9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money

By Ilya Pozin INC Magazine

Don't show 'em the money (even if you have it). Here are nine better ways to boost morale.

The ability to motivate employees is one of the greatest skills an entrepreneur can possess. Two years ago, I realized I didn’t have this skill. So I hired a CEO who did.


Josh had 12 years in the corporate world, which included running a major department at Comcast. I knew he was seasoned, but I was still skeptical at first. We were going through some tough growing pains, and I thought that a lack of cash would make it extremely difficult to improve the company morale.

I was wrong.

With his help and the help of the great team leaders he put in place, Josh not only rebuilt the culture, but also created a passionate, hard-working team that is as committed to growing and improving the company as I am.
Here are nine things I learned from him:
Be generous with praise. Everyone wants it and it’s one of the easiest things to give. Plus, praise from the CEO goes a lot farther than you might think. Praise every improvement that you see your team members make. Once you’re comfortable delivering praise one-on-one to an employee, try praising them in front of others.

Get rid of the managers. Projects without project managers? That doesn’t seem right! Try it. Removing the project lead or supervisor and empowering your staff to work together as a team rather then everyone reporting to one individual can do wonders. Think about it. What’s worse than letting your supervisor down? Letting your team down! Allowing people to work together as a team, on an equal level with their co-workers, will often produce better projects faster. People will come in early, stay late, and devote more of their energy to solving problems.

Make your ideas theirs. People hate being told what to do. Instead of telling people what you want done; ask them in a way that will make them feel like they came up with the idea. “I’d like you to do it this way” turns into “Do you think it’s a good idea if we do it this way?”

Never criticize or correct. No one, and I mean no one, wants to hear that they did something wrong. If you’re looking for a de-motivator, this is it. Try an indirect approach to get people to improve, learn from their mistakes, and fix them. Ask, “Was that the best way to approach the problem? Why not? Have any ideas on what you could have done differently?” Then you’re having a conversation and talking through solutions, not pointing a finger.

Make everyone a leader. Highlight your top performers’ strengths and let them know that because of their excellence, you want them to be the example for others. You’ll set the bar high and they’ll be motivated to live up to their reputation as a leader.

Take an employee to lunch once a week. Surprise them. Don’t make an announcement that you’re establishing a new policy. Literally walk up to one of your employees, and invite them to lunch with you. It’s an easy way to remind them that you notice and appreciate their work.

Give recognition and small rewards. These two things come in many forms: Give a shout out to someone in a company meeting for what she has accomplished. Run contests or internal games and keep track of the results on a whiteboard that everyone can see. Tangible awards that don’t break the bank can work too. Try things like dinner, trophies, spa services, and plaques.

Throw company parties. Doing things as a group can go a long way. Have a company picnic. Organize birthday parties. Hold a happy hour. Don’t just wait until the holidays to do a company activity; organize events throughout the year to remind your staff that you’re all in it together.

Share the rewards—and the pain. When your company does well, celebrate. This is the best time to let everyone know that you’re thankful for their hard work. Go out of your way to show how far you will go when people help your company succeed. If there are disappointments, share those too. If you expect high performance, your team deserves to know where the company stands. Be honest and transparent.

Talent for Tech: Hiring A-Players, at a minimal salary

Provided all goes well, you may reach that point in your venture when you receive funding. In order to grow, the next step is to expand the team by hiring “A-players.” These are people who can wear multiple hats, fit with the company culture and communicate well. While they are not part of the founding team, they are crucial to advancing your startup to that next level.
Chris De Sousa, of headhunting firm Hireglyphics, has a high volume of clients seeking A-players. “It’s a challenge finding these high-quality candidates because they know they are good. As a result, they are just as picky as the companies.” De Sousa believes we are seeing a “candidate market” right now, since many companies are looking for the same type of talent.
Where to look

Wondering how to find an A-player? Start with the obvious: tap into your own networks and those of your fellow founders. Make use of local innovation centres and see if any advisors can provide referrals. And don’t hesitate to pursue candidates not formally in the job market, because they may be willing to take on a new challenge.
Your next option is the tried-and-true tactic of posting your job on as many websites as you can. Alex Norman, co-founder of HomeSav, said he found LinkedIn to be the best channel through which to hire for sales, marketing and HR positions. “It was not especially good for seeking out developers.”

