The Bull's-Eye View

No one can deny the internet’s impact on professional sales recruitment, and social networks such as MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook, to name a few, have added another dimension to this powerful communication medium. These networks are only beginning to be recognized for the valuable recruiting resource that they are, arguably more so than traditional online resume postings and job boards.

Robert Scoble calls Facebook "the modern day Rolodex," and I’d have to agree. Like any recruiting method, setting up an account and adapting to the Facebook format takes time, but the payoff is tremendous, once you know what you’re doing. In professional sales recruitment, mastery of Facebook (or similar sites) will soon be a required skill.

The beauty of Facebook is in the wealth of information freely supplied by its users and wide variety of search functions. An active "Facebooker" will include enough information about their work experience and personality to make it seem like you know them, before you’ve even spoken.

Social networks encourage users to reveal personal details well beyond the standard academic major and degree information found in a resume or cover letter. Photos, lengthy likes and dislikes lists and personal commenting features provide a very telling description of a candidate as both a person and an employee.

What does this mean for a job placement firm? Free networking connections and a lot of time saved, for starters. Most of these sites are free to join, and once you're familiar with the functionality, you can save a lot of time screening potential candidates before you even call them back. Take the time to join one or two of these social networks and you're almost certain to see the quality of your candidates improve.

Be ready to propel a meeting forward when it hits trouble spots. Here are three classic meeting problems and how to solve them:

• Problem: "We always peter out."
  Solution: End the meeting on a high note. If 17 minutes into the meeting, you reach the climax of the gathering, stop the meeting there. That way everyone walks out revved up— and more productive.

• Problem: "Everyone’s bored out of their minds."
  Solution: Make attendees laugh. Here’s a trick from Sheldon Arora, CEO of Esoftsolutions in Plano, Texas: The last person into the room at the monthly companywide meeting has to tell a joke. It loosens up the room and fills the seats on time.

• Problem: "No one retains a thing."
  Solution: Do a five-minute recap at the end. You want everyone to leave knowing exactly what they’re supposed to do. Clarify potential outcomes, outline next steps and make assignments.

- Adapted from "Escape From Meeting Hell," Patrick J. Sauer, Inc., www.inc.com. Troubleshoot a stagnant meeting

Lessen Crisis Management

Keep crisis management from dominating your day. After putting out a fire, routinely go one-step further by asking:

• What is the pattern here?
• Why did it occur?
• What can we do to avoid it in the future?
• Who can be trained to prevent it from happening?

Then put a plan into place to avoid the crisis next time.

- Adapted from Don’t Oil the Squeaky Wheel … and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness, Dr. Wolf J. Rinke, www.wolfrinke.com

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
- Og Mandino

No man fails who does his best.
- Orison Swett Marden

Website of the Month

President Bush asked all federal agencies to streamline communications with the public and improve interagency information sharing in order to enhance public security.

To provide better service in alerting the American people to unsafe, hazardous or defective products, six federal agencies with vastly different jurisdictions joined together to create a "one stop shop" for U.S. Government recalls. The agencies are: Consumer Product Safety Commission, Food & Drug Administration, U.S. Coast Guard, National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Dept of Agriculture.

Check it out at: http://www.recalls.gov

Do you need a top-performing sales professional to drive revenue?

If you don’t have time or money to waste searching for a top-quality sales person that drives revenue, Target Consulting can do the sales recruiting for you. You only pay us if you hire a candidate, and we guarantee the candidate for a limited time. Visit our Client Services section.

Call us for a confidential job search

Developing Time Conscious Attitudes and Goal-Oriented Habits

The first step in changing any habit is to identify the that habit you want to change. This is true for your time attitudes as well. Establish a period of time in which to analyze situations, your attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes. Evaluate your present time use. Take time to record exactly how you spend your time. This is usually an important discovery process. Most people have a very inaccurate understanding of how they actually spend their time.

Pinpoint precise behaviors that are incompatible with your vision, goals, and values. For example, if your goals are to do well in your job, which might mean getting promoted and getting a larger salary, but you keep making commitments to friends and family that keep you from doing really well at work, your behavior is not in line with your senior goals. If you learned as a child that the approval of others was important and you find yourself regularly agreeing to do more than you can handle well, your behavior is understandable, but may also be self defeating. Examine your attitudes and early conditioning to determine if a change in your thinking might well be useful. If you want to achieve outstanding success, but you put in minimal hours and exert only average effort, your behavior is inconsistent with your goals. Either change your goals to ones that will inspire you to change your behavior, or change your behavior by developing new habits that will get you to your goals.

It is important to define the new habits that you may wish to develop.

Identify them as specifically as you are able.
For example, if you want to develop habits conducive to being successful in business, you might read biographies of business leaders or become part of a leadership development program. You might also seek out a mentor to learn more of what it takes to be successful. In other words, find what skills you will need and develop a plan to acquire them.

Look for opportunities to practice and ask for help from others.
Let them know your goals. Acquire the discipline to concentrate on what you want to eliminate, what won’t get you there. Be meticulous about your daily planning process. PLAN TOMORROW BEFORE YOU LEAVE TODAY. Both self discipline and self management are critical aspects of time management. Both of these can be developed. Focus on your rewards; they must exceed in value the price you will pay in effort, or you’ll be inclined to revert to old habits. Once you decide to do something, give your word to keep at it until you win! Keep your word. Take responsibility for your own success or failure. Recognize the difference and the value of a long term benefit rather than momentary gratification.

Develop a winner’s attitude.
Think positively about your opportunities, your potential, your ability to achieve your goals, and your right to success. Focus your thoughts. Train yourself to seek solutions, not place blame, and to focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t. If you break an iron rod at its weakest point and weld it back together again, the weakest point becomes the strongest point.

- All rights reserved worldwide. Copyright protected. Source: Arnie Rintzler, AWR Business Concepts, 158 Mayhew Drive, South Orange New Jersey 07079

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Target Consulting Welcomes Gela Feroze!

Gela Feroze was a top biller from Sales Search Consultants and will be opening a new Branch office for Target Consulting Group in Portland, ME.

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