Paul McCord's Page

Are you a sales manager or sales executive? Are you aware that there is a radical change coming to what you do and how you do it? If your company already uses a Sales Performance Management or Sales Force Automation program you may already be feeling the beginnings of the change. If your company has a CRM program, over the coming months and years, you’ll see the change also. And if your company hasn’t adopted any of these technologies, don’t worry, it will come to you also. For most sales manag… Continue

Although an easy way to recruit, employing contract and in-house recruiters is generally a poor way for companies to attract top industry talent. Furthermore, studies indicate that within 12 months of the hire, 60% of all new hires are considered unsatisfactory (all hires, not just those who were introduced by recruiters). This doesn’t mean the under performing employees leave the company—it simply means that position is now filled by an unsatisfactory employee. Recruiters have an extremely tou… Continue

How often have you been exhorted to set your goals down in writing? How often have you done it? How often have you immediately forgotten about them once you’ve completed the writing exercise? Most of us have experienced the frustration of setting goals only see them fade away into nothingness. We never reach them. More than likely, we never think seriously about them after we’ve ‘established’ them. They make us feel good for a while but they’re really not something ‘that’s going to happen.’ Th… Continue

There was a time when marketing and advertising were viewed as seat of the pants processes, based on gut feeling, hope, and simply looking at the overall results to determine whether they were ‘working.’ Instead of trying to understand marketing as a quantifiable activity, the marketing department would simply generate a number of targeted activities such as direct mail pieces, radio, TV, and print ads, and other such promotional pieces, then sit back to see what happened. If sales increased, t… Continue

We humans are funny animals. We tend to do the same things over and over, no matter what the consequences. Although we are admonished to learn from our mistakes, more often than not we continue to make the same mistakes time after time. Maybe not the big obvious mistakes, but the little ones that we don’t notice we keep doing and doing. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that if we’re doing something that has a negative outcome that we’d stop doing it? Even more fundamental, doesn’t it seem reasonable… Continue