How Not to Write a Job Ad for Advertising Specialties Sales People

I continually scratch my head at the the type of people who write job ads like the one I just came across on Craig's List. I understand this employer wants a keen sales rep to bring in sales. Yes, sales people need to bring in business at the end of the day .... how they achieve this goal is the subject of another discussion.


Customers - run for cover!!! Mr. Alligator Grizzly Bear Ball Buster is out to sell you some pens, flashing baubles and white coffee mugs!! Reject him at your peril!!

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Ad Specialty Sales $1,000 + wk

Looking to train experienced salespeople to sell Ad-Specialties.

This position is about building your own business within a business.

Successful applicants will learn how to sell all types of Ad Specialty products.
Once you have achieved an income of at least $1,000 per week for six months you will start building your own crew of salespeople. Your income will be limited only by your work ethic and imagination.

-Qualified applicants will be hard working, self-disciplined and goal oriented.
-Be responsible and punctual.
-Want to make as much money as humanly possible.
-Have the hide of an alligator
-Be prepared to rip the hair off the balls of a grizzly bear

WARNING:
Slackers, Liars, Deadbeats and Wimps need not apply.

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The Growth Dilemma

I observe most of my important business lessons when I go to market.

I love farmer's markets as they are filled with such interesting vendors. Most of them are pretty quirky and have strong personalities. It is pretty evident when you are speaking with the owner at one of these places. They are the ones who know what you ordered last week, that your toddler likes poppy seed bagels, who enthusiastically recommend the basil-lemon mustard to go with the sausage you just bought, point out the best head of broccoli, and always cut the ham just the right way. They just get it.

Then you come the next week and the owner is busy serving another client. No problem, except for the fact that the owner's nephew is helping out this week. The nephew does not get it. He reaches for the limp broccoli, fumbles with the credit card machine (or even worse, informs you that you cannot charge $13.11 worth of goods on the card because it contravenes the "no visa under $20 policy"), he slices instead of shaves the ham, and he fails to connect with you about anything. The exchange is a transaction vs an experience.

I return the following week. Again, the owner is swamped with other clients. "Uh oh", the nephew is eyeing me, looking to help. I pretend to continue shopping, all the while hoping that the owner will look up and take my order. No luck, I keep delaying ... keep avoiding the nephew. Eventually, I succeed and I place my order with the owner, the only one who gets it.

This situation is not uncommon in business. A passionate owner, recognizing they can't do it all, hires others to help grow the business. Suddenly, a new person starts answering the phone. Their voice is different, their disposition is different, their product knowledge is different, and they are pretty good at enforcing company policies that you were previously unaware of ... all told, you feel something is missing.

Of course, this is the ultimate challenge. How does a business owner empower the people around them to act like themselves - stamping their DNA onto the people who work with them, so to speak. I know of many amazing businesses that have done this very well, though I know of many others that fail miserably. Unless you are dealing with "Bob the owner", you walk. This is unfair to Bob as he is just too busy ... why won't my clients just deal with the "nephew"?

The companies that nail this concept end up winning. In my experience, training the people around you to "get it" is the most important thing you can do in growing your business. Yes, it is essential that you hire people that have a range of experiences, but if you can't bottle up what is special about your business (and you) and give it to these new hires, you will end up with an uphill battle on your hands.

I speak from experience. Right Sleeve is a very demanding place to work. We are fanatical about delivering a "wow" customer experience and those that do not get this, end up leaving very quickly. Unfortunately, more people end up NOT working out than the ones that do. Why is this? While growth is very important to us, we are not prepared to sacrifice a quality customer experience for anything. All of our staff have to connect with our clients.

If people think and act like this is a product business, their chances for success are limited. This is a people business first and a product business second. Come on - we sell branded promotional products!!! However, what is special about this place is the effect that these products have on the people who order them (making them look good in front of their boss or clients). This is powerful stuff ... and a hard concept to teach.

I feel like we have made some tremendous sacrifices in our quest for the perfect team. While I know deep down inside that we could quadruple overnight if we hired a small army of salespeople, I am not prepared to become the kind of company staffed by too many "nephews" and too few "Bobs". Why? While in the short/medium term, it would be brilliant strategy for growth, I'd pay the price in the long term. (do you think Howard Schultz may have been thinking this when he wrote his "Starbucks is becoming soulless" companywide email in Feb 2007)?

Growth is still very important to us. But it just takes time to find the right people. It takes time to hire them, train them, develop them. Our management team has been around for years and we have highly dedicated, passionate people who take ownership over what they do. These are the kind of people who genuinely say they have fun at work. I know they represent this company as well - if not better - than me.

The ones who don't work out have difficulty understanding the path to success involves patience, training, learning from setbacks, dealing with criticism, listening, and truly caring about their work and the impact it has on others (vendors, colleagues and clients). This is hardly an overnight process.

