Poaching Issues
Building the best sales team is one of the key objectives of every sales agency.
They are the division that is responsible for selling products or services, ensuring that the company can stay in business and enjoy sustainable growth in their revenue.
Many companies invest multiple hours into grooming and mentoring these sales professionals, equipping them with soft skills (e.g. relationship building, communication) and hard skills (e.g. knowledge of products and services, sales pitch). Not only do these professionals have to master the art of closing, they also have to build long-term relationships with their clients to ensure repeated sales.
As these professionals rise through the ranks, their excellent track records may attract the interest of other sales agencies. Headhunting is a common phenomenon.
How can you minimise or solve poaching issues? How can you protect the interest of your company if a talented sales professional chooses to work for another agency?
Speak to Wise Hour for a fruitful discussion on how you can minimise this poaching issue.
Money Lending Culture
“A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Does this apply to lending your friends money too?
While providing a helping hand (and money) may seem to be the right thing to do, it may ruin your relationship. Making a personal loan from the people around you is potentially tricky when timely repayments are not made, especially if it is at your workplace.
Here are several reasons that acceding to loan requests to your coworkers may not be ideal:
- You are there to earn a pay check, hence it is ironic to find yourself lending money that you may not be able to get back.
- Traditional lenders consider them to be too high risk to lend money to. If you lend them money, you are taking on this huge risk.
- Lending them once may lead to subsequent loan requests. Your coworkers may not be incentivised to develop good money management.
- Having to repeatedly chase for overdue payments will get awkward and hurt your professional relationship. You are not working as a debt collector after all.
Lending your coworkers money, regardless of the amount, will hurt the team synergy and trust levels at the workplace. This will adversely affect the overall company performance in the long run.
What should you do if these money-lending habits escalated to a workplace culture? How can you stop it from happening?
Contact Wise Hour on how to handle a situation of this nature.
Lazy to Think/Lack of Self Belief
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” - Buddha
Question is, how much handholding is sufficient for the employee to grow in their role yet not be reliant on your guidance?
As managers, it is important to note that you are the facilitator of their growth. A teacher can ease the learning journey with his mentoring, but the student has to walk the path himself. You can create opportunities to promote a positive learning environment, but the staff has to be willing to learn and put on his thinking hat.
If you have encountered situations where employees seem “unteachable”, there could be underlying reasons that you may wish to examine.
Insecure employees are “hard to evaluate, hard to coach, and hard to develop,” says Ethan Burris, an associate professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin. They may be conscious about how they look in front of others, and this robs them of the chance for self-improvement.
For such employees, what kind of coaching can you provide to boost their self confidence? How can you bring them up to speed without spoon-feeding them? Most importantly, how are you able to deal with your own frustration and still provide effective mentoring?
Don’t doubt your mentoring skills anymore. Seek help from Wise Hour on how to be an effective facilitator at work.
Types of Employees
There is a Chinese proverb that goes “The same type of rice raises a hundred types of different people.”
You cannot expect every employee to be the same - Be it their personality, values, learning and working style. They may bring various sets of problems (and headaches) to you too.
Despite the difference, you can still maximise the team’s performance. How can you do so?
It is not about your resources, it is about your resourcefulness.
Learn to become a great leader who can inspire your staff to become the best version of themselves.
Wise Hour to your rescue. Speak to us to gain insights into how you can manage your staff effectively.
Prospecting
Cold or warm - which one do you prefer?
Nope, we aren’t talking about your cup of coffee. We are talking about customer acquisition and the leads that you have.
Cold market refers to people who may not have known you, but you approach them and try to open a channel of communication. On the other hand, warm market refers to the people who know you, your business and your products. They can be your friends, relatives, referrals or existing customers.
Which is the most ideal method of sales prospecting? What will you do if you are managing these 2 groups of people?
Have a discussion with our Chief Owl who has more than a decade of sales and marketing experience to gain insights into effective prospecting.
Working Towards a Common Goal
“Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.” - Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
Not only you have to deal with the demands of your customers, you have to ensure your company sees profits while making sure your employees are engaged and taken care of.
In this process of managing your business, there may be doubters, naysayers and negative remarks. Your good intention may even be misconceived. You may have to work harder than anyone else, but not everyone is able to appreciate your efforts.
How can you stay mentally tough to deal with these criticisms? How can you stay strong and keep it going?
Most importantly, how can you ensure profitability for your company while taking care of your employees? Speak to Wise Hour to learn how you can manage your cost and employees effectively.
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. They usually agree to decisions and opinions made by the group, even if it may override their personal beliefs. They will rather maintain the peace than to speak up to offer their point of view.
This can be attributed to a few factors:
- They are afraid of being judged.
- They are afraid of offending the group, especially the leader.
- They go through motion and do not spend time to think through the matters.
The groupthink culture can result in poor and irrational decisions being made. Ideas are unable to be bounced off and assessment on the potential risks and benefits of a decision may be inadequate.
Learn how you can ensure psychological safety in the workplace so that the employees can voice out their thoughts freely. Contact Wise Hour to find out how you can maintain this healthy organisational culture.
Staff Retention
Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to. - Richard Branson
It is extremely exhausting having to train and re-train new employees. The turnover expenses are higher than you may think. Studies have shown that replacing an entry-level employee costs 50 percent of their annual salary. That figure rises to as much as 250 percent when replacing leaders or highly skilled employees.
Other consequences include the impact on teamwork, and that your loss may be a competitor’s gain.
Is your retention issue due to the hiring process being non-stringent? Or is it related to the organisation culture that is resulting in disengaged employees? It is important to nip the problem in the bud.
Speak to Wise Hour on how you can improve your staff retention here.
Types of Employees
There is a Chinese proverb that goes “The same type of rice raises a hundred types of different people.”
You cannot expect every employee to be the same - Be it their personality, values, learning and working style. They may bring various sets of problems (and headaches) to you too.
Despite the difference, you can still maximise the team’s performance. How can you do so?
It is not about your resources, it is about your resourcefulness.
Learn to become a great leader who can inspire your staff to become the best version of themselves.
Wise Hour to your rescue. Speak to us to gain insights into how you can manage your staff effectively.