View the Video of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes

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Top Ten Hiring Mistakes Hiring Errors View the Video of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes

On our Hire and Retain Top Talent Blog, we recently posted a video of our Research Project titled The Top Ten Mistakes in Hiring. You can download a copy of the Executive Summary of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes Research Project by clicking here. The blog post with the video of the Top Ten Mistakes in Hiring can be found by clicking here.

In the video we identify which of the 5 components of our Success Factor Methodology can be used to overcome each of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes.

We teach the Success Factor Methodology in our popular workshop "You're NOT the Person I Hired" which is named after our best-selling book by the same title. You can download a digital version of our book on raising hiring accuracy and eliminating hiring mistakes by clicking here.

Barry Deutsch

Don't Use LinkedIn - Funny and Sad at the Same Time

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ostrich head buried hg wht Dont Use LinkedIn Funny and Sad at the Same Time

Mic Johnson wrote a funny blog article titled "20 Reasons Why Your Business Should NOT be on LinkedIn." I almost fell out of my chair laughing and then realized he had nailed it -  most companies are resisting or ignoring using new tools, such as LinkedIn. It is the number one business networking and referral tool in existence. It just keeps building in importance.

Are you being a ostrich when it comes to using LinkedIn?

This resistance unfortunately allows your competitors to gain a strategic advantage over you in attracting talent, sales, marketing, lead generation and nurturing, and customer service. These tools are here to stay and the more effective and efficient companies are implementing them through-out their business. The real interesting element of social media is that it levels the playing field for entrepreneurial companies and small businesses to do things that traditionally only a large company with lots of resources could do in the past. Now you can achieve comparable results quicker and easier.

I reprint below the 20 funny reasons why you shouldn't be on LinkedIn (Mic did a great job in pulling these together):

1. You will take a cold call over a warm, or even hot, call every day of the week. 

2. You think business can only be done face-to-face even though relationship building (isn’t that what business is all about?) happens every single day online. 

3. You believe that you (and your employees) 30% complete profile with no summary, no picture and zero recommendations doesn’t reflect poorly on you or your business.

4. You don’t have time to spend a couple of hours on LinkedIn each week to research prospects because you are too busy doing the same sales techniques you’ve used your entire career. 

5. You don’t want to participate in forums that make you or your business look like subject matter experts in your industry.

6. You don’t want to read blog articles and stories from people in your professional network that may help you or your business.

7. You don’t want to take the time to give recommendations to people that you’ve worked with throughout your career that are awesome because there isn’t anything in it for you.

8. When customers or prospects search for you on LinkedIn, you want to make sure they can’t find you. And if they do, you want to make sure that your personal profile and company page don’t tell them anything of value. 

9. You know for a fact that none of the 150 million people on LinkedIn are your customers or prospects.

10. You know that LinkedIn is adding 2 people every second (up from 1 person a second a year ago) but those people probably won’t ever want to buy anything anyway. 

11. You don’t want to share your personal and professional brand with people because that would be bragging. Even though they want to know. Everyone knows that, in business, it’s always better to not give people what they want.

12. You don’t want to know more about people that you are doing business with or would like to do business with.

13. You believe, with all of your heart, that there is no value in keeping up with what is going on in your professional network (such as new business deals, new hires, new products and services, etc.).

14. You have all the business you will ever need and aren’t interested in generating more.

15. You prefer to limit your prospecting and sales activity to the two networking groups you belong to and the five coffees and lunches you try to set up each week.

16. You don’t see any value in updating your LinkedIn status regularly to tell your professional network about things that may help them. 

17. You think tools like LinkedIn aren’t fundamentally changing the way business is done.

18. You don’t want your employees spending time on a tool that can help enhance your brand, your reach, and open up the lines of communication. 

19. You don’t want to find talented people to work for you or get recommendations from people that they are connected to on LinkedIn. A two-page resume and a 1-hour interview give you all you need to make a $50,000 decision. 

20. You think you’ve done your job on LinkedIn by having an “ok” profile “just so you’re out there” and see nothing wrong with having a LinkedIn inbox full of invitations and messages you haven’t responded to.

