3 Ways to Inspire Your Sales Team
New Year – New Goals
By Dan Fantasia CEO and Founder of Treeline, Inc.
“Behind extraordinary achievement you will always discover extraordinary effort.”
The Greatness Guide, By Robin Sharma
It is a new year and there is no better time than right now to inspire your sales team. One way to get the year off to a great start is to set your sales goals for 2012. Use your optimism to motivate and inspire your sales team. If you can harness this positively charged energy you can create an aggressive, focused and contagious environment likely to achieve success in 2012.
Here are 3 easy tips when to inspire your team:
1. Use inspirational quotes to motivate your sales team to work hard, take chances, and strive to succeed. There are thousands of quotes that you have read in your life time that have inspired you and passing them along to your sales team will likely have an effect on their attitudes. Share your enthusiasm and leverage good quotes that relate to your sales team. Get them energized and excited about the day, month, quarter and year. A great book for this is “The Greatness Guide” by Robin Sharma.
“Leadership is shown when a salesperson makes extra calls at the end of an exhausting day – not because it’s the easy thing to do but because it’s the right thing to do. Leadership is shown by the manager who finishes a report that has taken the very best from him, then goes back to it a little later to polish and improve it even more. And leadership is shown by the human being who fights the urge to stay under the covers on a cold day and throw on her running shoes to pound the pavement. Not because running miles on a frosty morning is fun. But because it’s wise.” – Robin Sharma
2. Bring the sales team together and reinforce team unity with pictures and stories of great memories. Talk boldly and openly about the last year. Look back at sales records, closed deals and team experiences. Help your team remember every positive experience in 2011. Relive funny moments, pictures from corporate outings and fun times. Many forget all the simple positive experiences they have enjoyed over the last year and many of these times are taken for granted. If you want to have a successful sales culture, then create an engaging environment that people want to be part of.
Here is a picture of the 2011 Treeline 10th Anniversary:
3. Lastly, use movie clips and videos that your team relates to. Movies are an effective and dynamic way to encourage your team. They foster self reflection and allow sales professionals to fully engage and support the message being presented. Movie clips are incredibly effective at supporting a motivational message that you are conveying. It is absorbed and experienced in a completely different manner and can get a team excited to take on challenges. Help them to be the best they can be.
Here are some videos about taking risks, commitment, hard work and adrenaline:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/05/yosemite-climbing/free-solo-video
http://www.adventure-journal.com/2011/11/sick-i-believe-i-can-fly-flight-of-the-frenchies/
Running a sales team is about metrics, closing and hard work. To motivate an aggressive sales force learn what excites them. Once you understand what motivates your team reinforce your commitment to support them. Help them get motivated and hungry for success.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. But the second best time is today.
Posted in Sales Motivation, Sales Team, Comments Off
Sales Hiring: The Tables Are Turning
Sales Candidates are in High Demand
By Kathleen Mauriot Division Manager at Treeline, Inc.
As we examine who are clients are looking to hire, it all boils down to the same basic criteria: inexpensive top talent with the perfect skill. You may laugh, but it is true. This is an interesting market and companies feel they are in the driver’s seat. To some degree this is accurate, but as an executive search firm exclusive to sales, we have noticed that the tables are turning as we roll into the New Year.
The world is flooded with the unemployed sales person who is desperately looking for their new gig. They will typically take every interview that comes their way. So, if you are looking to fill your calendar with interviews, no doubt you will be successful. However, filling your calendar with “A” candidates will require a different plan. “A” candidates are in high demand.
Just over the past week multiple companies have called Treeline looking for an introduction to top talent. The market is starting to explode and talent is being sought after like we haven’t seen in a long time. These candidates are being perused on a daily basis and they now feel like they have a bit of an upper hand. However, you can still find and hire them. The question is “are you willing to pay them?”
