The Hair Shop blog

Questions on Values

Before I start I know you may be thinking, here he goes again on his soap box, but I only stand on the soap box because I am short.

One of the feeds I subscribe to is Lewis Greens Blog, and his post on Values is one that I really liked.

Now I know that most of us are not going to start our own business (if you are you might want to print these lists and subscribe to his blog), but I feel the first list on creating values is one that we could and should ask ourselves about our daily life.

To create values, we begin by asking a few questions:

1. Do people believe what we say and do we say what we mean?

2. Is our business built on values that represent the heart and soul of the founders and leaders of the business?

3. Does the corporate culture buy into those values?

4. And do the values represent core beliefs held by the executives and founders that reach beyond profit?

5. Why should we expect anyone to buy our products or services if they cannot trust us to be honest and caring human beings?

Now #1 is a given question, for #2 could you not ask yourself, is our daily life conducted by the values that we believe in and represent, #3 Do our family and friends buy into those values, #4 Do these core values represent core beliefs held by our parents or grand parents that reach beyond just existing, #5 Why should we expect anyone to bide for our time or want to be our friend and acquaintance if they cannot trust us to be honest and caring human beings?

As for the second list of 10 critical factors that success and business growth revolve around,

1. Credibility, Trust and Values
2. Relationships and Partnerships
3. Brand Development and Brand Management
4. Business Culture and Diversity
5. Under Promising and Over Delivering
6. People-Centrism

7. Planning
8. Visionary Thinking, Calculated Risk Taking, Strategic Thinking and Doing What You Do Best
9. Sales and Marketing
10. Listening, Solving and Meeting Real Needs

Again you may not be looking to start your own business, but if you are looking for advancement or a change of careers put this list to use before taking a position with a new company or put it to use with your current company.

You probably do not want to take a position if the company is lacking on several of these especially on #1.

If you can answer all of these questions with a yes I think you are probably leading a pretty happy life. What do you  think?

Whats your plans

Wow this has been a blast and I find myself looking at my classmates wondering if any will go in to sales. One day I answer my phone and it is one of them calling to set an appointment about selling me boxes, chemicals or supplies for my company.

I see the personality coming through in them and think all of them could be pretty good at it.

They all understand the importance of knowing your product, training and setting goals and objectives, but how many actually plan to take the career change plunge.

I know I do, not sure exactly what field but I know I am at a point in my life that I can take the risk if I want. Lets face it the money is not in the production side of the business and I am getting bored with what I am doing. After all I have been doing it for the better part of 15 years.

To all I say if that is what you want to do then go for it. I have dealt with a lot of sales people over the last 15 years and have seen a lot of good ones as well as a lot of bad ones, and I can say that what I have seen from my classmates makes me believe that they all would be very good at the job if they wanted to.

Well just wanted to post something a little different.

See all of you in class.

Whats the plan Stan

Evaluating your sales team, I am not sure which I feel is more important the training of your sales for or how you set up their goals and requirements.

Both are very important and we know what a person that has no idea of what they are doing can affect and organization, but as I shared in class last week a misdirected sales force can have devastating effects also.

As a manager you must set these goals and measurements with the understanding that you may want to put focus on one or two main objectives, but never take it for granted that you team will cover the basics. You must always cover the fundamental basics in the plan as well this will insure that if they are not overlooked. In our case the fundamentals were not put in the measurement and they were overlooked causing 89 people across 3 plants to be temporarily laid off and in some cases maybe permanently.

A misdirected sales force can ruin a business just as quickly as a well directed sales force could build one.

Are you just a copy cat

The first time I heard the phrase bench marking in business it though back to the days of being a short guy who could not run or jump playing on the basketball team, which after every game I came home with bench markings on my rear. Sorry for the flash back, now on to the subject at hand.

When we were kids we were ridiculed for being a copycat (and in the case of the mullet justifiably so), but in today’s business world being a copycat (benchmarking to improve) is looked upon as a positive and people are rewarded for it.

