Let’s say you get fired, or laid off, or you quit because after two weeks you know you’re at the worst company on the planet. In all of those cases, you will face the interview question: What happened at your last job?

Here’s the answer you should always give: “I left to do x.” And you fill in for x.

Which brings me to what you should be really focusing on when you are unemployed: Learning and growing. Because this is what you are going to talk about in job interviews.

Check the rest out here: Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist.

The globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone, particularly in the rich world. Entrepreneurs can now come from almost anywhere, including once-closed economies such as India and China. And many of them can reach global markets from the day they open their doors, thanks to the falling cost of communications.

For most people the term “entrepreneur” simply means anybody who starts a business, be it a corner shop or a high-tech start up. This special report will use the word in a narrower sense to mean somebody who offers an innovative solution to a (frequently unrecognised) problem. The defining characteristic of entrepreneurship, then, is not the size of the company but the act of innovation.

The whole article is here: Heroic entrepreneurs | Global heroes

Business managers, particularly entrepreneurs and small business owners, have a downright awful track record when it comes to hiring sales talent. When you hire the right sales resource, you see instant results and amazing things begin to happen. On the other hand, when you hire a mediocre (or worse) salesperson, you shell out paycheck after paycheck and begin to feel like you’re running a corporate welfare program.

Sound familiar? Read the series:

• How to Hire Salespeople, Part 1: Why It’s So Hard.
• How to Hire Salespeople, Part 2: Reading a Sales Resume
• How to Hire Salespeople, Part 3: The Interview
• How to Hire Salespeople, Part 4: The Offer

I think it is an important—natural question every sales professional should be constantly be challenging themselves and their customers with. Great sales professionals challenge their customers to think about their businesses differently. They not only solve their customers problems, but they find new opportunities for their customers to expand and grow their businesses. They bring their customers new ideas and possibilities—possibly provocative ideas.

These ideas engage the customer in a different type of conversation with the customer. We move from how they solve today’s problems, but what they can do and where they go tomorrow. The interesting thing is that you don’t have to have the “right idea,” the mere act of engaging the customer in a different conversation changes your relationship profoundly.

So Now It’s Provocative Selling!.

This 60-minute session is to introduce the “uninitiated” to the basics of searching for leads and resumes using Google, and for more experienced recruiters who want to learn new things.

The session will be especially helpful for those who are registering for the Virtual Recruiter Series who are either unfamiliar with basic search syntax or want a quick refresher.

Session goals include:

• Share the basics of Boolean search. You will see how simple search strings are constructed and how they can be used to find resumes and other leads available on the web but otherwise hard to find..
• Focus on finding engineering and technical talent with an emphasis on identifying diversity candidates. However, the techniques can be applied to any skill set and/or location.
• Provide access to additional free resources including self-paced study guides, tutorials, videos and research

For quick registration, click here »

The social web describes the way people congregate online to share their content, information and other stuff; how they make connections and keep in touch; and get their news and so on.

Communities like MySpace, Facebook, and Ning; online networks like LinkedIn; social bookmarking sites like Delicious; video and music sharing sites and so on, provide rich pickings for intelligence gathering. “Unpublished” databases, spreadsheets, membership lists, org. charts, and more provide rich pickings too.

With “insider knowledge” it is possible to gain true advantage. More than prospecting for business or beating out the competition, finding a new job or recruiting hard-to-find talent, competitive intelligence can give us access to opportunities otherwise unimagined.

Topics covered in the session include:

• Basic search techniques, research tips, shortcuts and “hacks”
• How to optimize your searching online using free tools and programs
• How to gather useful competitive intelligence and what to do with it
• Mining the “deep web” for invaluable information
• How to connect competitive- and social intelligence to engage your targets
• A review of free tools and resources that put you ahead of the game.

This session will be recorded and made available for all attendees. The session is supported with online resources and includes self-paced study guides.

For quick registration, please click here »

A few weeks ago, while listening to a favorite morning radio program, I was reminded of the impact on our thoughts in any economy…

You see during the days of Jimmy Carter’s 10% unemployment and 21% interest rates we did not have the various ways to distribute negative commentary. Internet? No! Cable TV? No! Talk show hosts? No! What did we do. We just worked through it.

Think about your salespeople and think about your leadership. How does negative news affect commercial and residential real estate professionals? How does losing a sale or having a sale placed on hold affect salespeople? How does learning about the stock market’s ups and downs affect marketing folks? How does news of an impending depression affect selling strength? How does hearing negative remarks about a President’s economic moves affect your belief in prospecting and sales goal achievement? How does filling your mind with all this stuff affect your ability to inspire others? And, in how many ways and how often do you take in these messages and hold them in your mind?

Great Sales Managers Guard Against Negative Thinking In Any Economy | SalesManage Solutions Blog.

Being in the sales industry requires a worker to be effective and knowledgeable in the world of business and sales in particular. Salesmen should impress their future bosses with their capability to carry on responsibilities and activities involving selling. The most common qualification that companies look for in a potential salesman is his capability to increase the viability of the product.

They should take part in the participation of consumers for the company’s products and services. Potential salesman should have the experience on the field and assure his employers that he could be a great asset for the company. Applying for a position in sales must not just involve a competent professional history. You should also concentrate on the sales cover letters if you want a breakthrough. You should be accounted for a presentable cover letter by your employers.

Read the rest of Mark Mattey’s article here: Keeping Sales Career on Track by Using Cover Letter Samples.

I won’t lie to you.

We’re a damn tricky generation. We’ve got Facebook, web-enabled cell phones, blogs, LiveJournals, Twitter accounts, and MySpace. It’s hard to know what’s business friendly and what’s just goofing off.

In a 2009 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, 61% of chief executives say they have trouble recruiting and integrating younger employees.

Worse than that, we have this sort of… superiority complex. Or so we’ve been told. And we’re sure you’ve heard it, too. Bunk. Pure drivel. What we -do- have is access to almost unlimited amounts of experience and information at our fingertips. Give us a week and we’ll be experts in anything.

Oh, right, and we’ve got doting parents, too… who carted us from one soccer match to the next while we graciously and gratefully grabbed up our trophies for participation and good sportsmanship. We’re apparently very dumb, you know, what with having the highest SAT scores in decades. We’re also drugged out on any number of legal or illegal prescriptions, to compensate for our rampant A.D.D.

Do you really believe all that crap? Neither do I.

Psychotic Resumes.

The session helps identify three areas in the recruiting and retention process where problems typically go unnoticed until they become trouble for the organization:

• Friction: We isolate the exact points in the recruiting process where the conditions for wildfires are created. We share practical steps to take to avoid unnecessary problems down the road
• Ignition: We pinpoint the fault lines the selection, onboarding and ramp-up of new hires where recruiting problems are exacerbated. We identify these and provide appropriate steps to take to avoid a disaster
• Explosion: A step-by-step example is given for creating a sales recruiting and retention process map. We show you how to identify flash points and what to do to avoid new wildfires while the process is being fixed.

The briefing includes learning guides and other supporting documents.

For easy registration, please click here »