The Front Lines of Healthcare Respond With Confidence

The results of ANSIR International's October (2010) survey of our newsletter readers were very optimistic with 71% of respondents projecting sales increases for next year. Combine that with 68% of healthcare companies currently ordering assessment tools used primarily for hiring, and 2011 feels very positive. Keep checking in with our newsletter throughout the year as we continue to measure and report what your peers are thinking and doing.

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Sales Training That Pays Off

By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

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American corporations invest heavily in sales training, spending approximately $7.2 billion each year, according to the Journal of Personal Selling. Despite the huge amount of green spent on sales training, most managers are unclear if the expense actually paid off and frustrated that training programs failed to deliver on the promises or expectations.

We have observed, facilitated and participated in hundreds of sales meetings over the past two decades and identified several attributes of sales training that yield better returns on a variety of levels—especially the bottom line. As you prepare for your next sales meeting, consider the following strategies...

ASSESS Talent to Clarify the Target

Sales skills assessments have come a long way since the personality tests of years ago. Today, resources are available to help you inexpensively measure specific sales competency, levels of motivation, temperament and the specific interpersonal skills that are the root of performance. Measuring these talents before training will help you focus your training efforts in the areas your team needs most.

CUSTOMIZED CONTENT to Maximize Performance

Sales reps are much more likely to use information and ideas when they are relevant and practical. Generic training programs built on academic or theoretical models are being rapidly replaced by programs built from the ground up to meet the unique and specific needs of the team. In fact, some companies will even solicit the feedback of their customers to further customize training. Who better to teach your reps than your customers? Custom training content delivers much more usable information that you can quickly implement.

REINFORCE Learning

A popular phrase in instructional design circles is "What gets reinforced….gets repeated". Research shows that 87% of what is learned in sales training is forgotten within three months —unless reinforced outside of the classroom. Apparently, this has more to do with a company's culture than a salesperson's aptitude. Even great training will produce disappointing results unless managers and executives provide reinforcement after the training program is over.

Sales training doesn't stick because steps are not taken to practice and reinforce the key ideas presented. How many times have you attended training and the role play or practice sessions were rushed or eliminated in order for attendees to make their flights or too tired to even try?

Seasoned sales reps learn best with frequent participation in 'real world' scenarios. Any meeting is difficult for sales people where they are forced to just sit and listen. Sales people learn best then they are engaged, involved and have frequent opportunities to share their knowledge and experience. It's critical to find creative, fun ways to reinforce learning during each training program, to boost retention for better performance long after the training ends.

EVALUATE RESULTS

Sales training may not to appear to deliver on expectations when results are not evaluated. Evaluating training effectiveness can be perceived as a very complex process—if you want it to be. On the other hand, as author Steven Covey offers, if you, "Begin with the end in mind," evaluating training becomes more streamlined and focused on the things that matter to you and your reps.

As you launch any training initiative, consider the results that matter most. Figure out your current reporting and data access capabilities to help create metrics that your systems can measure. In addition, consider expanding your definition of sales training success by polling customers, prospects and end users. So often, sales managers build training around metrics that are too myopic. How might our customers define sales success? What attributes might they require in our sales team that will ultimately drive the results we look for? Incorporating these strategies into your training program will ensure your training pays off. Training done well, will deliver significant returns to your top line, bottom line as well as what it will do for that magnificent middle---the core talents of your team!

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Boosting Morale

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There's no denying that occasional, unexpected rewards from management can really lift a group's spirits. Thoughtful gestures such as a surprise lunch together, tickets for an event that can be shared later with a spouse or a snazzy new espresso machine for the office speak louder than words for saying, "We appreciate you."

When budgets were especially tight this past year, smart companies rewarded heavily burdened employees with bonus paid time off. Whether it was a half day, a full day, or a chance to plan for leaving early on Friday afternoon, these companies showed they really cared about taking the "mean" out of lean times.

