The Best time to Try to Get a Client on the Phone

Getting some phone time with busy people is a challenge. The challenge is a bit less daunting if you know the right times to reach out.

 

Dr. James Oldroyd at the Kellog School of Management studied the records of more than a million cold calls and came up with the following results:

• Thursday is the best day to make a call. You’re 20% more likely to reach people than on the worst day, Friday. Other days were in the middle somewhere.
• Between 8 am and 9 am is the best time to call, with between 4 pm and 5 pm the next best choice. In the 8-9 am time frame, you have a 164% better chance of reaching people than you do in the 1-2 pm period.

Why cold calling is essential

Research finds that 10%-15% of current customers are actively looking for a new vendor, and that 20%-30% more will listen to someone who can promise a better product, cheaper product, better delivery or superior service.

The simple truth is that cold calling pays – it’s a critical way for salespeople to uncover new, previously unidentified prospects, people who are unhappy with their current situation and are willing to listen of a better offer.

Let common sense be your guide

Common sense is a good rule to follow when scheduling your cold calls. Call when other salespeople won’t or during what they claim to be a bad time: around holidays, summer vacations and long weekends. Some salespeople write off these times by taking official vacation days or by mentally taking time off.

Business is still taking place

Some prospects may not be in, but business is still taking place and other buyers may be working. Their gatekeepers are out and they’re more apt to pick up the phone during these “slow” times.

Maybe they’re even in a receptive mood, since other salespeople may not be banging their doors down.

The wrong assumption

Salespeople who refuse to make cold calls during these traditional downtimes forget a basic rule of selling: If they’re not making cold calls, they have no chance of reaching those prospects and selling them.

Added benefits of cold calls

Besides generating some bona fide leads, cold calling will teach you to:

• Be ready. Cold calling teaches you the value of every second a prospect affords you.
• Be creative. Cold calling teaches you to be flexible and fluid in your approach to prospects.
• Be fast. Cold calling teaches you to make your presentation concise, appealing, clear and simple.

Unconventional times to call

Here are three unconventional times to call that may pay off:

1.      After or before hours. Who’s normally working late or coming in early? Owners, executives, people who control purchasing.

2.      Weekends. Owners and key executives may be in their offices while their screeners aren’t working. They may be more relaxed during these times and can time more time to listen to you.

3.      Bad weather days. Pay attention to the weather in areas that you call into. Some salespeople make it a point to call in areas that have just been hit with a blizzard during the winter. They reach owners and executives who are in their offices and whose screeners aren’t working. A salesperson for Xerox set a sales record during a three-day snowstorm, while many of the businesses in his city were closed. Most of the gatekeepers stayed home during the blizzard, but their bosses were in, many of them prospects he had tried to reach unsuccessfully in the past.

Ritualizing your cold calling

Make an appointment with yourself to cold call during set times to which you commit on a regular basis. For some, it may be every day between certain hours, no exceptions.

For others, it may be one day a week. Though it may vary from one salesperson to another, the key is setting the time and then doing it.

Do nothing else

Make cold calls regularly and try not to do anything else during that time. Don’t check e-mail. Don’t write proposals. Stay in a zone during cold calls and don’t let administrative tasks get in the way.

When is the best time to cold call?

The best time to cold call is when you’re in a personal success zone. That’s the time when you have a string of very successful calls, you attitude is at its peak and everything falls in your favor.

So when you’re on a personal hot streak, try to keeping going. Don’t stop to dwell on the success too long. Take advantage of the groove you’re in and keep plugging away.

Client Issues – Deal With Them Fast!

If you accept referrals and conduct business with referred clients, eventually a job will go bad.  We take care to insure that it never happens, but sometimes the perfect storm combines to produce a result that dissatisfies a customer.

There are several things to consider:

1.     Learn about it early.  Stay in touch with your client and be alert for any indication that something is not perfect and needs your attention.  Use  survey documents if that is appropriate.  Call a few days after delivery to just “check in” and make sure everything is great.  No news is rarely good news…just one of many old sayings that are often wrong.

2.     Be listening for any indication of a problem and jump on it right away.  We had a shirt manufacturer in our group for a short time and I gave him an order for a dozen shirts for our employees to try him out.  I mentioned to him during the meeting after the delivery that the logos were too large and I was not pleased with the shirts.  He did not pick up on it, never contacted me and began to avoid eye contact.  He only lasted a few months, but after that incident, I would never have referred him to a real customer.

3. Don’t be blinded by the cost of fixing the problem. If it costs you more than you can afford…if you lose big time to fix the problem… it is worth it! You are not just dealing with a customer. Having a dissatisfied customer is problem enough. No, you are dealing with a potentially dissatisfied referral resource that will not only never refer you again, but will talk you down in his circle of contacts. Think how much time and energy you have invested in developing the relationship you are about to see evaporate.