Consider these two scenarios: do you hire the sales representative with the perfect skill set who will have little to no ramp up and start generating revenue quickly OR do you hire the sales representative with a close skill set who you may need to dedicate initial training to get up to speed? The deciding factor may be compensation; the job market overall is sluggish, many companies believe they can take advantage of the economic times by offering a lower comp. The mindset of many is “take it or leave it.” In other words, “if you don’t want the job there are ten other people who will.” There’s definitely 10 other people, in fact there’s a thousand other people… the wrong people. That’s ego talking. Put it aside. Do not take that mentality, especially when you are filling a revenue generating role. Your goal as a sales manager is to fill that seat with a sales representative who you believe is going to drive revenue and help YOU reach your number. Don’t undercut a talented sales representative who brings all the pieces to the table. They will get insulted and walk from the offer. You’ll be back to the drawing board, which takes time and time equals money.
If compensation is a major concern, choose to hire the sales representative with a close skill match. You may be able to offer a slightly lower compensation package in exchange for the additional training needed to perform the job.
No matter what scenario you decide, make it a win-win for everyone. As a corporation, you will gain loyalty and commitment from your employees.
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Team, Comments Off
Hiring Sales People: What’s more important Skill or Spirit?
Should You Hire For Skill Or Spirit?
By Michelle Randall Expert Blogger at FastCompany.com
Companies spend a huge amount of time and resources crafting business strategies. Even so, most of these strategies end in failure.
I saw one company spend half a million dollars and hundreds of employee hours implementing a new strategy, only to admit that it wasn’t working. They had to spend even more money and lay off employees trying to put things back to the way they were before. The next time the company tried to introduce a new strategy, it was met with considerable employee resistance.
If employees don’t buy into a strategy, it’s doomed to failure from the start. After all, strategy doesn’t execute itself. People execute it. This is why it’s vital to integrate strategy and people.
Because people represent the potential of the business, high-growth companies need high-growth employees. Employee development is the key ingredient in breaking through to the next level of growth. Employees have to develop new skills that allow them to perform at higher levels so that they can quickly deliver on the potential of the strategy and the company itself.
While it’s certainly possible to hire for new capabilities, there are tremendous benefits of promoting from within. Just a few benefits include: retaining technical knowledge; honoring the informal, social fabric of the organization; and fostering the culture of the company.
Employee development needs to be included in both strategy creation and execution. There are two main ways to assess people and their development: skills and spirit.
Skills are things that can be trained. A leader can be coached on how to become more influential and engage their team to achieve great results. An employee can be trained technical skills such as engineering, accounting, and marketing that they need to do their jobs really, really well.
Spirit refers to the “soft” skills that can’t be trained effectively. You have to hire for them. These are hard to find but are necessary for a company to function smoothly.
One of these skills is teamwork–the ability to put the needs of the group ahead of personal desires. Another is heart, as in “put your heart into it.” This describes true commitment and passionate engagement. Employees with heart take ownership of their jobs and go the extra mile.
One of my clients, a growing manufacturing company, got a huge order that had to be delivered on a rush basis. Everyone at the company had to pull out all the stops to get the job done on time.
Two women working on the manufacturing floor had the idea to make posters to keep track of progress. These were updated several times a day so that everyone could see how close they were to completion. The posters helped keep everyone motivated, and with a lot of extra effort the order was filed with zero errors.
The two women demonstrated both teamwork and heart. They were promoted to management positions shortly afterwards.
Too often, companies hire for skills without enough consideration for spirit. When that happens, you end up with a bunch of wonks who can’t work together. There needs to be a balance between skills and spirit across the entire company.
This same balance needs to exist within individual senior managers. A VP of global marketing at a IT company recently asked me about this. He told me that one of his senior managers had great skills and was a decent leader, but he wasn’t showing any heart–he just didn’t seem to care about the company. The VP said that the manager’s bad attitude was starting to wear off on his entire team.
My reply was clear and simple. I told him that if the manager’s heart wasn’t in it, there were two options: move him into a purely technical position or let him go. Senior managers are a microcosm of your company. They are the role models for other employees. As such, they need to have both skills and spirit.