But boosting morale in a consistent, meaningful way is a day-in, day-out way of life for businesses who want to retain valuable talent. Here are some best practices from the champions:

• Communicate honestly & clearly about where the company is headed and what management is doing to get there. Give employees a choice of ways to submit questions and give feedback to management. Conduct an employee survey to find out what their current perceptions and concerns are. Address their concerns.
• Don't shy away from difficult conversations. Your silence leaves a void for gossip and (probably inaccurate) speculation, while your straightforward honesty builds trust and credibility. Respond to employee questions, even when you have to admit you don't know the answer or have made a mistake that requires a course correction.
• Show employees how their role fits into the big picture. Connect individual, group and departmental goals to company goals. Connect company goals to the mission and potential to positively impact stakeholders and the industry at large. This underscores daily activities by connecting them to the team's shared effort to achieve outcomes and makes work more meaningful in the process.
• Apply fair, consistent and transparent policies in the workplace. Don't selectively allow certain people to, for example, borrow company equipment for personal use, bring dogs or kids to work, or sidestep dress codes unless everyone can. Have a policy for telecommuting and flexible scheduling that is based on a logical evaluation of roles and tasks, not preferential treatment for individuals. If some employees have earned extra privileges through performance, be sure that the reasons (and the way others can earn the same privileges) are clearly understood.
• Be respectful. By all means acknowledge when an employee has made improvement in an area where they've struggled, but be sensitive to their feelings by giving reinforcement in private when appropriate.
• Show appreciation publicly. Make it a point to praise employees for a job well done in front of their peers and customers, but be sincere or don't bother. Everyone else's baloney-indicator works as well as yours does. And there's no need to limit positive feedback to an employee of the month program. Just as it takes (depending on which marketing expert you listen to) 3 - 7 repetitions for a person to absorb a message or recognize a brand name, it takes multiple messages for employees to really believe that you see and value their contributions. Remember that your frequent, honest praise for a job well done establishes a foundation of respect between you. This is the foundation that will give employees the confidence to feel safe discussing areas where they need improvement.
• Deliver development opportunities. Professional development is a vote of confidence in their abilities and an investment in employees' career progression within your company. They recognize both, and the bonus (beyond improved performance here and now) is that the company will have a healthier internal talent pool to draw from as growth opens up new positions.
• Offer a sense of ownership. Invite employees to make suggestions for better ways to get the work done.Really listen. Then give them responsibility for integrating a good idea or process into the job. Adults appreciate being treated with respect for their abilities and judgement. At the same time, over-extended managers need to strengthen the "delegation muscle." For example, use a performance management and development process that actively involves employees in decisions about enhancing their competencies.
• Allow choice & control when you can. Being micro-managed should be the consequence of a pattern of poor decision-making, not a standard operating procedure. Preferred "best practices" should be established because they are clearly connected to results, not based on one person's whims. Look for opportunities to give employees healthy autonomy over their personal work space and processes, as long as they are not in conflict with company values.
• Align business practices with core values. Really make working at your company something to be proud of. "Walk the talk" is just another way to say "Have integrity." It means that the values your company claims on the company web site or in documents are in fact visible in its actions toward employees, customers and vendors.

Managers and their teams thrive in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. An assessment of the entire group provides a team motivators and behaviors report that shows at a glance where the group's strengths and potential lie. For more information, contact Anita Sirianni 800-471-2619 or coach@anitasirianni.com.

How to Manage, Motivate & Move Sales Reps

By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

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Have you ever felt like you were talking to a brick wall when trying to motivate your sales reps? Any manager, coach, or teacher knows the difficulty of getting people to perform better. It is one thing to get reps excited and energized at a sales meeting-but quite another to maintain their enthusiasm over the long haul. Whether you are trying to motivate your sales team or yourself, consider the following strategies that will drive you to action:

Picture the Possibilities

There are bumper stickers everywhere that call us to 'visualize world peace.' From global harmony to personal performance, visualization is an important step in the realization of any goal. Begin by imagining your company as the industry leader. See each of your representatives as superstars and treat them that way. Goethe stated the principle this way: "Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be." Encourage your team to see themselves at the top of the sales chart or accepting your company's highest sales honor. Ask them to think about what they would do with the additional bonus or commission money after they have earned it. The seed of powerful motivation starts with seeing the desired result as if it already happened.

Get Really Personal

As you begin to introduce new sales goals, remember the channel every rep is tuned to: WIIFM or 'What's In It For Me?' Describe how the new goals will benefit each member of your team in a personal way. You will ignite their energy and excitement needed to get the job done. Keep in mind, "Winners are ex-losers that just got passionate." For enthusiasm to stick, the more personal the vision, the more powerful the performance.

Praise Progress

Motivation that leads to peak performance boils down to this basic formula:

Accomplishment + Acknowledgment = Achievement

Most human beings are driven by an innate desire to make a difference, to be of contribution. By acknowledging the success and good works of your people, you will promote exponential increases in performance. One easy way to do this is to follow Tom Peters' advice, 'catch your people doing something right.' Be generous with praise. Look for ways to acknowledge people for their performance and effort. If their efforts fall short of your expectations use the 'Stroke and Kick Approach.' "Stroke" by acknowledging something good in their actions then "Kick" with a gentle nudge toward improved performance. For example, "Jerry, your closing skills are the best in the company, but what can be done to improve the number of calls you make?"