4.     Once you have fixed the problem and the customer is satisfied, you must go out of your way to explain your failure to the referral source.  Explain the steps you are taking to insure the problem will never occur again.  Explain the extra steps you have taken to protect the referrers relationship with your customer.

A job gone wrong is an opportunity to develop an even stronger bond with a referral source and a customer by wowing them with your response.  It is also an opportunity to take a huge step back in your business.  Be sure you make the right choice.

Do you agree?  Let me know when you have had a job go south that you have either fixed or fouled up.

Firings for Offensive Facebook Posts Upheld

Here’s some good news: In two separate cases, authorities have stamped their  official OK on the termination of employees who’d written offensive posts on social media sites.

In the first case, Paterson, N.J. teacher Jennifer O’Brien posted, “(I’m) not a teacher — I’m a warden for future criminals” on her Facebook page, according to a story in The Record.

She was suspended. And then following a hearing, administrative law judge Ellen Bass ruled O’Brien should lose her tenured job.

Citing Paterson’s problems with poverty and violence, Bass wrote, “O’Brien has demonstrated a complete lack of sensitivity to the world in which her students live.

“The sentiment that a 6-year-old will not rise above the criminal element that surrounds him cuts right to the bone.”

The final firing decision now goes to the state education commissioner, who has 45 days to issue a ruling.

An unacceptable job title

The second case involves a man who used a profane and not-socially-acceptable term as his job title on his LinkedIn page.

His employers didn’t see the posting until several months later.

In the meantime, company employees used social media to discuss a wage and hour lawsuit concerning another firm’s practice of giving workers comp time in lieu of overtime.

The first employer had a similar policy, which it eventually changed.

After the policy change, the employer discovered the profane job description on LinkedIn. Company officials told the employee the post was in violation of its electronic communications policy and fired him.

He filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, saying his questionable LinkedIn post wasn’t the real reason for his discharge — it was the comments he had made about the companies overtime policies.

But NLRB officials didn’t buy it. Barry Kearney, NLRB associate general counsel, wrote in an advice memorandum that “there is no evidence that the employer was even aware (of the employee’s comments about overtime), and certainly no demonstrated animus towards employees discussing their working conditions.”

What’s more, Kearney said, the employer only discovered the offensive post as part of an assessment of problems it was running into on the firm’s LinkedIn page.

 

Peppermint-oreo Cookie balls

Peppermint-oreo Cookie balls.

What is becoming a mini-trend, another state has passed a law prohibiting the use of credit checks in employment.

In what’s becoming a mini-trend, another state has passed a law prohibiting the use of credit checks in employment.

California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a state law banning the practice. California thus joins a growing list of state with similar statutes, which includes Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon and Washington.

The California law does include exemptions from the ban. These include applicants for certain management-level jobs, law enforcement, positions whose duties would include access to customer’s personal data, and jobs calling for the direct handling of money.

Fading fast

Generally, the practice of using credit checks as a screening tool has become less common among U.S. employers.

You’ll remember the EEOC held hearings on the practice some months ago. At that session, several speakers testified that the use of credit histories in the employment context can have a disparate impact on a range of protected groups.

And that could expose employers who use credit checks to charges of discriminatory hiring practices.

3 Ways Data Gives Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy a Leg Up on the Competition

3 Ways Data Gives Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy a Leg Up on the Competition.

More People Gearing Up To Quit – Opportunity for you?

As the job market begins to loosen up, human-resource managers might increasingly be surprised by an announcement from employees they haven’t heard in a while: “I quit.”

In February, the number of employees voluntarily quitting surpassed the number being fired or discharged for the first time since October 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Before February, the BLS had recorded more layoffs than resignations for 15 straight months, the first such streak since the bureau started tracking the data a decade ago. Since the BLS began tracking the data, the average number of people voluntarily leaving their jobs per month has been about 2.7 million. But since October 2008, the average number dropped to as low as 1.72 million. In March, it was about 1.87 million.

And recent sentiment indicates that the number of employees quitting could continue to grow in the coming months. In a poll conducted by human-resources consultant Right Management at the end of 2009, 60% of workers said they intended to leave their jobs when the market got better. “The research is fairly alarming,” says Michael Haid, senior vice president of global solutions for Right Management. “The churn for companies could be very costly.”

Adecco Group, a world-wide staffing firm based in Zurich, has seen several of its clients ask for candidates for key positions after employees made surprise departures, says Vice President Rich Thompson. Although so far there haven’t been widespread departures, Mr. Thompson says his company is readying itself for large-scale changes within the next few months. “We’re preparing for a massive reshuffling of talent at all job levels in all industries,” he says, noting that the recession earlier this decade was so short and shallow that the turnover this time around is likely to be much greater.