Another option is to engage a recruiting agency―one that specializes in technology companies would be ideal. These agencies know the trends in the market, they can help you with HR activities such as writing job descriptions, and they can promote your company and its positions on your behalf. But the agency route does not work for everyone. In Norman’s experience, “the recruiting agencies had a solid candidate pool, but were only able to pull people that wanted high salaries. This is not as effective when you’re looking to bring a $40K/year developer on board. Plus, agencies often take a 20% commission so it ends up being quite expensive if you’re at an early stage.”

To find developers who were willing to take a lower salary, Norman had the best luck with classified websites Kijiji and Craigslist.

How to entice them
Think about location

If you still haven’t picked a location for your company’s headquarters, give it some thought based on the type of people you wish to hire. For example, where is your talent located now? De Sousa says, “office space may be cheaper in suburbia, but does your talent want to commute there?”
Derek Webb, a recent computer science graduate now working with Xtreme Labs, says “location wasn’t a huge concern to me when I was looking for a job. I didn’t want to base my job around where I wanted to live.” However, with Xtreme Labs based in downtown Toronto, Webb adds “being in the heart of Toronto is definitely a nice perk!”
Build a compelling website

Phil Noelting, founder of hiring platform Qwalify, has spent a lot of time speaking with job seekers in Ontario. Through his research, he’s found that a Gen Y job seeker tends to look first at a company’s website in order to learn more about them, and then will continue to search for job postings there. “This is different from Gen X, who tend to search for jobs locally.” Noelting sees a website as being a company’s main identity, and advises startups to keep their sites fresh, relevant and interesting in order to entice talent. In his own experience with recruiting, Noelting found “there was a lot of traction around our website―people were visiting it and sending us emails saying they were interested in working for us.”
Compete like a startup, not a tech giant

Let’s face it. Tech startups do not have the means to compete with giant tech companies on salary, nor on benefits or reputation. Says Webb, “many of the Valley firms come up to Waterloo to hire―including Facebook, Apple and Google. A lot of students apply to these!” What makes the situation for startups even harder is that companies like Google have created an entrepreneurial environment, where engineers and product managers get to own entire products. So what can startups offer a candidate?

When hiring technical staff, it’s a lot better to try and sell the potential of who that person can become moving forward. For example, emphasize what languages that developer will learn, and who they will learn it from. Says Noelting, “Facebook can’t give developers as much breadth of learning because their technologies are established, so a developer is limited by what languages he/she will code in.”
Suneel Acharya, formerly with startup TalentBin, was attracted to the company based on their promise of responsibility, growth, on-the-job learning, a broad variety of work, and direct involvement in the success of the organization. Helen Robert from TechEdge, a firm that advises technology companies on compensation, feels “this is surprisingly important to people. It’s important that employees feel connected to the organization and that what they do directly helps with the company’s success.”
Lastly, stay flexible. Offer some leeway in time and location so that your employees can work on their own schedule. Says Robert, “flexibility doesn’t cost an organization anything, but it can really set apart a small company from a big one.”
Provide equity

Experts in the tech industry often advise startups to treat their early staff like late founders, by giving them a stake in the company. It comes down to the cash vs. king mentality, where you shouldn’t be afraid of giving up ownership if your end goal is to raise money and continue growing the pie. And providing equity is a great way to get your employees dedicated, and feeling like an integral part of the team.

Webb remembers the lacklustre attitude his classmates had about joining smaller startups. “They weren’t a part of the inception, so it wasn’t really their company. It’s more exciting when you help to create it.”
Of course, many startups fear that employees will take equity and leave a few months later. One way to mitigate this is to bring new hires in on a “trial” basis. Acharya was brought on board his Silicon Valley startup with a six-month contract, with a potential for hire. “Contracting is a big thing in the Valley―it provides a safety net for companies.”
And Acharya recommends advancing new hires slowly vis-à-vis their equity amounts, so that startups remain protected from employee turnover. Acharya shared with us how a common contract in the Valley reads:
No equity for one year

25% of your end-state equity share after the first year

A pro-rated amount of equity every month thereafter

Another common practice that Acharya shared is to align incentives by writing contracts based around milestones. “If you’re targeting a major milestone in three years and need a technical lead for that, structure their contract around the three-year mark. Arrange the contract so that once the milestone has been met or the three-year mark is up, they receive their equity.”
Be honest about salary

Media outlets report that Google is paying new computer science graduates $90,000–$105,0001, a figure that most startups simply cannot match. But do young workers really prioritize salary when seeking a job? Robert from TechEdge feels “they want to be treated fairly in relation to their peers. Salary may not be driving their decision, but it will become an issue if their salary dips below what they perceive to be fair.”
Norman of HomeSav, however, had a different experience. “Although we were offering many of our candidates Options to join us, they were more interested in salary and benefits. We had a hard time convincing them to forgo higher salaries at a firm like Google or Microsoft and to work for us instead.”
What did recent graduate Webb have to say about this? “Salary was always at the back of my mind, whether I said it or not. Then again, if I’m going to get paid a lot but not enjoy the work, then it’s not worth being there. I need to care about the work and be passionate about what I’m doing.”

