Why you have to get to know your people

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April 19, 2012 CONNECT WITH SMARTBRIEF Share | Sign up | Archive | Advertise The Leaderboard    Why you have to get to know your people It's critical for leaders to understand the personalities of the people they manage, Jim Keenan writes. "It's not enough to have talented people if you can't use them correctly. You end up wasting your time and their skills," he writes. A Sales Guy blog (4/18)       Sales Teams Are Stretched Too Thin To Maximize Revenue Sales teams across the globe are expected to cover more than ever. New research shows that this has made it much more difficult for them to see competitive defections and opportunities to sell more – "blind spots" that can cause as much as 12% of revenue to fall through the cracks. Learn how companies are taking simple steps to address this. Sales Strategies    Getting sales and marketing to work together Often, sales and marketing departments fail to get on the same page. "Salespeople want marketing to focus on lead generation," sales coach Jill Konrath says. "But their definition of a quality lead is often very different from what they're typically handed by marketing." Salespeople should understand what kind of situations to expect, and marketers must understand the concept of trigger events. Sales & Marketing Management (4/18)       Keys for achieving sales success with tablets If you're ready to hand tablets out to your sales team, it's a good idea to come up with a standard set of productivity-boosting applications, Will Kelly writes. It's also important to make sure your company's online content works well with major tablets on the market, he writes. TechRepublic (4/18)       Tips for shortening the sales cycle Sales cycles are getting longer for a few reasons in particular, Dan Perry writes. To address that problem, managers should focus on the sales process while coaching and encourage representatives to prepare formally for sales calls. Sales Benchmark Index/Sales Force Effectiveness Blog (4/16)       What Every Small-Business Owner Needs To Know For Tax Season Small-business owners can seize many opportunities to reduce their taxes, lower their expenses and invest in employees and equipment this tax season. It’s important to understand the credits, deductions and strategies you can use to help maximize your business’s tax advantages. Download your 2012 Small Business Tax Strategy white paper now, exclusively for SmartBrief readers. Daily Data Points    Internet ad spending climbed more than 20% last year Data show that online ad spending was up 22% in 2011 to exceed $31 billion. Mobile advertising, which increased 149% to reach $1.6 billion, climbed the most rapidly in 2011, according to the data. MediaPost Communications/Online Media Daily (4/18)       Other News Majority of CEOs plan to increase IT spending, survey finds CIO Asia (4/19)       Europe's financial troubles drag down commodity prices TheStreet.com/The Associated Press (4/18)       Over 1,700 CMOs shared their insights on the fundamental shifts transforming business and the world. Find out how they are striking a better balance between investing in solutions that drive efficiency and those that improve decision making, foster collaboration,and enhance customer relationships. On the Road    Breathing life into dead time at the airport This feature offers four ways to wisely use the dead time you face at airports. "People tend to find themselves with 30 minutes and start doing things at random. Have a list of tasks you can and need to work on," suggests time-management coach Mark Forster. Check out the ways you can get things done while you while away the hours. Financial Times (tiered subscription model) (4/17)       Leveraging Cloud Security to Weather Threatening Storms Web attacks and retribution campaigns are on the rise, and they have become more frequent, more random and more extreme. This paper assesses the current cyber threat environment and discusses the use of distributed cloud services as an effective means to protect against evolving, modern-day IT threats. App Update    How to set up custom vibrations in iOS 5 Using custom vibration patterns can allow you to identify callers even while your ringer is off. After enabling custom vibrations on your iOS 5 device, you can set different patterns for specific contacts. GigaOm/The Apple Blog (4/18)       On the Internet, page-loading delays can stop customers from buying. Download our free report 3 Proven Ways to Boost Transactions with Web Acceleration and learn how Limelight Network's front-end acceleration technology can improve Time to Actions. SmartPulse    Does your company have a key account program? No  50.00% Yes  50.00% Has your company equipped its sales team with tablets? Yes No 10 Principles for Building an Effective Human Capital Plan The Human Capital Plan is an important tool that organizations use to drive focused actions that can ensure goal achievement and business success. It allows organizations to assess, plan for, and respond proactively to its human capital challenges and needs. Download the white paper to learn more. Featured Content    Should Your Business Be on Pinterest? Courtney Rubin How ZinePack Went From Zero to $4 Million Donna Fenn 3 Slick Analytics Dashboards to Monitor Your Business Website Lauren Hockenson 10 Tips on Using Facebook to Boost Business Angela Stringfellow HP, Staples Launch New Green Initiative for Small Businesses Ashley Lutz Making Small Talk  Practical joke decorated Pentagon wall for months A 1982 picture of Naval Academy graduate Capt. Eldridge Hord III hung for months in the Pentagon while disguised as a portrait of an ensign supposedly lost at sea in 1908. The conspiracy was carried out by "an alliance of British and Canadian military officers and a clandestine, predawn operation later dubbed 'THE PROJECT,' " writes Adam Entous. The Wall Street Journal (4/16), National Public Radio (text and audio)/The Two-Way blog (4/17)       Position Title Company Name Location Director of Sales – eDiscovery Corporate Recommind Washington, DC Director, Federal Sales PC Mall Gov Chantilly, VA Click here to view more job listings. SmartQuote  The single biggest problem with sales today is sales reps are mismatched to the buyer. They think like a sales rep and not like a buyer." --Dan Perry, writing at Sales Benchmark Index's Sales Force Effectiveness Blog       SmartBrief on Sales Partners SmartBrief delivers need-to-know news in over 100 targeted email newsletters to over 3 million readers. 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