by Elizabeth Hines | Oct 8, 2015 | Blog, Strategy, Talent
Hiring someone who says he or she is not a team player sounds like a risky proposition, right? Few employers are, after all, searching for renegade employees or stubborn loners who refuse to interact with co-workers. But what if it actually turned out to be a good strategy? Researchers at the University of Tuebingen set out to examine the effects on applicant pools by stressing the need for teamwork in job ads. The conclusion of the study puts it like this: “Given the evidence of a possible downside, it is recommended that firms should never look for team players just because ‘everyone else is doing so.'”
The study analyzed survey data from 1,300 college students who had been asked to evaluate a number of job postings that outlined various requirements, including whether the applicant should be a team player or an independent task-oriented self-starter. Interestingly, what researchers found was that although the ads did indeed attract applicants who considered their teamwork skills to be a primary asset, they also discouraged people whose qualifications matched the job description with the exception of one criterion: social skills. As a result, the employer missed out on technically skilled or task-oriented candidates who took themselves out of the running before the race even began. The study went on:
“…considering that organizations always need employees with high task-related skills, but that they may not always need team players, they should carefully consider when the requirement for teamwork skills is listed in their job advertisements—because there is a downside to looking for team players.”
For organizations that truly need employees with an aptitude for collegial collaboration, the study shows ads that stress the importance of possessing teamwork skills do what they were intended to accomplish. But in other cases, where teamwork takes a backseat to specific talents or technical skills, the employer is likely to end up with a smaller pool of applicants than if that routine phrase had been left out of the job requirements.
People who don’t cite social acumen among their list of skills may not thrive at “water-cooler conversations” or rush to plan the next company outing, but they know how to get the job done and they do it well. If teamwork is irrelevant to their job description, isn’t that all we really need?
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. Our firm works with companies to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
We advise and work with companies on their most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, talent acquisition, performance management, and M&A support.
We have deep expertise and a proven track record in a broad range of industries including: supply chain, real estate, software, and logistics.
![5 Tips Supply Chain Managers Need to Build Landing Pages That Convert [Infographic]](https://www.fronetics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/landing-pages-that-convert.jpg)
by Fronetics | Sep 28, 2015 | Blog, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain, Talent
Landing pages are a fundamental tool in converting website visitors into leads. They’re what convince your visitors that they absolutely must download your fabulous resource offer. Yet often times they’re treated as the annoying little sibling to high-value content pieces – tagging along almost as if an after-thought. In reality, landing pages have just as much, and possibly even more importance than the content offer. Besides, what good is your best resource if it’s landing page stinks?
Here are five tips supply chain managers need to build landing pages that are sure to convert visitors into leads.
by Fronetics | Sep 17, 2015 | Blog, Internet of Things, Marketing, Social Media
As of January 2015 nearly half (3.01 billion) of the world’s population (7.21 billion) were active internet users. Population growth from the previous year was up 1.6%, active internet users were up 21%, and social media users were up 12%. These are big leaps, and continued growth is predicted. These numbers are a good thing, not only for people like Mark Zuckerberg, but also for business.
Here are 8 reasons why your business needs to harness the power of the internet:
by Fronetics | Sep 15, 2015 | Blog, Data Security, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Personal connected devices – our laptops, cell phones, and tablets – are arguably the most complicit tools in the recent blurring of the parameters between personal and work life. And while most businesses have generally recognized the benefit of allowing employees to use their personal devices for work purposes, the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) revolution has certainly thrown a curve ball to those responsible for safeguarding company data. Although corporate finance groups are singing the praises of the trend due to its inherent reduction in costs, it’s not all rosy in the BYOD world. That’s why it’s crucial to format a corporate strategy policy that will protect your company from a potentially dangerous data-leak train wreck.
Here’s why: Employees are now widely accessing corporate data from their own computer, a tablet, even their mobile phone. With so many of us bringing more and more smart devices inside our office environments and hooking them to our corporate networks, the potential for data leakage grows exponentially. When anti-virus and digital security software company BitDefender set out to explore the connectedness of typical American workers last year, they found that over half stored work-related data on their personal devices. Shockingly, almost 40 percent of them had nothing in place to prevent unauthorized access to their device. Further, in a study conducted by the University of Glasgow, 63 percent of used smart devices purchased through second-hand stores and eBay-like marketplaces still had data on them. This data included personal information as well as sensitive business information.
The problem is there’s no chain of custody in the BYOD world. Think about it. When the corporations owned your cellphone and your PC or laptop, they controlled its issue to you, how you used it, what software you put on it, and when and how it was turned in and destroyed. A solid internal tracking of electronic assets coupled with a solid electronic asset disposal solution provider meant that, for the most part, the corporate digital assets were safe. In the BYOD world, the corporation does not own the IT equipment. Personal smart devices are being linked to corporate IT environments. This mating of personal and professional equipment and data is happening everywhere. Your corporate data is being commingled with secure and non-secure access points to the Web, cloud, etc. Not to mention the fact that those devices metaphorically walk in and out of your office every day, and you have no control.