Show Me the Money

Salespeople are motivated by money and the opportunity to make more. Financial incentives tied to achievement are just another form of acknowledgment. In fact, bonus money provides a double incentive: the chance to earn more money and receive the recognition that comes with the achievement. Be sure to tie reward to superior work performance. Special bonus rewards received without an extra effort are not special at all. When creating financial incentives to motivate your sales team, remember the German proverb: "He who likes cherries soon learns to climb!"

The Ball Goes in the Cup

In golf, landing on the green isn't enough to win the match. If you want your people to achieve specific goals clearly communicate your expectations and ideals for success. Don Shula attributes his success as the coach with the most wins in NFL history to the "... result of a strong set of operating beliefs and principles.... You won't be a successful leader if you don't have a clear idea of what you believe, where you're headed, and what you are willing to go to the mat for." Goals that are just out of reach--not out of sight, are the most powerful, so remember to keep them realistic. The more vivid the vision, the more real the results.

No Train No Gain!

Give your people the tools and training to become successful. Top teams learn from top coaches. Provide the best training you can afford. Consider it an investment that will pay higher dividends in outstanding performance. Thomas Jefferson said it best, "Of all of the investments you can make, education pays the best interest". Motivate yourself and your people with these ideas then sit back and watch the mountains move.

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On-boarding - More than Just a good Idea

By Bill J. Bonnstetter

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Forward-thinking companies are taking on-boarding of new employees seriously, because it's one of the best ideas to be refined in recent years. A superior on-boarding process initiates success in two areas: retention and performance. However, reaping the rewards of a comprehensive on-boarding program requires that you absolutely must make sure you use a selection system that only allows you to hire people who truly fit the job and the corporate culture. Imagine the consequences if you mistakenly hired an inferior performer and then implemented a process that will make sure they don't quit!

A proper selection process starts with identifying subject matter experts (SMEs) who really understand the job in question. The SME's first task is to identify the key accountabilities for the job. This process requires a facilitator to assure that key accountabilities are real and void of any individual biases. If the job could talk, it would identify the key accountabilities objectively and without bias.

Key accountabilities do a better job of demonstrating the reason the job exists than old-style job descriptions do, and they are a much more clear way to identify expectations to an employee, too. Once a manager sees how effectively they communicate the job to a new employee, they will see how obsolete job descriptions have become. In fact, since key accountabilities make it easy to recognize the skills, behavior, knowledge and motivators required to accomplish the job results, they make it easier to hire and train for superior performance, too.

This process empowers a company to define the ideal candidate for the job, including:

• Education
• Certifications
• Experience
• Ideal behavior, skills and intrinsic motivators

With a process in place to promote longevity within your company, you can once again address an on-boarding system. The best practice is to have the new employee complete all payroll, insurance, and company policy information prior to the actual start date. The new employee's work station must be ready on Day 1, with equipment such as their desk, chair, computer and phone in place. As much as possible, the work station should be prepared with access to the initial set up information they will need for tools such as voice mail, computer log in, and phone and email distribution lists. This assures that you get your new employee off to a positive and fast start, and the first day can be spent focused on establishing a foundation for performance.

The key components of the on-boarding process for their first day will be:

Introduction to management and colleagues

Manager and new employee discussion:

• Key job accountabilities
• Skills and behavior required by the job
• Corporate culture
• New employee's current skills and any skills that must be developed to do the job
• How best to communicate and manage the new employee
• Creating and prioritizing a personalized development plan
• A plan to hold the new employee accountable for building necessary skills
• Assign a mentor to the new employee to assist the on-boarding process
• Schedule a meeting between the new employee and senior management

This on-boarding process was developed and refined over a period of years. It not only ensures a company's ability to select and keep superior performers, it also contributes to attracting top talent by helping to brand the company as the best place to work in its city or industry. Over a 24-month period, tracking the use of this system demonstrated impressive results: it filled 96% of open positions and retained 98% of those hired and on-boarded with this process.

©2010 TTI, Ltd.

