Hello! We are Bill Trochim, of Cornell University, and Arthur Blank, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. We are the Chair and Program Chair, respectively of the Translational Research Evaluation (TRE) topical interest group. There is a growing recognition in many fields that the problems associated with the translation of research to practice are among the most important and costly of our modern era and that our society needs to address these issues. Many U.S. federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been mounting a variety of efforts to enhance research translation and address major translational barriers. For instance, in 2006 the NIH started the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), one of the largest programs at the NIH. Administered by the newly formed National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), the CTSAs now encompass a network of 62 "hub" organizations (academic medical centers, medical schools, community organizations, etc.) in a national research-practice network. In the past year a variety of AEA members joined together to start the Translational Research Evaluation (TRE) Topical Interest Group. The purpose of the TIG is to provide a community for all evaluators interested in the evaluation of translational research initiatives to enable them to share the specific and unique challenges they face in this evaluative endeavor. The TIG provides a forum for addressing all aspects of evaluation related to clinical and translational sciences including (but not limited to) education, frameworks and models, innovative applications, novel methods, data collection techniques and research designs. This TIG will offer its members - evaluators, practitioners, program managers and other stakeholders - an opportunity to share mutual interests, evaluation expertise, resources and materials. The over-arching goal of the TIG is to explore current, state-of-the-art evaluation approaches and applications, foster communication among TR evaluators and provide opportunities to discuss existing and emerging techniques to evaluate translational research efforts. Furthermore, this TIG will encourage its members to identify and disseminate successful strategies to overcome challenges associated with translational research evaluation. Rad Resource: The TR TIG welcome professionals and evaluators looking to connect practice with research. Check out our TIG page and see if you’d like to become a member. We also look forward to seeing you at our TIG-sponsored sessions at Evaluation 2015 in Chicago! Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

Happy Saturday everyone!  Liz Zadnik here to start the weekend off with a recent struggle of mine as a practitioner and evaluation enthusiast. For a few years now I have been honored to be conferred with and asked to speak on evaluation within the anti-sexual violence movement.  I also have had the chance to help curate this blog and communicate with all of you, the blog’s brilliant readership.  I have worked with talented and experienced evaluators who have described me as "a collaborator" and "coauthor." Truth be told though, I quietly wait for someone come along and finally say, "Hey!  You don’t belong here!" I heard of "Imposter Syndrome" a years ago;  I didn’t want it to resonate quite as much as it did.  For folks unfamiliar, Imposter Syndrome is the individual belief that accomplishments, jobs, and/or reputation are not due to intellectual ability or skill, but to luck.  While it doesn’t discriminate, it does tend to impact women professionals more than their male peers. ‘Luck, Error and Charm’, Hannah Kent at TEDxLittleLonsdaleStWomen, 1 December 2012 from Emily Hehir on Vimeo. Hannah Kent’s TEDxLittleLonsdaleStWomen talk sounds like my own.  Her experience sounded like mine; professional achievements and academic honors, but still questioning whether or not she earned them.  The successful women she mentions tend to attribute their honors, accomplishments, reputation "to luck, to being in the right place at the right time, to factors other than ability.  They live in fear that eventually some significant person will discover that they are, indeed, intellectual impostors." Lesson Learned: It’s OK to not know it all.  Learning something new is fun and exciting and keeps work interesting!  I try to tell myself, How will I ever get better/stronger/more confident if I don’t try something new or ask questions?  I have come to see my hesitations and second-guessing as anchors, keeping me in the same place so they can always be right.  Learning new things and connecting with more knowledgeable and experienced evaluators is the only way I can move forward. Hot Tip: Find your power position.  For me, it’s standing with my feet hip-distance apart with my hands clapped in front of my chest.  I feel like I am honoring myself and everyone else in the room.  It also helps me become present and remember I deserve the respect of the people in the room, just as they deserve mine.  I am hear to share and learn. Have you ever felt like a fraud or imposter?  What are some of the ways you help yourself get back to the present? Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

Hi, I’m Maryann Durland, an independent evaluator and Social Network Analysis (SNA) practitioner. In this post I will address the requirements for doing an SNA application, particularly in evaluation, and which we could also call the standard for an application. I will use the early literature that formed and grounded SNA thinking and that continues to be relevant. Early on in the history of defining SNA, Linton C. Freeman, described four requirements for completing a social network analysis in his book, The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science: A structural perspective Empirical data Graphics Mathematical models with analysis I believe and promote, particularly in evaluation applications, that these are still the requirements for meeting the standard for doing SNA. Evaluations using SNA are distinct from research on SNA theories and measures, which may have different requirements. In evaluation applications structural perspective means that we can define relationships within the program and these relationships create a structure through which information flows, resources are found, barriers are identified, spaces are found that need connections, and so on. Data is the existence or non-existence of a relationship between two elements. Empirical data refers to verifiable data collected on the relationship between any two elements, also called the members of a set. Just like traditional data collection, we collect relational data through a variety of methods from observations to surveys about experiences. The data we collect populates matrix cells, indicating the presence or degree of a relationship between two members. Graphics indicate that we can visualize the network, results and/or analysis in graphs such as sociograms. Mathematical models with analysis allow us to calculate SNA measures which are measures of the network, not attributes assigned to individuals. Models called algorithms or a set of procedures, are as much a description of the relationship as they are the algorithm for how to calculate a measure. Lesson Learned: Clearly, these four requirements delineate a specific methodological basis that is different from traditional quantitative and qualitative analysis. These requirements mean evaluators must think differently, ask questions for a different purpose, and conceptualize an evaluation differently. Rad Resource: Early literature on SNA sought to develop what we could call standards for applications and one of the most important resources is the work of Linton C. Freeman. Freeman’s work continues to set the standards for SNA applications and the reference for the requirements. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Social Network Analysis Week with our colleagues in the Social Network Analysis Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SNA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

