Day: April 25, 2011

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Once & For All People: Telecommuting is Not Slacking!

As someone who has been doing this for almost 12 years, I can honestly say that I spend more time at work than any cube jockey in my field.

This comes as a shock to most Old School managers, as they feel that if someone is not under their direct gaze, they are off goofing off. If you are in Sales, this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you are a Sales Engineer, you already know why, so let me explain why this is so for the rest of you. There is a reason why Sales Engineers telecommute:

  1. Sales personnel are Performance Compensated. “Huh?”, I hear you say. Performance Compensation is what makes all things in Sales happen. A few examples:
    1. It weeds out the lazy/incompetent for you. If you don’t perform, you don’t get paid, and eventually you are asked to leave, as the company can no longer afford you. IOW, you are not earning your salary.
    2. Even if I could sleep 24/7, I wouldn’t. If I do nothing, then nothing gets done. This means that, just like the above, inactivity does not pay the bills, nor does it make me sit well with my VP Sales and CEO. Another way to look at it is that I can’t blame my reps, but they can blame me. We are seen as the point where “the buck stops”. No excuses. Whatever it takes. You don’t have to look after someone who is Performance Compensated because among others, their spouse is reminding them.
    3. It fosters and reinforces teamwork and cooperation. “OK, Pat. I think you’ve taken it a little too far, there.” Not so! From experience, Sales Support that is salary is virtually dismissed by the reps. But if you are comp’d on the deal as they are, you are seen as having “skin in the game”. You aren’t mentioning an idea just because it would be interesting (which would confuse the deal and lose the account). Far from it, you are mentioning only what is needed to close the deal. Why? Because that’s the only way you get paid! Others in the company soon realize that you are only “bothering” them because your work is directly responsible for their salaries.
  2. Being “at work” includes far more time that you may realize. The time I spend overnight away from my family and flying/driving all over creation to get in front of customers and prospects is time on the clock. I can’t jump from my trans-Atlantic flight to London at 5:00pm because I’ll miss my soap operas. There is an easy test to see if you are still on the clock: Can you leave at will-right now? No? Then you’re on the clock. This can ruin relationships and marriages. Fact.
  3. Talent can be hired from a vast pool of resources. No longer do companies have to be in expensive, dangerous metros in order to be in commuting distance of talent. That talent-and the company HQ-can be anywhere. I often work for companies that have a <some location> Branch Office, which is just one of my reps’ house/P.O. Box & cell phone. Employers can now advertise nationally for very specific talent, and have realistic expectations of getting it!
  4. Those few times we are home, we are at work.A good telecommuting friend of mine, who lives in Eastern Connecticut but works for a NYC bank, once told me his work schedule looks like Tetris. In other words, people schedule meetings, conference calls, demos and sales calls at everyone’s convenience but mine. I have even had reps overbook me for their meeting, claiming that theirs was more important. This means across many, many timezones.
  5. The Family thinks when you’re home, you’re not working, too! Work for you is normally shielded from the kids & wife. You leave & come back. In between you could have that other family across town that thinks you work 2nd shift. In the Sales Engineer’s world, our families might see us at weird times-like during the day. Since they only do fun things with the family when you’re home, it is a logical conclusion that you are there to do fun things! We also get it from our spouses, who will claim “Now that you’re here, I have a list of errands and chores for you”. We fight this a lot, and even my spouse slips into that mode once in a while. The great Ernie Kovacs had this problem in his home writing studio. His solution was to hand a sign on the door of his study that read simply “Not Now.”

So the next time someone says “Gee, I wish I had your job. You never go to work!”, sit them down and review how many hours you spent at work in the past month compared to them.

And for you Old School managers who still can’t get past it, look at it this way; We can’t steal stationary supplies this way!

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Social Media and the Workplace

In the late nineties, when the internet started to become popular, the beginning of a revolution started: mails could be traded not only electronically, but instantly as well, and the first instant messengers (ICQ comes to mind) were invented. Centralized, unidirectional communication started to lose space to bidirectional communication – a powerful way not only to get information, but to socialize as well.

At first, this had little impact at workplaces: modems were slow, the costs of being connected to the internet to the average person were prohibitive to the average user, and communication was usually restricted to text-based messages and a few photos.

During the last decade, however, communication went through a revolution: both bandwidth costs and prices of storage devices fell sharply, and processing power became cheaper. This provided users a fertile ground to create videos, take thousands of photos, upload their high-quality mp3 songs to their favorite homepages, and so on.

It was then that social media started to become serious.

In no more than a few years, social media changed from a hobby into almost a need to be connected – all the time, everywhere. And this very need is giving companies a hard time: LoveMint.com, a partner of Wall Street Journal, for instance, states that social media can lead of a loss of productivity of around 1.5% in a company, “the difference between keeping a company open or closed if the budget is low”.

The risks, though, are not limited to material damage: they can go as far as damaging internal relationships as well.People, as previously stated, are socializing beings, and unfortunately conflicts may occur from this kind of socialization. Msnbc.msn.com, for instance, states that an employee was fired after publishing derisive comments about her boss. The fact led to a suit, possible brand exposure, and possible loss of money – every company’s nightmare coming true.

Does that Mean that Companies should Shun Social Media?

