As an executive recruiter, I'm increasingly seeing an uptick in engagements to replace the head of sales.
That's no surprise, since the economy has taken its toll on sales organizations. Success can shield a litany of sins. But in leaner times, it takes a strong, tenacious, creative, and hard-working executive to successfully pull in and close deals. Replacing a key executive in good times is difficult enough. In a flattened
economy, it can get dicey because there is less margin for error. Many CEOs ponder the difficult decision of whether to sack a B or C player and roll the dice hoping to find an ace. They are not sure they can snag someone measurably better. They debate about keeping the incumbent in the company in a lesser role and carving up
the sales force to accommodate the shift. But if you know how to assess sales leadership, it doesn't have to be such a gut-wrenching decision. Following are a few guidelines for conducting a successful sales executive search...
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[From "20 Minutes to a Peak Performer" (McGraw-Hill) by Alan Vengel.]
1. Have a plan. Leaders who do best are the ones who take a few minutes at the outset to determine the purpose of the conversation, what questions they want to ask, and what results they expect.
Many of us put off giving feedback to our employees even though we intuitively know giving and getting honest feedback is essential, says Judith Lindenberger of The Lindenberger Group, LLC.
Maybe, she ventures, it is because there are so many ways to screw it up. The following, Lindenberger says, are the most common feedback mistakes:...
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Work with its deadlines and financial pressures is tense enough on its own without adding the emotional issues of its decision-makers.
There's a book you may want to pass along to your managers to help them keep emotions in check when making professional decisions. Joseph Cardillo, author of "Can I Have Your Attention?: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Concentration," says "Emotions are prioritizers. If we learn to tap into what our
emotions are telling us, we can use their raw power towards our goal instead of against it." Here are the author's top five tips for keeping your emotions in check and making the right decisions at work:...
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New research from Publicis Groupe suggests consumers are open to offers amid the chatter.
The conventional wisdom is that brands should mostly concentrate on listening rather than talking in social media. This may not be totally accurate. Publicis Groupe digital shop Performics has found consumers are actually quite receptive to direct response-style product offers on social networking sites like Facebook. "Companies
need to look for ways to do classic push marketing," said Michael Kahn, svp of marketing at Performics. Performics, which runs performance marketing campaigns, has run efforts through Facebook's self-service ad platform that are "as effective as search in terms of ROI," according to Kahn. One was a push for...
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Online social networks put a new face on brand-damaging activities, ranging from reputation attacks to imposter sites
It's hard to understand who in their right mind would want to incur the wrath of "Triple H," the intimidating superstar of professional wrestling. But when a poser created a fraudulent MySpace account in Triple H's name, it wasn't the wrestler that the perpetrator had to contend with. The smackdown came from someone who was
actually watching the wrestler's back -- Lauren Dienes-Middlen. She's vice president of intellectual property at World Wrestling Entertainment, the Stamford, Conn., company that owns the trademark. WWE notified MySpace, which terminated the account immediately. The growth of social networks has brought a variety of threats that can
potentially damage a brand's good name. Most of those threats aren't new, however. Social networks have simply become...
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Some malware attacks target site visitors rather than the site brands themselves.
Here's the scenario: Attackers compromise a major brand's Web site. But instead of stealing customer records, the attacker installs malware that infects the computers of thousands of visitors to the site. The issue goes unnoticed until it's exposed publicly. Such attacks are a common occurrence, but most fly under the radar because
the users never know that a trusted Web site infected them, says Brian Dye, senior director of product management at Symantec Corp. When his company tracks down the source of such infections, it often quietly notifies the Web site owner. But word
can get out, leaving the Web site's customers feeling betrayed, and seriously damaging a brand's reputation. Attackers, often...
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Do you sometimes get the feeling that Internet portals, search pages, social networks, e-commerce, and other Web sites are not necessarily designed in order to maximize user convenience and benefits? We do, too.
Why—you might ask? For a fundamentally similar reason to why some retail stores place the most popular items (e.g., bread, milk) in the furthest possible place from the entrance; that shopping malls seem designed to make sure you get lost at every single visit; and that popular magazines drown the content they carry in a sea of
advertising with no clear table of contents and split stories. Indeed, all of these intermediaries are in the business of...
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You've held your own while negotiating dozens of successful deals. Even so, you want to take your game to the next level. What's the next step?
There are plenty of guides that offer tips on negotiation strategies. As useful as these are for a grounding in the fundamentals, they don't always fit the complex, ever-changing deal situations that occur in today's business environment. Harvard Business School professor Guhan Subramanian fills that gap by examining complex
deals where negotiators are fighting on multiple fronts—across the table for sure, but also on the same side of the table with known, unknown, and potential competitors. In February 2010, Subramanian will publish Negotiauctions: New Dealmaking Strategies for a Competitive Marketplace, a book that draws on his
experience studying and advising on complex corporate transactions and high-stakes personal transactions such as buying a home or car. The first Harvard faculty member to hold tenured appointments at both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, Subramanian is the faculty chair for the new HBS Executive Education course
Managing Negotiators and the Deal Process (November 8-13, 2009). Subramanian recently discussed his thoughts on the current business environment and how deals get done with HBS Working Knowledge...
