I was thinking "Why am I important to my customers?" it is the word 'custom'

So everyone has some importance to someone...we hope. In the course of what I do everyday, selling complicated software solutions to large companies and their HR organizations, I look to build relationships and trust with the prospective 'customers' that I work with, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Some call your prospects who purchase services or product from you a 'client.

Firstly, I like to use the word 'customer', my client sounds like there is an arms-length transaction at hand, you know, what the attorneys and Wall Street people do. If you think about it, the word 'customer' is comprised of 'custom' - 'er' (see www.dictionary.com). So if you think about it, a custom, habit or practice means an established way of doing things. Custom, applied to a community or to an individual, Habit, applied particularly to an individual, implies such repetition of the same action as to develop a natural, spontaneous, or rooted tendency or inclination to perform it: to make a habit of reading the newspapers. Practice applies to a set of fixed habits or an ordered procedure in conducting activities.

So I decided that I want to 'practice' the 'habit' of providing a 'custom' experience to my customers!

Investing in Talent Management: what's needed to enhance your ROI

What Provides Positive Return from Your Investment?

Integrate Your Learning and Performance to Achieve Talent Management-
The talent management suite covers the employee lifecycle from onboarding through learning management through performance measurement and succession planning and into a pay-per-perfromance culture. Assessing employee performance in isolation is often not enough – you should be able to close skill gaps with dynamically recommended training and development. Don't get stuck with different tools, disconnected databases and no unified view of the data.

Use Talent Management 2.0 web tools-
Workforces are changing fast – hierarchies are flatter, workers are more geographically dispersed, and generational differences are as sharp as ever. Integrated talent management now must account for the numerous ways that your employees interact, learn, and work. An integrated approach is required – one that enables high-impact success around employee collaboration, professional networking, development, and performance. Make use of social networking to foster engagement, drive adoption through intuitive interfaces, make sure there is some AJAX programming that will decrease the use of those pop-up blockers.

Utilize a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model-
On-demand delivery is fast, cost-effective, secure, and meets the needs of some of the world’s largest global enterprises. SaaS architecture provides clients with minimal IT costs, high flexibility, great reliability, and the lowest total cost of ownership. Unlike silos of talent management systems, An integrated SaaS delivery model is fully deployable across the entire enterprise within weeks.

Make Sure the Tools Are Configurable for Your Business Processes-
Every organization is unique and a one-size-fits-all approach to talent management does not work. The need to configure your Organizational Units is entirely more scalable and more flexible than domains and allows for ready matching of your specific workflows and processes with the processes and work flows being managed by the application – down to the tiniest of details.

That's just some of my advice....

WSJ highlights what talent managers know: keep developing, keep training THROUGHOUT THE CRISIS

Some of the sound bites from this article are beginning to sound all too familiar.

I thought all of the talent managers would want to read a synopsis of what Dana Mattioli had to say in her "Theory & Practice" column published on 2/9/09

Those of us who remember the previous downturns all too well, see the same things happening again. Companies historically cut leadership-development programs during downturns, but the moves backfired and prompted midlevel managers and top performers to leave before the economy recovered…It’s obvious that without capable managers “the ability to come through (the recession) in a healthy fashion is diminished”.

Josh Bersin of Bersin Research (a talent management analyst) says the deepest cuts are typically in training for ‘soft skills’ such as communicating with co-workers and conducting meetings. He says “…leadership development is taking a growing share of training budgets. Identifying and grooming leaders is important in good times…in time of crisis when the economy is struggling…it’s imperative”.

Executives need to deploy the proper set of tools that will provide direct operational impact (lower costs and increase productivity): by increasing retention, by deepening your bench strength, through employee development, and filling those critical skill gaps.

As the Wall Street Journal identifies, the problems being sewn today require new systems for tomorrow. Looking forward, 2nd generation Talent Management Systems can offer HR partners, OD&E specialists and executives with tools that will increase employee development, engagement and productivity.

I'm not sure how your company manages this today or what your vision is for the recovery, but feel free to schedule 10 minutes with me to discuss specific customer case studies that might help you.

So...I was inspired to write more from a reader- like a self review or analysis

I just did an interesting thing...I reviewed my salesmanship from 2007 vs. my performance from 2008. "Very, very Interesting"...someone once said that from a famous movie. As a salesperson...I am gauged on my performance. And my performance this year was entirely different..and better, than last year. Incredibly so, somehow all of the pieces just fell into place. Selling software solutions is a time-consuming, often detailed process. Getting all of the pieces to fall into place requires some intrinsic strategy, requires the customer or stakeholder to understand, acknowledge and trust you.


I had a good time, enjoyed the fruits of labor...more like the juices of the grill.

It's kind of weird how it happened, it was a suddden change in what I was doing...somewhat impercpetible to myself and the people around me. Using a coach and adopting some of the philosophies of a number of disparate sales books, i made it gel together and IT WORKED. Like 7 of 9 customers trusted me enough to buy from me and you know what...I never asked for their business. I exceeded my goals and downstream made some good money.

So, now the question is..how repeatable is this? can I replicate in '09 what I did in '08?

Well, that is an open question and the results are TBD....

