I have spent the better part of the last 20 years in some kind of sales capacity, the latest being as CEO of Eagle … which of course is a sales role too. For the last couple of months, I have been involved in pulling together a sales training package for Eagle’s sales team and over the next couple of days I will be presenting it.

There are really remarkably few secrets to success in sales. Despite the multitude of sales methodologies, “tricks and tips” and sales gurus the formula is really quite simple.

1. Know what you are selling! Whether it is a widget or a complicated solution, the sales person needs to know and understand their “product” and how to answer the common questions that are raised. This comes down to basic training from their company – good training breeds the confidence to succeed.

2. Work hard! Probably the biggest failing of most sales people. This is a tough job, and to succeed you MUST have a good work ethic. Long lunches, golf days, short days on Fridays are habits to avoid.

3. Work smart! Good time management skills, good organizational skills and an attention to detail will get great results.

4. Listen! The client will tell you everything you need to know to answer their concerns … if you shut up long enough to listen!

I am convinced that if you can “ace” these four things, you can be super successful in sales. I don’t believe you need to be “personality of the year”, an extreme extrovert or a party animal to be a successful sales professional. An outgoing personality can definitely be an asset, as it can in any people-based career … but is not essential.

Now I need to “sell” my sales team on this!

As a staffing company, we are often challenged by clients about the cost of a contractor versus an employee. At first glance, the hourly rate paid to contractors may seem expensive – it can certainly look like a lot of money, particularly when multiplied by 240 days and 8 hours. But are companies really looking at all of the pertinent factors? Consider the following:

The contractor is ONLY hired when needed, and you ONLY pay for time on the job. Therefore you are NOT paying for:

• wait time, while budgeting is approved;
• vacation time;
• benefits;
• cost of training;
• training time;
• sick days;
• mental health days;
• maternity, long term disability or other such time;
• trips to the dentist; or
• any other miscellaneous reasons that reduce the productivity of the average worker.

Another cost rarely factored into the equation is management time. Any manager will tell you that HR issues will burn more time than any other management activity. There are really no significant HR issues with contractors, if there is a problem they are gone. No mess, no fuss, no severance!

One of the biggest benefits of using a contractor is that you have the pick of the market to ensure the person coming in has relevant skills. Often we force-fit employees to do a job because they are available. Contractors hit-the-ground-running and get the job done quickly … the cost of missed deadlines needs to be potential factor too!

If you need a job done and are weighing up hiring or bringing in contract help, make sure you consider all of the facts. It’s a big corporate cost and commitment to hire people, and while contractors are not always the right answer, neither are employees!

I’m a business owner, so I guess I have a different outlook on life than many others. I have trouble understanding that so many people go to work every day with an attitude that says things like … “2,345 days and 42 hours to retirement!”, or maybe … “Only 7 hours 52 minutes till I get outta here!”. I listened to a radio show on my work today and the hosts were trying to plead a case for another public holiday today in Canada for National Flag Day. Surprisingly to me, all four listeners that dialed in said they didn’t think we needed another day off … I loved it! But I think the attitude of the show hosts was really representative of most workers.

Why can’t people in general have a positive attitude to work. We all (except for a tiny minority) need to work and probably are there at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Why not be positive and happy for those hours? It’s a much better way to spend 40 hours each week than the alternative. There are always positives to find in life, good health, a good standard of living, good friends, loving family, good co-workers etc. Yet so many people go through life with a negative attitude, dragging all around them into their depths. I, for one, will go out of my way to avoid negative people. A fellow CEO told me that he stood up in front of his whole company and said, “If you are a “glass half empty” kind of person, you don’t fit in this company!” Some people ended up leaving, but it was a better place for that.

So … look for the good in your life. Bring a smile to work. Treat people with respect. Live each day fully without wishing your life away! I think you will find life to be so much more enjoyable.

Eagle is a Canadian Information Technology staffing company. The professionals that we place on contracts are typically independent contractors, who are one-person incorporated companies. One of the challenges that business owners always face is personal development and a one-person business exacerbates that problem. If “the business” is taking time out for training, then it is not making money … oh, and it is paying for training.

