We had a company picnic last tuesday that was one of the best we’ve ever had. We rented out a big facility that could fit all 200 of us. Maybe one of the best things we did turned out to be the worst as well. We did one of those massive ice cream sundays. We put the ice cream into a large gutter and all ate out of it like a troff. It was very cool, but made such a mess we called in the California janitorial cleaning service. They cleaned it all up like it never happened. We probably wont be doing that again

Price is easy – the only three options you have are up, down or same. That’s
it. Quality is much more involved. Firstly we cannot judge or even quantify the
quality of a product if we don’t have a yardstick. There are two ways to do this
and both have their place. Firstly, find an equivalent product sold by a rival
company and compare its attributes with your own product. Better still, obtain all
competing products and produce a checklist of each product’s attributes,
comparing each with the other. Now add your own product to the mix and see where
it lands in the quality hierarchy.

A second way of measuring quality is to produce a product specification (the
above comparison exercise could feed in to this). Most specifications
allow tolerances for certain attributes. A shirt’s line of stitching may need to
be within a channel rather than in a perfect straight line, for instance. The
amount of glue seepage from a fibreboard box join may be allowable if no more
than 2 millimetres from the join. Certain attributes may have no tolerance at
all, especially when it comes to a critical function of the product (such as an
on/off switch on an electrical appliance). Health and safety aspects will
usually have no tolerance as will legal aspects. For instance, an incorrectly
wired mains plug will not be acceptable as will incorrect labelling of contents,
if this contravenes the law.

Then you need to decide what to do if a product is outside the given
tolerances. If it is a food product, it may be sold off to a jobber or even
disposed of. If it is a factory-made product it may be sent back for
re-working. But what if the production manager is under pressure to get
goods out to the customer and the quality controller finds that it is out of
specification? There are a multitude of solutions ranging from “send it
back” to “ignore it”. In between are various solutions such as
putting the monkey on the customer’s shoulders: “you can have it now with
minor defects or you can wait until tomorrow for the in-specification product.
Up to you”.

This dilemma will be familiar to production facilities around the world. The
production staff have pulled out all the stops to meet their deadline – and very
proud of themselves too – and the quality controller rejects it. Often the
quality control function will have a separate reporting structure giving them
independence from production. The lines will converge somewhere, and often with
the CEO. And here is a scene repeated around the world, countless times every
day: the quality control representative and the production representative
arguing their respective cases in front of the boss. “I paid thousands in
overtime to get this product out!”, says the production man. “The
product is not acceptable”, says the Quality controller. “It’s only
marginally out of specification”, says production….and so on.

Why is this scene played out so often? The boss is in an impossible situation
where he will let his customer down one way or another. Does he come open with
his customer and share his problem with them or does he let the product go
through and hope and pray? Or does he simply stop the product from going out and
say to the customer “do what you will, but I’m not letting a substandard
product leave this factory”.

It’s easy to sit and read this and say: “don’t let it go out”. This
is great in theory, but if it means you will lose your customer altogether if
they don’t receive their order on time then you are in a zero game. Just take my
earlier method of checking quality: when the competitor products are being lined
up for comparison, our boss’ product won’t even be in the line up if it never
made it to the customer! This is the dilemma in essence: what is worst, a
product with defects or no product at all? As I said, it is a zero game.

It is of course nonsensical to let things go this far. Yet it happens
everywhere and happens all the time. There are conflicting theories as to
whether the quality control function should be separated from production or
whether it should be part of production. There is no easy answer. If the
quality controllers were in the production plant instead of outside it, would
they be on the “reject it” side or the “let it through”
side? Bear in mind that they are as culpable – if not more so – as the
production manager if the finished product is not up to standard. By mixing the
quality controllers in with the production staff there is a danger that things
will get personal. This in-built friction will be a battle of wills and the
winner will be the person or people with the most assertive personality. Not the
way to run a production line!