I’m Bethany Laursen, an independent consultant and evaluation specialist for several units at the University of Wisconsin. I fell in love with social network analysis (SNA) as a graduate student because SNA gave me words and pictures to describe how I think. Many evaluators can relate to my story, but one of the challenges to using SNA in evaluation is identifying what counts as a "good" network structure. Hot Tip: Identify keywords in your evaluation question(s) that tell you what counts as a "good" outcome or goal for your evaluand. An example evaluation question might be: "How can we improve the collaboration capacity of our coalition?" The stated goal is "collaboration capacity." Hot Tip: Use published literature to specify which network structure(s) promote that goal. Social networks are complex, requiring rigorous research to understand which functions emerge from different structures. It would be unethical for an evaluator to guess. Fortunately, a lot has been published in journals and in gray and white papers, Continuing our example, we need to research what kinds of networks foster "collaboration capacity" so we can compare our coalition’s network to this standard and find areas for improvement. You may find a robust definition of "collaboration capacity" in the literature, but if you don’t, you will have to specify what "collaboration capacity" looks like in your coalition. Perhaps you settle on "timely exchange of resources." Now, what does the literature say about which kinds of networks promote "timely exchange of resources"? Although many social network theories cut across subject domains, it’s best to start with your subject domain (e.g. coalitions) to help ensure assumptions and definitions mesh with your evaluand. Review papers are an excellent resource. Lesson Learned: Although a lot has been published, many gaps remain. Sometimes the SNA literature may not be clear about which kinds of networks promote the goals you’ve identified for your evaluand. In this case, you can either 1) do some scholarship to synthesize the literature and argue for such a standard, or 2) go back to your evaluation question and redefine the goal in narrower terms that are described in the literature. In our example, the literature on coalition networks may not have reached consensus about which types of networks promote timely exchange of resources. But perhaps reviews have been published on which types of brokers foster diversity in coalitions. You can either 1) synthesize the coalition literature to create a rigorous standard for "timely exchange of resources," or 2) reframe the overall evaluation question as, "How can brokers improve diversity in our coalition’s network?" Rad Resources: This white paper clearly describes network structures that promote different types of conversations in social media This short webinar reports a meta-synthesis of which networks promote adaptive co-management capacity at different stages of the adaptive cycle Different network structures promote different system functions. This is the take home slide from the Rad Resource on ACM capacity. In this case, the evaluand’s network goal is timely social learning, collective action, and resilience. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Social Network Analysis Week with our colleagues in the Social Network Analysis Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SNA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

Hi, I’m John Burrett, of Haiku Analytics Inc., Ottawa. One serious problem with logic models is that they usually leave out external influences and feedback effects, even when they may be important, because they make the model "too complex". It is good to simplify, but ignoring important influences on program success when planning an evaluation may lead evaluators to fail to collect important data and to misinterpret results. Trying to embrace complexity by drawing a web of boxes and arrows is not helpful: it’s too complex to use and explain and will drive your audience away. This will probably come only from the mind of the evaluator or program manager, thereby easily missing important external influences and other complexities. Hot Tip: I recently stumbled onto an alternative approach during a mapping of factors of cause and effect related to a complex policy problem. Data was obtained from an expert panel, developing a matrix linking a number of factors with an estimate of strength and direction of relationship between them. Mapping this with network analysis software helped the panel to visualize what they had created. It followed that this form of data could generate outcomes chains and logic models. Here’s a simple example: a program supporting trades training by providing grants to students and developing state of the art teaching materials in collaboration with trade schools drives the immediate outcomes of… Students gaining the ability to take training and Currency and quality of the training being improved, in order to achieve The ultimate outcome of increased employment. Exogenous effects influencing these results include cost of living, demand for skills and technical changes affecting the training’s currency. The size of the nodes indicates betweenness centrality, identifying those factors that connect many influences, thus propagating certain effects. The width of the edges indicates the hypothesized strength of influence. Possible unintended effects and a feedback loop are also shown. Lesson Learned: A key advantage of this approach is that that it creates a logic model using expert knowledge, rather than simply an evaluator/manager’s understanding of a program. This could also include other sources of information like findings from literature and program stakeholders’ experiences. Importantly, you could do this without imposing any prior idea of the logic model on those providing the cause-effect data other than including the program/outputs/activities and specifying the immediate/intermediate and ultimate intended outcomes. A second major advantage is that the logic model utilizes network metrics generated from the data, so how the program and influences are expected to be related can be analyzed. For instance, factors that are thought to have an important role in propagating effects across the system would show high betweenness/eigenvector centralities. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Social Network Analysis Week with our colleagues in the Social Network Analysis Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SNA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

Hi, I’m Rebecca Woodland, an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at UMass Amherst. If there is one thing that I know for certain it’s that relationships matter and how we are connected influences the quality and outcomes of our shared endeavors. Social Network Analysis (SNA) has had a profound influence on my evaluation work. I want to introduce and encourage evaluators (who may not know much about SNA) to consider integrating it into their own practice. Simply put, SNA is all about telling the story of how "ties" between people or groups form, and how these "links" may influence important program objectives and outcomes. With SNA you can mathematically describe and visually see connections between people. You can use SNA to explain and predict how ties between "actors" influence the attainment of program goals. Hot Tips: Evaluators can use SNA to address a wide-range of pressing program evaluation questions such as these: Want to know whether a program has the capacity to spread a new or novel intervention? SNA was used to evaluate school-level capacity to support or constrain instructional innovation. Want to know how large, inter-agency partnerships develop and how inter-agency collaboration correlates with intended program outcomes? Evaluators used SNA to track the development and impact of a Safe Schools/Healthy Students inter-agency community mental health network. Want to know who influences the budgeting and disbursement of funds for advocacy programs in fragile environments? SNA was used to map the flow of resources and funding patterns for new-born survival activities in northern Nigeria. Lesson Learned: Possibly the biggest wow factor is that SNA enables the creation of illustrative visuals that display complex information, such as intra-organizational communication flow and the location of network "brokers," "hubs," "isolates" and "cliques", in user-friendly ways. Image via under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Rad Resources ®Visualyzer is an easy to use program (with a 30-day free trial) that enables you to create socio-grams on any network of interest to you. The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis. An outstanding guide to all aspects of SNA, including Chapter 38 which provides a comprehensive overview of SNA data collection and analysis software. The International Network of SNA (INSNA) has links to journals and to topical areas of interest. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Social Network Analysis Week with our colleagues in the Social Network Analysis Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SNA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

Hello from Andres Lazaro Lopez and Mari Kemis from the Research Institute for Studies in Education at Iowa State University. As STEM education becomes more of a national priority, state governments and education professionals are increasingly collaborating with nonprofits and businesses to implement statewide STEM initiatives. Supported by National Science Foundation funding, we have been tasked to conduct a process evaluation of the Iowa statewide STEM initiative in order to both assess Iowa’s initiative and create a logic model that will help inform other states on model STEM evaluation. While social network analysis (SNA) has become commonly used to examine STEM challenges and strategies for advancement (particularly for women faculty, racial minorities, young girls, and STEM teacher turnover), to our knowledge we are the first to use SNA specifically to understand a statewide STEM initiative’s collaboration, growth, potential, and bias. Our evaluation focuses specifically on the states’ six regional STEM networks, their growth and density over the initiatives’ years (‘07-’15), and the professional affiliations of its collaborators. How we translated that into actionable decision points for key stakeholders is the focus of this blog. Lessons Learned: With interest in both the boundaries of the statewide network and ego networks of key STEM players, we decided to use both free and fixed recall approaches. Using data from an extensive document analysis, we identified 391 STEM professionals for our roster approach. We asked respondents to categorize this list by people they knew and worked with. Next, the free recall section allowed respondents to list professionals they rely on most to accomplish their STEM work and their level of weekly communication - generating 483 additional names not identified with the roster approach. Both strategies allowed us to measure the potential and actual collaboration along the lines of the well-known network of STEM professionals (roster) and individual’s local networks (free recall). Lessons Learned: The data offered compelling information for both regional and statewide use. Centrality measurements helped identify regional players that had important network positions but were underutilized. Network diameter and clique score measurements informed the executive council of overall network health and specific areas that require initiative resources. Lessons Learned: Most importantly, the SNA data allowed the initiative to see beyond the usual go-to stakeholders. With a variety of SNA measurements and our three variables, we have been successful in identifying a diverse list of stakeholders while offering suggestions of how to trim down the networks’ size without creating single points of fracture. SNA has been an invaluable tool to classify formally and evaluate the logistics of key STEM players. We recommend other STEM initiatives interested in using SNA to begin identifying a roster of collaborators early in the development of their initiative. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Social Network Analysis Week with our colleagues in the Social Network Analysis Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SNA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.  