 

Here's my personal example of what LinkedIn has meant to me: LinkedIn has allowed me to expand my executive search practice to new clients by at least 30% over the last 3 years, during tough economic times, and at the same time reduce my costs of conducting a search by 50%. This means I can offer my clients better service, at a substantially reduced fee, while my profit increases, and my efficiency improves at a geometric rate. There are thousands of these examples for every imaginable type of business.

After you laugh or cry when you read these 20 reasons of why you shouldn't be on LinkedIn, I'd like to consider when you're going to put a plan in place to integrate the tool in the day-to-day aspects of doing business - in almost every function in your company. One of the greatest ROIs can come from recruiting better talent. Start there, and then expand it into sales, marketing, customer service, and employee engagement.

What's your biggest hurdle/roadblock in not doing this immediately?

To read Mic's full article, please click the link below:

20 Reasons Why Your Business Should NOT be on LinkedIn

Barry Deutsch

Can You Handle Being on Stage as a Leader?

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Great Leadership Blog Can You Handle Being on Stage as a Leader?

Beth Armknecht Miller is a Vistage Chair in Atlanta who provides a great role model of leveraging social media to create a personal brand around being a Vistage Chair. She does a great job using social media tools to amplify her message as a Vistage Chair in her community. One of the blogs I follow is the Great Leadership Blog by Dan McCarthy. I stumbled across this guest blog post by Beth on that blog titled "Don't Let the Pebbles Cover the Rocks".

Beth talked about the importance of not letting the urgent overwhelm the important in this article. If you'll remember the writings of Steven Covey in the Seven Habits of Effective People, this was one of the key downfalls of most individuals - they let the urgent dictate their lives.

My focus was on a particularly interesting comment Beth made in her blog article that stuck in my mind. Many of you know that I coach High School Girls Basketball. We just finished our league season. The comment Beth made me reflect back over the last 6 months on my personal leadership, my ability to "control" my emotions and the other coaches I've observed in 100s of high school basketball games since the beginning of September. We have 3 levels in our program and each level has played over 50 games each. I announce all of our boys games for home games at our High School. Plus I run a youth club team with over 100 kids. That's observing a lot of games. Here's the comment Beth made about leadership:

And finally, having the skill to manage your emotions in times of the urgent is critical to leadership success. Many leaders forget that they are "on stage". Their employees are always looking to them for emotional and behavioral cues. So when something or someone becomes that pebble, you need to kick up your level of emotional intelligence. Step back and think before you react.

 

I realized that the girls who played for me looked to me for guidance, inspiration, and focus. The lessons I've learned from coaching have helped me in my personal business, executive search practice, and in coaching my clients to be more effective in retaining top talent.

Observations:

Very few basketball coaches have good control of their emotions and are able to effectively communicate with their teams. Their style is measured in extremes - from pure joy to outright anger. They talk about being ethical and value-based in their style out one side of their mouth, and out the other side swear at their players, abuse the referees, and trash talk the opponents. I have to ask myself what type of contradiction that sets up in the minds of young student-athletes. Perhaps, it prepares them for a lifetime of abusive and terrible bosses. Is there a significant difference in this aberrant behavior by coaches of high school girls vs. CEOs at entrepreneurial companies.

I may sometimes wonder if the girls on my team are paying any attention to what I am saying or doing during practices or games. I then realize they are focused on me with laser attention - every action, word, verbal or non-verbal comment is absorbed, analyzed, digested, and filed away for future use. I create a very open team environment where my girls can feel free to say anything they want without the feeling of retribution for being open. I am reminded of being on stage for them when I hear things like:

Why is that other coach yelling at his team?

Coach Barry - don't forget to breath

Can you believe what that coach just said to the referee? How about that parent behind us who just yelled that comment - isn't that inappropriate?

Coach Barry - when you sit down on the bench we feel you've given up on us.

My coaching peers frequently ask me why I don't yell at the referees when I am upset about their calls. I tell them that the referees are doing their best job and sometimes they make mistakes under difficult situations and pressure. I ask them how they would feel if I yelled at them every time they made a mistake.