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"Crises offer rare opportunities to make major changes in an organization because they lessen the resistance that exists in good times."
It is tough to think positively in a crisis.
Yet one overarching lesson in a new book by HBS professor Bill George, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis (Jossey-Bass), is exactly that: See crisis as a chance to develop and enhance your leadership skills. "Optimistic, forward-thinking leaders are sitting on a rare opportunity, and they must be systematic in how they take
advantage of it if they want to make positive changes," says George, a Professor of Management Practice at HBS and the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, which develops medical technologies to treat chronic diseases. "Leaders must be willing to ask for help," he continues. "They should rely on a mentor, an internal management
team, and an external support group. No one can be an effective leader in a crisis by attempting to go it alone. Leaders must be the first to recognize this reality and plan accordingly." The seven leadership lessons include:...
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"I look for passion for the product—and I don’t think that’s something that you can fake," says Selena Cuffe who, with her husband Khary, runs Heritage Link Brands.
The Los Angeles, California business imports wine made by locally-owned vineyards in Africa. "As a salesperson, you are up against a lot of no's, a lot of reasons people can’t take the product, and you have to...
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How to use Hadoop to analyze big chunks of data. It's easier than ever for companies to collect all kinds of data about their customers. Often, the hard part is figuring out how to analyze it all. What starts as a useful database of customer information can become a slow or unresponsive monster when it grows to more than a terabyte -- or about 1,000 gigabytes -- of
data. In some cases, a database can be so enormous that no single computer is capable of processing the information. [To analyze all this data, ImageShack decided to tap the same technology developed by search-engine companies to index the Web:
Hadoop, a program designed to process massive amounts of data. Inspired by Google's MapReduce technology, Hadoop is...]
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Hacked passwords can compromise company data security. Strategies for creating the best passwords. "Breaking: Bill O Reilly is gay." That message was sent from the Fox News Twitter feed in January. A hacker had broken into Twitter's systems, thanks to a weak password chosen by a Twitter employee. By using a so-called dictionary attack -- a program that guesses passwords by systematically trying every word in the
dictionary -- the hacker had figured out a Twitter employee's password: happiness. After gaining access to Twitter's systems, the hacker leaked the passwords used by Fox News and several celebrity Twitter users, including Britney Spears and Barack Obama. Some of those Twitter feeds were subsequently filled with obscenities and
links to pornography. Then, in July, another hacker broke into...
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SUMMARY: A company blog is a great way to share your industry expertise with clients, and to create keyword-rich content for search engines.
But creating a blog and encouraging multiple authors to contribute can be daunting. Read how a small consulting firm had nearly everyone in their company contribute to a corporate blog that now accounts for more than 50% of natural search-generated
visits. Learn tips on identifying keywords, creating an editorial calendar and setting deadlines...
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SUMMARY: Contests are often used as a “quick fix” to grow an email list.
But with a little more planning, you can design a campaign that offers more than a one-time lift, and targets quality names for your database. Read how an ecommerce marketer established a monthly contest targeting customers with a popular product
offer. The campaign has more than doubled the size of their email list in eight months – and the new names are providing better response than those from the existing database...
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When the weather gets warm, we Midwesterners really enjoy hanging out with our neighbors and having a cold drink.
That June evening in Chicago was no different. But as I poured the drinks and contemplated writing this article, I laughed. I realized that I had just coordinated the impromptu meeting with my neighbors via Facebook. I mean, really? They live across the street! What's even funnier is that I knew they would get the Facebook message before I could walk over and knock on their door. Enter my "aha!" moment. We as consumers are integrating social-media channels with how we communicate with friends and family. The challenge of being on the "strategic" side of social marketing means that we sometimes lose sight of how real people use those outlets. In that brief moment, though, I realized how I use social media in my daily life—which was my epiphany that day. (I have them periodically.) So, take a minute and think about the folks with whom you socialize. [There are four basic motivators for social engagement: self-expression, status achievement, altruism, and self-interest. Recognizing what motivates your subscriber base will help you develop email content that is share-worthy. Let's explore each motivator and how you can apply that knowledge to your social-email strategy...]
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In July, the World Health Organization threw its hands up, declared H1N1 the fastest spreading pandemic ever, and said tracking individual cases was hopeless. But that hasn't stopped Google and, now, GE Healthcare from trying.
Both companies claim to have "near real-time" data on flu activity, but their numbers are gathered from very different sources: Google Flu Trends tracks H1N1 infections by counting the number of online searches for flu-related topics, such as "fever" and "sore throat." GE Health care's figures come from the more than 16,000
outpatient care centers using its electronic medical records system. So which one is better? GE's Centricity EMR system allows physicians to...
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