Our WCSO theme for next week will be Results.

While improving Results is something we are all focused on there are a number of approaches we can take to do this. Prior to next Tuesday’s meeting I would like you to think about the following questions:
• What is one thing the company could do differently to help you be more effective, which will help you improve your Results?
• What is one thing you can personally do differently to be more effective, which will help you improve your Results?

While we won’t ask you to share the results out-loud please be prepared to answer these questions. Your answers need to be very specific.

For example, please don’t answer #1 by saying, “Have fewer meetings.” On the other hand, if there are specific meetings that you attend that don’t hold value to you then you may want to say that.

Same goes for your personal change. Please be very specific.

********************************************
We will be sharing the results of the Content Library survey in Tuesday’s meeting.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Our WCSO theme for next week will be Digital Optimization and Fulfillment.

As all of you are aware, our new team was created in Q1 and it is time to provide you with an update on our progress.

As a reminder, when we built the new team here were our goals:
1. Reduce processing time – to increase sales time – by eliminating the need to work with multiple sources for getting a digital campaign live and monitored
2. Reduce churn by ensuring fulfillment was done accurately on the front end and by optimizing campaigns
3. Increase our average digital value by providing upsell recommendations

We conducted a survey over the past couple of weeks and many of you shared your thoughts on how we are doing so far. I will share those results with you on Tuesday.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Our WCSO theme for next week will be Sales Express.

Sales Express is a program that gets all key stakeholders in the organization to rally around our Top Opportunities. The goal is to provide ways to help you all move Top Opportunities more quickly through the 5-Step Sales Process. We started this last month when we brought a group together including Carol Hudler, Kevin Huff (Finance), Tara Quarrick (Gannett Local), Bob Faricy (Marketing), Megan McCrea (Digital) and Daphne Lowell (Client Solutions) to meet with a few of our sales managers to review our Top Opportunities. We wanted that group to know who we were targeting and also think through ways they or their departments could personally help move these targets faster through the sales process. I have joined a few team meetings as well to talk about the things I can do to assist. Next week, Kevin Huff and I will be meeting with several AEs to talk about ways we can grow ROP frequency from current print customers. In that meeting, the AEs will bring in their proposals and we will give them immediate feedback so they can then work to quickly close the business. As you can tell, we want to move quickly here and exhaust all of our resources to help close key business. Expect to hear more over the coming weeks about Sales Express and how it will apply to your sales team.

**************************************************

We launched the Content Library earlier this month and hope you have taken the time to use it. The attached survey asks for some of your initial impressions about it. We would appreciate you completing it by next Friday, April 26.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N2GCYMT

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Our WCSO theme for next week will be our New Incentive Plan.

As you are well aware, the main objective of our new world class incentive plan is to encourage a more high-performance oriented culture. We want the plan to be simple, drive revenue growth (both total and digital) and encourage you to focus on quarterly rather than monthly results. We gave each of you an incentive calculator so you can easily determine your incentive payout at various levels of performance. Our goal is to do whatever we can to help you reach and exceed world class levels.

Next Tuesday I will review the results for Q1.

**************************************************

It is time for you to do the quarterly assessment of your manager. Please complete the attached survey by next Friday, April 19.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SD7PXB9

Thanks and have a great weekend.

As a follow up to last week’s WCSO theme (Development) we will focus on KPIs next week. With Mutual Commitment meetings just around the corner it is time to do your KPI reviews.

Let’s review why KPIs are important. KPIs align with our company’s strategic vision and are the true drivers of revenue generation and high performance. An analogy from our daily lives: to keep our health in check, we monitor our blood pressure and our heart rate, and we test our cholesterol and body mass index. When something is out of whack, most of us would respond by having further tests done or going on medication or otherwise changing the root cause of the problem. If we didn’t, our health would eventually decline.

KPIs are meant to do the same thing—keep our overall performance healthy, and when something gets out of whack, it triggers remedies through coaching to drive up the overall “health” of our performance.

