Recent Articles from Merit Gest
Three secrets sales trainers don’t want you to know
Training is a tough business. The old saying, “Those who can, do – and those who can’t, teach,” makes an already challenging business something you can’t even be proud of doing. To protect their fragile egos, trainers have a secret language that makes them feel a bit more important. Sorry, fellow trainers…I’m breaking the code […]
Top 10 tips for onboarding salespeople
Business owners and CEOs of companies generating $3 million to $50 million in annual revenue were recently asked, “What is the most frustrating position to hire for within their company?” The answer: salespeople. Most managers have paid their dues and worked their tails off, clawing their way up the corporate ladder. However, most managers were […]
The real reasons people quit
Steven has worked at the same consulting company for the past seven years. When he started, he was a single man out to prove that he deserved to be on the partner track at his firm. Over the course of the seven years, he got married, moved to a bigger house in the suburbs, and […]
Where emotional intelligence meets LinkedIn
Emotional Intelligence is defined as “the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships” according to Daniel Goleman, author of several books on the topic. A large body of research supports it as a key predictor of success in […]
Two keys to survival in the sales jungle
Of course, strong selling skills and a consistent plan of action are critical to successfully closing deals, but that’s not all it takes to survive today. Those who have strong self-regard and a high degree of flexibility will be the survivors in this wild sales environment. Self-regard is the ability to respect and accept oneselft […]
Why before what and how
What mediocre leaders don’t understand is that it’s tough for people to rally together for a stronger profit margin alone. Our brains don’t think like that. But stronger profit margins are exactly what happen when people ban together for something that calls them forth to become more than what t...
To coddle or not to coddle?
“To coddle or not to coddle?”, that is the new question. Do you go out of your way to create a warm and welcoming environment with the intention of sending a message to your new hire that you are glad they have joined the team or do you shy away from anything too welcoming because you don’t want t...
Logo mug versus paper cup
In a recent Vistage presentation, Chair Phil Liebman, posed a question that sparked an interesting debate about the distinction between a probationary period versus an onboarding period. The conversation came about as I was sharing my top 10 list of tips to instantly improve your onboarding process. Number five on the list is “create a […]
Job descriptions versus job agreements
For years, I’ve been encouraging clients to create job agreements rather than job descriptions, but it wasn’t until last week that I fully appreciated the science behind why this simple shift in linguistics makes such a big difference in behavior. Job descriptions are a one-way communication of wh...
Gear up for New Year’s hires
All the folks who made New Year’s resolutions involving making a change in their work life are back in the office. They may be in your office. Or maybe they didn’t wait around for the end of the year bonus check and they already left, giving you an opportunity to hire someone better. If the […]
Feedback vs. feedforward
Feedforward is about encouragement because it focuses on solutions and what can go right in the future. When done right, feedforward is highly motivational and gets people into positive action.
Let’s look at two ways a manager can talk with a direct report:
A six-minute fix for your onboarding process
At the end of the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy learned that she had the power to return home all along. All she had to do was click her heels three times and say, “There’s no place like home” and just like that she was back on the farm in Kansas. If only […]