Integrating strategy and people accelerates the potential growth of any organization and is critical for high-growth companies.
Randall, Michelle. “Should You Hire For Skill Or Spirit?” Where Ideas and People Meet. Fast Company, 8 Nov. 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. <http://www.fastcompany.com/1793369/hiring-for-skill-or-spirit>.
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Team, Comments Off
How to stimulate competition in your sales team?
A Lesson About the Value of Purpose and Internal Competition
By Daniel Fantasia, CEO and Founder of Treeline, Inc.
Creating a fun, exciting and positively charged sales environment that fosters healthy competition in your sales team will ultimately result in success.
Below is a great story from Charles Schwab in Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends & Influence People about the need to stimulate competition in your sales team. Sales people are fierce competitors and there is nothing more thrilling than to accept a challenge to compete.
“Charles Schwab had a mill manager whose people weren’t producing their quota of work. How is it, Schwab asked him, that a manager as capable as you can’t make this mill turn out what it should? I don’t know, the manager replied. I’ve coaxed the men, I’ve pushed them, I’ve sworn and cussed I’ve threatened them with damnation and being fired. But nothing works. They just won’t produce.
This conversation took place at the end of the day, just before the night shift came on. Schwab asked the manager for a piece of chalk, then, turning to the nearest man, asked: How many heats did your shift make today?
Six.
Without another word, Schwab chalked a big figure six on the floor, and walked away.
When the night shift came in, they saw the 6 and asked what it meant.
The big boss was in here today, the day people said. He asked us how many heats we made, and we told him six. He chalked it down on the floor.
The next morning Schwab walked through the mill again. The night shift had rubbed out 6 and replaced it with a big 7.
When the day shift reported for work the next morning, they saw a big 7 chalked on the floor. So the night shift thought they were better than the day shift, did they? Well, they would show the night shift a thing or two. The crew pitched in with enthusiasm, and when they quit that night, they left behind them an enormous, swaggering 10. Things were stepping up.
Shortly this mill, which had been lagging way behind in production, was turning out more work than any other mill in the plant.”
-Charles Schwab, How to Win Friends & Influence People
According to Schwab, “The way to get things done, is to stimulate competition. The desire to excel! The challenge! Throwing down the gauntlet! An infallible way of appealing to people of spirit.”
Although Charles Schwab was writing in the 1920’s his message is still applicable today. This is a reminder that the responsibility of sales management is to define goals and understand what needs to be done in order to accomplish success. The best way to generate a successful sales environment and culture is to create healthy competition. When a team is empowered to create a competition the importance of that competition to the sales team is felt that much more throughout the organization. When the team assigns value to the competition then it has meaning and therein lies the contagious and fun sport. It is important to sustain competition within the sales force and results must be tracked and displayed for everyone to see. This will inspire healthy internal competition and drive a “winning” attitude.
The summer is almost over, but there is plenty of time left in 2011. This is the time to hire and work hard to hit your goals. Those managers that can inspire and sustain competitive sales environments are headed for great success.
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Motivation, Sales Team, Comments Off
Book Review: The Perfect Salesforce
Can you have the perfect salesforce?
Reviewed By Chris Simone VP of Sales at Treeline, Inc.
Once in awhile, Treeline recommends a book to our community because the book is actually worth the time and attention of Sales Leaders. Derek Gatehouse’s The Perfect SalesForce is easily one of these books that is truly worth your time! This book provides a framework and lens for unlocking the secrets to hiring and retaining the right sales people for your particular company, culture, and product/solution.
Derek Gatehouse challenges the traditional concept that sales can be taught through specific process. Instead, Gatehouse argues, that you can’t actually train sales people to sell much more than they already do. After a career of studying high performing sales team, Gatehouse identifies the six best practices of the worlds best sales teams. Controversial and smart, this book will blaze the trail to change the way sales teams are built, managed and retained.
