With the Christmas Season over, it is that time of year when you start to think about your holidays. Whether it is a safari in Africa or an orgy of indulgence in the Balearics, everyone ooks forward to their holiday when you can switch off from work and be someone else. Someone with no cares in the world, enjoying the fruits of their year’s hard work, whose priority is not presentations or prospects but pure pleasure. Happy days, no?

Well no, not always. Many people and companies do not make the right preparation before they go on holiday, they only make holiday plans five minutes before. Holidays are usually a forgotten entity – few think to factor them in to workload allocations and long term planning. But what about work commitments, what about that tender you have to get out, what about that important trial that lands when you are away. All these things need to be considered when planning your holiday, not just what factor lotion to pack. To avoid the potentially nightmarish repercussions of returning to find your team, your target or your trial in tatters, your holiday needs to be managed, before and after.

Time management experts always advise busy sales executives and managers to take more, rather than less, holiday. Having a break gives you fresh perspective, allowing for rest and relaxation and innovative ideas to bubble up from the subconscious. Not only that, but the more frequent you take holidays the more organized you will become. If you think that every time you go away you will have to brief people to fill in for you, delegate responsibilities and generally re-organise your workload to cover for you absence. This may all seem obvious and very straightforward but surprisingly enough it is still too often neglected. The basics are simple:

•Plan your holidays as far ahead as possible, and make sure that relevant colleagues and customers know about them as soon as possible.
•Use voicemail and email to let customers and colleagues know when you’re away, and who is handling your responsibilities in your absence. Your role may very well be shared between several individuals, so be specific.
•DO NOT pretend to be present when you are not, your unavailability will only annoy.

Sales and Marketing professionals are generally agreed that the best way to handle key staff absences is through careful briefing, backing-up of staff and knowledge sharing.

Before taking your holiday, the most important thing is planning. The basis for operational effectiveness is to have a three to six month strategy in place, which is agreed right up to the top. At holiday time the workload can then be spread through the appropriate team. It is all about keeping people informed. Briefings must be given and notes of all contacts with any clients should be routinely kept. This lets all staff have a strong idea of the progression and intentions with any client. The managers or people above must be kept informed allowing continuity. All clients can then be given a second

contact within the company who will be versed in any situation. Comprehensive handover notes are crucial and a debriefing meeting to the rest of the team is also very important so that they are fully aware of everything you’ve been working on, what might crop up in your absence and what’s outstanding. Having someone new to look after your accounts just for a couple of weeks may also be of benefit to the client as they get some fresh blood for a week or two.

Many sales professionals fail to take their full holiday entitlement because they are afraid of missing out on a big deal or they don’t want to not make target. Increasingly, however, managers agree this can be a shortsighted approach and are looking for ways around it. The problem is what if someone else closes a deal when the primary person is away on holiday, will that still be added to the sales figures. This should always happen and thus ensures that only people who play as a team will be able to thrive. Obviously if a large amount of work is required while the person is away then figures should be adjusted accordingly to ensure fairness.

If you are responsible for your team’s performance and making sure that everyone hits target, then surely you should also make sure that they all take their full holiday allowance too. Not doing so ends up being counter-productive so make them use them or loose them. People do need a life outside of work and to take time away from the office and field. If a company simply looks at monthly figures and does not allow for this, you are failing your employees. Should that be the case they will tend to fail you.

Holidays should not affect target, after all, everyone needs one. If you want the best from your workforce then employers need to be flexible, respect their staff and be insistent that they take their holiday entitlement – it helps prevent burnout. Infact you should encourage holidays, how about even giving their birthdays off as one too!!!

Surely it makes sense that the best time to take a holiday is when your clients take theirs. We should be at work when our clients are available to sell to and take our holiday when they are off on theirs. In this way it is easy to plan holidays for the next 12 months to coincide with quiet periods, avoiding the last month of the quarter and ideally the whole of Q4.

“Don’t take your laptop, PDA, work notes or other nonsense away with you. YOU ARE ON HOLIDAY!”

Holidays should be planned to coincide with Easter, half term and July/August school holidays. In this way it is easy to plan all of your holiday allocation well in advance, which also assists with providing cover and handovers. During a stressful end of quarter it is an excellent incentive to know that in a few days’ time you will be relaxing on a sunkissed beach!.