How to Leverage Sales Meetings for Better Performance

By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

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Sales meetings are a big investment for the companies who host them and the salespeople who attend. Their importance for training, communicating and building camaraderie is unparalleled. But, how well do sales meetings influence bottom line productivity and sales performance? I help plan over 50 sales meetings each year and have participated in hundreds of successful and some not so successful meetings. I have observed several mistakes Sales Managers make that reduce the value meetings can have on sales performance.

The agendas are distributed, the welcome comments are made, the lights are dimmed and the marathon of PowerPoint presentations begins. One after another, managers, supervisors and company honchos deliver company news, product updates, and new sales plans. Present, pass the handouts, answer a few questions, and turn it over to the next speaker.

Sound familiar? What's the problem? Information delivered and it goes in one ear and out the other. Have you ever felt frustrated after your best ever super charged meeting and everyone went back to selling the way they always did? Sales people are naturally kinetic beings—they need and want to learn in a way that moves them. The monologue marathon of most sales meetings fails to engage reps. As a result, they have little effect on performance in the field.

Most experts agree—the optimal length for adult learners to retain a single thought or idea is seven minutes. We teach reps and manager how to incorporate "hot spice" into their presentations at regular intervals for maximum learning and retention. Presentations delivered at sales meetings should engage and get reps stimulated. This can be as simple as asking a question or as involved as initiating an exercise. Sales people naturally respond (and learn) by doing. Build your meetings and presentations around frequent opportunities for interaction, exchange and participation. The results will promote retention and ultimately improve performance in the field.

Another common mistake that hampers performance is packing more meeting into the time allocated. Considering the significant expense of most sales meetings—managers are tempted to squeeze in the most material in the shortest period of time. As a result, learning for reps is like drinking water out of a fire hose! Some signs and signals your meeting is over packed include running behind on planned agenda times. As the clock ticks by, meetings escalate into rapid fire data dumps. Question and answer sessions are relegated to email or when everyone has one foot out the door to catch their planes.

Overstuffing meetings causes reps to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. As a result, they are less effective in translating information gathered at meetings into action steps to sell with. As you plan, prioritize your key objectives. What are the most important action items reps should walk away with? Cross check this list against your company sales goals. How will the ideas presented and time allocated advance your sales initiatives and bottom line results? Think of different formats and times information can be disseminated. We helped one client organize a pre-meeting web conference to launch a product. This freed up precious sales meeting time for hands-on demonstration and role play. The result, a far greater return on results than traditional meeting formats. We worked with another company to improve trade show performance by distributing a simple email presentation prior to the show. Think of creative ways to reduce the "what to sell" data dump that often gobbles up the more important "how to sell" meeting time.

There are many ways you can use sales meetings as a valuable tool to improve performance. We have prepared a complimentary Sales Meeting Tool Kit for Sales Managers who want to more out of their meetings (and their people!). To obtain a copy, simply email us at Coach@AnitaSirianni.com or fax to 480-948-7705.

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Are You Running Around in Square Circles?

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Moving at high speed, trying to get more and more done. Thankfully, economic indicators show us headed toward blue skies again.

Have you been running around the same bases week after week, assuring that the essentials are under control? The urge to concentrate exclusively on crucial, immediate concerns can be overwhelming, but it's a mistake that can hinder growth. No matter how busy you are, strategy matters.

The economic slowdown compelled organizations to reverse the gradual creep of costly, unnecessary complexity, and that's good. But it has also meant weathering the storm with a smaller staff, and that's been a challenge. To drive results going forward, leaders must be equipped to keep every employee on track. With all the re-sizing, restructuring and belt tightening, it's very possible that many, if not all, of the roles at your company have changed. Make sure that the opportunities on the horizon don't dissipate into chaos because of cloudy communication and altered roles.

This is an opportunity for clarification, one that can improve your team's performance and lend momentum to achieving goals. There are day-to-day tasks and projects required to meet those goals. Use a patented process to benchmark jobs at your company and establish the key accountabilities for each position. It's the best way to communicate revised performance expectations to everyone on the team and ensure that nothing critical gets lost in the shuffle.

The simplified version of strategic planning is knowing what results you need to accomplish and having an action plan to produce them. Benchmarking jobs, identifying key accountabilities and defining priorities is a good foundation for your leadership plan. Getting through the recession requires a unique recovery plan for each business. There are already signs that some companies are doing a better job of rebounding than others.

©2010 TTI, Ltd.