Robert advises that “it’s better to be upfront with your staff from the onset, and let them know if you can’t pay the market average at the moment. But commit to increasing their salary once the business hits a certain revenue point―a point you will need their help getting to.”
Support their development

A recent article in The New York Times shared the story of Valley-based startups that lure talent by providing weekly lessons on how to start a business and how to find venture capitalists to finance it. Redfin, an online real-estate brokerage, is one of these companies. They set up meetings between recruits and venture capitalists so that new hires can start talking about their own companies. Redfin also runs classes twice a month on entrepreneurship.
As the war for talent in Silicon Valley continues, companies are using these strategies to lure in good candidates―candidates that are eager to start their own ventures, but may not yet have the experience or connections to succeed.

On the whole, remember that championing the development of your employees will yield benefits. While they may not stay with you for the long run, if you create a good rapport they will be more likely to refer other talent to you, or help out later on a part-time basis.

http://www.marsdd.com/news-insights/talent-tech-hiring-a-players-minimal-salary/

The Truth About Sleep & Productivity

Working overtime doesn't increase your output. It makes you stupid.
By Margaret Heffernan

Arianna Huffington talks often about how the key to her productivity is sleep.

It's a smart suggestion, not least because so many of us still imagine that the more we work, the more productive we are. For over a hundred years or more, this has been deemed nonsense.

The first productivity studies were conducted by Ernst Abbe at the Zeiss lens laboratories in the 1880s. They indicated what every other productivity study has shown since: that, up to around 40 hours a week, we're all pretty productive but, after that, we become less able to deliver reliable, cost-effective work. Why? Because when we get tired, we make mistakes—and the extra hours we put in are absorbed by correcting our errors. This is demonstrably true in industries like software coding, in which mistakes can cost a lot of time to put right. But it is equally true in manufacturing where more units of production also mean more flaws and waste.

Even though the data around productivity has proved pretty remorseless, humans have found the message hard to accept. It seems so logical that two units of work will produce twice the output. Logical but wrong. The critical measure of work isn't and never should be input but output. What matters isn't how many hours your team puts in, but the quality and quantity of work they produce.
Which is where sleep comes in. Although we might all like to imagine that we can work happily through the night, once again the data's all against us. Lose just one night's sleep and your cognitive capacity is roughly the same as being over the alcohol limit. Yet we regularly hail as heroes the executives who take the red eye, jump into a rental car, and zoom down the highway to the next meeting. Would we, I wonder, be so impressed if they arrived drunk?

The reason sleep is so important is because fatigue isn't simple. When we are tired, our performance doesn't degrade equally. Instead, when you lose a night's sleep, the parietal and occipital lobes in your brain become less active. The parietal lobe integrates information from the senses and is involved in our knowledge of numbers and manipulation of objects. The occipital lobe is involved in visual processing. So the parts of our mind responsible for understanding the world and the data around us start to slow down. This is because the brain is prioritizing the thalamus—the part of your brain responsible for keeping you awake. In evolutionary terms, this makes sense. If you're driven to find food, you need to stay awake and search, not compare recipes.
After 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of six percent in glucose reaching the brain. (That's why you crave donuts and candy.) But the loss isn't shared equally; the parietal lobe and the prefrontal cortex lose 12 percent to 14 percent of their glucose. And those are the areas we most need for thinking: for distinguishing between ideas, for social control, and to be able to tell the difference between good and bad.
I've sat in many boardrooms through the night, at the end of which seriously bad deals were done, I've seen the cost of sleep deprivation. Not just in bad tempers, bad diets, and bad decisions. But in the loss of truly productive work and discussion that could have been less heroic but a lot more valuable.

What is Inside Sales? — Our Definition of Inside Sales

The most pragmatic definition of Inside Sales is simple:

Inside Sales is “remote sales,” most lately called “virtual sales,” or professional sales done remotely. Where Outside Sales or traditional Field Sales is done face-to-face.

Taken in this context, the majority of all sales is done remotely, and the numbers are growing. A recent study done by SKKU and MIT, in conjunction with infoUSA, found that over the next three years, Inside Sales is growing at a fifteen times higher rate (7.5% versus .5% annually) over Outside Sales, to the tune of 800,000 new jobs.