It’s not enough to hire a “great” sales person; you need to understand the specific and prerequisite traits and characteristics of your “perfect” salesforce. http://www.theperfectsalesforce.com/
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Team, Comments Off
4 Key Hiring Tips When Hiring Sales Professionals
What can executives do better when hiring sales professionals?
By Daniel Fantasia, CEO and Founder of Treeline, Inc.
I was recently asked to share my opinion on this question, “What can executives do better when hiring sales professionals?” Well, there are many things we can all do better when hiring, but strong sales organizations share key hiring traits that make them more effective than their competition. Executives that hit their hiring quota will consequently also make their quarterly revenue goals.
Our strongest clients follow these 4 key hiring traits when hiring sales professionals. These new hires will produce success and build high growth, positively charged, and contagious sales organizations.
1) When hiring sales professionals, executives must commit to getting it done. The most talented executives understand the importance of human capital and building a successful yet sustainable sales force. Many say that hiring is a priority, but tend to under-estimate what that really entails. Executives that find success commit to a timeframe and hiring process. They hold themselves accountable and dedicate their efforts around building a pipeline of qualified candidates. They work smart and efficiently to find the resources they need to hire top talent. Hiring is difficult, but they put in the extra hours, jump through hoops, and find flexibility to spend time to hire the right professionals.
2) Executives must create an effective hiring strategy. This reinforces leadership, resulting in open accurate communication and defined expectations. A strict timeline and decisive decision making processes must be inspected to achieve exact start date hiring. Planning that begins at projected start date is critical. Working back from the “hire by” date and account for the time it takes to complete each step of the interview process; as well as, the future hires resignation and two week notice period. Expectations must be set with everyone involved in the hiring process and explain urgency and importance. Strong executives understand their pipeline of candidates and know how many candidates they need to interview to make a hire.
3) Executives must be decisive and learn how to qualify candidates as they search for their next top sales professional. Subsequently, they must qualify candidates early on in the process. They recognize the importance of visibility/transparency and realize that being open and honest is necessary to build trust. They cut the unqualified candidate from the process quickly. For those that move forward they are very transparent with the interview process and set expectations accurately. They ask questions regarding the candidate’s pipeline of opportunities and time frame. For strong candidates that have urgency, they adapt and move the process to hire quickly. The market is very hot for talented sales professionals. They are hard to find, so do not let time squander away when you have a top performer in your grasps. To win the hearts of talented sales professionals you must have open honest dialog and build trust in the interview process.
4) Lastly, executives need to have a strong understanding of the traits and characteristics that their salespeople actually need (i.e. granular DADO Saleforce Profile) which will help them focus on the right candidates and avoid analysis paralysis. Executives must truly understand the qualifying criteria that makes up their sales force and have a complete understanding of the function of the role. Companies are welcome to use our free tool that will email a report to them with the key characteristics they need to focus on. Click here to identify your sales force characteristics. When you complete this form an email report will be sent to you. This helps understand the qualifying and disqualifying criteria before the hiring process begins. There can be no confusion in the process. A top sales performer is taught to ask hard questions. If you can’t answer even the most basic questions including average sales size, cycle, quota, base salary and total compensation don’t expect to attract top talent.
Companies that find success exhibit well organized and aggressive hiring strategies. If hiring is an important part of your sales strategy in 2011 I offer you this advice, work overtime and find valuable resources to make sure you hit your goals. If you can do that you will find much success and achieve your revenue targets.
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Team, Comments Off
7 ways to Motivate Your Sales Team
How to Get Out of a Sales Slump
By Dan Fantasia, Treeline, Inc. Founder and President
Have you ever seen your favorite sports team or favorite professional athlete get into a slump and wonder how they got there and when they are going to get out of it? It can be frustrating to watch and even more difficult for the team to recognize the need to make changes in order to snap out of it.
The driving factor behind breaking a slump is 90% mental, which is why it is so difficult to break. Think about it. When was the last time you found yourself in a slump? How long did it take to wake up and move on? What were the factors that motivated you to get over the hump?