Top talent will not put up with a boss who cannot control their emotions. Members of a sports team will stop working hard when they don't trust or believe in their coach. Employees are no different. If you're going to be a "nut-case" and not coach/manage from a values-based approach all the time, then you should just forget about ever retaining top talent.

One of the top 3 reasons top talent decides to leave is that they lose their trust in you as THEIR leader. Not being able to control your emotions and not being able to "walk the talk" of your values is one of the fastest methods to lose good people. How many of your managers and executives have no clue how to manage with values and control their emotional state? Are they capable of learning? Should you send them to charm school? OR is it time to move on and hire better managers. You managerial and supervisors will dictate the caliber of team that delivers the front line of your service. If you've got "BAD" managers in those roles, you'll never achieve long term continual success since they will only be able to hire and retain average and mediocre candidates who can't find a job elsewhere.

Have you ever played on a team for a coach who couldn't control their emotions - have you ever worked in an environment where the CEO or manager couldn't control their emotions? What did you do about it?

My experience is that the entire culture/style/values of the team, group, department, or organization is set by the coach or leader? Do you have managers in your organization contributing to dysfunction?

If you would like to read the full article, click the link below:

Don't let the Pebbles Cover the Rocks

 

Barry Deutsch

 

 

 

If you would like to read the full article, click the link below:

Don't Let the Pebbles Cover the Rocks

Barry Deutsch

Why do most companies keep recreating the wheel?

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Wordpress Logo Why do most companies keep recreating the wheel?

I had an interesting conversation at a presentation yesterday at one of my clients where we were working on performance management improvement. The topic of knowledge sharing came up. Various managers, staff, and field techs keep coming across similar problems and resolutions, yet it doesn't get shared. I'm curious how other organizations "institutionalize" or "formalize" knowledge sharing beyond the weekly/monthly group meeting. How does this information get stored as part of the organization's history?

An easy recommendation I've making to my clients to immediately start down this path is to just starting using a Content Management System internally like a blog - such as WordPress - to collect, store, and circulate knowledge. Easy to use and set-up and every person within minutes can learn how to add information.

Anyone else have experience with companies using a structured approach to knowledge sharing without spending thousands of dollars on expensive software?

I find in many of my entrepreneurial clients, those in the 50-150 person range, have no formal tool to collect knowledge and share it with other employees, new employees, and customers. Everybody is an isolated silo. Even though three of our staff have faced this same exact issue before, let's allow the new guy to stumble through it again, recreating the wheel, and making the same mistakes we know will happen.

This sounds so dysfunctional that information is not shared other than the occasional "lunch-n-learn", staff meetings, or the rare group training (in which we forget 90 percent of what we've heard and learned within 48 hours).

I am recommending to all my clients that have a workforce and client base with the following needs that they immediately implement putting wordpress on their website and using it both internally as a knowledge base, and externally, as a marketing engagement tool for clients:

  • Success stories to share with all employees and clients
  • Problems and their resolution
  • Feedback on projects
  • Updates for clients on projects
  • Client understanding of your solutions
  • Case studies
  • Technical Training and Updates
  • Product Information and Updates
  • Project Collaboration
  • Sales Call Reporting - beyond the information in your CRM system
  • Field Tech/Customer Call Reporting - beyond the information in your CRM system
  • Company Newsletter
  • Self-paced on-line training

 

The list is endless when you start including downloads for video, audio, mobile updates from the field off ipads and smartphones. Layer on top of the internal value you get: Imagine the ability to interact real time, improve communications, and engage at a deep level with your existing and potential customers.

There are other more rigorous and expensive solutions. WordPress could be the least expensive (it's free - and quickest method to implement a knowledge base immediately) You always have the option to scale it up and transfer the content to another system in the future. Your IT professionals can quickly master how to support the software and your staff can be easily trained. You can also outsource the support of your wordpress installation to an expert, for a very low monthly fee (this is my approach).

I can't think of an easier solution to get a knowledge base up and running within days, and start to see the immediate impact.

I am conducting a research project for companies interested in launching a knowledge base that can be used internally and externally for marketing. I will take the first 10 companies to raise their hand and I'll walk them step-by-step through the launch and management of their knowledge base using WordPress. I will do this on a complimentary basis to form the foundation for my research project. Shoot me a note if you're interested in being part of the initial research group.