My name is Sophia Guevara, Program Co-Chair for the Social Network Analysis (SNA) TIG.  This week, several evaluation professionals have shared with this blog’s readers their thoughts on social network analysis. With posts discussing logic models to examples of the application of social network analysis on a wide-range of evaluation questions, you’ve hopefully gained a better understanding of it. Rad Resource: The SNA in Evaluation LinkedIn group. This group provides TIG group members with an opportunity to discuss topics of interest for those utilizing or learning about social network analysis. Rad Resource: Join the SNA TIG group. As a member, make sure to make use of the eGroup discussion option. Rad Resource: SNA TIG business meeting. If you are thinking of joining the TIG or have already joined and are looking to connect with other evaluation professionals making use of SNA, the business meeting is an excellent place to do just that. The SNA TIG business meeting is held at the annual American Evaluation Association conference. Rad Resource: AEA public eLibrary and the Coffee Break Archive. There are a variety of resources that can help you learn more about the topic. For example, if you are looking to learn more about the use of SNA related-programs, check out Dr. Geletta’s coffee break webinar focused on importing spreadsheet data into Gephi. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Social Network Analysis Week with our colleagues in the Social Network Analysis Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our SNA TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.  

Hello evaluators! I’m Sheila B Robinson, aea365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor. In 2010, I traveled to San Antonio, TX to attend Evaluation 2010. I was on my own, and knew no one else attending the conference. I made my first friend there by recognizing the name tag of the author of an early aea365 post I admired, and introducing myself as we both waited to attend a session. This blog has been a tremendous connector for since its inception. Networking with other evaluators has been a highlight of my career and I continue to actively seek out opportunities to meet new people, whether it is in person at a conference, or online. I’ve made some wonderful new friends this way, and have often reached out to members of the evaluation community for help and advice when evaluation work gets tricky. Fortunately, many evaluators are more and more connected via social media and using it to collect and share information and resources. Lesson Learned: I was reluctant to use social media for professional purposes until just a few years ago, but now I find I very much enjoy the learning and interaction from these channels, among others: Twitter: It’s not just what celebrities ate for breakfast! AEA maintains a list of evaluators and evaluation organizations on Twitter here. I’ve also been "collecting" evaluators on Twitter; see my list of nearly 400 here. Facebook: It’s not just for Internet memes and selfies! Some AEA TIGs, affiliates, and evaluation associations have active Facebook pages (as do many independent evaluators and consultancies). A few of which I’m aware include: American Evaluation Association AEA PK-12 Educational Evaluation TIG AEA Affiliate Atlanta Area Evaluation Association (AaEA) AEA Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment TIG Better Evaluation Pinterest: It’s not just for crafts and recipes! Kylie Hutchinson may be the most active evaluator I know who maintains 9 evaluation-related boards. Ann K. Emery also maintains many boards related to data visualization. Google+: It’s not just for "techy" people! It’s also a place where evaluators share ideas. David Fetterman is one evaluator particularly active in this space. Stephanie Evergreen can also be found here. YouTube: It’s not just for silly cat videos! AEA has its own channel here, and AEA affiliate Eastern Evaluation Research Society (EERS) now has its own YouTube channel. AEA maintains a list of member blogs and Twitter handles here. If you have a blog or Twitter handle that doesn’t appear on the list, write to info@eval.org and ask to have it added! Do you use these social media channels professionally? Add your info to the comments so we can all connect! (Social Media icons by Aha-Soft Team via iconfinder.com) Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

Hi, I’m Elissa Schloesser founder and principal graphic designer at Visual Voice. I specialize in helping organizations visually communicate complex information, concepts and ideas—including evaluation methods, theories and findings. Rad Resource: Data Stories is a podcast that covers topics on data visualization. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the field. A recent episode, titled Disinformation Visualization explores the "darker side" of data visualization. I found this discussion particularly thought provoking and relevant to anyone communicating data. It challenges you to think critically about the data visualizations you create and consume. Hot Tip: Can you spot a misinformed chart? Below is an example of two charts created from the same dataset. This example is a little extreme, but I included it to show how data could be manipulated in visualizations. Both are technically correct, but they strive to tell a different story based on how the data is represented. Hot Tip: Spot misinformed data visualizations by considering these three things: CONTENT: How was the data was gathered? Before the data is even visualized consider how it was collected. STRUCTURE: How was the data structured or sampled? Does the visualization only represent certain years or a particular age group? PRESENTATION: How was the data presented? Does iconography, colors, annotations, etc. used influence your perception of the data? Lessons Learned: Think of data visualizations as "visual arguments" rather than "visual evidence". Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

As a salesperson, when was the last time you caught yourself chasing the unchaseable? Better yet, when you do get a hold of one, and there’s interest, at what point did you mess up closing the sale?     Being oblivious to dead end prospects and flubbing the close are two of the most common (and costly) mistakes salespeople make. Let’s look at why they persist, and how you can fix the problems to improve your bottom line for 2014.   Treating Every Prospect Like "The One"   When you go all in on every prospect that pays attention to you, you’re setting yourself up for burnout and, more importantly, for fewer opportunities to close the bigger fish. If every prospect was a $40,000 or higher deal, then by all means work your tail off to get every signature. But if you’re putting the same energy and resources toward a $40 deal, the numbers game will not be kind to you.   The number of deals closed may look bigger if you try and close all the small, side projects, but will that hurt your quarterly goals if the dollar signs aren’t matching up?   Time is so precious that before you know it, the quarter’s almost up and you’re panicking because while you may have a lot of small deals closed, the bigger deals either haven’t panned out, or sign two months later than you need.   That’s because either the unmet need isn’t discovered, or it’s discovered WAY too late. Getting to the unmet needs and pushing to close big deals sometimes means you need to just really analyze which leads are small potatoes and shouldn’t eat up your time as much.   Talking Your Way Out of a Deal   Making the sale in a timely manner is high on every salesperson’s list. Going from pre-calls to building rapport and finding the unmet need eventually leads to the moment you close. But some factors get in the way: either you are met with objection after objection, or you talk yourself out of the sale.   Talking too much during the key moments of the close is dangerous for many reasons. One, you’re providing more time for the prospect to find some other doubt. Two, you’re extending your time that much more. Both of these are a detriment to that handshake, signature and deserved celebratory scream as soon as you leave their premises.   Every negotiation is about communication and knowing how to balance between silence and questioning. Salespeople are naturally chatty - and that’s wonderful. Healthy dialogue builds rapport and establishes the kind of trust you need for later.   However, if you’re about to close and you see that look in the prospect’s eye where you’ve checked off needs and see dollar signs metaphorically spinning inside each iris, don’t talk anymore. Put the coffee down, say "Let’s do this," or "Ready to give an order it’s wings?" or whatever response you use to close… and keep quiet!    You should have a good idea of when needs are fulfilled by how many times the customer is nodding in approval to your pitch. All too often, the sale (and talking about the sale) becomes an unnecessary game of seeing if you can be best friends, explaining how cute their kid is in their soccer outfit, dissecting the history of BBQ, and more - all before you’ve signed off on anything.   Practice being aware of the right moments to stop and let your final pitch sink into the prospect’s head. (Watch our When to Shut Up course for more).   Final Thoughts   These aren’t the only mistakes salespeople make during the stages of a sale - but these two really can sting. Lessen the bite and become better organized with your sales approach. Learn to prioritize the big fish and practice on knowing when to keep quiet when negotiations start to tip in your favor.   Learn to handle sales curveballs with our series on "Objections" right now with a free trial of Thinkzoom.   The post Two of the Most Common (And Costly) Sales Mistakes appeared first on .