I Want to Have My Performance PRE-Review

Well it's getting to be that time of the year...you sit down, answer a bunch of sections of your performance review, provide some cogent commentary, hit the send button and DING!, your manager has a task assigned to them via email. So, they log into the portal, start their review of your performance over the past year...seeing all of your thoughts and comments, they append their own subjective comments on top of yours. And DING!, off it goes to HR.

Is this really what should be happening? I just wrote my own PRE-view and sent it to my boss. I wrote about what I would like to do next year based upon my perceived performance this year. Based upon problems I encountered this year, I proposed solutions and options that might be applicable for next year. Do I really want to review my entire past year, what was good, what was bad, where I can improve? Will I learn anything from that analysis? Maybe, I could get some developmental ideas to improve some aspects of my job or increase my competencies...but shouldn't we be talking about that during the course of the year?

I want to be able to look forward, anticipate what problems & issues I might encounter and be able to plan proactively. It's like an IDP, but it's not based upon what was done but upon what needs to be done. I don't know why people haven't thought about this. Selling performance systems, I always hear the same stories about the process, the work flow and the development plans. Everyone is looking back, I have yet to hear any company or department that is looking forward, using the PRE-review!

Building a salesperson's self-development plan from your customers

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. I have a sales coach that supports me, helping to analyze my actions during the sales process. It's very focused on what we are doing now and what we should do next. But I just realized that I should know what has worked best in the past and what has not worked. I can sit down and write out what went right on the project I won, what went wrong on those same deals and then I can write out what went wrong on the deals I lost (most everything...) but won't that yield an entirely biased list?

So, I started to think about every time I call on my customers, asking them questions on their progress, their roadblocks, their strategies. Everyone of them loves to talk about the product, their project and how things are progressing. So this is where the connection happened.

Now that I personally have a number of customer projects that I have lead the sales effort, it would make the most sense to query those people on how I did. What went right, why they selected my company, what I could have done better. That might also yield a positively biased reaction (we would hope). So, I thought I should include some prospects that didn't select me because of some obvious reasons.

Now, I put together a scenario of how I would contact each customer, introduce my coach and then lead the coach into an assessment interview. All of my customers are from the organizational effectiveness and development space. So, they should get the fact that I want to conduct a peer review using them.

This is the email I laid out.

Dear Customer of Mine,

I am trying to create some development actions and improve my performance (boy, those words sound very familiar). I obviously sell talent management software and certainly feel the need to have my own talent plan. Since you are I have had a close vendor/client relationship that has lasted for quite some time, I was hoping that you might be able to participate in my performance improvement program.

I have been working with a sales coach for quite some time conducting mentoring and coaching sessions. To expand my program, I thought some peer reviews would be of valuable to my coach and allow some different perspectives (I am sure he is tired of hearing my own assessment!) So, I have asked him to contact you (with your permission) to provide some input to about 5 assessment questions that he has created . In respect of your time, this will only take 10 minutes on the phone.

Can I ask him to contact you directly for this short interview session?

Signed,
Jamie

How does that sound?

Here are my set of questions to pose....the question is "Will I gather the information I am looking for, some unbiased third-party opinions of me, my selling process, my attitude and how I compare to others doing the same thing???

1) (FOCUS ON THEM) Overall, how much impact on your final selection did the product have or did the salesperson have? (maybe percentages, maybe preferences)
2) In looking at this buying process, could you describe some best practices that you uncovered that will help you in future buying decisions?
3) (FOCUS ON ME) What did the salesperson do that was particularly effective and helped to differentiate him from his competitor's salespeople? maybe ONE top of mind example that sticks out?
4) Could you describe your experience (in a couple of sentences) in the process of buying a product from Jamie in comparison to other corporate purchase decisions you have been involved with?
5) What could the salesperson have done differently to help you along in the selection process or towards a buying decision?
6) From a best practices standpoint, what could you recommend to the salesperson? maybe doing something better that might have changed the buying process - made your life easier, made things simpler?
7) If you uncovered a colleague with a similar need to the product or service you purchased, how likely would you be to refer that colleague to Jamie?
8) Finally, Would you be willing to give this salesperson a testimonial? written via email or place directly into linked in?

published at http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1399030

Article: Managing Careers and employee development planning

Published June 2008
Performance Management - The Two Faces of Career Management

Charles Coy of Cornerstone OnDemand


Until recently, it was the sole responsibility of employees to plan their career management strategies. They might quietly seek out new positions outside an organization or hope to be among the select few groomed for a higher position internally. Inevitably, those who did not want to follow the lockstep path of advancement within large organizations — often among the most talented and highly qualified — voted with their feet.

A confluence of economic and demographic factors has given new urgency to reversing this phenomenon. According to a 2006 survey by the consultancy Knowledge Infusion, 6 to 10 percent of the workforce will retire by 2010, putting considerable pressure on organizations, particularly those with more than 10,000 employees. This emerging global shortage of talent — driven by fast-growing economies, increasing competition and the first wave of retirements among baby boomers — is forcing organizations to seek out new strategies to retain top talent in a tight labor market.