Reaching Sales Goals — A Plan for Sales Managers…

By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

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Spring time is a season of renewed resolutions, 'fresh starts'. It is also a good time for sales reps to review and renew their annual sales goals. Some reps may be quite adept at goal setting, but it's rare to find salespeople who remain focused on their professional goals without some managerial guidance. And it's even more rare to find reps that are good at implementing plans over an extended period of time. Salespeople get busy and are easily distracted while trying to work a plan throughout an entire year. As a result, reps will be more successful achieving their goals with the support, direction and guidance of their manager.

Promote the Power of Planning

Salespeople know that setting goals is important, yet many tend to reject planning as busy work that gets in the way of selling. You must educate your team to view planning as an implementation step in achieving goals. It is the critical groundwork necessary to improve the attitudes, accuracy and accountability so many sales teams are lacking. Invest time up front, to help reps understand, view creating a sales plan as an invaluable tool in achieving their goals. The mistake I see many sales managers make is that completing sales plans is just a necessary report that is required, by them or the company, at the end of the year. The better you are able to have reps view this tool as an important step in getting where they want to go, the less you will have to work at getting them to use it!

Success Follows Structure

One of the fundamental reasons people don't achieve higher levels of performance in sales is the lack of a structured, organized way of achieving them. It is here that sales managers can offer invaluable support to their reps by teaching and coaching effective goal setting tactics.

Most sales people will embrace ideas they believe will help them achieve better results with less effort. As a sales manager, your job is to demonstrate how mapping out the implementation steps necessary to achieve sales goals will improve the likelihood goals will be met or exceeded. A Strategic Sales Plan is a written 'game plan' that outlines the specific tactics and strategies necessary to achieve personal and professional goals.

Every Strategic Sales Plan should be as unique as each territory and the representative who will execute it. A good plan will guide reps through important considerations needed by this territory, during this year, given the specific market conditions that exist at this time in this territory. The sales plan itself, as a deliverable, isn't the most important part of this process…it is the process reps must go through of investigating and answering key questions. I recommend providing reps with template or topic outline to create a more uniform format to boost consistency, making it easier to coach and provide better management support.

Encourage reps to customize their Plans to meet their needs and the needs of the market. Ask them to take into account a distributor or customer needing special attention or different strategies. Build the template to cause reps to view their market at a higher level than the view they have on a daily basis when their feet are on the street. This exercise will help to strengthen their research, data analysis skills and creativity while preparing these plans. The more reps put their unique thumbprints to the Sales Plans, the more they will own the results.

The Rewards of Reinforcement

Delivering final Strategic Sales Plans can be done one on one with managers to discuss the unique and specific details of each strategy. Another approach is to showcase each rep's strategy by presenting them to each other at a regional meeting. Group presentations encourage the support and fresh ideas from other members of the team. One of the most important ways managers can reinforce the value of a Strategic Sales Plan is to encourage reps to refer to the Plans throughout the year. In addition, consider conducting midyear reviews as a 'check up' on progress to plan.

Think of strategic sales planning as the beginning of a process to better goal achievement. A well thought out customized plan and consistent follow-through will keep your reps on task and focused on the endgame.

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Personal Accountability on the Job — The Key Factor to Superior Performance

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Personal accountability is not only an important skill to possess, but it is also in high demand.  In over 95% of the jobs we studied, we found personal accountability to be one of the top seven personal skills that are required for superior performance on the job.  Most companies would agree that responsibility for actions is a major component to success on the job and will look for this skill in any employee review or selection situation.  Unfortunately, personal accountability can be difficult to gauge and is often times not genuine until you can scratch through the surface.

If personal accountability is so important to success on the job, yet difficult to find, how can we look for this skill in today's talent?

To help you identify the skill of personal accountability, consider using the following interview questions in your selection process or employee evaluation.

• What person from history do you most admire for taking the blame for a failure? What did taking the blame do for that person?
  
• Give me an example of someone you know whose personal actions led to disastrous results. How answerable is that person for what happened? What advice would you give to that person?
• What is the worst business decision you ever made? What made it the worst? What would have helped you to avoid making that decision?

While questions like this might help you take a guess at the level of personal accountability an individual has, it is best to get a truly accurate picture of the skills they have through a individual assessment process.  This will eliminate all bias and give you statistical results that will easily help you take the next step in talent management.  Soft skills assessments and 360 degree surveys are commonly used in business practices today to accurately assess personal accountability and the many other skills that make each person unique.

Job Matching to Improve Hiring Accuracy

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By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

When sales and marketing executives get together, high turnover and poor productivity of salespeople are likely the two most widely discussed topics. Unfortunately, they rarely discuss challenges and poor hiring accuracy as a source of their performance troubles. The number of healthcare companies seeking ways to improve their hiring accuracy is rapidly growing.

