It’s never a bad idea to look at strategic principles through the lens of proven business leaders such as Jack Welch. Jack started at GE as a chemical engineer in 1960 and by 1980 he was promoted to CEO where he proceeded to grow the company from $26B to $130B with a market value of $410B. To learn more about … Read More
Are You Selling to the Right Accounts?
An effective sales strategy starts with well defined segmentation of your current and target accounts. However, many companies struggle with defining the right criteria to build an effective account pipeline, which then significantly reduces the productivity of their entire sales process. This post will discuss three examples of how to qualify the accounts you decide to pursue; the existence of … Read More
Sales Management or Micromanagement?
Are you a Micromanager? I conducted an informal survey the other day discussing the roles of sales process within the staffing industry. Most of the respondents responded positively to the need for greater structure within sales organizations in order for sales people to maneuver through an increasingly competitive environment. One respondent caught my eye, primarily because he captured the downside … Read More
Change: Your Future Depends on it
Most companies embrace change when they first enter the market, because change presents opportunities for start-up companies to outmaneuver larger organizations that are less adaptable and more reliant on the status quo. Anyone who has been part of a quickly growing start-up organization knows the feeling of stealing away market share simply because it’s more in tune with the buyer … Read More
Eliminate Waste: How Staffing Firms Can Deliver More Efficiently
Do you know who your most profitable clients are, and do you respond to their needs accordingly? Are you paying for work that has little to no chance of providing revenue? How firms manage and deliver against job orders significantly impacts it’s competitiveness and bottom line. Studies from Lean Six Sigma consultancies estimate services firms who do not actively manage … Read More
Drivers for Sales Success
Identifying key sales drivers and being able assess the health of those drivers is critical in building and successfully managing a sales force. There are many staffing executives who believe that most sales issues begin and end with the quality of their sales force. While the quality of sales personnel is an important factor it is not the only one. … Read More
The Strategy Focused Organization (Part 3): Mobilize Change Through Executive Leadership
Today’s CEO is wrestling with unique market challenges. These challenges have forced many leaders and employees to question current business models and are looking at change not as a threat but as a necessity. This openness to change provides an opportunity to inspire their team to a better destination. However, many changes are complex and can reach to the heart … Read More
The Strategy Focused Organization (Part 2)
Principle Three: Make Strategy Everyone’s Everyday Job Does this sound familiar? A company crafts a strategy. They develop a thorough presentation to communicate the strategy and motivate the team. They call a team meeting and present the strategy. Employees are excited about the new direction seeing a better future ahead. Then the excitement fades, old habits reemerge, and six months … Read More
The Strategy Focused Organization (Part 1)
In 1991 Kaplan and Norton wrote the highly influential book called “The Strategy Focused Organization”. One of the first things they address is the key principles a company must hold in order to create a break through strategy that drives profitable growth. There are five principles overall, today I will write about the first two. Principle one: Translate the Strategy … Read More
What role does Strategy have in Staffing?
Staffing at its roots is an entrepreneurial industry. Some of the most successful staffing companies can point to strong leadership, aggressive execution, and ambitious production personnel as keys to their success. It is an industry defined at many levels by its shear will to succeed, and through the nineties that seemed to be enough. Over the last decade, we have … Read More