More evidence: if you don’t believe it, grab a list of 10 traditional or “Outside Sales” people and call them. 7 out of 10 will be sitting in front of their computer, working in their cubicle, office, or home office—just like the Inside Sales people.

The term “Inside Sales” originally came about in the late 1980s as an attempt to differentiate “Telemarketing” (or “Telesales in the UK) from the more complex, “high-touch,” phone-based business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) selling practices.

Telemarketing is often believed to have begun in the 1950s by DialAmerica Marketing, Inc., reported to be the first company dedicated to telephone sales and services. By the 1970s telemarketing was a common phrase used to describe the process of selling over the telephone. It often included both outbound and inbound, but later became much more synonymous with the types of outbound calling we’re all familiar with—large-scale “blasts” to lists of names to try and drum up quick sales, usually while the family is sitting around the dinner table.

By the late 1990s/early 2000s, Inside Sales was the term used to differentiate the practice from Outside Sales—the traditional face-to-face sales model where salespeople went to the client’s location of business to engage in the sales process.

Companies found the new channel of Inside Sales to be undeniably effective, but often didn’t know what to do to solve the conflict between the younger, disruptive, more technically savvy upstarts who sold over the phone, and their more senior counterparts who wielded incredible political power in their organizations as the entrenched source of revenue for nearly a century.

For years Inside Sales has been relegated to generating leads for the more senior Outside Sales reps or merely closing the smaller accounts. This is now no longer the case. Many companies are already using a hybrid form of Inside Sales, with reps calling from their company’s home office, then traveling occasionally to client locations and merely calling it “sales.”

By Marc Benioff’s own admission in his book “Behind the Cloud, salesforce.com “grew their company for the first five or six years with a telesales or Inside Sales model.” They added Outside Sales or Field Sales to go upmarket when they wanted to sell to Enterprise-class companies, but the company still does a majority of their sales work remotely.

Another way of defining “Inside Sales” is to also state what it is not.

Inside Sales is not Telemarketing.

Let me repeat: Inside Sales is NOT Telemarketing. Telemarketing is a scripted, single-call-close, almost always targeting a small-ticket, business to consumer (B2C) model.

Inside Sales is not scripted. It requires multiple calls or “touches” to create a sales close, involves medium or large ticket goods and services, and targets business-to-business (B2B) or high-end business-to-consumer( B2C) transactions.

Inside Sales is professional sales done remotely. It is not the mindless “phone drone” that calls at dinner time and won’t hang up until you have said “no” seven times.

Inside Sales is also not Customer Service. Though Inside Sales frequently involves an element of inbound call handling like a customer service department, in its pure form it is not customer service.

Some companies erroneously describe their inbound call centers as “inside sales,” but this does not fall within the boundaries of our definition unless the agents’ primary function is selling.

Inside Sales is professional sales done remotely . . . it is remote sales.

Thanks to Ken Krogue for this article!

Team Building in 2012

It's a new year and for many organizations it's time to shake up your team building exercises. Push people outside of their comfort zone, give them an experience they will talk about for the rest of their lives, challenge them mentally,physically - let them find new boundaries to their resiliency.

Thinking this might be what your team needs? Check out Warrior Dash. MUD. SWEAT. BEER.

Races across the United States, Canada, Ireland, England and Australia.

Watch the video and decide if your team has what it takes to be a warrior.

How to maximize your field reps sales potential

Field Sales is a very different type of selling. It requires a unique type of rep who has no fear and can make a great first impression. Being organized on the road has its own challenges. Here are some of the best practices we have seen for being successful as a road warrior:


1) Marketing Tool Box. To avoid papers sliding all over your car, pick up a portable filing cabinet from staples or an office store and protect your contracts, marketing slicks and paper work from heat, cold, folded corners and being trampled. This will ensure you have all the paper tools you need and will make it obvious when your quantities are low. There is nothing worse than showing up and having to show a brochure with a boot print on it or a contract that looks like it went through a wash cycle.

2) Get a Tablet. Instead of relying on paper or to augment your paper requirements, invest in a tablet. Tablets still have wow factor and you can easily show products, services on a tablet without the pomp and circumstance of booting up a computer. Your prospects will think you are tech savvy, organized and credible. It doesn’t have to be an $800 ipad. An 8g anything will do. I picked up the Blackberry Playbook when it was on sale for $199 for one of my clients reps and it has helped them tremendously – even the simple stuff like email on the road becomes faster.