When I started Eagle I had a similar dilemma, how do I continue to learn about running a business and still do my day job. Here are a couple of ideas:

Read! It seems obvious … but so few people do it! I love the Executive Book Summaries because they are an 8 page (20 minute read) synopsis of some of the greatest business books. A very affordable annual fee lets me download pdf files that I print and read when I have a few minutes between meetings or when I’m traveling! I also subscribe to McKinsey Quarterly which again produces short very informative and relevant documents that keep me thinking, give me ideas and help me to stay relevant.

Network! I started a small group of fellow CEOs that gathered on a monthly basis to share stories and collectively grow. There are many existing groups that provide the same experience. One I belonged to in Ontario is the Innovator’s Alliance. I hear that the YPO, TEC and other groups are all of value to CEOs. If you are an independent contractor why not start your own?

The Internet! There are online course in just about everything. It takes discipline, but that’s the price of being great at what you do. Get the search engines working for you!

My advice …invest a little in yourself and you differentiate from almost everyone else!

No song about hating Mondays, or the like. Just an observation that Mondays can be very unproductive for many people and it doesn’t need to be like that!

I have a habit of working on Sunday mornings, part of the time is spent in organizing myself for the week. Whenever I miss, (this weekend my son had an out of town hockey tournament), I always feel like I’m just slightly out of control. It is the same sense I get from 90% of the population on Monday mornings … “I know I’m busy, got lots to do, I’m doing it … but I’m not sure I’m being as productive as I might!”

The staffing industry is notorious for its fast pace. Good organizational skills and excellent time management will get you everywhere in this business. I have always said that good time management has been critical to any success that I have had in my career and its one of the things I really hammer home with my staff.

So … you don’t need to work Sunday mornings in order to be organized (did I hear a collective sigh of relief?) … but being organized does not come easy. A couple of tips.

“To Do Lists”.These are the anchor of any good time management system. Write EVERYTHING down, prioritize based on your world. In my world if it translates into business then its at the top of the heap, if its personal then it fits in around my other items. I don’t care if you use an electronic to do list, or good old pen and paper … “Just Do It” (thank you Nike). I think your to do list should be separate from your everyday notes … on a separate piece of paper (or virtual paper). I think you should review it every day either first thing (before opening email) or at the end of the day in preparation for the next day.

Balance. I hear this all the time these days and most times it comes with the suggestion that the person needs to spend more time at home! Balance is very personal, if it works for you that’s good, but it needs to work for your personal AND professional “you”. If you want to do a good job then you need to be productive, in most cases if you make the best use of your work hours then you will feel comfortable in enjoying your “home” hours.

Resources. Time management is a subject that gets beaten to death, but if you can find what works for you … its golden. Here are some links … The David Allen Company has a concept called GTD (Getting things Done) which is very practical. If you need help with balance and perspective John Izzo and Patricia Katz are two of my favorite reads! All three have good newsletters to which you can subscribe.

Now it is up to you to make Mondays, and every other day, productive.

I am heading out on vacation for a month … so I have arranged for some “blogging” to happen during that time, with a “best of …” series of blogs based upon the 520 entries I have created over the last 2 1/2 years. The other impact of my absence is on the monthly Industry News update that I produce, which means this version is a 3 week version for May … and I’ll catch up with the June edition.

Below is the introduction to this month’s Industry News update, and the full version can be found at the Eagle website later today.

Last year in May 2007 brought some interesting, and big dollar, M&A activity much of it from private equity. Goldman Sachs and Texas Pacific Group paid $27 Billion for Alltel, the 5th largest cell phone company in the US, Microsoft made its largest acquisition ever, paying $6 Billion for aQuantive, an internet advertising company. The other big deal was the sale of Acxiom for $3 Billion, and again to equity firms.