Offer Formalized Career Development
One proven strategy is collaborative career management: helping your best people develop their talents and skills for positions within the context of your organizational needs instead of watching helplessly while your competition lures them away.

Leighanne Levensaler, director of talent management research at Bersin & Associates, has defined a framework in which career management can be thought of as an umbrella term containing several core elements or processes.

First, from the perspective of individual employees, the notion of career planning indicates employee-driven choices and career exploration. Second, and from the perspective of the organization, career development points toward formalized programs intended to drive employees along closely defined and strategic career paths.

Thoughtful management of these two sides of career management can make or break any workforce planning strategy. Keeping talent engaged, providing opportunities for development, helping them steer along a self-directed career path and striving to align their daily activities with company goals is crucial to retaining your human capital.

"In this intensely competitive knowledge economy, talent can be the biggest differentiator and the most critical factor in driving a company's performance," Levensaler said. "Looming gaps in the talent pool threaten every company's ability to execute on their current and future business plans."

Research shows gaps will persist across job functions necessary to compete in a knowledge-based, industrialized economy, especially in areas such as sales and customer service, IT, finance, marketing and research and development. Yet, despite widespread acceptance of the growing talent shortage as a real business problem, few are taking action to formally assess or counteract it.

Technology Integrates Career Management Processes
One barrier facing all organizations has been the lack of a comprehensive career management solution. Traditionally, the HR function has been highly decentralized, consisting of complex manual processes loosely supported by disconnected technology solutions. Information about individual employees resided in different silos, hampering managers' ability to effectively guide and develop employees. At the same time, employees did not have clear views into their own career management and possible career paths within the organization.

Early efforts to integrate HR functions within a single software package were a mixed bag. The good news is software solutions are catching up with the needs of the marketplace. Vendors such as Cornerstone OnDemand now offer comprehensive talent management solutions that touch on the entire life cycle of the employee, from development to performance assessment to compensation and succession management. By integrating these functions into a single suite of software tools, the best solutions give organizations a big-picture view of current and future needs.

Levensaler advises using caution when viewing talent management solutions as a kind of magic bullet that can be bought off-the-shelf and plugged in. But when implemented effectively, career management platforms offer a win-win for both employee and employer.

"Talent management solutions are starting to mature," said Levensaler. "The potential long-term returns from such solutions are huge, as long as organizations are willing to make the investment of time to tailor the solution to their business needs."

Career Management Benefits Drive Deep
The best technology solutions help HR managers produce measurable results that justify their functions while delivering on business goals. The benefits include:

-Increased retention (and lower costs of recruiting).
-Organizational needs matched with the best candidates.
-Optimized use of existing talent resources.
-Increased productivity.
-Individual career paths better-aligned with broad needs of the organization.

Further, many systems can dynamically produce organizational charts and organizational readiness models to identify future needs and provide HR practitioners and line managers with the ability to set individuals on satisfactory career paths. Automating the processes that drive this next generation of organizational modeling makes real, long-range planning possible.

Deep in specific business units, the benefits can be felt acutely, as well. The promise of these technologies does not live strictly in the boardrooms or with higher-level HR. Supervisors can take advantage of real-time access to employee career preferences, performance data and development records to developing a better, more well-rounded understanding of employees' professional goals, strengths and training needs —which can result in more realistic staff and development planning.

"Done right, career management serves the best interests of both the employee and the organization," said Levensaler. "The employee benefits from a well-thought-out road map leading the way to future advancement while the organization retains and engages its best talent."

Individual Development Planning
The core of any career management process and system to support these processes is the individual development plan (IDP) that allows managers to work with each employee to develop a personalized career development plan. Employees are encouraged to seek out future interests or new roles within the organization.

A competency appraisal lets the employee assess readiness for a new position and identify gaps in his or her resume or skill set. And employees can link to resources that allow them to upgrade their skills through training, education or certification.

The technology delivers these development plans as templates that can be easily customized to the needs of the organization and the employee. Development plans can be directly tied to the competency assessment process, allowing managers to link corporate goals into personal learning plans such as shadowing a manager, taking an online course, etc. Free-form objectives and goals also can be entered, and any type of training can be directly linked so the entire process is self-contained. Target dates can be established and managerial comments can be attached to any learning plan.

For the employee, this personalized approach bonds them to the organization, aligning their personal career goals with those of the organization. The overall effect helps:

-Boost morale and increase productivity.
-Improve workplace engagement.
-Encourage employees to take active roles in career development.
-Keep employees' sights focused on future positions and roles within the organization.
-Increase value of each employee to employer.

Employees derive value from the whole experience, especially in light of the fact that continuous improvement of job skills is critical in a tight knowledge economy. Further, employers develop systematic inventories of employee skills and can identify gaps for workforce planning.

By breaking down the barriers between employee and employer and bringing them together under a common cause, career management offers one of the most promising ways of addressing the current talent crunch. When career management is embedded within an integrated talent management solution, organizations have a tool to guide, develop and reward their best talent.

To keep employees engaged and aligned with company goals, today's most forward-thinking organizations work aggressively to implement career management solutions.

http://www.talentmgt.com/performance_management/2008/June/658/index.php?pt=a&aid=658&start=0&page=1