If social media presents serious threats to businesses, why should it be allowed? First, let’s face it: social media is here to stay: not only social media represents 22% of all time spent online, states MediaWire, but according to e-commerce guide.com, but 5 out of 10 social media tools are being adopted by “more than 50% of brands and retailers”, states the news portal. This means that, although there are risks, any company could seriously benefit from social media. Therefore, here’s a list with a few tips on how to decrease profit loss:

How to Prevent Internet Abuse

  1. Manage the time your employees spend online: have you ever considered liberating the internet only during break time and filtering certain sites? While people tend to frown upon this, they will still be able to browse the internet (which will keep them happy)while still minimizing productivity losses.
  2. Allow access to some sites only to certain groups: if your company does decide that accessing sites such as Facebook outside lunch break is important, consider restricting this privilege only to those who are prepared to handle this kind of communication properly, as the PR staff of your company.
  3. Track who is misusing your internet connection: you can use a proxy to identify abusers and modify your policies so your employees will sign a contract stating that their online activity may be monitored. Again, this will not turn you into Mr. Nice Guy, but you might consider this to be better than employing per-site restrictions.
  4. Micromanage sites your employees visit: simply using a huge firewall to block many sites isn’t very effective. What if your company decided that Facebook is harmful, but Twitter is essential to spreading your business around? Never block any site “just because”: you might be losing a valuable tool that would help you grow otherwise.
  5. Make productivity expectations clear: after all, it’s not only the internet that’s at fault in productivity loss. Reading a magazine, watching TV, listening to an mp3 player instead of working; these are time wasters, too. That way, you’ll increase productivity overall, and not just recover lost productivity from online time wasters.

Conclusion

Although social media can decrease profit and productivity when used inadequately, they’re here to stay, and if managed properly, they can increase brand awareness at an inexpensive price, increasing loyalty both from your employees and customers. A good way to make your company grow is to create a proper social media account with your company logo and signature, and a personalized page. Also, don’t forget to “shout” about your brand: create a friendly workplace and a social media page, and your own employees will gather their friends to your page, which means they’ll be exposed to your products. This way, you can have a peaceful workplace, loyal employees and customers and new customers arriving virally, exponentially – And this is the dream of every company.

Chase R. Smith is a productivity and time management professional. For more tips & techniques to help you become more effective with managing your time and tasks visit Chase at http://www.chasingproductivity.com. 

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Twitter Marketing 101 – How to Use Twitter For Marketing and PR

Effective Twitter Marketing 101

Okay, I’m going to put it out there – I love Twitter! There, I said it. Twitter most of the time plays second fiddle to the social media giant Facebook. In my opinion Twitter is like the party where everyone is dancing and exchanging info, whereas Facebook is the party full of wall flowers or cliques. If you’re in network marketing and not taking advantage of this powerful social media site [Twitter] let me share with you what you’re missing. Most businesses and Network marketers are now using social media as a marketing strategy. This actually helps increase sales and cut cost in advertising and marketing. One of the most widely used is Twitter. Twitter is micro blogging at its best. Twitter is a creative way to express what you’re doing or in a Marketer’s case promoting in 140 characters max. Why use Twitter for business? Using Twitter for marketing allows marketers to get their message in front of non-stop traffic. Twitter has a multitude of members; an estimated 300,000 people join on a daily basis and there are about 60 million Tweets that go out per day…now that’s traffic!

How to use Twitter effectively for PR and Marketing

1) Become Attractive. What I mean by becoming attractive is, remember to use the rules of *Attraction Marketing and be sure to provide Content and Value. If your niche market is other Network Marketers then your content (blog posts, updates and articles) shouldn’t be about anything other than topics that pertain to leadership or the industry. There’s nothing worse than going to someone’s site and not being able to pin point exactly what they do. When you provide a link in your tweets you want the information to be so useful that it becomes worth retweeting or viral.

2) Stand Out. How do you stand out? Do what everyone else is NOT doing. If you haven’t noticed everyone is selling or promoting something on Twitter. In order to not get lost in the crowd, build relationships instead selling. There may be millions of tweets out there, but someone, actually many people are looking to make a worth while connection with you. Would you do business with someone that only looked at you a dollar sign? I would hope not.

3) Build your list. It’s nice to tweet quotes, and other empowering notes, but one of the main reasons your on Twitter is to build an effective following. Everyday there should be a tweet including a link that leads traffic to your blog or affiliate site; if not then you’re just wasting time.

4) Keep your followers intrigued…Be Creative. The quickest way for someone to “unfollow” you is to repeat the same tweet, over and over and over and over…get my point? Be creative, keep your readers intrigued, and be original! Maybe you can write your tweets in story form one day or in a poetic rhyme- whatever it is keep them following. With Twitter usage growing leaps and bounds on a daily basis, you must fight to get noticed. Make your 140 characters work for you! Yes there are only 140 characters (not words) so make them as powerful as 140 thousand characters. The power is in your tweet.

5) Automation. One or two tweets just won’t do. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands and can update on a regular basis, I advise you to “automate” your tweets. Sites like; Hootsuite, Tweet deck and Social Oomph, to name a few, help keep you tweeting throughout the day. Set aside time in the evening or morning, whatever works best for you and load your greetings (social Oomph) and tweets for the day. Automated tweeting is like having a virtual social media assistant. Be sure to check these sites daily for Direct Mentions (when someone tweets about you) and Direct messages that need your response.

There are a plethora of social media sites out there, but Twitter by far is one of the less complex ones to engage. The networking possibilities are limitless. Although it is a simple media format, it can be confusing to people new to the internet or mysterious to Network Marketers that never used this format before. As a Network Marketer, I didn’t get it at first, but being a part of a knowledgeable community like MLSP I was able to learn from six and seven figure earning Leaders in the industry. It’s like being in a room with all the celebrities you’ve ever wanted to meet. In ending…the most important key is to learn as much as you can about the industry. Be a student first, gain knowledge and then share that knowledge with other struggling Network Marketers.

Tyzanise Newman 

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