Most of us were lukewarm about learning when we were in school because we didn’t like getting up at 7am. That’s why we loved college; because we dictated when we got up for class, if we went at all. But now that school’s over and done and you’re settled in at your job, learning should no longer be a "Do I have toooooo!" mindset. Quality eLearning programs teach a skill, solve workplace issues, empower employees to succeed, and help your company’s bottom line by creating a more productive workforce.     However, getting employees to latch onto eLearning can be tricky; especially if there’s no accountability, if management doesn’t have buy-in first, and if other factors persist. With Valentine’s Day upon us, we thought we’d play Cupid and offer a few ways you can get your employees to fall in love with eLearning.   Love at First Sight or Site?   Sure, the script is full of useful bits of knowledge. The person presenting it is lively and speaks clearly. But the visuals are clearly lacking. There aren’t enough visual cues, pictures or actions happening in the background. And that bare-bones approach to instructional design won’t just make your learners reach for the nearest cup of coffee to stay awake; it’s a detriment to their retention.   According to Brain Rules,  vision trumps all other senses when it comes to remembering information. The article states that if learners have more audio than visual to digest, they’ll only remember 10% of the information three days later. However, if a picture is thrown into the mix, learners remember 65% of the information in that same time span.   Learners need exciting content with even more exciting visuals to help make the eLearning experience better for their brains.   Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places   Your employees’ schedules are busy. Not only do they have their regular duties to complete, but they also need ongoing development such as eLearning to help improve their skill sets and become even better at executing those day-to-day tasks.   But you can’t force employees to learn at "such and such" time. If you make a series of courses mandatory on a certain day, with a specific block of time, you may leave yourself vulnerable to employee unrest. That’s why the learning platform must be cooperative to their schedules. It must be a mobile ready, 24/7 learning experience with courses that can be viewed whenever, wherever the mood strikes.   Like ours.   Love Your Wingman   Why is Facebook worth so much money? Why is LinkedIn so popular? Why does the latest social platform take off like a space shuttle?   It’s because social media platforms are an extension of us now. We consume information shared by others at a rapid pace. Posts that receive recommendations, favorites, or a stream of comments engage us even more. Best of all?  Multiple studies have shown that social media access is making us smarter. One study from the University of British Columbia points out how one group was able to learn new skills faster when they had access to more than 10 "mentors" full of knowledge, rather than the other group who was limited to just one.   Here’s an excerpt:   For the study, participants were asked to learn new skills — digital photo editing and knot-tying — and then pass on what they learned to the next "generation" of participants. The groups with greater access to experts accumulated significantly more skill than those with less access to teachers. Within ten "generations," each member of the group with multiple mentors had stronger skills than the group limited to a single mentor.   So it’s only logical that your learners have social capabilities on your LMS to not only comment on a recently viewed course, but to also communicate their own knowledge or tips to others around the office. When you foster an eLearning experience that includes - not excludes - social media/sharing opportunities, you encourage higher utilization rates.   Was there a love connection?   It’s important that your eLearning program has complete buy-in from both management and the employees - but you can’t just rely on buy-in alone. You need to have sound instructional design - courses that are short, visually stimulating, and connect research to content practically. You need a versatile, intuitive platform to do everything from easily administering courses to empowering social capabilities to learners.   Give your employees the ej4 eLearning experience and watch them fall head over heels for learning!   The post eLearning, You Complete Me! appeared first on .

2013 was a banner year for U.S. businesses involved in mergers and acquisitions. It’s estimated that within the first 9 months, the total sale of mergers and acquisitions approached over $865.1 billion dollars - the highest mark since 2008. 2014 is off to a hot start as well. Just recently, two of the country’s biggest cable providers merged.   Aside from the stock market making noise on "Merger Day," the businesses involved are faced with how to make changes to their existing operations. Will the ogo change, or receive a sub-header?  Will products change or be discontinued? What will the Marketing  message to consumers be? What will happen to our workforce and productivity? That’s a huge concern for both merging businesses.     From finding ways to communicate change to championing a new message to making sure both IT departments are up to speed on new software, here’s a look at what companies should be mindful of when merging.   Culture Shifts Need to Be Addressed   Company culture changes from mergers go far beyond one company having bean bag chairs and the other having ergonomic office chairs. No, the real company culture shift comes from conflicting leadership styles, contradictory company regulations, different employee collaboration, and how employees are motivated to perform at their best.   If a merger happens, and leadership doesn’t find a way to communicate a message that employees can get behind, prepare for huge morale dips, or worse, a spike in employee turnover. While you can’t please every employee (some employees may resist any change and quit on that basis), it’s paramount you deliver a message to quell confusion that’s sure to come the moment the merger’s announced.   Using ej4’s Thinkzoom is the perfect way to deliver that message. Whether it’s a CEO or another member of the leadership team creating the communication, you create one message and share it often with every employee. Not only is video more appealing than an email, you don’t have to worry about the memo or email getting lost amid the hundreds of other messages each employee sees a day.   Training Programs Must Be Available   Many departments face adversity when a merger happens. Some employees are let go because their role no longer exists or their role becomes duplicative. Other departments take on additional responsibilities and must learn new products/procedures quickly. If there’s no accountability or easy training program in place, your company will be in trouble. That employee confusion I just talked about previously comes full circle and motivation is pushed to its limits. More stressful scenarios from unexplained responsibilities likely means performance levels will crash.   That’s why you must communicate that message the right way. If the IT department of the company that was bought out needs to learn a completely different software platform, make sure they have the right training videos to coach them through it. What about new hires that were brought on shortly before, or during, the merger? How does HR communicate different open enrollment programs or detail job responsibilities clearly?   Thinkzoom is that communication tool where companies can target the right message and help teach the skills that employees need to feel comfortable (re: not likely to quit) and productive for the future.   Final Thoughts   A company merger is a big test. While stock prices tend to trend up with the announcement, it’s what goes on afterwards that companies must be keen on to prevent taking unnecessary financial hits. Keeping tabs on employee morale through better communication is the first step. Informing the staff of new duties, changes to current ones and having an easy platform to discuss new company regulations will help to eradicate employee fears and confusion. Above all else, it’s imperative that communication is easy, frequent and front-facing to keep employee turnover at a minimum and ensure as smooth a transition as possible for the road ahead. The post Two Things to Keep In Mind During Company Mergers appeared first on .