In an article published by Harvard Business Review, Herbert and Jeanne Greenberg report on the myths associated with hiring. They studied more than 360,000 individuals from a variety (14) of industries in the US, Canada and Western Europe. Their results suggest selecting successful salespeople and sales managers can be accomplished by matching talent to job requirements.

The basis on which hiring judgments are made explains why high turnover of sales personnel in most industries including healthcare persists. Even where turnover is relatively low, approximately 20% of the salespeople account for 80% of the sales. Basing hiring decisions on myths rather than reality is, according to Greenberg's research, the reason that 55% of the people holding sales positions have little or no ability to sell, while another 25% have sales ability but are attempting to sell the 'wrong' product or service. The remaining 20% of salespeople are doing precisely the job that is appropriate for them and for their companies. It turns out, these reps were the same 20% producing 80% of the sales!

The study looked at a variety of myths and popular assumptions that influence hiring decisions. The following factors were evaluated and include these study results:

• Age (over 40 and under 40) 'When comparing the on-the-job performance of people over 40 with that of their under-40 counterparts, the study found no statistically significant difference.
  
• Sex (men vs. women) The results show, 'beyond statistical question, no performance difference between men and women.'
• Race (blacks vs. whites) The study concluded that 'blacks will perform on the job as well as their white associates.'
• Experience (experienced vs. inexperienced) The results of the study found that 'there was little difference in the performance between experienced individuals and those with no experience.'
• Education (college vs. high School) Unlike the four other criteria presented, 'the study showed there was some variation in the industry-to-industry variations according to levels of education. The college graduate and the multi-degree recipients slightly outperformed the less educated individuals in industries characterized by big-ticket, highly technical sales and by sales requiring lengthy follow up. The differences, seldom reached 5%.

Researchers found a better approach to predicting job performance can be accomplished through job matching. That is, to pursue a good match between the employee and the job.

For years, medical and dental employers have used a variety of tools to improve their hiring accuracy for years. These instruments provide insights about candidates difficult or unavailable from traditional interview and selection methods. Until recently, resources were limited to evaluating the talents of people—not jobs. Today, through advancements in benchmarking combined with the power of technology, matching job requirements with people talent has never been easier or more affordable. .

Critical requirements of the job are best defined through a defined benchmarking process. This involves top performers in the job or those with a clear understanding of the role. Each company has a unique combination of skills and talents required for success. Our experience benchmarking sales jobs for medical distributors and manufacturers exposed several common attributes of top performers:

• Self Management
• Teamwork
• Initiative and Drive
• Decision Making Ability
• Detail Orientation
• Conceptual Ability
• Empathy
• Self Starter

Employees and job candidates complete an on-line questionnaire to compare their talents to the company benchmark. The results can be used to make better hiring decisions, identify gaps in talent and job requirements (job matching) and expose training needs.

Through, years of research, experience and technological advancements, we've learned a lot about how to spot top sales talent, the value of which will prevent costly hiring mistakes, reduce turnover and yield improved productivity. In the end, success requires a combination of both science and gut to make the best hiring decisions.

ANSIR International, Inc. © 2010

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Invest in Your Talent

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Controlling Turnover and Addressing Disengagement with a Complete System

Turnover alone may be costing you millions, but what about the employees you still have? Is their disengagement costing you even more?

Fortunately, turnover and disengagement stem from job fit, and you can reduce costs associated with both by using a complete hiring system. With a process that looks at hiring from the very beginning to the very end, you can consider the job, the talent, professional development and performance management. However, with reduced budgets and overwhelming responses to job ads, many companies are finding themselves skipping a system all together. Unfortunately, a move like that doesn't come without a hefty cost, as doing nothing to ensure job fit will cost you more than implementing a complete hiring system to start controlling turnover and disengagement costs now.

With a solution for future turnover and disengagement costs, let's turn our focus to the disengaged employees on your payroll now. Can you determine the underlying issue? It may be decreased morale, lack of direction, little job satisfaction or no motivation. Whatever the case, you need to start by using the same complete system. Assess job fit by comparing the job and talent, ensure that each person is on a professional development plan, and then manage their performance with specific motivation, communication and responsibilities that fit their unique personal style and skills.

A dip in the economy shouldn't mean you loose track of the very asset that will turn your company around. Remember, now is the time to invest in your people.

©2010 TTI, Ltd.

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