Companies are scrambling to address this issue in a number of ways. Some have addressed the problem via software solutions at the enterprise level (think Blancco or BlackBerry enterprise), some at the device level (think solutions like Apple Find My Device, etc.), and some at the human resources and legal levels with policies and procedures that prohibit users’ use of corporate information. But the truth is, without a chain of custody model incorporated with these solutions, once the corporate data is accessed or downloaded, it’s already gone — you just don’t know it yet.
The reality is that it’s going to take some time for the corporate world to catch up with what some have called the “semi-private information revolution” like the cloud, Facebook, or social media. Secure file sharing, essential for an organization’s BYOD guidelines, is one of the best options available. Services are now available to help with cloud encryption and it’s changing the way we share and monitor files. Encrypting data is crucial and minimizes the risk of sharing sensitive data and having it tampered with. Rely on your electronic asset disposal provider to help your company develop a strategy and process that is aligned with your corporate information sharing guidelines. Right now, your corporate data is only as safe as the process that you create.
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm. Our firm works with companies to identify and execute strategies for growth and value creation.
We advise and work with companies on their most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, talent acquisition, performance management, and M&A support.
by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 14, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Selling certainly isn’t like it used to be. Take the requisite childhood lemonade stand, for example. Every summer thousands of entrepreneurial youths take to their neighborhood streets with pitchers of homemade lemonade to offer passers-by a cool drink for a small fee. For decades now these business startups and their transactions have generally been straight-forward. Recently, though, the owners and operators of these businesses, almost all children, have faced increasing complexity in their business environment. Local authorities have been cracking down on lemonade stands without proper city permits or food handling licenses. Potential customers have grown more mindful of product ingredients. These new idiosyncrasies have everyone wondering, “When did selling become so complex?”
Successful companies have adapted to these new selling pressures by placing emphasis on a strategic selling process. MHI Global suggests that these strategic selling processes “significantly improves the odds of [a business] winning complex sales opportunities by defining a process for pursuing sales opportunities and establishing common criteria for allocating resources.” Those companies are then able to determine when to walk away from resource-intensive deals with a low probability of success, giving salespeople the time and energy to focus on the opportunities most likely to become profitable, long-term customers.
There’s little doubt that the role of strategic selling is one of the toughest in any organization. It’s also one of the most expensive line items for most companies – so getting it right is important. There are a lot of great strategic sales teams out there, to be sure. But there’s an equal amount of selling teams that could use some advice.
Here are five ways to optimize your strategic sales teams and, in turn, increase their revenue-producing effectiveness.
Devise a Process
Strategic selling is a process. Like any process, discipline and milestones mark the way. Only through uniform use, iteration, and formal improvement will your organization, the sales team, and the salesperson become more effective. I don’t care what the process looks like…yet. Get a process that everyone can track inside your organization and stick to it. No loose cannons or end around players….they devalue the process.
Refine Your Process
Once you have an established process, take the time to refine it. The most successful strategic selling processes include some iteration of the following items:
- Assessing the selling opportunity
- Developing a competitive strategy
- Identifying the key decision makers and their motives/agendas
- An action plan
- Sales plan testing and improvement
- An organization implementation process
Create a Compelling Event
If your sales process relies solely on responding to RFPs, you are not strategically selling….you are responding to opportunities that every qualified organization will see and compete for. Create a compelling event inside your target customer. The easiest sale is the one that your competitors never knew about in the first place. Creating a sense of urgency and need inside a customer is hard work and takes time, but that’s what makes it valuable to your client and your organization. Knowing your customers’ needs and how your solution fits makes you more valuable than a traditional “RFP responder”. Be there first, be relevant, and be action oriented and your customers will rely on your solutions more often.
Make the Most of Your Resources
Time is money and both are scarce resources. Make the most of these precious resources and never fall in love with an opportunity unless it meets the following criteria. If it fits, engage fully and engage to win. No half efforts. Ask yourself these questions:
- Is there a true opportunity that has been clearly identified and agreed to within your customer’s organization? Said another way, is there a “compelling event” as mentioned above that everyone involved is aligned around?
- Can you compete to win? Does your solution or unique business differentiator align to produce customer benefit? Can it be aligned?
- Can you win? Are there any commercial obstacles that would stand in the way to your winning? These can be politically driven, relationship driven, or even solution driven.
- Is the opportunity worth winning? Does it have the desired ROI for the investment of selling resources? Does it contain enough profit to engage your organization? Is it too risky a fit (a force fit to your solution) or does the risk and reward balance? Can your customer pay for the service? Have they allocated funds?
Avoid ‘Work for Free’ Promotions
Stay away from “free trials” or “free pilot” engagements. In fact, run from them. If your customer is headed down that path, revisit number four above. It could be that they do not completely understand your solution and how it fits, or simply that they have no funds to undertake the engagement. In either case, time is money and it’s time to move on.
Make no mistake, the strategies listed above are not easy to instill in a sales organization. But by doing so, true opportunities will increase, they will have greater value, and your chances of success will soar. No hard work goes unrewarded.