When done right, everyone acts like "Bob the owner" and the passion permeates the business meaning the experience is never diluted for the customer.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

My buddy Scott Annan sent this video my way. While it has already been watched a billion times, I wanted to spread the word even more. This is a fabulous look at the evolution of the web from a unidimensional resource to its current status as a dynamic and collaborative medium.

This is worth the 4 minutes ...

Fabulous quotes

You know when you come across quotes that make you say "Yes! That's really smart" ... well here goes. They nail the point in such a cool "less is more" kind of way.
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When people are least sure, they are often the most dogmatic (JK Galbraith)

Imagination is more important than knowledge (Albert Einstein)

Coffee is for closers (Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenross)

Where there is no vision, people perish (Proverbs 29:18)

Things do not change; we change (Henry David Thoreau)

Until you try, you don't know what you can do (Henry James)

Man cannot discover new oceans until he has courage to lose sight of the shore (Anon)

A crank is a man with a new idea - until it catches on (Mark Twain)

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten (Anon)

Leadership

In my experience, the meaning of leadership is giving your people a voice to express themselves.

The staff we attract enjoy selling our fun/hip/trend setting products to image conscious companies. Working with headstrong, creative, opinionated people can be a challenge. However, giving a group of people like this a voice to express themselves can have extraordinary results.

I have found that giving people a voice is achieved in three ways (i) participation (ii) ownership of ideas and (iii) setting an example

Participation

We have weekly meetings to discuss creative initiatives. These sessions are pretty liberal and open ended. I have found that the more freedom I give people to express themselves, the more creative they are with their ideas.

For example, in a recent session about how we were going to communicate our top sellers to clients, we honed in on the idea of a Staff Top Ten list. In order to give this promotion a little more personality, the team decided it would be fun to showcase ourselves as the style makers behind the products. Fast forward to the creative ... we now have people striking poses in the Number 10 to represent the Top Ten theme so we could capture the meaning of the promotion on our web site.

These exercises are often very random and the energy in the room is unbelievable as it allows members of the team to express themselves as well as feel connected to the overall mission of the company - to deliver a WOW experience to our clients. You can read more about the exercise here.

Ownership

In addition to these creative sessions, I ask each staff member to be a weekly "Learnings Chair" where they moderate a discussion based on a case study of their choosing in their assigned week. This case study may be a chapter from a book, blog post, magazine/newspaper article or podcast. This topic is distributed to all staff a few days in advance.

Each Monday, the appointed staff member will lead a discussion on the top 3 learnings from the case study and how we can apply them to Right Sleeve. The results have been fantastic. Not only does the company learn 3 new things each week, but each staff member is empowered every time they are asked to present in front of their peers. This is much more powerful coming from an employee than it is coming from the boss (people just expect me to say these things)!

Setting an Example

As a leader, I find that the written word gives my ideas more legitimacy. As such, I publish my ideas on our company blog for the world to see. Our company blog is successful because it gives Right Sleeve a human face. I avoid writing about selling our products, rather I use it as a medium to communicate my philosophies on marketing and business in general. I have found the impact of the blog on my staff to be profound as it gives them a forum to discuss and debate the things I publish online (and believe me, they debate them passionately)! They also get the opportunity to look "beneath the hood" and see what makes the owner tick - unfiltered and uncensored. This is powerful as it makes me more accessible as a leader.

While I have made many mistakes in running this business, one of my biggest successes has been giving my staff a say in the process so their sense of ownership increases ... making my job a little easier every day.

Herd mentality

Herd mentality is fascinating.

Have you ever noticed that whenever a plane lands, taxis to the gate, and turns off the seat belt sign that 95% of the passengers instantly jump up, rush to get their bags from the overhead bins ... and then proceed to wait for several minutes (still standing) before the plane's doors open?

Where are they going in such a rush? Is the guy in the seat behind me going to get off the plane faster than me when the doors open? It seems so unfair - he has been standing with bag in hand for 5 minutes while I sit there relaxing (and I still get off before him .... after all, I am still seated ahead of him). It only takes a few seconds to get your bag in the overhead bin. (and yes, I have traveled with my family as well as by myself).

To be clear, I am not a slow poke. I am usually in a hurry, but I just don't get why people rush just to stand there? Why not sit back, relax and wait until the doors open? Then grab your bag and be on your way. Standing in the aisle will not speed anything up, other than just congest the aisle and cause back pain.

Ever since I can remember, people have always rushed to stand after a flight arrives at the gate. It seems somehow ingrained in the traveler's DNA, but it does not seem to affect one's ability to get off the flight any faster. This is just what people do, as though they are following some sort of rule book.

Here's the point. Why do what everyone else does, especially when "what everyone else" does is kind of silly when you step back and really look at the situation?

It's pretty liberating to do things differently - in life, business, etc. Sometimes doing it the way everyone always does it only satisfies our need to be like others, but it is not necessarily the best way.

(author's note - while I may be onto something with this deplaning business, I still engage in many other silly and herd like activities, so I am not playing high and mighty. I still have plenty to learn!)