This month, May 2008, saw some interesting activity on the M&A front with an aborted attempt by Microsoft to buy Yahoo which could still morph into a different deal involving some parts of Yahoo. HP paid almost $14 Billion for EDS, announcing their intention to compete at the highest levels in the IT services and outsourcing business. CBS paid $1,75 Billion for the CNet suite of web based sites and Oracle made a foray into the insurance vertical with the purchase of software company AdminServer. Autodesk was “on a tear” with three acquisitions this month Moldflow, RealViz and Kynogon and Accenture bought another couple of companies to add to its growing acquisition list. One of my least favorite companies in the world, Vurv, was sold to Taleo for $128 million.

There are some mixed messages coming from studies with IDC Canada painting a relatively rosy picture of projected IT spending for 2008 and the US Conference Board reporting an increase in its leading indicators for April. Worker confidence however fell to a new low in a Spherion index and Yoh reported a drop in IT wages (which could be good news if you are paying but bad news if you are getting paid!).

A presentation I attended from a CIBC economist suggested that we are probably about half way through the fall-out from the sub-prime debt debacle, and while Canada is doing “OK” Ontario is either in, or on the brink of, recession driven by the manufacturing sector.

The staffing industry is typically a good “bell weather” for the economy, often the first to feel the effects of a slowdown when orders slow down and clients reduce their temporary and contract head count. We are NOT there yet and we are hopeful that the strange combination of skills shortages and a tough economy will shelter us a little this time! Wish us luck!

Ontario Government Prize move #1: “The Ontario Ministry of Labour has launched a consultation to determine if there are suitable protections in the Employment Standards Act for workers employed by staffing agencies. Vic Dhillon, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Labour will be leading the consultation on behalf of the Minister.”

Yesterday I was suffering some angst about a number of issues that meant I had trouble coming up with a positive blog. The above announcement was one of them … and another example of a Government being driven by the “squeaky wheel”.

I had resolved to not let it get to me, but a blog is meant to be a place to share thoughts and ideas in an open manner so what the heck. I’m sure this blog entry will not win me any friends with the Ontario Government but they need to hear it!

Ontario Government prize move #2: On March 31st the contracting vehicle that the Ontario government uses to procure IT services on an as and when required basis expired. The new one wasn’t ready, but it is “projected” to be released in June (or July …. my bet is on September). For a business that means six months of lost opportunity with one of the biggest users of IT services in the province. For the Government managers trying to get their work done it means they either procure the services another way (read more expensive, and probably more complicated) or they wait.

A reasonable person might suggest that they extend the old contract … “can’t do that”, they say. Don’t worry there are other procurement tools people can use. Nice theory but we have not seen a new piece of business since the old contract expired … but who cares they new contract will be here in a few months!

Newsflash for the Ontario Government … the Ontario economy is either on the “edge of a recession” or “in recession” according to a CIBC economist. Not a big surprise given the state of the manufacturing sector in South West Ontario.

Why would ANY Government choose to cause issues for the small and medium enterprises of this province which the Ontario Government describe as the engine of the economy? Worse yet why NOW, when the economy is so fragile?

The staffing industry in Canada is an $8 Billion industry according to the latest Statistics Canada report (2006 Survey of Services Industries: Employment Services). Ontario represents 57% of that business or approximately $4.6 Billion.
The staffing industry has average annual operating profits of 3.5%, with Ontario companies operating at 2.6% … hardly room to play there!
I was talking with the President of a medium sized staffing company who has been in the business for 25 years. He estimated that his company alone has found 450,000 people jobs over that 25 year period.

Hundreds of manhours of the best minds in our industry are going to be consumed trying to defend our industry from attack and at the same time one source of business has been cut off.

Wake up Ontario … this is a global economy and Ontario businesses, already operating on skinny margins will not be able to compete if you keep getting in the way!

I have blogged in the past about my desire that this “soap box” generally should be a positive forum. It is a very rare day when my mind is filled with topics that have my blood pressure boiling … today is one of those days!