We are tracking 11 KPIs. I know that sounds like a lot but let’s break them down. The first five are focused on total revenue and digital revenue. They are:
• YTD total revenue vs. goal
• YTD digital revenue vs. goal
• YTD total revenue vs. last year
• YTD digital revenue vs. last year
• # of quarters achieving goal in rolling 12 months

I think we can all agree that these are important measurements that we keep a very close eye on all the time.

The other six are indicators of good “health” as mentioned above. They are:
• # and $ of opportunities in Present & Close
• # and $ of opportunities in pipeline
• Win rate
• % of accounts buying digital
• Time from step 2-5
• Average spend per account (Total spend & Digital spend)

In no way shape or form are we going to ask you to get hyper-focused on all 11 KPIs. Rather, we will select the handful that, with improved performance, will help you reach you overall goals. Everyone’s individual focus may be a little different. For some it will be moving opportunities more quickly through the pipeline, others may need to grow their revenue per customer and others may need to grow the percentage of customers buying digital. Use the KPI dashboards to help build your individual development plan.

As a reminder, please be thinking about which development areas you want to focus on in Q2 and be prepared to discuss those with your manager.

****************************************************

When we announced the creation of our new digital optimization and fulfillment team I told you that we would be soliciting your feedback. I have included a link to a survey. Because this whole initiative is so critical to our success the survey is longer than usual – about 20 questions. It still shouldn’t take much longer than about 10 minutes and I would really appreciate getting your thoughts. Please complete the survey by next Friday, April 12.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KDJ3NPL

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Our WCSO theme for next week will be Development.

I have talked a number of times about our desire to create a “Coaching Culture” that is obsessed with the Development of everyone in the department. There are a number of things we are doing to move ourselves in that direction. From Annual Reviews to weekly 1:1s to Mutual Commitment Meetings our goal is to provide you with the training, resources and tools you need to be a world class sales executive. It is important to note that Development is not about micro-management, but rather, it is concerned with identifying real opportunities for continued improvement and advancement.

When you review the Core Competencies of a Sales Executive and look at the competency “Collaboration” you will see a bullet point that says, “welcomes management coaching and feedback; constantly strives for improvement.” This requires you to be introspective and honest with yourself about where you have room to improve. This is not something that everyone is comfortable with and it can be hard to get your arms around. But in a world class sales organization all of us must be open to coaching and feedback and constantly strive to get better.

We started the Mutual Commitment Meetings earlier this year and now that Q1 is finished it is time to start preparing for our next round. These meetings will recap your results and progress from Q1 as well as spell out a few development areas for Q2. In the survey we did following the last Mutual Commitment Meetings:
• 100% of you said the Mutual Commitment Meeting was helpful ensuring you can continue to grow your knowledge and skills.
• 97% of you said the goals you and your manager identified from your Mutual Commitment Meeting were the right ones for you to focus on.

This tells me you are seeing value in the meetings, which is very good news. We will get the schedule for the next meetings out to you soon. In the meantime, be thinking about which development areas you want to focus on in Q2 and be prepared to discuss those with your manager.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Another article reinforcing the fact that print Yellow Pages is no longer a viable medium. A great opportunity for us to call on these remaining advertisers and pitch our digital solutions.

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/03/27/annual-print-yp-death-watch/

Good article.

http://heavyhittersales.typepad.com/heavy_hitter_sales_sales_/2013/01/top-reasons-salespeople-lose.html

Many of you have told me that we needed a way to easily search for and find market research and other important information. During the 2013 Strategic Plan presentation I announced that we were developing a Content Library to do exactly that. I’m very pleased to let you know that the library is now available for use!

The library will reside in Sales Force.com and we will begin training next week on how to use it. You will be able to easily search for files without having to dig through folders. It will include forms, research information, rate cards, etc. Everything you could find previously in the Public Folder will be in the new Content Library, but it will be organized much better. In addition, because it is housed in SFDC, you will be able to access the information from anywhere. Plus, you will be able to sign up for emails to alert you when updates or changes have been made to a document.

We look forward to hearing your feedback once you start using the library so that we can make continuous improvements to make sure it remains a helpful tool for you.

*****************************************************

In Tuesday’s meeting we will review the results of the Q2 goal setting survey.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Info we can all use!

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-easily-double-your-sales.html