19. Have a long memory for people’s accomplishments and a short memory for their transgressions.
  20. Maintain the skill and aplomb to get your salespeople to go where you want them to go—and have them think they took you there
  21. Learn some things about the sales job that inspire people, and encourage your folks to share them with the team.
  22. Be a great listener.
  23. Have recent, relevant selling experience
  24. Be 100 percent committed to helping other people win.
  25. Understand that people will follow someone they think is looking out for them
  26. Make decisions as if your closest competitor is sitting on your shoulder
  27. Never delay or procrastinate when bad news must be delivered
  28. Be aware of the delivery, receipt, and perception of your message— always
  29. Do not expect people who work for you to work like you.
  30. Be the first to offer help or a joke, and the last to give up
  31. Never side with your folks against “the company.” You are the company—so talk about news, changes, and updates as if you fully support them, because you must.
  32. Use uncommon ideas to forward other people’s careers.
  33. Always think two steps ahead.
  34. Ensure that the plan salespeople submit can be accomplished by that person with the tools at their disposal
  35. Recognize the unique skills, gifts, fears, and aspirations of each of your salespeople
  36. Recognize what your salespeople have in common, and what they do not
  37. Never chastise or berate in public or in private
  38. Inspect what you expect.
  39. Know that you will be the topic of someone’s dinner conversation
  40. Understand what motivates your people, and why they choose specific goals
  41. Never assume that what you think people are capable of is the same thing they think they are capable of.
  42. Maintain actions consistent with your character
  43. Have the confidence and ability at any time to pick up the phone or walk into a building and make a cold call in front of your folks.
  44. Never let your salespeople see you sweat.
  45. Maintain an even-keeled temper.
  46. Always be honest and forthright
  47. Lead meetings with a greater concern for inspiration and education than for filling an hour.
  48. Find, hire, and keep a great assistant
  49. Never use phrases like “these people” to separate yourself from the team.
  50. Regularly go out into the selling world with your salespeople.
  51. Recognize that the manager is there for the team, instead of the team being there for the sales manager
  52. Sell vision all day, every day.

Wednesday 6 June 2007

Emerging reasons of de-motivation at work place

De-motivation at work place: Reasons & Possible Solutions

Employees are not treated well

1. People feel like slaves
Solutions:
1. Respect employee privacy.
2. Treat employees as valued business partners
3. Be honest with employees
4. Encourage employee independence
5. Provide more opportunities for employees to control their work hours
6. Provide more opportunities for employees to control their work space
7. Support professional development

2. Too much interference in the job
Solutions:
1. Make certain the senior executives delegate
2. Provide delegation training for managers.
3. Share best practises
4. Ask managers to put themselves in their employees' shoes.
5. Rate supervisors on how well they delegate.
6. Ask employees what decision-making authority they really need.
7. Encourage employees to push back.
8. Train employees how to exercise more decision-making authority.

3. people afraid to speak up
Solutions:
1. Foster a spirit of openness.
2. Catch people in the act and use positive reinforcement.
3. Improve your listening skills.
4. Get in the habit of making self-disclosures

4. No appreciation for hard work and commitment
Solutions:
1. Use individual-based recognition instead of group recognition.
2. Accompany individual bonuses with an appropriate personal message.
3. Provide immediate rather than after-the-fact recognition
4. Train supervisors how to provide positive feedback
5. Make positive feedback part of the performance review process.
6. Provide feedback about feedback.
7. Senior management must serve as role models.

5. Different rule for different people
Solutions:
1. Promote flexibility rather than rigid rules
2. Communicate a philosophy of flexibility
3. Avoid the union mentality


Employees are not respected

6. Management does not ready to listen
Solutions:
1. Circumvent the hierarchy.
2. Get rid of the "suggestion box."
3. Set realistic expectations
4. Proactively promote the proliferation of suggestions.
5. Close the loop of communication


7. Management do not respect the people genuine problem
Solutions:
1. Respect employee privacy
2. Get to know your employees as people
3. Communicate with employees individually
4. Apply discipline to individuals, not teams.
5. Recognise that employees have lives outside of work.
6. Treat employees as adults
7. Remember the Golden Rule-“Management should give employees the same level of respect and dignity that they would want to be shown themselves.”

8. No trust on management for the information received from themSolutions:1. Bypass the middlemen
2. Differentiate between "nice-to-know" and "need-to-know”
3. Communicate "don't-knows" as well as "do-knows."
4. Never communicate important information so frequently
5. Use multiple communication channels
6. Produce the results
7. Share the wealth
8. Recognise that you are accountable to employees
9. Be honest with your employees

9. Boss is a terrible manager
Solutions:
1. Treat employees with respect and dignity.
2. Involve employees in decisions.
3. Empower employees.
4. Clearly communicate assignments.
5. Listen, listen and listen.
6. Recognise that your job includes solving "people problems."
7. Provide personal recognition.


