Opportunity costs of your sales staff

One of the line items that most managers and businesses seem to ignore are the opportunity costs of their employee’s time. Opportunity costs are defined by the fact if your employees spend their time on one task then the task they don’t complete is the opportunity cost.


Managers need to review procedures and practices to keep their operation streamlined. Offices that are overwhelmed by paperwork need to review what actually vital information is needed. If your staff is bogged down with repetitive and excessive documentation then that needs to be reevaluated.

Sales is one area that businesses seem to push for excessive paperwork from their staff. Offices have call logs to monitor how many calls and who was contacted. Next a call log documents who was called, when and a summary of the conversation. On top of this many sales staffs have to prepare daily, weekly or monthly reports to summarize for their bosses the same information that can be found on the call logs. Other reports that come up involve listing hot leads you have or are going to approach and where you are as far as contacting and identifying the decision maker.

All of this information is important especially for management to keep track of their sales staff. Without a strong sales force you can’t expect your business to grow especially in this economic climate. This information can help management identify staff that is having issues or needs extra support to close the sale. But the multiple reports can also eat up your sales peoples’ time that could be better spent going after new business.

Managers need to keep the lines of communication open with the sales team to go over procedures and come up with a system that gives management updates on their time but doesn’t hinder them from being able to close more sales.

Do you agree that the sales staff needs to have guidelines but still have the freedom to get the work done or have tips on how to do this?

10,000 hours of social media

Outliers: The Story of Success Can anyone really call themselves a social media expert or guru? I hear these titles tossed around a lot these days. I’m not sure if anyone can really qualify for this distinction based on the newness of the medium.


In the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell he talks about the theory of 10,000 hours. This states that to really be proficient or an expert in any area you need to put in approximately 10,000 hours.

If you use this as a starting point then not too many people really can call themselves experts. Facebook started in February of 2004 and was only used by college students. It didn’t open to the public till September of 2006. Since opening to the public, it has gone through a host of changes and business has been adapting so it can take advantage of this growing audience.

When you talk about social media Facebook is only one of the players. You also have to account for Twitter, blogs, social bookmarking and all the other ways people are now interacting online.

This medium is going through constant changes with new sites springing up and users looking to see how they can be used on a personal and business level. Trying to spend enough time on any one site or on using all the sites would make it next to impossible for anyone to truly be called an expert.

Social media is constantly evolving and those of use that it on a regular basis and try to advise our clients on the advantages at this point are still students. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that can advise you properly and help with strategy. It does mean that if anyone tells you they know all the answers then they might not be open to the changes and could miss new opportunities as the social world changes.

Do you feel you qualify as a social media expert? Feel free to share your thoughts.

Social media peer pressure

As kids we are warned to beware of peer pressure and how to fight the temptation to go along with the crowd. As adults in the business world you would think that we would be immune to this type of childish behavior.


Social media is the biggest example of how the playground has entered the boardroom. Right now there are many companies who have jumped on the social media bandwagon with absolutely no strategy or without even knowing why they are there.

A recent article I read http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=130720&passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchReslts&art_searched=social%20media%20as%20half%2Dassed&page_number=0#comments talks about a survey by Digital Brand Expressions show that of 100 companies of varying size (from 50-1000 employees) 78% said their companies were using social media but only 41% said they had a strategy. Of this group 88% agreed that a social strategy was necessary but they hadn’t gotten around to planning yet.

My guess for these findings is cost. No executive would for example spend $1 million dollar or even $1 dollar on buying any form of advertising in print, TV or radio without a reason or strategy. They would want to see demographics and justification on why this would work and expect to see how this spending will result is tangible sales.

I hear this over and over, social media is FREE. Why use an agency, we have staff let them build a facebook and twitter. Because there is no one to account to for spending companies feel it’s ok to start and see where it goes.

They don’t recognize the power of word of mouth advertising or the danger it can present to your brand if not done properly. Social media needs to be classified like all other marketing and communications efforts done by your company.

The lesson we learned as kids hold true today. Look before you leap and don’t give into peer pressure.

Networking when your searching for a job

Promotion isn’t limited to what businesses do as part of their marketing strategy, sometimes it needs to be done for you.

Recently I read an article tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/03/job-sites-are-they-worth-it/ on talking to recruiters and their use of the big job boards. Surprisingly many weren’t that excited to staff their positions using these sites. Also the more senior the position, the less likely they are to use the major job boards.

This could still be some residue from when the economy was booming and recruiters all wanted passive talent. The thought was if someone was looking for a job then they didn’t want that candidate, instead, they wanted to reach out to those that weren’t actively looking.

So the question is if you aren’t going to find your next job on a job board, where can you go. It’s time to go back to basics and that’s your friends, family and business associates. There isn’t the stigma attached to being out of work like there is in a good economy. Everyone has seen really great people lose their jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with their performance.

The idea is not to be embarrassed, tell everyone you know that you are looking. Go to linked in and change your status, even make sure to update your facebook, twitter or any other social sites you use to let them know your available and they type of job you want.

Don’t forget to get out and network. It’s easy to rely on the internet but sometimes the best contact is face to face. Look for groups that meet that let you talk with others in companies you might want to join so that you can find out if they are hiring and who is the best person to contact.

Many local newspapers are hosting these types of events or job fairs as ways to recruit to offset the decline in print recruitment advertising. Another possibility is your local chamber of commerce to see if they host business card exchanges or workshops. These casual get together can be a great way to meet local business professionals.

The more people you have looking for you the better chance you have to find the job of your dreams.

Does anyone have any great places or groups they have gone to that have helped in their job search? Share them here.