So, rather than blog about all that negative energy I am going to focus on the fact that (a) I am heading out on a month’s vacation this Friday for the first time in my life … (b) I am going to jump on my motorbike and clear my brain this evening and (c) I have so much in life to be thankful for, that the “issues” of the day are really just noise in the journey we call life!

Focus on the positives in your life … it is much easier on the blood pressure!

Mortality can be such a morbid subject and I am pretty sure that is why most of us work hard at ignoring the subject, but the plain fact is that we have a limited time here. Given that fact … we have a choice about how to use that time and I think the best result is to reach “the end” with no regrets!

The following might be a quotation that I could adopt … Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, scotch in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”

I recognise that we are all different, and therefore it is important that we all have our own version of what life should look like. It would be a terrible shame to arrive at the end of your life having “let life happen”.

I have a number of blog entries that might get you to think about this subject, interestingly enough they were all written in 2006.

There was the entry about Life … and Death from December 2006.

I wrote about Life and the Pursuit of Happiness in May 2006.

I observed that Time Goes So Fast in my blog entry in June 2006.

The last one I’ll reference talked about Living Your Life With No Regrets in August 2006.

One of the ways to take charge of your life is to set yourself goals … at the end of this week I will fulfill another of this year’s goals, and take a month away from the office on vacation in Europe. A week in France, a week in Spain and two weeks in Italy. It would have been very easy to let another year go by without making this happen … but by setting goals and working towards them it is happening.

Take charge of your life … it’s the only one you are going to get!

It is a difficult thing to achieve balance in our lives. Balance is different things to different people and for most of us, other people affect those different areas that we are trying to keep in harmony!

At work, our boss, our company plans and our own commitments all conspire to keep us busy and we need to understand where our “tipping point” is. If we want to do a good job, be successful and be fulfilled by our work then it needs to be enough to achieve that end … without adversely affecting the other parts of our life.

At home we may have family commitments, hobbies and activities that we commit to, self improvement projects or health targets all of which require our time and energy.

We may be (hopefully we are) involved in charitable work or other not for profit work that needs our time and skills.

There are always going to be demands on our time and it is up to us to determine where we want to put the emphasis. For some people family and home life is the only priority and work is a necessary evil to pay the bills. For others career is critical and work is a huge priority because of how fulfilling it feels, or because they are driven to reach a goal. For most there is a middle ground where success at work is important, but they also want to spend as much time with family as possible. There will also be certain periods when the balance tips one way or another … but as long as it is temporary that is all good.

None of the above is wrong in any way shape or form … but where the disconnect comes is in expectations. The person who is not willing to put the same amount of effort into the job as the next person may still expect the same kind of rewards. Equally, the person who devotes all their energy to work and career cannot reasonable expect to have the same kind of time at home as the person who makes family and home their top priority.

The ONLY way to achieve YOUR balance is to know yourself … to understand your motivations and adjust your expectations accordingly. Success in anything will always bring some kind of compromise and hitting the right “balance” to suit your needs will lead to a life that is full and rewarding.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. How much difference would it make to your life if you put in a few extra hours at the office each week? .. or a few less hours?
2. Can you find a way to get to 90% of your children’s activities … soccer, hockey, dance etc? Is that enough? Would you settle for less?
3. Would you accept a slower pace of career growth if it meant you could spend more time with your family? … more time doing your hobby? … more time working with non-profit organizations?
4. Is the time you spend with your family maximized now? … how much time is spent comatose in front of a TV? … how much time is spent interacting with your family?
5. Do you dash home from work right at 5pm and do nothing? … or dive into a passion (hobby etc)? … or spend quality time with your family?
6. How many hours of my week are productive … Work? Family? Hobby? Health? Charity? Is the mix right? Am I “wasting” too much time?
7. If I was hit by a bus tomorrow would I have regrets about what I have done with my life? If so, then what would you do differently?

If you ask yourself the hard questions about how you live your life, it can lead to a different perspective and with a little planning could lead to small changes that make big differences and subsequently increased satisfaction.

We are all different and you only get one shot at this, so make the most of it.

“Life is not a dress rehearsal.” … Rose Tremain