Employees Aren't Receiving What They Really Need

10. Too much of work is carried out by less number of people
Solutions:
1. Set realistic expectations.
2. Ask employees about the workload.
3. Conduct periodic staffing audits.
4. Retrain staff.
5. Use relief employees

11. Little training and less opportunity for continuous learning
Solutions:
1. Communicate the importance of learning.
2. Show the personnel development fund
3. Provide opportunities to visit customers
4. Institute a job rotation program.
5. Institute a shadowing program
6. Provide a reading and learning resource centre
7. Systematically assess training needs.
8. Evaluate training programs
9. Invest in training during down periods
10. Encourage employees to be honest about their needs
11. Use methods other than classroom instruction
12. Make certain that supervisors support the transfer of training

12. Serious concern about quality of products and servicesSolutions:
Legitimate concern
1. Investigate the problem
2. Communicate and demonstrate a commitment to quality.
3. Admit that there is a problem

Unwarranted concern4. Provide employees with customer satisfaction data.
5. Identify what is important to customers
6. Track trends in customer satisfaction
7. Provide competitive intelligence
8. Provide an appropriately balanced picture

13. Too many meetings
Solutions:

1. Put a time limit on meetings.
2. Use a process facilitator
3. Pay special attention to the end of the meeting


Employees feel unappreciated


14. Not paid fairly
Solutions:
1. Clearly state your pay philosophy.
2. Avoid paying by the hour
3. Use bonuses rather than pay increases
4. Train supervisors how to talk about pay
5. Weed out ineffective performers
6. Set clear expectations for applicants
7. Offer additional responsibilities to top-of-the-range employees
8. Widen pay ranges
9. Offer longevity bonuses
10. Promote your best performers
11. Encourage those unhappy with their pay to leave

15. Performance review systems is useless
Solutions:
1. Provide continuous feedback
2. Adopt a developmental mindset
3. Skip the money part
4. Involve employees in setting goals
5. Focus on behaviours, not traits
6. Conduct performance discussions, not lectures
7. Conduct annual performance reviews on time
8. Train supervisors

16. No link between job performance and pay
Solutions:
1. Make your pay-for-performance philosophy clear to employees
2. Rate supervisors on how well they rate their subordinates
3. Use objective performance measures
4. Be cautious when using 360-degree feedback
5. Use multiple measures

17. Cost of benefit is eating up paycheck
Solutions:1. Communicate how much the organisation is paying for cost increases
2. Produce total compensation statements
3. Increase deductibles and co-payments rather than premiums
4. Provide choices
5. Establish flexible medical spending accounts
6. Help make employees better health-care consumers

18. Promotion seems impossible
Solutions:
1. Set realistic expectations for employees
2. Be sure to point out opportunities for improvement
3. Promote the best
4. Create new positions
5. Offer technical track promotions
6. Promote from within
7. Move people around


Employees feel not interested in his work

19. Monotonous job
Solutions:
1. Help employees see the light
2. Enrich jobs
3. Provide other opportunities
4. Let your people go if very unhappy

20. No job security
Solutions:
1. Promote ideals and values rather than company goals
2. Don't deny the reality of the situation
3. Help employees grow
4. Provide portable benefits

21. Not getting much time for personal life
Solutions:
1. Provide flexibility in working time
2. Educate supervisors
3. Become known as an organisation where balance is valued
4. Reduce organisational inefficiencies
5. Provide senior management role models

22. Feeling trapped in a vicious cycle
Solutions:
1. Begin an intrapreneurship program
2. Allow employees to work part-time

Monday 4 June 2007

Budgeting for e-Learning Course Development

The most scientific methods of determining the price is to multiply the estimated project completion time by the costs and profit margin.
The direct development cost of the e-Learning courses involves the production cost. The total estimated expenditure of personnel time, materials, overhead, and profit becomes the bid price for the project, depicted by the following formula: Price = Cost + Profit

However, you will also need to factor other items into your budget such as:
  • Software to run the e-learning (LMS or e-Learning system)
  • Hardware for housing the e-learning software
  • Associated training for the client
  • Specialized programming for connecting e-learning software to existing human resource systems
  • Any additional services or products you provide

Project Bid Prices
Based on Time and Resources involved
— A mutually agreeable hourly rate for personnel is established and billed accordingly as the project continues. Expended materials and supplies are added to personnel charges. This approach is most desirable the scope of work is likely to change often during the life span of the project. While, this approach appears to be the fairest for conducting business with any customer.

Determining the Project Scope
Budgeting is built on project scope. None of the below-mentioned factors contribute solely to a project bid price.
There are several factors that can affect project scope and pricing:

Number and type of Learning Objectives — The assumption is that more objectives suggest more work and those instructional lessons for higher level objectives as categorized by Gagné and Bloom are more time consuming to prepare than lower level objectives. In this case, we establish fees for each type of objective based upon previous experience.

Number and types of interaction — Linear electronic page-turners are more easily constructed than lessons with abundant branching options.

Assessment requirements — The inclusion or exclusion of pretest, posttest, and embedded questions affects the complexity of a project. Also, true/false and multiple choice items are easier to create than drag/drop interactions.

Expected length of program — Often the project price is based upon a unit price per hour of instruction. The hourly rate varies depending upon the type of lesson requested. For example, a one-hour lesson dealing with learning facts and basic knowledge may price out at $3500, whereas a one-hour lesson dealing with a simulation of a complicated company process may be priced at $11,000. Generally the standard effort time required to develop 1 hr of e-learning course is 350 man hrs including the efforts of all related human resources such as Instructional Designers, Graphic Designers, Animators, Flash Developers, etc

Level of media integration — The type and amount of media used in a lesson affect the project price. Basic text is the least expensive; motion video is the most expensive. Animations are more expensive than static graphics, but static graphics are usually more expensive than clip art. The use of sound such as audio narration and special sound effects influences the project bid price.

Technical challenge — The technical requirements such as the authoring/ programming tools to be used, the delivery system, and any special requests certainly affect the personnel resources needed for a project.