There's No Secret To Hard Work

Bluntness is not a personality trait that's typically considered refreshing, but it's what people enjoy about speaker, author and cable TV personality Larry Winget (larrywinget.com). Winget frequently reminds people if they're counting on New Age approaches to succeed at work (or life in general), then they're going to be disappointed.

"People are scrambling to find some secret that will help them be more successful," he recently blogged. "In fact, the best-selling book on the planet for the past two years is a book called The Secret. When it comes to this book, The Secret is a total load of crap! Read more...

Leave it to the Experts! SVM is a gift card specialist with over ten years of experience in gift card sales and marketing. They represent all of the major brands of gasoline gift cards along with over 125 of the most popular retail, restaurant, hotel and universal gift cards. Customers take advantage of their one-stop-shopping philosophy to save time and money. To learn how SVM can support your gift card program, visit www.SVMcards.com today.

3 Networking and Education Tools for Sales Management Pros

#1 - "Sales Management Executives" is a new, public LinkedIn group created in April 2009 by Lee Salz, President of Sales Architects. The Sales Management Executives group bridges the knowledge gap allowing sales management executives to thrive! Sales leaders are encouraged to sign up and join in lively exchanges with over six-hundred like-minded colleagues.

#2 - SalesForceXP is now accessible as a LinkedIn forum. This community-based online extension of SalesForceXP is focused on meeting information and networking needs of the supplier-side of our industry. Individuals whose companies supply products and services geared toward training, incentives, recognition and off-site meetings are encouraged to sign up.

#3 - Even your most highly motivated salespeople need more than desire to produce results. The SalesForceXP eLearning Center offers live seminars on topical skill sets from noted sales management experts. It's an affordable means of providing sales tactics that produce results...

What Works?  Incentive Products

The surest way to motivate someone to achieve an objective has always been to offer an incentive. Do this and get that. The best incentives are those things recipients desire, but won't buy for themselves.

Check out this collection of guilty pleasures...extravagances that combine highly-desirable brand names with top-notch features. These are the sort of powerful incentives that money alone can’t match...

Don't Allow Cleverness to Hijack Your Message

During his 15-year tenure as Executive Creative Director for Saatchi & Saatchi, Paul Arden was responsible for some of Britain's most successful advertising campaigns. It's no surprise, then, that in "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be," Arden's collection of quick and random thoughts on doing business better, he states, "Don't be afraid of silly ideas. The way to get unblocked is to lose your inhibitions and stop worrying about being right."

More surprising, however, is his caution against putting your cleverness in front of your communication. "I have no argument with intuitive, clever ideas. The problem is that good ideas do not always come along, great ideas even less often. In their need to prove their worth, creative people often produce work which on the surface appears clever but has little substance. Instead of trying to find a quick fix, if they were to spend time finding out what the problem was, they would discover the solution."

Which of these two things have you done more recently:

• Asked your customers to fully describe the challenges they're facing

• Developed a new sales campaign or strategy to go to market

If you've tackled the second bullet point more recently than the first one, it may be time to address that.

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