Do you remember a time when we couldn’t screen calls?  When you’d get a call from a telemarketer who would most likely butcher the pronunciation of your last name?  Ahhh, those were the days!   Hi, Mr. Schnowhsnfklaks.  I’d like to talk to you about-"   Click.   The greeting is everything. There’s more to it then just pronouncing the last name correctly.  Often times greetings are too generic, haven’t been thought through, or come off flat and energetic. If you’re lucky enough to keep the prospect on the phone, you have to get them to listen to your pitch.  Most of us are so stoked about getting to the next step, we bungle the rest of it!  We turn into "JoJo the idiot circus boy with his pretty new pet!"     Let’s look at how a company should communicate the best selling points of their product to its sales team to use on prospects.   Let’s say a company sells high-efficiency light bulbs. Their target audience is everyone from giant, corporate offices to small mom-and-pop stores. The obvious need is cutting energy bills.   The salesperson reaches a decision maker - the person responsible for the  company budget and the building’s maintenance/infrastructure. First, let’s take a look at how not to do it.   "We have some of the sleekest, most durable lights in the industry. Our lights are 100% eco-friendly. The wattage isn’t too bright or distracting and is easy to install throughout your building."     "So what," says the decision maker. Maybe he or she starts to raise doubts and asks you what your sales are - when the real question they should be asking is,  How does this affect my company’s building?   The QuickSell to that key question comes by discussing their issues. Maybe instead of talking about why your company is so great, you roll off into this question:   "Do you know how much your company’s electricity bill was in the past year? Better yet, what were the last few months like? Your building is roughly 5,000 sq. feet, give or take. How many of those rooms are lit up from 9 to 5? Maybe even all night in some cases? I know it’s probably difficult to enforce a policy that tries to remind employees to turn off lights when they leave a room, because your priority is their productivity. Have you seen any rise in your electric bills year over year? Have you done anything to counter it?"   Notice before the main hook, not a single question saying how awesome their lighting company is. Just repeated questions of the prospect’s needs. And if they don’t know the answers to all of them, at least the you raised them for the decision maker to mull over later - and you stand out as the company that asked.   Once you get feedback, then you rattle off the main hook:   To get lower energy bills, you should buy eco-friendly light bulbs from us. We cut "X" company’s bills in half last year… and their building was 10,000 sq. ft. It’s fast, easy, and will save you money.  I could set up a consultation today, if you’d like?   It’s that line of questioning that positions the sale down a better path. People naturally want to talk about their concerns and what their company can do to save or make them money. It’s the basis of almost every sale. If you’re spending too much time queued up to the first pitch, you’re going in reverse and may end up like the telemarketer above.   As a company, why not take that second pitch, acclimate the questions/scenarios to your company’s product and communicate that message to your team to use out in the field?   With ej4’s Thinkzoom, you have a communication tool to create a better selling point template - and other messages - for your sales team to learn and apply. And that one communication could have a resounding impact on your sales for tomorrow and the rest of the days ahead.   Communicate your company’s selling points to your sales team with ej4’s Thinkzoom. Test it out now for 15 days!   The post Cold Call With The QuickSell appeared first on .

March 1st - March 7th is National Write a Letter of Appreciation Week. It’s a friendly reminder about the benefits of writing a letter of appreciation to your family members, your friends, co-workers, or other people who’ve helped you out along the way. I’m not talking about the Thank You letter you write to a hiring manager after an interview. That’s understood (or should be, at least). These are letters you write thanking someone for something SPECIFIC. For example, being a good friend, a great teammate at work, or for just being kind and generous with helping not just you, but others along the way.   Writing a letter of appreciation is encouraged this week, but not mandatory. It’s not genuine if it’s forced. But what this week should remind everyone in the workforce is this:   When was the last time you thanked a co-worker for their hard work with an email (or letter)?   We’ve already covered the effects of management not praising its staff - 43% of employees cite lack of recognition as the reason they quit. But that question above doesn’t just revolve around management expressing gratitude to their teams; it concerns everyone in the office.   Remember the time when you were swamped with work, had a mountain of tasks, and a co-worker offered to help ease some of that?   Remember the time when a deadline was coming up and you had to get something pushed through a co-worker before approval?   Or just remember any moment where that co-worker went the extra mile to help the team succeed on a project? Maybe they gave great advice that helped you succeed at your tasks, or organized the project calendar to perfection, or just brought positive energy to everyone with their infectiously positive attitude and work ethic?   I’m sure we’ve all verbally expressed our gratitude to one another, but there’s a hidden joy of writing and receiving an appreciative email. It goes beyond just words and forces us to sit and write a message from our heart. We feel more positive emotions from writing a gracious letter that should, in turn, make the reader feel more positive emotions, too.   Positive emotions make us happier at work. According to a Harvard Business Review study, small wins make a happier workforce, and that happier workforce is more productive than a less united, neutral one. And what better way to take part in a small win at work than with a letter? You don’t have to write a letter of appreciation for everything at all times of the day, but it’s nice to appreciate your co-workers with an email or letter every now and then.   Besides, who doesn’t like feeling happy? The post Have You Written a Thank You Note to a Co-Worker Recently? appeared first on .

