Salesperson on Measuring Salespeople Relations

As I finish “Measure What Matters" by Katie Pain, one of her last chapters intrigued me. Within Chapter 12, she directly focuses on how to measure relationships with salespeople, channel partners, and franchises. Now, I could bore you with the exact steps on how to measure and blah blah blah, but what I want to focus around is the way she introduced and explained other measures of success in this area. 

As many know, I am a sales representative for a promotional product retailer. So when I read the following ways she proposed, it made me stop and think about how it related to my experience being a salesperson.

-More visibility than the competition

            The business that I work for is relatively small in both size and overall influence in regards to the market share. The thing that sets us apart though is how we strive to make every order one that our customer would want to promote and be proud of the work that we provide. We do not simply create articles about what we do, we want our customers to mention us publicly because it provides an additional insight, or visibility, that could not have been seen otherwise. The measurement of success is more so for bigger company because of the comparing aspect of sheer volume of coverages. 

-Better image than the competition

            I think this measurement concept is beyond the need to explain. For any business to be successful, it must have a reputable image. The better the image compared to the competition, the more sales or exposure it will get. At the franchise level, this concept is a lot easier due to the analytical software out there that are able to measure the articles, blog posts, and treads already out there. 

-Getting visibility for local franchisees  

            This idea revolved around the establishment of company spokespeople as community leaders on certain topics of interest. At the business that I work, we all take on this role as soon as we become hired on. We have weekly meetings for the sole purpose to get across our "corporate" messages. 

  

Until Next Time,

Matt

Hunger Games Disappointment

Well this weekend was the release of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2" and sadly it did not go over as well as planned. The movie was hyped to be the movie of the holidays and was backed by a large fan following. The only issue is that the movie openings did not have as long as a wait as it project it would have. 

The movie is the fourth and final film in the series to be released. The trilogy has been building up its marketing promotions for some time now in hopes that it would bring the full fan following to opening. Sadly, that was not the case by the results of the box office sales. 

Now, I too am one of those fans who decided on not watching it on opening day. Do not get me wrong, I will see it the movie someday soon but just not on opening weekend. I think the films directors and marketing staff had to high hopes for what the last movie could bring to the table. With that, the marketing strategies could really only be focused towards those who have read the book or those who have seen all of the previous movies. It is from this that the amount of people who they could sell tickets to was already limited. In any right persons mind it is obvious it would not do higher sales or profits than the previously released films. 

Until Next Time,

Matt

Winning Weekend (Almost)

All I can say is what a weekend for my favorite sports teams. Just as a disclaimer, I am from Michigan and I am proud to be a Michigander. Anyways, this weekend many of my favorite football teams had games against challenging opponents. The following is the results of the "almost" winning weekend. 

On Friday, Ohio Northern University (ONU) had its first game of the NCAA playoffs against Franklin College. ONU was down by 16 points and was struggling to make any moves, that is, until it started to snow. Franklin was a dominant throwing team while ONU was a dominant running team. When the snow came down, it made it hard for Franklin to do what they do best, while ONU was not phased even in the slightest. ONU rallied and stuck it to Franklin by finishing and more so winning the game, 27-22. That was win number one for me this weekend. 

On Saturday, two games had my attention for a majority of the day. First was the Michigan verse Penn. State game. Although I am a Michigan State University (MSU) fan, I still root for its sister Big Ten School in the same state. The game was interesting to say the least but Michigan came out on top by winning the game 28-26. 

The most important game of the weekend was the Michigan State University verse "the" Ohio State University (OSU). This game was crazy to say the least. OSU has had a bunch of criticism against its schedule thus far in the season. The team was 10-0 and had yet to face a team ranked in the top 25. Going into this game, MSU was ranked ninth with a record of 9-1. MSU was also posed an even harder challenge due to the game being at OSU's home stadium and playing without its starting quarterback. The game was a dogfight and in the end, MSU kicked a 41-yard field goal to win the game, 17-14. As a MSU fan who attends a university that strongly roots for OSU, this was a huge win for my weekend.  

Today, my favorite NFL team won as well. The Detroit Lions pulled out a win against the Oakland Raiders with the final score being 18-13. The Lions is a team that must fight for every win more than any other team out there, at least that is my opinion. Therefore, this win was the cherry on top on the weekend of winning.

You are probably asking why I kept referring to it as "almost" winning even though all of my favorite teams had won. Well the answer to that is not one that can be seen from a single watchable game. The reason why this weekend was not perfect was that my Fantasy Football team let me down and was absolutely destroyed in points. I was projected to win by 35 points with a score of 127, but sadly, that number is solely theoretical. My team ended up not even breaking 50 points while my opponent ended up scoring more than I originally was projected. 

Overall, you cannot win them all...but winning four out of five is not half bad. 

Until Next Time,

Matt