So what is the answer? Here is a radical one for you: get rid of the quality
controllers. Make all the staff responsible for quality. Crucially, in
tandem with this, make sure the production manager is responsible for quality
and quantity in equal measure. His job should be to get the product out on time
and at the right quality. Make sure his bonus is based on both measures and not
weighted more one way than the other. The conflict between getting the product
out and getting it right would not be played out in the CEOs office when it is
too late, but in the production manager’s head when planning production – even
urgent production. And get a good production manager – you can afford to pay for
the best now that you have no quality control staff.

A company that is known world-wide for superior quality is Insectocutor.
The methods it employs obviously works as its fly killers are consistently of
the highest standards and workmanship. The management team of Insectocutor are
so confident of this that they guarantee their machines for 5 years. We sell a
range of their products at our web site at Arkay Hygiene. Insectocutor staff and
management need no lessons from me or anyone else on how to produce a product on
time and at the highest standard of quality. They have been doing it for over 40
years!

High quality Insectocutor Fly Killers
from Arkay Hygiene. Take, for example, the excellent workmanship of the SE44
Stainless Steel Fly Killer Machine.

A recent survey showed that 53% of all sales recruiting efforts lead to mis-hires. That means if your company does an average job in sales recruiting, you have a 50/50 chance of making a mistake. And nowhere is it more costly than in sales. Given the learning curve and sales cycle for a new recruit, it can easily take 6-12 months before you realize the person you hired is incapable or unwilling to sell for your company. The costs can be staggering: tens of thousands in expense, hundreds of thousands (or millions) in lost sales and margin, and as much as 1-2 years of lost momentum and market share to your competition. With so much at stake for your company, are you willing to accept these outcomes?

Fear not. It is possible to avoid these costs, as long as you recognize the potential pitfalls and work proactively to eliminate them. Here’s a set of rules that will help you in your quest for making top hires:

Know Your Requirements. Start by developing a clear job description that fully identifies the key skills and experience you’re looking for, the selling environment, the ideal candidate profile (hunter vs. farmer), sales objectives and key performance metrics for the position. This sounds easy, but if you skip this step, chances are you’ll end up with nothing to match candidates against – and that’s the start of a recipe for disaster.

Understand The Skills & Traits of Top Performers. Many managers hire sales reps that epitomize the stereotype of a top sales rep. They mistakenly believe that if a person can sell himself or herself through the interviewing process, that person must be good at sales. Dead wrong. Look for these key skills and traits:

• Traits Skills
• Motivation To Succeed Prospecting
• Ego-Drive Probing
• Empathy Listening
• Service-Orientation Persuasion
• Conscientiousness Negotiation
• Ego-Resilience Technical
• Detail-Orientation Organization

Know Where To Look. Let’s face it. In this economy, placing an ad in the local paper or on job boards is not going to attract top sales talent. Why? Because the best sales people are already working, and probably not looking! If you want to find the best, you need to develop a highly targeted strategy. Start by finding out the names of top reps who are working for your competitors, and make a direct approach. Continue by contacting everyone you know in your industry network (including your customers), to get referrals, since most great hires come through people you already know. If these efforts don’t yield results, target top reps in companies that are selling complementary products to your customer base. Need help? A good headhunter knows exactly how to find the best people.

Sell the Job. If you want to attract the best, make sure to spend time developing and promoting your own company’s story. What’s your vision for the company? What’s your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? What’s your strategy to win in your market? What sort of growth and advancement opportunities do you offer to top performers? What makes your company a great place to work? Are you offering a job, or a real opportunity?

Develop a Rigorous Process, Then Stick To It. This is where companies often fall down: by going too fast and skipping critical steps. Hiring great sales people requires lots of time, commitment and energy. To do the job right, make sure your hiring process includes the following elements:

 Build the right interview team, train the team on interviewing skills, assign different topics to team members, and make sure to debrief on each candidate.
 Use behavioral interviewing techniques, rather than asking closed-ended questions.
 Collect detailed sales achievement history from all candidates, by asking for a breakdown of their annual quota and actual results for the previous 3-5 years. Top producers have this information - underperformers don't.
 Assign homework at each stage of the process, and watch closely to see how well candidates follow-up -- and follow instructions.
 Validate your candidates sales skills, using an online sales profiling tool (we like the Express Screens at http://www.objectivemanagement.com)
 Discard personal references, and insist on speaking to each candidate's past 3-4 immediate sales supervisors. If they're not listed, insist on talking to them anyway.
 