But the questions I pose to you are; is benchmarking really just a lack of imagination by the management team? Is it because they could not come up with any solutions of their own to improve upon the process, so they just decided to copy the other guy? What if while in the process of copycatting the other guy we do not try and come up with our own solution and in doing so we miss and opportunity to not only improve the process but also become the leader in the field our self?

The fellow student from Canada found an article that puts benchmarking as number two on the executives guide of management tools and third is the process of reengineering for improvement. So is that copy first and try to improve on your own second. We are studying marketing and sales and constanlly hear that you, your company, you ads and the products should stand out and be different be remarkable, but we put benchmarking that high on the list of tools you should have.

Yes benchmarking is a very successful and widely used tool but is that a good thing?

fellow student from Canada

Purple cow

Good Ole Boys Club

Some might say behaving ethically means good buy to the good ole boy clubs were you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. Were sales people would do things like buying a person a new car, house or pay for a pool to be installed (in this situation all three) in order to make a sale on aluminum billet at a price two cents a pound higher than the current market. If a sales person is offering you anything other than literature or a lunch (which you must have approve through your boss before attending) then you should avoid this person like the plague.

In sales or purchasing functions there has always and will always be that temptation to do whatever it takes to make the sale or get the best price. Now a lot of people will say yes I can see what you are talking about in sales but getting the best price for a purchaser that is their job; agreed but it must be done ethically. That means you do not lie to a vendor about what price you are getting in order to try and drive his price down, lie about your expected volume to get a volume discount that you know will never happen, or demand to be taken out to lunch before discussing business. All of these are unethical behaviors, as a matter of fact if you are the sales person and a customer gives you the price you have to beat beware because it is against every policy I have ever seen to give the price out of a potential vendors competitor.

I have seen a lot of different ethical breaches in the last ten years, besides the ones that I have already mentioned with the aluminum billet, giving the wrong volume, giving a competitors price and demanding lunch every visit before talking business.

On the purchasing side you can add pushing your girl scout cookies, suggesting that you really like chocolate covered almonds that the other company sent you, dropping a hint that your daughter would love a gold necklace for her birthday but you just afford it and so on and so on.

Other sales breaches I have seen would be an envelope full of cash, gold jewelry, all expense paid hunting trips to Canada or Colorado (you even keep the $2000 shotgun), season tickets to the local pro sports teams and so on.

If going in to sales you must always remember to do business ethically, yes you may grow you territory slower but it will be a strong loyal territory, but it is also your job to keep your eyes open for the unethical behavior of you customers.

Business Ethics Deffinition

About Managment

Sales Recruitment

In module 5 we are talking about hiring sales people, and this is a valid subject for a sales management course as the one we are taking.

If we are thinking of making a career change, the question that should be on our minds as we near the end of our education at Northwood is what are they looking for in the job I am turning my resume for?

Yes I know that they will put down that they are looking for a person with a degree and sales experience along with a list of attributes they should have. But if every sales manager only hired people with experience then there would never be another opening.

So what are they looking for well besides eye contact and posture, I haven’t a clue since I have never worked in sales. The one reoccurring theme is the term self-starter and results driven. Of course you have to so that you are a people person and are able to communicate effectively, but before you go in make sure you can give examples of what you have done and how you have gotten results in tasks that you have been given.

Exhibit 5.5 and 5.6 on pgs. 143, 144 and 145 looks to be a great outline of what to look for and some questions to ask when interviewing and this could be a great tool to prepare a person for an interview.

Monster search

Sales Forecasting

Ah accurate sales forecast, a manufacturing managers dream.

I really liked the topics here and will need to reread them because quite frankly I am not that sharp sometimes. But an accurate sales forecast is very difficult to attain in some industries. Yes you are in the medical supply you know how many people are at what age and the population in your area of responsibility and you can generally get pretty accurate on what the demand is going to be for any given period of time.

Now when you are dealing with products that are affected by fluctuations in the housing market to name one of many, it can be a totally different story. Yes there was a predicted drop in new home starts but it has turned much worse than forecasted and all the so called experts are unsure of when it will turn around.

