Smart Lemming Review: The Carrot Principle - How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance
July 3, 2009 – 5:39 pm | No Comment

What it is: Gostick and Elton’s The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance

What it’s about: This updated edition offers invaluable advice for middle managers …

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Smart Lemming Diary: Preparing for My First Sales Training
July 2, 2009 – 8:25 am | One Comment

upward-mobility

August 24, 2005

My CEO, Tom, wants the sales training for our first Value-Added Reseller (VAR) relationship to be on August 31. Secretly, I was hoping it would be kicked to September 8 or 9, but there is urgency to get it done ASAP. Most of the sales support and focus for the past couple of months has been for the VAR, leaving us in a poor position of having four to five customers that want to sign contracts.

Despite this demand for our product, we don’t have a contract for them to sign, since the VAR master agreement isn’t signed Tom’s company and the VAR. Yesterday, he had a productive call with VAR’s VP of Sales to review the red lined version of the agreement. The net effect of the deal? The VAR is committing to selling sixty units of our product by year-end, but they need sales training before they can even start.

Sales Training Agenda
I have participated in four sales trainings before, two of which I organized and managed with my former VP. The VAR’s VP of Sales didn’t know what the agenda should be, so during a conference call, I rattled off an agenda during my Friday call with her when Tom was on vacation. The agenda will be as follows:

  1. Industry & Company Overview: Product Training, Target audience, business goals, feature set, Solution Development Prompters (SDP), and Product information Sheet & collateral, etc.
  2. Competition: Profiles, Strengths & Weaknesses, & Positioning
  3. Sales Tools: Sales Presentation, Sales presentation, demo presentation w/ notes, Sales presentation, Product demo, ROI Financial Dashboard, ROI financial dashboard sample report and ROI Terms and Definitions
  4. Mechanics/Administrative: Pricing, Pricing FAQs, Pricing policy, Online Demo, Online demo policy, Standard proposal template - Channel Partner, and Online demo calendar
  5. Technical Aspects for Sales: Technical FAQs, Hosting and Security Overview, and Hosting Escalation and Response Times
  6. Our Client Services (Implementation and Support): Overview of CS, IT Scope & Effort Estimate, Proposed Kickoff Agenda, Training Agenda, Systems Reporting Tool Overview, Overview of Maintenance Services, and Sample System Integration Specification
  7. Sales & Marketing Programs: Target Audience: National Accounts – Existing Accounts, Target Audience: Large Qualified Prospects – Existing Pipeline, and Target Audience: New Prospects – Larger Prospects

Remaining Work

We’ve completed 23 of 52 deliverables or 56% percent complete, based on existing materials I’ve created or that has been generated by others. I have 24 deliverables to complete between now and August 31. The bulk of the work are the business goals by target audience mapped to feature set and the SDPs.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here.

12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #12 What if you finally get to do what you always wanted?
June 30, 2009 – 9:39 am | One Comment
12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #12 What if you finally get to do what you always wanted?

What if you finally got what you always wanted? Perhaps the real question is, “What do you want to do?”
I know that I like building things. I like working wherever I want, whenever I want. …

Smart Lemming Diary: Sales Training Preparation
June 30, 2009 – 8:55 am | One Comment
Smart Lemming Diary: Sales Training Preparation

August 23, 2005
Tom’s been on vacation since last Thursday. During his break, he received both VAR agreements from our channel partners that had been held up for months. Today was his first day back. Since …

12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #11 What is the elephant in the room?
June 29, 2009 – 9:55 am | No Comment
12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #11 What is the elephant in the room?

There’s nothing more uncomfortable than an elephant in the room. No one wants to discuss the elephant. It’s better to avoid it by not acknowledging the elephant’s existence. What’s the elephant in your room? Or …

Smart Lemming Diary: Poaching is Successful
June 29, 2009 – 9:24 am | One Comment
Smart Lemming Diary: Poaching is Successful

August 21, 2005
When I got back into the office on Friday morning, the revised offer letter still hadn’t been sent from our Controller to Jonathan for my Marketing Manager position. Jonathan had emailed once on …

12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #10 What if you didn’t get that job?
June 26, 2009 – 8:42 am | No Comment
12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #10 What if you didn’t get that job?

“What if” questions are dangerous. They’re like the “road not taken” question. But really, what if you didn’t get that particular job?
I know that if Group Health Cooperative in 1996, right after my MHA program, …

Smart Lemming Diary: Who’s Sending the Updated Offer Letter?
June 26, 2009 – 8:38 am | No Comment
Smart Lemming Diary: Who’s Sending the Updated Offer Letter?

August 18, 2005
The Controller’s out. The CEO’s out. Who’s sending the offer letter? Jonathan didn’t get his updated offer letter yesterday as we promised. The Controller, who prepares all offers, was still out on vacation. …

12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #9 How did it all go wrong so fast?
June 25, 2009 – 9:55 am | No Comment
12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #9 How did it all go wrong so fast?

Did you ever ask yourself, “How did it all go wrong so fast?” This usually means that the tide has turned, usually not for the good. What changed? How and why did things go wrong? …

Please Don’t Promote Me: 5 Tips on How to Avoid Career Vertigo
June 25, 2009 – 9:35 am | No Comment
Please Don’t Promote Me: 5 Tips on How to Avoid Career Vertigo

“Please don’t promote me! It’s stressful.” First of all, what?! I always felt like doing cartwheels or something when I was promoted. When I read “Please Don’t Promote Me” by Joseph Weber, I did a …

The 8 Deadly Sins of Email
June 25, 2009 – 9:00 am | 2 Comments
The 8 Deadly Sins of Email

I was avoiding Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Home and Officeby David Shipley and Will Schwalbe because this book was “too visible” in the stores when it was first released. I was seeing …

Smart Lemming Diary: An Offer Declined, We Counter
June 25, 2009 – 8:25 am | No Comment
Smart Lemming Diary: An Offer Declined, We Counter

August 17, 2005
Ever have an uneasy feeling as if things won’t go the way you want them to? That was the feeling I was having over the weekend and this morning. Jonathan finally contacted Tom …

12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #8 What happened on a work day that was “different?”
June 24, 2009 – 9:10 am | No Comment
12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #8 What happened on a work day that was “different?”

We’ve all had a day when we knew something wasn’t quite right. Reflecting back on “what happened on a work day that was different” helps us validate our intuition. We can learn to trust our …

Smart Lemming Diary: Former Sales Colleague Interviews Well
June 24, 2009 – 8:00 am | No Comment
Smart Lemming Diary: Former Sales Colleague Interviews Well

August 16, 2005
My former sales coworker, Jamie, flew in Sunday night for Monday interviews. She met with Tom first. whom she had to convince that working remotely from her home office was effective. Jamie sold …

12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #7 Have you experienced a painful loyalty?
June 23, 2009 – 11:02 am | 2 Comments
12 Questions for Career Mindfulness: #7 Have you experienced a painful loyalty?

Loyalty. Employers want it. Employees sometimes give it. With loyalty comes implicit trust. Sometimes giving loyalty ends up being a painful experience. Have you experienced a painful loyalty in your career?
When I think of this …

Feeling Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
June 23, 2009 – 10:28 am | No Comment
Feeling Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

If you’re like me, you do not like being uncomfortable. As you move up the career ladder or become an entrepreneur, you’re constantly in unfamiliar situations like going to events, being in meetings with key …