•Commit to your time off! Don’t take your laptop, PDA, work notes or other nonsense away with you. YOU ARE ON HOLIDAY!
•Be realistic. Tailor your destination and travel to the amount of time you’ve got. If you are only taking five days, don’t spend two-and-ahalf of them on a plane!!
•Always use up your full allowance. No matter how much you love your job, not taking breaks will ultimately have a negative effect on your productivity and performance levels.
•Try for an upgrade. Only a third of first class passengers actually pay full fare, so it is always worth a shout
•Do not return from your holiday at 3am and go straight to work 3 hours later. Ideally leave a day off in between and set aside your first day / morning back just for catching up. Counteract the back-towork blues by getting your next break booked!.

duffy.taylor@ontargetmag.com

 

 

What happens when you are used to being “Number One”, the best sales person in your team and then all of a sudden you start missing your sales targets and not doing the business you once were?

What is happening?

Decreasing sales can come about for several reasons, and not necessarily solely because of you. Changes in the company, in the market place or your personal situation may all be contributory factors. Identify such changes and ask yourself if this might be the reason. This might help to pinpoint the cause but also look deeper and consider how motivated are you?

Motivation?

Motivation may not be the root cause of any problem, but it is probably a factor now. Loss of motivation can be masked by stubborn and sheer determination. Look for changes in timekeeping patterns and productivity levels and especially a reduction in creativity and thinking outside of the square. Do you grasp new concepts or contribute ideas like you used to or do you feel that you are simply going through the motions. Think about how you communicate with customers and colleagues, why are your customers spending less?

Your Pipeline

Why have your orders stopped or do not seem as large as they once were. It may be that you have simply taken your eye of the pipeline while concentrating on current orders and deliveries and not thought about future projects. Switch your focus to where potential business exists.

Are you growing?

Does your current position provide you with the opportunity to grow, develop and learn? If not then you are probably just bored or stagnating. Think about your career direction and what gives you satisfaction. Work with your manager to find new challenges that support your personal and professional development.

 

 

 

Email Marketing

Email is one of the easiest, cheapest and most direct communication technologies known today and allows businesses to communicate with existing and potential customers like never before. It can generate tremendous response – 20 percent to 30 percent – as opposed to direct mail campaigns, where typical response rates are around 2 percent. There are three main advantages of email – interactivity, speed and accessibility:

•Interactivity. Each individual has the opportunity to communicate with a massive network of friends, family, colleagues and associates all over the world.
•Speed. A message can travel swiftly from one person to the next and back again in a matter of seconds. This allows sales people and marketing departments to get quick feedback and information and finetune their offerings accordingly.
•Accessibility. We live in an age where almost everyone has, or will soon have, an email address.

In the beginning

Over the last couple of years, the main form of email marketing was unsolicited commercial email, also known as spam. Unscrupulous marketeers harvested the email addresses of unsuspecting individuals from Internet newsgroups and compiled them into lists to use and sell.

Spam continues to be a nuisance to individuals jamming email in-boxes with messages that simply are not of interest and the return addresses usually don’t accept replies. Many times they contain topics that consumers find offensive, such as pornography, offers to buy Viagra and get-rich-quick schemes.

Online users jealously guard their privacy. An overwhelming majority of people believe that businesses should ask for permission before using a customer’s personal information. If you are emailing without people’s consent then you might just loose a potential customer.

Viral and Permission Marketing

Two solutions to email marketing that have recently emerged are viral marketing and permission marketing.

•Viral marketing refers to the practice where consumer-to-consumer communication leads to widespread, rapid dissemination and quick adoption of an idea or product. Hotmail is a classic example of a successful viral marketing campaign. The free email service grew at an unprecedented rate by simply adding the tag line, “Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com” at the bottom of every email.

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“ Take the time to use emails effectively. You will improve your chances of making the sale and staying on good terms with your customers”

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Viral marketing is best incorporated as part of a larger strategy. It works very well when you are more interested in the quantity and not the quality of traffic you drive to your site. Limit your viral marketing to new and unique products that have a real value proposition.

•Permission or opt-in marketing is when consumers explicitly permit a few marketers to send them certain types of email. They usually fill out a profile that helps companies guage a consumer’s interest in particular products so they can receive targeted messages.

But permission marketing has led to new problems. Consumers do not always update or modify their profiles, and as their interests change, the messages become less targeted and effective. In addition, poorly designed incentive schemes have created an entitlement mentality among consumers. Many individuals believe they should be paid or rewarded to do anything on a Web site that requires them to disclose personal information. If you don’t plan your email campaign carefully, you may end up attracting people who are more interested in the incentive than your product. If you think this is all a bit over the top and people could not possibly get upset about emails, read the following results of a survey recently undertaken.

•94% think companies that violate their online privacy should be disciplined.
•86% favour opt-in policies or permissions based email marketing.
•54% believe that Web site tracking invades their privacy.
•27% would never provide their personal information in order to use a Web site.