So what effect does this have on the manufacturing companies making products for the new home market, well most have slowed or stopped producing and some are sitting on large amounts of raw material that were bought according to the sales forecast that was loaded in the MRP systems that they use.

Yes sales forecast are an important tool becasue that is what the business sets its financial plan to, but one cannot rely solely on them and they must be updated periodically to be effective.

Sales Forecast spreadsheet

sales forecast

Sales Forecast

SBU objectives

I really liked Exhibit 3.2 on pg. 52 in the book.

I think that most people think of salespeople as going out and getting new sales and that is all that they do. But this exhibit shows that there are a lot of different functions depending on what how the salespeople are paid and it also depends on what mode the company is in at the time also.

We just went through such a transition of going from Build, Hold and Harvest in the last few years. Starting out the company was aggressively going after business to build market share so we were in the Build mode, and we stayed in that mode for quite some time.

Once we our production process started filling up the sales focus switched to a more Hold mode, and focused on servicing our existing accounts and making fewer calls on new accounts. At this point the production pipeline had filled up to capacity.

When production capacity had been reached we switched to the Harvest mode, servicing the high yield customers to insure they stayed and pushing price increases on the low yield to increase yield and if they left so be it.

This is a continuing process because if a lot of the low yield customers left then you reverted back to the Build mode, but if only a few left and the remaining took the price increase you moved back to the Hold mode.

Ideally a company would move in and out of the Hold and Harvest mode and not revert all the way back to the Build mode, but it does happen.

We went through this when a company had oversold capacity and when it came down to getting material we were lower on the list because our sourcing department did a great job of negotiating a low price so in some cases when they had production issues we did not get material because we were a low margin customer. Low profit meant low priority when it came to customer service. Needless to say we left them and went to another company, but about six months later they came back to us and tried to win our business back which we refused.

It is a very slippery slope to walk because you want business to fill up your production, but you have to be aware of the consequences once the pipeline is full if there is any production or supply issues.

If you have any thoughts I would like to hear them.

Tutor

SBU def

What is more important

Below is a link to a Blog on sales, it was an interesting take on what is better for a sales person to have Confidence or Enthusiasm and though most people went one way or the other with this post I am not sure I totally agree with either. Because I feel you need both to be an effective salesperson.

What is a salesperson that is enthusiastic but has no confidence? Would that not be a person that was excited about something but was to self-doubting to tell anyone else?

How about a salesperson that is very confident but was not enthusiastic about the product. Would you want to talk to that person? You can tell when a person is not excited about what they are pushing and if they are not excited then I am not going to be excited.

Right or wrong I look at it this way.

First if you are a new salesperson you better have one or the other when you walk in the door. If you’re enthusiastic we will work on the confidence, and if you have the confidence we will train you and get you excited about the product.

Second in you are an experienced salesperson then you better have the confidence when you walk in the door. Because after lets say ten years of sales you still are not confident in your abilities, then I would not hire you.

Either way after the training process and your probationary period, if I do not see that you have or are developing both of them, then I am not sure how long you will be around.

Sales article

Dogers Sales and Marketing Move

This has nothing to do with sales but it is a Marketing ploy. (using that as and excuses to blog on the topic)

Who all has heard about what the LA Dodgers are doing to try and sell tickets?

Well they are selling all you can eat tickets; yep buy a ticket for the right field bleachers for a measly $35 dollars in advance or $40 at the gate and you get all you can eat at the concession stand (excluding alcohol and candy) or at an server you self buffet line they are going to put in.

Wow, is there attendance that low that they need to make this type of move. Or is it a move if it works out that might possibly turning the whole stadium in to the same type of tickets?

They will not lose money by any means because if you do eat the $25 to $30 dollars worth of food it takes to pay for the tickets then you will be consuming a lot of beverages and at 3.75 a pop for 25 cents worth of drink they might even make more money on this than before. If this works how easy would it be for them to collect all the money up front and not have to deal with it at the point of sale? You just walk up order and leave because you have already paid for it.

But my question is, do you really want to sit in that section? I know on a hot summers day that I don’t want to sit with a couple thousand people or more that can eat $25 worth of nachos or hot dogs.

Dig in