Now think of your team. Are some of your players in a slump? If so, they are not the only ones. Frequently, around the end of Q1 a lot of sales representatives fall into slumps. Your team ran straight into Q1 at full speed and with the winter months coming to an end, many have cabin fever and are easily distracted.
The last couple of years have been tough. Many of our sales peers had to fight hard, work harder and their ability to succeed has been tested. Good news, the market is picking up and as sales professionals we have an incredible opportunity to crush our numbers in 2011. We have to take advantage of the time we have to make money.
So how do you get your sales athletes out of a slump?
- Acknowledge that some of your players are distracted? Bring it to their attention. Many of them will already feel pressure internally. They will not be sure what is wrong, but will know that they are not producing as well as they should. This is not about being unlucky, or being a victim; this is about getting pointed in the right direction to succeed.
- Relieve anxiety that will cause additional distraction by addressing the problem and offering support and council. Sales people know when they are not producing. Help them get back on track with aggressive and direct objectives and goals. Focus on driving activity and inspect results.
- Mix it up. Keep your environment fresh and change up the daily routine. Encourage your team to run in the morning, drive a different way to work, read a new book, listen to motivational tapes, eat different foods, take different people out to lunch, get to work early, set a goal to close the office twice a week, etc. Break the common routine; steering your team away from burn out. When in a slump it is easy to burn out, but it is your responsibility to help your team push through the downs. It happens to all of us, but it is those who mentally push through these lows that find better days and much success.
- Encourage your team to ask for help. Find new ways to do the job. Encourage your team to be nimble, to adapt, change and learn. Learn from management, peers and from the newest members of the team. Knowledge is power and it revitalizes the sole.
- Don’t get distracted. Block out the billions of distractions you have daily. Use your time wisely. Don’t waste time on distracting emails, news stories, family, social networking, the production of others around you, etc. When in the office there is one thing to focus on, booking business. The only way to make money is to sell, so clear everything out of your way that does not relate to your pipeline, booking revenue and hitting your goals. What is it going to take to be number 1?
- Have fun. Share a positive attitude, it is contagious and will bring your team success. We are approaching the end of the first quarter. There are 3 quarters left. The weather is changing and instead of being a distraction use the momentum to create fun motivational challenges to build team unity. A happy and positively charged environment creates high production.
- Team Unity. Focus on the basics and driving activity. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you? Take action! Encourage your team to find a peer to commit to call blitz together. Create team games internally with small prizes to build unity and drive activity. Have fun with it and create competition. Prospecting together creates synergy and increases energy and belief. Everyone’s success is shared and the team will achieve positive reinforcement and success.
The key to getting out of a slump is to recognize that you are in one. Take control of your destiny. Don’t be a victim. Instead, shake it off and make small tweaks to your daily routine and get on the offensive. Mix things up and get it done. Be happy and work harder than everyone else. Ultimately, you will find yourself at the top of the heap by end of 2011. This is going to be the best year of your life. Let’s go!
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Motivation, Sales Team, Comments Off
Happy Holiday’s from the Treeline Team
 Happy Holiday's from the Treeline Team , Comments Off
Hiring Sales People Who Can Sell
On December 2, 2010 Next Level, Inc., a sales management consulting firm, invited presidents, CEOs and managing partners, including Treeline, to an event called “Hiring Sales People Who Can Sell.” Jim Ayraud, the CEO and Founder of Next Level identified how to find “A Players” in order to build a culture of success. In a nation where 55% of employees are unhappy at their job, Ayraud asserts, “Managers should always be prospecting. Use your Network and make sure that you are always marketing your company.”
What to Look for When Hiring Your Next “A Player”
Three questions to ask:
- Does the candidate have ambition and drive?
- Does the candidate have the ability to control and close?
- Does the candidate have the ability to effectively build relationships?
How Does Someone Show They Have Qualities of an “A Player?”
Instead of qualifying candidates you should disqualify candidates.
Have a thorough hiring process:
- Phone interview: Ask questions, evaluate and make sure the candidate closes.