When you email a prospect, are you using an automated, "one-email-fits-all" approach? Do you try to keep them short or do you make it a novel? How much are you talking about your company’s strengths and less about what your prospect does?     There are plenty of questions to ask yourself when crafting that perfect sales email. Here are a few reminders to help you craft the right one.   Avoid Subject Line Disasters   If your prospect is someone that’s used to receiving hundreds of solicited emails a day, the last thing you want is to emulate everyone else’s style. Using the same, "Just a few minutes of your time…" subject line as 50 other emails is the wrong approach. Chances are that approach will land your message in the "Trash" quickly.     There are plenty of email sins, but it all begins with the subject line.   Don’t use any of these examples:   One-word drops:  "Hi." "Hello." "Special!" All-Caps attacks: ATTENTION: THIS IS IMPORTANT, FREE MONTH OF OUR SERVICE, SAVE 20% INSTANTLY WITH US!, etc. Stale questions: "Did you know…", "Would you like to save money?", "Can you get your product noticed?" "Does your marketing approach need help?"   Check You’re Your Grammar   Your sales email might have some intriguing questions, fantastic hooks, and/or amazing promotions. But if you have sloppy grammar or poor punctuation throughout, it becomes an eyesore on the readers. They won’t take you seriously. They’ll judge the quality of your product and the business based on how substandard your email is. They won’t focus on how you’ll help their company because you’ve peppered the email with too many misspellings.   [Here’s a list of the 100 Most Commonly Misspelled Words]   It’s imperative that you proofread every sales email you send, especially if it’s an automated email that goes out to a massive audience! And be extra careful when typing out an email on a smartphone. Most smartphones have autocorrect features that will change your words (and possibly the message) as you power through. Same goes for tablets. In fact, whatever platform you use to send your message, just review everything at least twice.   Get to The Point   Don’t spend the first few sentences talking about your company’s history (or theirs). If you’re trying to offer something, or trying to feel the person out, get to it in the first few sentences. Again, if the prospect is used to seeing 50-100 solicited emails a day, how much time do they have to read every email from cover to cover? They don’t. And if you don’t pick their brain immediately, the email is a lost cause.   Timing Is Everything   Are you sending emails out during the peak readership hours of the day? There’s a difference between email opens on Monday at 8AM than Tuesday at the same time. Same rule applies for the lunch hour on Wednesday versus Thursday or Friday.   There are plenty of email software tools out there that monitor opens, clicks and whether the reader shared that email with others (Signals is my personal favorite). If you can, sign up for a free trial of that software, then test to see when your emails are getting opened the most, save that information, and use it for future prospecting.   It’s better to time your delivery than it is to send three of the same follow-up emails.   Final Thoughts   Your sales emails play a vital role in the prospect funnel. That’s why you must never overlook the minutiae of what makes them work in your favor. Know your audience, personalize every email if you can, keep grammar fouls at bay, and make sure to get to your point quickly. If you can will yourself to make better emails, you might just open your prospect’s eyes more to your message.   The post Make Your Sales Emails Count appeared first on .

Career Bliss released its "10 Happiest/Unhappiest Cities to Work In" survey less than a month ago. My initial thought on reading it was all the top-10 unhappiest cities would be in bitterly cold regions, or places that don’t see sunlight as much as say, California. But then I read through it and found three cities in Florida made the unhappy list?! That’s what I get for assuming.     Florida? Palm trees, ocean views, and sandy beaches.  I mean I I know it rains every once in a while and yeah there is that hurricane season but come on, it’s Florida. The weather’s nice and most of its major cities have beautiful beaches to tide workers over during their lunch break. Even Sacramento, CA made the unhappy list, too.   So what makes or breaks this list? The happiness survey was less about location and more about an employee’s relationship with their boss, their work environment, job resources, wages, workplace culture, career advancement, and other markers.   Then what makes Cincinnati, OH less desirable than San Jose, CA? Throw out the weather and extracurricular opportunities like beaches that employees could factor in as "schedule flexibility." Now what are you left with? Do employees in unhappy cities loathe management more than California workers? I doubt it.   With the exception of employee salaries, most of the talking points in that survey could be improved with a better approach to communication between the company and its staff.   Here are a few ways better communication can turn frowns upside down and help make any city in this country a happy place to work in.   Mend Management-Employee Relationships   Happiness between an employee and their manager begins with better trust and understanding of what must be done at work. 1 in 3 employees admit their boss isn’t doing an effective job, while 50% of employees insist they could do their manager’s job better than them. Now most employees wouldn’t say this out in the open for fear of retribution or loss of their job. But there needs to be a better way to approach honest communication.   If management isn’t aware of the issues, how do you expect them to fix them? If employees aren’t coached on how to move past it, there will just be more growing resentment, and in some cases, those employees will leave. A series of communication courses taken by both parties is the first step.   With better trust , the next step is for management to communicate job expectations, and then supervise from there. Using Thinkzoom, you could create quick courses every month that issue a list of objectives you want an employee - or team of employees - to focus on. Define their goals, how they’ll tackle them, and leave room in the message asking for their feedback.   Involve your employees more and you increase engagement, co-worker relationships and build a better team in the process.   Communicate Company Policies   You can’t move from zero transparency to complete transparency about workplace policies overnight. But you must start to communicate your workplace’s rules and regulations if you haven’t already. Handing them a company brochure and expecting them to read it cover to cover isn’t a solution; video communications that break up company policies into segments is a better avenue. With a knowledge sharing platform, leadership and HR build a series of quick videos on what their policies are, how to abide by them and which department to send questions to (because you know there will be some).   It’s better to have 10 short videos on how corporate policies affect employees than to not have any sort of concrete measure in place.   Communicate Why Culture Matters, Not Just What It Is   59% of women - and 53% of men - cite their healthy relationship to the work environment as a reason they stay.   How does your company communicate its foundation, its heart and its message to employees? You can’t just say your company is a "fun-loving, bean-bag filled adventure… where work happens." You need to send a clear message to your staff about why your company is where it’s at today, maybe talk about how it has evolved since Day 1, and how the employees are central to so many moving parts moving the way they need to.   For instance, if you have a culture of open, honest communication, say so. Explain the values behind why open feedback between employees, departments, etc., can work wonders because it fulfills "X, Y and Z" for the business. And if you don’t have an open, honest communication policy, then admit that as well.   You can’t have employees guessing at what defines the workplace. Everyone’s in this together and they need to be told why.   Final Thoughts   Ok, so maybe if we all worked from lawn chairs on white, sandy beaches and the weather was a perfect 75 degrees, than maybe, just maybe we’d all be happier at work. Truth is, you could have that nice weather and perfect office location and still feel the sting of unhappy employees if communication is poor.   When you improve communication, you develop better performance improvement levels from employees, who become more satisfied with their work, which helps build that happy workforce your company craves. The post How To Achieve Happiness Working In Any City appeared first on .