Recruiters and human-resource experts say the increase in employees giving notice is a product of two forces. First, the natural turnover of employees leaving to advance their careers didn’t occur during the recession because jobs were so scarce. This created a backlog of workers waiting for better times to make a move to better jobs. The median monthly voluntary turnover rate in 2009 was 0.5%, half of the rate in 2008, according to the Bureau of National Affairs, a specialized news publisher for professionals.

During the recession, even if they heard of an opening, employees were reluctant to switch employers, says Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “The idea of moving when the world was already in uncertainty was quite scary,” he says. But those hang-ups are disappearing, and employees are becoming more receptive to recruiter calls and beginning to tap their networks again for signs of opportunities, he says.

Another factor making it harder for companies to retain employees is the effect of the heavy cost-cutting and downsizing during the downturn on workers’ morale. A survey conducted last summer for the Conference Board, a management research organization, found that the drivers of the drop in job fulfillment included less satisfaction with wages and less interest in work. In 2009, 34.6% of workers were satisfied with their wages, down more than seven percentage points from 1987. About 51% in 2009 said they were interested in work, down 19 percentage points from 1987.

“Employees feel disengaged with their jobs, which is going to lead to a lot of churn as we come out of the recession,” says Brett Good, a district president of Southern California for Robert Half International, an executive recruiting firm.

Mr. Good, who worked for Robert Half in the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this decade,says his company saw a “tremendous amount” of departures from technology companies that needed to be refilled when the dot-com recession ended. Already, Mr. Good says he’s received calls from executives who nine months ago felt trapped because of economic conditions and didn’t want to lose sure-thing positions, but now feel they’re able to move on. “They feel like ‘a bird in the hand’ isn’t good enough anymore,” he says.

An increase in turnover can be costly for companies. It typically costs a company about half of the position’s annual salary to recruit a person for that job, but the cost can run up to several times that if the position requires rare skills, says Right Management’s Mr. Haid. Convincing employees to stay might not be cheap either. Nearly 5,400 members of TheLadders.com, a job board for positions that pay $100,000 or more, responded to an April survey that asked how much more money it would take to convince them to stay if they wanted to leave. More than 20% said it would take a raise of more than $25,000. In all, about 50% of respondents said it would take more than $15,000.

To re-engage employees, Robert Half International is advising clients to hold town hall meetings and one-on-one sessions with employees to hear grievances and try to rekindle interest in the company among workers, Mr. Good says. Some clients had made broad-based cuts in departments based solely on salary or without regard to employee tenure, damaging the trust of the employees who survived, Mr. Good says.

Florida Hospital Flagler, an 850-employee hospital in northern Florida, faced a 30% turnover rate in 2008, almost double the average for area hospitals, says Alyson Parker, director of human resources. That dipped to 20% in 2009 as the economy suppressed voluntary departures, but the hospital still spent $3 million in 2009 on covering open positions, and finding and training new employees. The average search for a new nurse, for example,  costs the hospital between $52,000 and $60,000, Ms. Parker says. This year, the hospital implemented regular town hall and department meetings, and one-on-one “stay” interviews for employees to air grievances and give ways to improve the work environment. So far, the measures have helped the hospital to lower its turnover rate by about 2 percentage points. “We’re trying to catch people before they even start looking for a new job, which will become even more important as the economy improves and more opportunities at competitors open up,” Ms. Parker says.

Human-resource managers often have trouble getting resources from top management until employees actually start to leave, says Mr. Cappelli. In the late 1990s, companies that were losing employees started to offer concierge services, discounted lunches, and hiring bonuses in a mad scramble to keep employees and recruit new ones, a trend Mr. Cappelli says could come back if the job market continues to improve. But this time around, Mr. Cappelli says companies might try to deal with more nuanced employee requests, such as lowering stress at work, improving work-life balance, and creating more opportunities for career advancement within the company.

For some employees, it might be too late. Dice.com, a job board for tech professionals, asked members what could persuade them to stay in their jobs if they found another opportunity. More than 57% of the 1,273 surveyed said nothing could persuade them to stay. Of those who said they could be persuaded, 42% said they wanted a higher salary and 11% wanted a promotion.

 

//
//

What is the etiquette on following up after a job interview? To follow up or not to follow up?

What is the etiquette on following up after a job interview? To follow up or not to follow up?

Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 4:03pm

 

Thank you to Carla Jones for posting this question yesterday!

 The etiquette on following up after a job interview is to always follow up!

 Use the opportunity to say thank you to those you interviewed with and restate your interest and qualifications for the position. You can also use this as an opportunity to form a long-term relationship with the employer – whether you get the position or not.

 How you follow up – whether by email, mail, or phone – depends on you, but it seems these days that e-mail is the most common way.

 

Our CEO – Skip Mumme along with Sales Executives Sharon Porter and Carol Heilman

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.