You can't coach tall!

I wish I could remember who the basketball coach was that said the words above, "You can't coach tall!" I believe he was talking about the struggles of competing against a team that had tall players and how there is challenge in going against a team that has the height advantage.

"You can't teach personality", I say. It is great to hire someone that has a tremendous amount of knowledge about the products you sell. It is great to have someone that is passionate about the industry you are in. The concern I have is in watching these people with customers. They seem to have a preferece to be around the products more than they want to be around the customers.

They don't have personality! As you consider hiring your next staff person, may I suggest you consider hiring for personality over hiring for product or technical knowledge. You can hire based on technical knowledge and try to teach the person to have a personality. (Has that ever worked for you?) Or, you can hire someone that has great personal skills and then teach them the technical product skills.

You can teach technical and product, but you can't teach personality!

Sales per employee

As the holiday season approachs, many businesses are considering adding additional staff. While few businesses go through this exercise, an important measure for the success of your sales people is 'sales per employee'. To determine your current level of sales per employee you divide the total annual sales by the number of full time employees. Of course, as you have full time and part time employees, there is a bit of mathematics involved to convert the part time hours into full time employees. The financial ratios calculator page on our website will help you with this exercise.

Click on this link to visit this page: Financial Ratios Calculator Page

Christmas Tree Auction

Here is a great idea for publicity and engaging your customers during the holiday season. Display several artifical or real Christmas trees in your business. For each tree you display, contact a charity to decorate that tree with decorations you provide. Customers are then invited to submit a bid to purchase their favorite tree. You create a 'ballot' on which they put their name, address, phone, and e-mail (this helps to build your mailing list), and their bid for the tree.

The highest bid for each tree wins that tree with the proceeds going to that charity. Work this promotion right, and you will get some great coverage from the media.