- Assessment: Have candidate take a test that measures their ambition and drive.
- Face-to-Face Interview: Conduct three separate interviews.
- Good cop
- Bad cop
- Neutral cop
What Are the Big Mistakes Hiring Managers Make?
Mistake #1:“Falling in Love.”
Mistake #2: Rushing the hiring process.
Mistake #3: Not knowing what kind of person the company wants to join their team.
As an executive search firm that focuses exclusively on sales recruitment, Treeline prides itself in the ability to identify top sales talent among the countless candidates vying for our clients positions. We are constantly prospecting and networking; looking for ambitious and driven candidates that know how to build relationships and close deals. For each one of these “A players” we have helped them find a corporation that leverages their strength to build top producing sales organizations. This ensures success for both candidate and company and ultimately builds a long lasting relationship for all.
Join Our Network! Treeline, Inc. has created one of the largest sales communities on the internet.
Posted in Sales Advice, Sales Team, Comments Off
How to Get Feedback From Employees
That suggestions box? Ditch it in favor of savvier methods for getting workers to open up.
By Tim Donnelly
No employee wants to be just a faceless cog. No matter how big or small your organization is, employees who don’t feel like they have a voice can drain the oxygen out of other employees, lower productivity rates, and even cause increased turnover. Employees who feel voiceless are more likely to be a drag on the day-to-day mood around the office.
Like a good therapy session, giving workers of all levels a chance to express their thoughts on the direction of the company has the opposite effect: Show your employees you’re interested in their opinions and they’ll be more likely take a personal stake in the business. They’ll go from feeling like they’re working for the man to feeling like they’re a part of the team.
“We don’t recruit engaged employees. Engaged employees are created,” says Lisa Wojtkowiak, client relationship manager with the Opinion Research Corporation, part of Infogroup. “It’s our job to engage our employees from Day One.”
In the old days, soliciting feedback from your employees meant putting a box marked “suggestions” next to the water cooler. Now, smart companies realize that, as they become more reliant on a knowledge-based economy, they need to engage their employees on a much more detailed level.
Getting Employee Feedback: The Issues to Target
Every method of gathering employee feedback depends on what challenges you need to address as a business. Consider: Is your employee base growing or downsizing? Are you preparing for a merger or staying level?
Professionals in the industry of employee research say offering general feedback opportunities are important — open-office policies or meeting with managers — but specific targeting of issues can help guide your company through difficult times.
Common questions managers seek input on include: how engaged are my employees? How satisfied are they working for the company? What is the communication like with management? Do they have the right tools to do the job? How secure do they feel in the job?
You can also use a survey to find out the demographics of your work force, such as age and gender, and to look for reasons for high turnover.
“You don’t do business without employees,” says Howard Deutsch, CEO of Quantisoft, a survey and consulting company based in Monroe Township, New Jersey. “Those who are highly engaged or motivated will be better at their job.”
Gerry McDonough, CEO of LeadFirst, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based partner of data collection firm WorldAPP, that provides survey design and employee engagement consulting, says asking about the culture of the organization is important. The culture is “upstream” of issues like employee satisfaction and engagement, meaning the answers workers give about their coworkers and the general office environment often directly affect their job satisfaction.
The culture questions can affect your core mission statement too: is it a set of values your employees support?
Getting Employee Feedback: Conducting Employee Surveys
Conducting a full-scale employee survey is still the most recommended method for gaining actionable employee feedback. Professionals recommend doing surveys on a regular basis, but say you shouldn’t do it any more often than once a year because employees could lose interest if pressed for feedback too often.
Although it’s recommended to tailor the specific questions to your company’s current issues, though a common thred that most surveys seek to discover is how connected the employee feels to the company. Most surveys will inquire as to the whether the employee has a good work-life balance, whether they are proud to work for the organization and how much effort they put into their work. Questions can also be tailored to find out how long the employee plans to stay with the company or what their feelings are about health and safety issues.