Nearly 139,000 private sector jobs were added to the workforce this past February. And if every one of those companies that hired failed to fully support each new employee, 77,840 of those new hires may be walking out the door as quickly as they walked in. That’s because 56% of new hires grow frustrated and mull leaving their post if the company shows little, to no, support right out of the gate.     Even if they’re thinking of leaving, your company’s already facing an uphill battle. With that said, what’s your company’s average training cycle for new hires? How do you know when they’re ready? What sort of new hire training curriculum is available, and how’s it being administered?   These are valid questions and if you want to keep your turnover low, you must have good answers to these questions. Even if you have a new hire with a sparkling resume - they’ve got a great skill set, worked in a similar industry before, performed similar job duties, etc. - don’t assume that person will just work autonomously on Day 1. Every new hire needs support. While the amount of support might vary, they need to know it’s there when and IF they need it.   Here’s how you can support your new hires.   Role Play: Do They Know Their Job?   A paltry 29% of new hires are given the full briefing of what’s expected of them. Not surprisingly, those employees who received it said it was the most valuable aspect of their job from the get-go. There are plenty of steps in the new hire process, but none are more valuable than making sure they know what they’re doing and why it matters.   Open Enrollment Made Easy   Not many employees get excited about having to fill out forms, update contacts, and perform other enrollment duties. But it’s all necessary. It’s a necessary evil. But how pain free do you make that process? Are you stacking walls of papers and brochures all over their desk and walking away with a dramatic "dusting of the hands" motion?   You need to communicate important dates on when certain forms are due, not just health benefits after the first 30 days, but other related forms that fall on different dates throughout the calendar year. Using Thinkzoom, you can easily attach a custom message that covers every date they need to know, then make other videos specific to each date, make note of popular FAQs that employees have about the forms, and relate other information. The important thing is you’re building that line of communication from the get-go.   Showcase Your Company, Or Someone Else Will Show Theirs   What makes your company the way it is? What are your company’s policy regarding sick-days and other corporate policies? Why is your company’s culture intoxicating to everyone who works there?   All of these topics must be addressed to every new hire. Communication is about forming a bond where there wasn’t one before. If new hires only read about your company, but don’t have a full understanding of why it matters to them and how you’re both going to make a difference together, you start the alienation process by accident. Make a quick, custom video that’s universal to this new hire and every single one that follows him or her. Keep new hires away from the shadows by opening up about every policy that’s important to their schedule, both inside and away from the office.   Get Them Compliant   From anti-harassment to employment law courses, new hires need compliance training, and companies need an easy way to administer it to them. When administering a series of courses on how to prevent sexual harassment at the office (a new series we’ve recently updated, by the way) or showing anti-discrimination courses, the process must be divided up to get their undivided attention more easily.   That’s why our compliance courses are great for many reasons: They’re short (10 minutes or less) and completely mobile for new hires to access whenever, wherever - and the message is clear and relevant to the audience.   Give Them a Mentor to Lean On   Mentoring applies to every business. A new waiter at a restaurant shadows a seasoned waiter for a few shifts. The new clerk leans on a reliable clerk to learn the register, when to contact management for additional assistance, and how to view and handle customer requests or complaints first-hand. A new sales member is brought up to speed by their manager to explain how to use the CRM, inform them of their territory, and may sit in with them on a few cold calls and prospecting processes.   Without some sense of a mentor, new hires will feel lost and confused. Make sure you’ve assigned a fellow employee or manager to help new hires get comfortable around the office.   Final Thoughts   The 30-Day burn of training can go two ways, swimmingly or catastrophically. You don’t want to have to go back to the drawing board if they leave - that dings the company wallet significantly. You need new hires to learn and apply their training quickly and know that there’s room to grow their skill set.   From delivering compliance courses to creating your own company message, make the first 30 days easier for your new hires with ej4′s Thinkzoom. Try it free for 15 days. The post The 30-Day Burn: Are Your New Hires Adapting Properly? appeared first on .

Salespeople devote nearly 11 hours a week to administrative duties. That’s 11 hours of a 40-hour work week!  And how is this time spent?  Typically, it’s spent on organizing calendars, setting up last-minute calls, browsing through CRM, and other miscellaneous housekeeping functions that aren’t the meat of your sales process.   Think about how much time you could save throughout the year by simply cutting that average in half? Instead of only doing 1,508 hours (the equivalent of a year’s worth of 29-hour work weeks) of actual selling, you’ll have nearly 1,800 hours. How do you get there?   Here are a few ways you can be better organize and prioritize every week.   Don’t Go Overboard With Calendar Details   It’s good to be meticulous with pre-call planning, cold calling, and remembering important details from a face-to-face meeting; it’s not good to waste time and energy fluffing up your calendar with unnecessary information.   Let’s say you’ve got 20 prospects targeted for the week. All their names are assigned to a date and time. But you use the ‘Notes’ section to go overboard with notes, suggestions and other fillers that offer nothing to prospecting. Don’t get me wrong - you need some notes to help you know what to target when the time comes, but don’t go over the top.   If you have a call with Bob, the VP of Sales of a major trucking company that you want  to sell engine parts to, don’t spend time writing down their entire company history and how both of yours intertwine somehow.   Write the name, their title, the company and the top needs analysis question:   "Bob Smith, VP of Sales for ‘X’ Company. Ask how much they currently spend on maintenance and repairs and what engine parts they seem to cycle through the most."   That’s it. Don’t go any further unless that information realistically increases your chances of making a sale.   Control Sales Meetings   We’ve practically clobbered this meetings about meetings topic, but that doesn’t make the point any less relevant. Meetings that run over, meetings that are a 50/50 mix of off-topic and topical, meetings that have no moderator, meetings that don’t have a process - they must be cut down immediately.   Yes, you have to have meetings to go over sales goals, what your targets are for the next month, and how you plan to hit them. But limit the amount of time each person talks. Say - and write down on the meeting agenda - that each person has 5 minutes max to get their points across. Anything over that and it should be discussed off the phone.   Give yourself time to make more money. It’s that simple.   Mismanaging Your CRM   It’s critical that you learn everything about the CRM, but it’s even more critical that you use it wisely.   Do you go into the CRM looking for prospect Jane and come out having looked at the company leaderboard, what your sales funnel looked like in 2013, and other areas that have nothing to do with prospect Jane? Some might argue that reviewing the leaderboard helps motivate sales reps, but if you’re mired in numbers that don’t directly affect prospect Jane and how you’re going to cold call/email her shortly, then you’re making poor use of your time with the CRM.   Even worse is waiting too long to log a contact’s information into the CRM - their LinkedIn profile, job title, phone numbers, last time contacted, and information stating where you and the prospect currently are in talks. Once you end a conversation with ANY contact, you must immediately go to the CRM and enter in all the information that helps put together that person’s B.A.N.T. (Budget, Authority, Need, and purchase Timeframe).   Identify (And Eliminate) Procrastination Habits   What’s the biggest roadblock to a sales rep’s administrative duties? Some argue it’s workplace distractions, but every employee has that. For sales, there’s a different kind of procrastination present: Deviating from your 9 to 5.   Things like putting off your morning habit of cold calls, saying you’ll get to it in the afternoon. Getting lost in off-topic emails or internal phone calls to other employees. Taking too long to fill out a sales proposal. Waiting an extra day or two to follow up because you want there to be some "breathing room" for the prospect to think about your last call. Talking more to a prospect to avoid hearing a potential "No" when you’re better off hearing it and moving on.   There are plenty of missteps, and each one throws off your calendar for the day and forces you to reorganize when you shouldn’t have to. Clamp down on these bad habits that ruin your day and your schedule.   Final Thoughts   Routines are necessary. You have to plan your days, weeks and months around how to open up more opportunities and close. But a lot of that time is spent poorly. Trim down your times, become more efficient with the extra hours and become more productive as a result.   Learn more about efficient organization soon with our brand new, 36-part series, Territory Development! With courses like "Utilizing CRM" to "Personal Management Tracking" to "Prioritizing Your Territory," our new series provides the best blueprint to control your sales territory and your time.   Coming April 1st, 2014 to the ej4 learning campus!   The post How Sales Reps Can Fix Their Administrative Duties appeared first on .