3) Use a CRM for field Sales. Not all CRM’s are created equally. Many of the CRM’s are great for in office sales or reps that go back to an office in between meetings but choosing the right tool for your road warriors is important. Front Row CRM has some very cool features for field reps. It has a mapping feature that shows you other prospects/leads/customers on a physical map so you can plan your route better. If the reps enter notes as they go, the Manager can see the actual route they took to coach them on better uses of time. It also has a CRM updating feature that can be used via TEXT in the event you don’t have a tablet. This is a stand alone or a bolt on to other CRM systems. CRM that works, is easy to use, simple to populate and actually facilitates sales is key to a field reps success

4) Keeping you office clean. I believe all companies with field reps should pay for an inside and outside car wash once a week. Keeping your car clean forces you to stay organized, helps you feel professional and in the event that a customer sees your car rolling up, it doesn’t look like it’s been off roading.

5) Fuel. Fuel is important. Your body and mind need good fuel to keep you at top performance which can be challenging when you are on the road. Drink lots of water and pack fruit & veg snacks. Apples, grapes, oranges, carrots, celery will all keep for days in a cooler. Don’t over think this. Just grab an apple on the way out or hit a grocery store between meetings. If you feel good, you will sell more.

And to state the obvious - you absolutely need a GPS!

It’s little every day changes that make a long lasting positive impact.

Happy Selling!

Objection Handling

It’s important that you have solid clarity of all the details in order to be able to truly overcome an objection. There are 5 steps to objection handling:



Acknowledge: Empathise and identify with their concern


Question: As for specifics including Who What Where Why and tell me more


Listen: Be patient and truly understand what the prospect is telling you


Position: Discuss the benefits and connect the dots to their business


(Here is where you could use the Feel, Felt, Found technique)


Check: Has the objection been addressed and ask for further feed back with a question


Here are some common Objections and some questions to ask that will help you uncover the true objection and position yourself to resolve the concern.


Happy with their current provider/service


• Perhaps you could clarify for me – Is it your service or your service provider that are happy with?


• What is it that you like about them


• When was the last time they did an assessment of your requirements or services?


• How do you feel your business would benefit from new technology? Cost Savings? Increased productivity? Efficiencies? Being more Competitive?


• It would be helpful if you could be specific about who your current service provider is and if you have more than one provider for one or more service


• How are you kept up to date on new technology, products and services?


• How proactive is your rep/provider?


• What features do you like about your service?


• Is there a specific feature or product you would like to see from your current service provider?


• Have you ever had an outage? How was that handled? What is your outage process?


Not Competitive


• Could you be more specific? Price? Solution? Product offering?


• Are you speaking with other providers regarding this service?


• I would like to confirm that we are truly comparing apples to apples. Can we move through the solution and truly understand the similarities and differences?


• Some line items may be included in the pricing where as with other suppliers they may be a separate item. Could I help you do a detailed comparison?


• Is there a specific part of the quote/pricing that jumps out at you?


• Was there anything noticeably different in the quotes?


• Do you have a budget?


• Is cost the most important factor in your decision?


• Where do you specifically feel we are not competitive? SLA? Price? Solution?


In a contract


• Is this a verbal contract or a signed contract?


• When was the contract signed? What is the term of the contract?


• If I could show you cost savings, and the numbers make sense, would you consider switching?


• Could I do a cost analysis of savings vs. any penalties?


• Could you share with me some of the main Terms and Conditions of the contract?


• Does it have an auto renew clause? Will your rates increase with the Auto renew?


• Were there any sticking points with the contract?


• What services are specifically contracted?


With the “In a Contract” clause the goal is to set a reminder to follow up 6 months prior to the contact expiry and note it in Goldmine and to offer them other Avega services including Conferencing and Social Media.


Not Interested


• Are you interested in New Technology? Better Service? Saving Money? Being Competitive? Educating yourself on communication trends? Getting a second opinion on solutions?


• What are you not interested in?


• Tell me something about your business that would help me understand what is important to you


• Are phone & internet a service that your business depends on daily to run your company?


• If your business depends on phone and internet, why wouldn’t you be interested?


• How do you communicate with Customers? Vendors? Other employees? What percentage do you use phone to communicate? What percentage do you rely on Internet and email to communicate?


• How critical is phone and/or internet to your business


• If Phone and internet are critical infrastructure, isn’t it worth looking at more closely?


• If I could demonstrate improved productivity and greater efficiencies by having the right solutions, would you agree to look at this service in more detail?

Be that active listener and truly seek to understand the objection. Take your time and be deliberate in your questions and finding the heart of the matter. Happy Selling!