“We have a lot of clients, and every single questionnaire is different,” Wojtkowiak says.
Professionals say a mix of quantitative questions — asking employees to rate their satisfaction on a five-point scale, for instance — should be mixed with open-ended questions to gain a mix of anecdotal and statistical information.
As for length, experts say a survey with between 35 and 55 questions is the ideal length, and it should take no more than 15 to 25 minutes to complete.
“You want to make sure you have enough information so you can make good judgments based on good data,” Wojtkowiak says.
If you want to conduct an employee survey more than once a year, she recommends trying a six-month “pulse” survey, a short four-to-10 questions of inquiry, usually based around measuring the impact of changes made based on feedback during the larger customer survey.
Companies should allow time for employees to complete the survey on the clock. It also helps to do the survey when the calendar is more likely to be clear: Avoiding the holidays or even your company’s open enrollment period helps workers focus on their feedback.
Getting Employee Feedback: Using Other Methods of Information Gathering
Just because a comment box is one of the oldest forms of employee feedback doesn’t mean it might not be useful for your business. Although it feels a little cold, and, frankly, antique, Wojtkowiak says keeping a suggestion box is an easy way to let employees know you’re interested in their opinion outside annual surveys. Town hall-style meetings and other group events that place management in front of workers are also becoming popular with companies. Or, consider an online portal where employees can send an anonymous note or post. Employee feedback can also be worked in from Day One. Wojtkowiak says successful organizations incorporate the need for employee feedback options and open communications in their training programs.
“If you’re retaining your most valuable staff, you’re really taking those best practices from those highly engaged employees and applying them down the road,” she says.
Getting Employee Feedback: Ensuring Participation
Typically employee surveys get a 70 to 90 percent response rate, but experts recommend several ways to ensure strong participation.
- Anonymity. If employees can be assured their responses won’t lead to any retribution, they are much more likely to give honest answers, Deutsch says.
- Proving access. Online surveys are considered the most efficient, but you’ll need to make sure everyone in the company has access to a computer. This can be done by setting up a dedicated computer station in the human resources office or by scheduling time for certain workers to use a computer terminal.
- Encouragement from management. A successful push for employee engagement has to be believable. That’s why experts say if you really want to hear from your employees, you should have your top bosses encourage feedback on a regular basis or send out reminders. “The response rate really depends on how much senior management gets behind the project,” says Josh Greenberg, president of AlphaMeasure, a research firm based in Boulder, Colorado, that has worked for Little Debbie snacks and the Canadian Red Cross.
- Incentives. While experts discourage companies from offering direct incentives to individual employees who participate in feedback opportunities, other methods are available. Greenberg says some businesses will offer a raffle prize for something like an iPod nano. Others will offer to donate money to a charity if their surveys reach a certain response rate.
Getting Employee Feedback: Using the Feedback
The worst thing for a company is to go to great lengths to solicit employee feedback, and then do nothing with it.
“If you’re going to collect all this data and then not close the loop back to the employees it almost makes sense not to do the survey,” Greenberg says. “It’s important to let them know that they’ve been heard.”
This can be achieved by sharing at least some of the results with the whole organization and setting benchmarks for improvement. Some companies will set up a goals monitoring system either online or on an office white board tracking efforts at reaching those goals so employees can be reminded of the progress.
Gerry McDonough, of LeadFirst, recommends companies split feedback into two categories: the broad issues that need to be addressed on a corporate or high management level and the narrow issues that can be addressed at a departmental or division level.
The shorter “pulse” surveys can also be conducted throughout the year to gauge progress. Wojtkowiak says matching the results to the hierarchy of your organization is important, to differentiate between the engagement of employees in an office inKentucky versus one in Iowa.
“Don’t put everybody in the same bucket,” she says.
Donnelly, Tim Aug. “How to Get Feedback From Employees.” Small Business and Small Business Information for the Entrepreneur. Inc.com, 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. <http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/08/how-to-get-feedback-from-employees.html>.
Posted in Sales Team, Comments Off
|