This new service and direction comes from our observation that one of the greatest challenges in most companies in building high performance teams and organizations is a lack of knowledge sharing among the management team in how to do it. Training is one element of the solution (most managers and executives don't have equal training), and the other primary failure point is a lack of sharing of specific past experiences and "details"on how to do it.

Barry Deutsch

Do You Challenge Your Sales Team To Keep it Fresh?

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The Sales Archaeologist Blog 300x47 Do You Challenge Your Sales Team To Keep it Fresh?

Frank Belzer wrote an interesting challenge in one of his older posts that I stumbled back upon in my archive for sales management. After having been in the executive search field for more than 25 years, one of the things I'm very proud of is a constantly evolving understanding of hiring top talent and sharing that with our clients. We've never been stuck in the same approach the vast majority of recruiters use:

  • We have a better rolodex
  • We're experts in this field
  • We have lots of candidates in our database

That was the mantra 25 years ago and it's tired and worn out today. Most managers and executives get weary of hearing recruiters pitch the same old story over and over.

 

History provides us with many examples of change and of methods becoming outdated. When the Greek armies conquered the world in 300BC under Alexander the Macedonian Phalanx was cutting edge technology. Five hundred years later at the battle of Cynoscephalae - it was not. The new Roman formation was more mobile and was able to outflank and crush the Greek Army.

Last week I had an opportunity to do a lot of sales training, far more than normal and it was pretty clear to me that so many times as sales professionals we revert back to old methods that although comfortable, often allow the prospects to outflank us resulting in a lack of clarity or a lost deal.

Chances are if you have been using the same methods for too long a few things have happened.

prospects are wise to your strategy - they are in control
you are just going through the motions - no passion
the method you are using is a combination of softened styles that cater to your weaknesses

Part of staying sharp and successful as a sales person involves looking for new ways to say things, new methods to reach people, new questions to ask and just continuing to grow and develop. If the Macedonians had done that at Cynoscephalae then the formation and methods that the Roman army faced would have been quite different as perhaps would have been the outcome.

 

When you interview sales candidates or sales managers, do you probe for how they keep their stories, pitches, turnarounds, handling of objections, and presentations fresh and interesting? If you look at your own sales organization, how much do you challenge that group to be fresh, have latest information, and provide a "differentiated" set of data to your clients? Or are your sales candidates still pretending like it's 1970 and what worked then will work now?

To read Frank Belzer's full article, click the link below:

How Fresh is Your Sales Methodology?

Barry Deutsch

LinkedIn Offers Powerful Tools for your Sales Team

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linkedin icon 256x256 scaled to 75x75 LinkedIn Offers Powerful Tools for your Sales Team

Are you training your sales professionals in how to use the advanced features of LinkedIn for marketing, introductions, and relationship building? If not, are you potentially ignoring a tool that could dramatically leverage your time and effort? If you have not gone down this path yet, what's holding you back?

Here's a few ideas:

  • Does everyone in your company have a LinkedIn Account?
  • Has each person input their entire contact list to check who they know is already on LinkedIn?
  • Have your sales professionals used their own contact list and that of everyone in the company to identify potential buyers at target companies who already know someone in your company - through which a warm introduction could be obtained?
  • Do your sales people use the profile manager and tagging to sort, manage, email, and nurture potential contacts?
  • Do your sales professionals all have impressive profiles fully filled out and an extensive LinkedIn Company Page?
  • Are your sales professionals using the advanced features of LinkedIn, such as blogging, presentations, video, reading lists, and others to engage with potential clients?
  • Have you brought in or hired a LinkedIn Sales Trainer to teach and train your team?
  • Have you sent your sales people to online e-courses/webinars to learn how to adapt LinkedIn to their unique selling approach?

Do you have a precise plan of how to bring your entire sales team up to speed on using LinkedIn to improve sales?

Barry Deutsch

Finding good sales people

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 Executive Leader Coach 300x42 Finding good sales people

Dave Kinnear, Vistage Chair, posted a wonderful article (I'm biased of course) on his blog to one of our most popular blog articles titled "Why is it so hard to find great salespeople?"