Hiring the right sales people is not easy, but no task is more important if you’re committed to achieving your company’s growth objectives. Unsure of how to get started, or too busy to do it yourself? We can help. Contact us for more information.

About Cube Management
Cube Management (http://www.cubemanagement.com) provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.

Don’t pay too much attention to the experts. They told the Beatles that the time for a guitar group had passed! At least one of them, Paul McCartney, is still going strong.He played at half-time at the Superbowl in 2005. Not bad for someone whose time had passed.

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21. He was given two years to live. He went on to get married and have three children and became one of the greatest theoretical physicists that the world has ever known.

He is now Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge – the position once held by Sir Isaac Newton. At least 40 years have passed since he was supposed to have died.

Recently in the UK some mothers have been released from jail. They had spent years of sheer hell in prison for allegedly killing their own children.

The evidence against them provided by a leading ‘expert’ has been shown to be faulty. They are now free but their lives have probably been destroyed irreparably.

The expert has not even been sacked from his job.

The experts probably told Sir Ranulph Fiennes that running 7 marathons in 7 days soon after a massive heart attack was not a good idea. He did it anyway.

Sir Ranulph, who was described as the world’s greatest explorer in 1984 in the Guinness book of records, has the self-confidence to ignore the experts.

Sir Ranulph now plans to climb Everest by the difficult route. The experts are probably not bothering to tell him that a man with a heart condition should not try to pass the ‘death zone’ on Everest where oxygen is in short supply.

Sir Ranulph is not too concerned. He believes that, If you plan meticulously and take the right person and the best kit and accept the fact that luck is an element, you will do alright.

Recently Anthony Smith, a 78 year old UK pensioner, has asked for three volunteers over the age of 65, to accompany him on a raft made of gas pipes across the Atlantic.

Two of the gas pipes will be sealed full of air to provide buoyancy and the others will be filled with water for drinking and washing.

A woman of 24 volunteered for the voyage, despite the request for male applicants over 65. Her application was reluctantly rejected.

Anthony may or may not succeed but he has probably already had a boat load of experts telling him not to set sail. I have a feeling they may be right in this case!

I, for one, will not be volunteering to accompany him. Like Nelson, I suffer badly from sea sickness and can’t swim too well!

An expert told me, many years ago, that I was making a fuss after I had a minor operation on my toe. I was in severe pain for two or three days. My mother did not believe the expert’s assessment and eventually removed the bandage. My toe was black with gangrene.

The bandage, put on by another ‘expert’, had been too tight.
I could have lost both my leg and my life if my mother had paid too much respect to the experts.

Frank Garon, the internet guru and philosopher, makes the key point that there are more than enough experts and critics to go around. We don’t need to become our own critic.

“The rest of the world will do the job, of trying to shoot you down, for you. You don’t need to do it yourself. You have to be your own cheerleader and your own biggest fan. Not your biggest enemy, and my fear is that maybe you don’t cheer yourself on enough or give yourself enough credit or enough of a chance.”

Obviously one should at least listen to the experts. Many of them do know what they are doing and could save your life or your money.

After all, an expert, Dr. Mike Stroud, accompanied Ranulph Fiennes on his marathon runs and great polar expeditions.

However, we should not automatically assume that experts are always right. Some of them are spectacularly wrong.

About the author

John Watson is an award winning teacher and martial arts instructor. He has recently written two books about achieving your goals and dreams.

They can both be found on his website http://www.motivationtoday.com along with a daily motivational message.

The title of the first book is “36 Laws To Ignite Your Inner Power And Realize Your Dreams Now! – Acronyms, Stories, And Pictures…Easy To Remember And Use Everyday To Grab Your Life And Soar With The Eagles”

The book can be found at this URL: http://www.motivationtoday.com/36_laws.php

The book uses acronyms, stories and pictures to help readers remember 36 laws that can gradually transform your life if you apply them.

Ezine editors / Site owners.

Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site as long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include my resource box as listed above.