Have you considered the cost of poor project management on your organization?  When I say "cost," of course I mean the bottom line, but I’m also including the soft cost: people costs.      I get to cap the week off with statistics about the costs of poor project management. So let’s get right to the numbers, shall we?   Below are two separate studies on the costs behind inefficient project management.   First off, there’s the study done by PricewaterhouseCoopers.  During their lengthy study on 10,640 projects from over 300 companies, across 30 countries, they found that only 2.5% of the companies successfully completed 100% of their projects.   OK, but what about when you focus on a specific industry?   That’s what the Harvard Business Review did with their research. They concerned themselves with project management trends in the IT industry. They analyzed around 1,471 IT projects and discovered that 1 in 6 projects had a cost overrun of 200%, and a schedule overrun of nearly 70%.   However you try to analyze it, that’s a lot of wasted resources!   But what’s that equate to in dollars? Well, it’s estimated that the rate of IT project failure falls between 5-15%, with total labor cost losses between $50-150 billion in the United States alone. That’s money wasted because projects aren’t managed tightly enough to be completed on time or within budget.   And beyond dollars, poor project execution impacts many parties. An unsuccessful project can break trust with customers. Lose that trust, and you might as well hope for the best on future business with that customer. Trust is also lost internally when a project fails. Members of project teams begin pointing fingers, creating animosity, losing respect for one another, and building grudges against stakeholders or project managers. Failed projects break morale, and create disruptions in future projects before they start.   Project management can break down in many places. But it has been in my experience that ultimately, a project fails for two reasons: either from poor planning or poor communication, or maybe both.   I’ll admit, I’m sometimes guilty of rushing through the planning phase to get a contract signed or a project launched, only to realize later that hurrying through the details meant dealing with larger issues midway through the project.   On the flip side, I’ve worked on projects where we carefully hammer out specifics with stakeholders and team leaders, and keep communication lines open and efficient as possible. Nine times out of ten, those projects should, and do, run smoothly. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise, either. Projects with thorough planning and reliable communication have the ability to remain successful even when occasional hiccups try to derail progress. And let’s face it, there’s always potential for some part of a project to stall or not run according to plan.  No company’s immune to it.   With that said, what are some other hard or soft costs you’ve experienced as a consequence of poor project management? More importantly, what steps have you taken to prevent similar costs in the future?   For more tips, check out "Managing and Tracking" from our Project Management series on Thinkzoom. Start your free 15-day trial now!   The post The Cost of Poor Project Management appeared first on .

A lot goes into making off-the-shelf eLearning impactful for the viewer. From subject matter experts to scripting to shooting and editing, take a look at how ej4 creates short, engaging off-the-shelf eLearning that sticks.     Have a look at our off-the-shelf library right now with a free 15-day trial of Thinkzoom! The post Watch How Off-the-shelf eLearning is Made at ej4 appeared first on .

In an effort to combat lifestyle diseases and improve the health of employees, many companies now have a workplace health and wellness program.  The post Keys to a Successful Workplace Health Program appeared first on .

Taking control of your territory is a big responsibility. You must master the ability to manage and prioritize your territory, determine the best way to keep your CRM updated, network with people in the community, and oh yeah, continue to sell and pitch clients!   With our new sales series, Territory Development, you’ll find the answers and techniques to help grow your sales territory the right way. Get a sneak peek at our largest sales content release this year!     Sign up for now for a free trial of Thinkzoom to view one of the courses, "The Realities of Selling in the 21st Century." The post Check Out Our New Sales Series, Territory Development! appeared first on .

Can you believe it?  I don’t know about you, but Q1 flew by for me!  Time flies when you’re having fun and when you’re in the zone!  So how did everyone do? Have you looked at your workplan or Q1 goals to measure progress and effectiveness?  Were you able to close last-minute 2013 prospects that rolled into 2014? Did your cold call volumes increase? Did you increase the number of face-to-face meetings with prospects?   If you missed your goals or quotas then it’s time to look at what went wrong.  It’s better and easier to determine what went wrong now, and it also gives you the remainder of the year to fix it.     Here are some things to take a look at as you prepare for Q2.  First, take a look at your sales process - where did you get "stuck" the most?  Talk with your supervisor or co-workers and see if they are experiencing similar problems and what solutions they’ve deployed.  Next, take a look at your targets - were they qualified targets?  Did you lose time running down leads when you really should have passed?  Take a look at the leads in your pipeline and make goals for each prospect.  Now, be honest, were hot stumped with objections that you received from the prospects?  You know real "selling" doesn’t begin until you heard the word "no".  By researching your leads, determining their buying motivation and really listening to what they say ( and don’t say) you can better guess at what kind of objection you’re going to hear.  This allows you to be better prepared to address the objection and move the sale to close.   Here are some other tips you can use to combat the Q2 sales blues.   Create a Sense of Urgency   How many times have you called a prospect and they said, "YES!"  Yeah, it doesn’t happen that often.  Not everyone’s a buyer at first. It’s part of your job to convince them that your solution not only meets their needs, but they will see additional beenfits on top of that. Sometimes this calls for a sense of professional urgency versus hard closing. Let‘s take a look at both tactics.   Professional urgency is knowing how to get from the initial call to the close in a quick, but respectful manner. That means keeping a consistent, friendly tone every time you follow-up. That means carefully crafting emails that are well-thought out reminders, not threatening demands of  "Hey, do it!" You need to move each prospect carefully and quickly through the  sales cycle.   The other side of urgency is the hard close. It’s trying to force the issue, force the sale with a barrage of emails that annoy instead of inform. It’s taking a terse or condescending tone when you leave a voicemail. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes, when done correctly, a hard close can work and not come off as rude.  However, most of the time, all a hard close does is drive your prospect into the arms of the competition.   Put Rejection in Your Rear View   Like I said, usually when you call on a prospect, the first thing you hear is "No." No one likes being rejected, but it comes with the territory, sales territory that is.  Cold calling will leave you mentally exhausted and ready to give up because you’ll hear "No" more times than you’ll hear "Yes."   Sales requires a thick skin to battle the gauntlet of rejection. You have to forget about the hang-ups and and rude behaviors.  Remember the benefits of being persistent? Persistence pays off in sales just like it does in other areas of our professional and personal lives. But persistence doesn’t work if you’re rehashing the days of rejection with your co-workers.  Putting yourself down, holding a grudge or dwelling on the negative with peers will only dig a bigger hole in your Q2 productivity.   Keep a positive attitude while remaining professionally urgent with missed Q1 opportunities and turn Q2 into a bright spot for not just your quota, but your overall performance improvement.   Have you seen the latest addition to our award-winning sales content, yet? Check out our brand new series, "Territory Development"!     See the entire clip of "The Realities of Selling in the 21st Century" right now with a free trial of Thinkzoom! The post How to Avoid The Q2 Sales Blues appeared first on .