Dave wrote this article over a year ago - and it's just as relevant today as it was when he originally posted the article. His call to action to companies to change the way criteria is set for hiring and performance, incentives, and expectations is frustrating to read since not a lot has changed in sales hiring over the last 10 years. Most companies are still stuck in an antiquated, ancient, tribal, and traditional approach to hiring and managing a sales team that is broken.

Until the basic paradigm shifts of how to define success, how to fish in deep waters for the best sales talent, how to motivate the best performers, and how to keep the best talent changes - most companies will continue to experience mediocre results in their sales teams.

Here's a small quote from Dave's article:

 

My friends at Impact Hiring Solutions posted an article on their blog answering a question I hear a lot: “Why is it so hard to find great salespeople?” They are right it is hard, and I think we should listen to their solid understanding of how to properly hire a sales person. However, there is a trap waiting for you. It’s a pretty significant trap; and it’s this . . . . Do you know what it takes to be successful in sales in THIS market or are you going to build your success factors based on past experience. Now, I’m not talking about setting the measurable goals part of this process. You know how to determine what the top line, bottom line and profit margins need to be. I’m talking about what makes a salesperson successful in the present economy. And if you follow the Impact Hiring Solutions guidelines, how will a person demonstrate that they have achieved the success factors in other companies and in this market?

 

How do you define success for top performing sales professionals? Have you changed your methods of where you go to find these candidates? Have you evolved your process of what you do with these top performing sales professionals once join your company? OR we will still using the same approaches from 10-20-30 years ago?

If you would like to read Dave Kinnear's full article on what needs to change to hire and retain top sales professionals, click the link below:

Finding Good Sales People

Barry Deutsch

Should you be Business Blogging?

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Daily Blog Tips thumb Should you be Business Blogging?

Sometimes I stumble across an interesting article that works for Vistage and TEC Chairs, Speakers, Trusted Advisers, and Members. This might be one of those articles. Is Blogging for everyone? Could your business, consulting, speaking, services, and products benefit from launching a blog?

This a little bit of a “devil’s advocate” post. Everyone is jumping on the blogging bandwagon. Should you join in the parade? Should you wait? Is Blogging NOT an effective strategy for your business? This article on Daily Blog Tips summarized many of the key points related to determining if your company should be blogging or whether it might turn into an exercise in futility?

I liked the way the author laid out a set of criteria or a checklist to determine if you should launch a business blog? There are obviously many benefits from having a business blog – one of the major questions is whether you have the time, patience, and resources to devote to launching a business blog.

There’s a common opinion that your businesses should blog. And that’s true – a lot of them should, but that doesn’t mean you should blog just to blog. Many businesses do the blog thing wrong, and apply it for the wrong reasons. This can create productivity gaps and areas where resources are allocated improperly. Blogging shouldn’t be done just to blog – there should be a clear focus, goals, and actionable metrics applied to it. It shouldn’t be done just because people do it – for the same reasons that Facebook and Twitter accounts shouldn’t be created because you heard “social media’s good”.

To read the full article on Daily Blog Tips, click the link below:

Why Your Business Should – And Shouldn’t – Have A Blog

Barry Deutsch

Do Your Customers or Clients view you as a Trusted Source?

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Reputation to Revenue Blog thumb Do Your Customers or Clients view you as a Trusted Source?

I was reminded how important it is for your potential customers to view you as a trusted source of information in re-reading this blog article in my archive from the Reputation-to-Revenue Blog.

Study after study has shown that a large percentage of buying decisions (both for products and services) are being done through web searches. On these web searches, your content, reputation, references, and recommendations all surface.

Are you establishing yourself as one of the top trusted sources of information for your customers/clients?

Are you producing enough content to establish yourself as the "authority" within your niche or marketplace?

Could you honestly say that for the service you provide – you’re one of the most trusted sources of reliable, non-biased, objective information within your industry or niche?

If you’re not in the top 3, you’re leaving money on the table. Social media – places like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, and other social networking venues – now give you the opportunity to build your own brand, become your own content publisher, and market precisely to your target audience on a very cost-efficient basis.

Are you taking advantage of these new tools and sites to establish yourself as a leading producer of good quality information about the products or services (which you provide) in your niche or market?

Here’s a good case study: My partner, Brad Remillard, and I have systematically developed our reputation as being one of the top voices in hiring and retaining top talent. We generate an abundance of referrals and leads for our executive search practice, speaking engagements, and hiring process improvement consulting business. We’ve put together one of the best collections of FREE content on the web for hiring and retaining top talent. We’re laser focused in distributing that content to our target audience – CEOs of small-to-medium size businesses. We generate a tremendous number of leads and referrals simply by publishing high quality content related to finding, interviewing, assessing, and keeping great talent.

Anyone can do this. There is no barrier to entry other than the time investment required to write and publish your content. Within a very short period of time, you could become one of the most trusted sources of information for your target audience-niche market. Our blogging and social media activity comprise approximately 1 hour per day of time including writing the blog articles, distributing the articles, projects, responding to our audience/connections, and networking on-line.

The future battle for the attention of the buyers of your services or products will be increasingly fought on the field of establishing yourself as a trusted source of information. This approach applies to Chairs, Consultants, Companies, Speakers, and Sales Professionals. How are you establishing your business as the most trusted within your niche?

To read the entire article, click the link below:

Marketing as media: Are you in the top five?

Barry Deutsch

Is Fear Holding You Back From Business Blogging?

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Compendium Blog thumb Is Fear Holding You Back From Business Blogging?

Have you launched a corporate blog yet?

What’s holding you back?

We have a saying in our basketball program based on one of the most popular quotes ever issued by a coach: “You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

How many shots (opportunities) are you missing because you’re afraid to shoot (start blogging)?

I’m sure by now you’ve listened to, read, and seen numerous “experts” talk about social media. In all that information, I’ll bet every one of the experts has called on you to start a blog.

I read recently on the Compedium Blog an interesting statistic:

According to a recent study by Experian-Hitwise, an Internet measurement data application provider, searchers’ use of eight-word keyword phrases grew 22% in just one year. In addition, 56% of all keyword queries are now three word phrases or more. So what does this mean for corporate bloggers? The longer the phrase, the more specific the searcher intent. Long tail searchers are hand raisers and know exactly what they’re looking for. It’s up to you to show up and solve their problems. How do you do this? By blogging.

There is no doubt among marketing gurus that blogging is the most effective method to drive search engine queries about your products/services, provide differentiation through thought-leadership, and engage with your community of potential buyers,  prospects, and raving fans that are interested in your products and services.

So, we’ve now established that beyond a shadow of a doubt, blogging is a great low-cost and effective marketing strategy – especially one that can drive sales leads.

What are you waiting for?

What is holding you back from taking the step of establishing a blog targeted at your customer base of individuals who make decisions on whether to purchase your products and services?

Are you waiting for your competitors to take the lead and then you’ll follow – or would you rather be the leader among your competitors?

Common fear factors in setting up a blog include:

  • The fear of running out of blogging ideas
  • The fear of looking/sounding stupid
  • The fear of wasting time with no immediate results
  • The fear of employees/blog writers releasing confidential information
  • The fear of not knowing where to start
  • The fear of the unknown: “I don’t know what to expect”

Are you letting your fears about blogging consume you? Are you over-analyzing whether it makes sense to start a blog? You could have a blog up and running within a few hours. Yes – you will make initial mistakes, errors, and you’ll have a few regrets. What’s new? Doesn’t this sound like every other idea you’ve tried for the first time?

I sometimes have to remind the girls on my basketball team to shoot the ball. Take a risk. Do something different for once. I ask them what’s the worst thing that could happen? Of course, they tell me they might miss. So do all your teammates, but they don’t let that fear of doing something – like shooting – stop them. Remember the old adage: You’ll miss a 100% of the shots you don’t take.

By not trying to blog and testing the social media waters, are you missing the opportunity to engage more fully your customer base, are you leaving sales leads on the table, and are you providing a window for your competitors to dominate your market?

Barry Deutsch

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