9 Questions to Ask... Before You Take a Sales Job

I get a fair amount of email from sales pros asking whether or not they should accept (or stay with) a sales job. The answer is really pretty simple; you need to assess whether or not that company is a good fit. With that in mind, here are the 9 questions that should always ask, before accepting any sales position.

* Question #1.
Do I have the right personality? Some sales jobs require an outgoing personality, while others are more contemplative and solutions oriented. If you have a mismatched personality, you’re not going to be happy, no matter how good you are at selling.
* Question #2.
Will they train me adequately? You don’t want to spend three months eating dog food while you figure out your new employer’s products and sales process. You need to hit the ground running, so you should expect top-notch training, provided the moment you’re hired.
* Question #3:
Can this manager coach me? Having access to somebody who can help you be successful is half the battle. You want t manager who can tell you what you’re doing wrong and encourage what you’re doing right. If not, it’s time to look elsewhere.
* Question #4:
Can they provide good information? Needless to say, the most useful info is a list of QUALIFIED leads, but there’s also competitive research, sales tools, USEFUL presentations, unique sales propositions, and so forth. If it’s not there, you’re in for a slog.
* Question #5:
Is there a clear sales process? You want to see a clearly-defined, easily-understood sales process, with easily-measurable metrics, can help you understand exactly what you need to do in order to be successful. If it’s not there, you’ll be winging it.
* Question #6:
Will I have my own territory? Unless you want to constantly fighting other sales pros for the same business, you should expect to have an exclusive region or industry segment where only you are allowed to sell. If it’s not there, then you’ll always be fighting your peers.
* Question #7:
Do they pay commissions promptly? You’d be amazed how many firms let the bean counters rule the roost and wait weeks, even months, before paying the people who are bringing in the business. So ask around and make sure they’re not pikers.
* Question #8.
Is there a generous bonus plan? If you do a superlative job (like taking the extra time to sell a product that’s difficult to sell, rather than just cherry picking what’s easy), you have every reason to expect that you’ll get some extra rewards.
* Question #9.
Am I interested in what I’m selling? This is the most important question of all. If you’re not interested in selling something, you’ll probably be lousy at it. Customers will sense that you’d rather be elsewhere and often suggest that you do so.

The above is based largely on conversations and interviews with Robert Carr, CEO at Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.

Boehmer Box installs Rapida sheetfed press

Mark Caines, president and chief operating officer of Boehmer Box LP

KITCHENER, ONT.—Boehmer Box, a company that specializes in the printing of offset paperboard packaging has installed a KBA Rapida 142 56" six colour sheetfed press with coating from KBR Graphics. The press includes KBA’s unique board packaging and is UV-prepped.

Boehmer’s customer base of food, beverage and consumer packaged goods rely on high-energy color-critical graphics. The company has 270 employees and works from a 320,000 square foot facility.

Kingsweb and Queenstone Services closing

4 March 2010

MISSISSAUGA, ONT.—KingsWeb Inc. and sister company Queenstone Services have closed their offices. KingsWeb had been operated by the Slater family for the past 25 years.

The Mississauga, Ont.-based commercial printer operated in a 50,000 square foot facility and offered services including sheet-fed and full-web printing.

PrintCan’s calls to KingsWeb and Queenstone offices had not been returned at press time. A general message on the company voicemail said the offices were closed.

Lowe-Martin and Imaging Excellence enter into alliance

12 March 2010

OTTAWA—PrintCan has learned from industry sources that The Lowe-Martin Group and Toronto-based Imaging Excellence have entered into an alliance. Imaging Excellence president Scott Brockie confirmed that the two companies have entered into a “strategic alliance” but would not say anymore.

Industry sources say the sales staff from Imaging Excellence has moved into Lowe-Martin’s office. PrintCan was unable to reach CEO Ward Griffin by press time.

Ottawa-based Lowe-Martin Group also has offices in Mississauga, Ont. and Galway, Ireland. It ranked number 28 on the 2009 Graphic Monthly Gold List of Top 100 Printers in Canada with estimated sales of $50,000,000 in 2008.

Toronto-based Imaging Excellence ranked number 78 on the 2009 Gold List with estimated sales of $9,900,000.

Stay with PrintCan for more details as they become available.

— Val Maloney

Donnelley/Bowne deal: what it means for Canada

8 March 2010

by Lorne Patterson

RR Donnelley is planning to acquire Bowne & Co., a provider of shareholder and marketing communications services for approximately US$481 million in cash, or $11.50 per share. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies and the acquisition is expected to close in the second half of fiscal 2010.


Headquartered in New York, Bowne has operations in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The company generated US$675 million in revenues during 2009 and offers digital one-to-one printing services for health care, transactional communications, financial services, marketing communications and other applications.

In Canada, Bowne has operations in four cities. The financial printing sales centres are in Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto. In addition to the financial printing office in Toronto, Bowne has a commercial printing plant located in Don Mills—a neighbourhood within the city. In the Toronto market Bowne is best known as a commercial print operation. The financial print segment is very specialized and probably wasn’t well understood by the marketplace or even the Bowne plant itself, for that matter. There’s also an operation in St Laurent, Quebec that provides customer communications, welcome kits, and 1-to-1 marketing communications.

So what will the merger mean to the Bowne operations in Canada? This is hard to say but as my editor says, when you don’t have any data you can still have an opinion. So, in my opinion, the Don Mills plant was always an anomaly in the Bowne empire, so I can’t see it being an integral part of the merger. Donnelley bought the Grafikom MIL operation in December 2008 so it’s unlikely they’ll need another Toronto operation. My guess is that it will be packaged up and sold.

The St. Laurent plant in Quebec is specialized enough that it could survive the merger. Customer communications, welcome kits, and 1-to-1 marketing communications should satisfy the strategic imperatives that Donnelley considers in acquisitions.

As for the financial printing sites, Donnelley opened a new financial services office in Calgary in March 2009. That location was designed to allow the company to address the financial print and related communications needs of businesses and law firms in Western Canada so that would make the Bowne site there redundant.

Donnelley has the Benwell Atkins plant in Vancouver, but not a large financial print presence in the B.C. market, so I’d look for some kind of consolidation in Vancouver.

I expect that the Toronto and Montreal financial centres will undergo some consolidation and rationalization as well.

I think that industry consultant Clint Bolte, in a comment on the Print CEO blog, put the deal in good perspective. On the world stage RRD has really put a major competitor out of business. Let’s not forget that the Canadian operations were by no means the main focus of this deal. Donnelly bought extremely valuable relationships with the financial services and legal community so it makes sense that some customer service and sales personnel will be retained. However, production and most other overhead probably won’t be needed in Canada as work will be consolidated into Donnelley’s existing plants.

But, consolidating Canada’s financial printing in Donnelley may also open the doors to some smaller boutique financial print operations that could service local needs. After all, not everyone likes to be serviced out of the States— be it Donnelley in Chicago or Bowne in New York.

Lorne Patterson was managing director of Bowne's financial printing operations across Canada. Since 2006, he has been a consultant to the printing industry

Baby Boomer Crisis 2010!

A new study warns that employers around the world are facing a critical loss of talent over the next decade as baby boomers retire.

That loss of experienced workers, Manpower Inc. warns, could be crippling for companies.

"Our population is aging rapidly, birth rates are declining and employers need to start asking where their workers are going to come from in the future," said Lori Rogers, Manpower's Canadian vice-president of operations.

The Manpower survey of 28,000 employers across 25 countries, including 1,300 in Canada, found just over two-thirds have no plan to recruit or retain older workers. Among Canadian firms, only 17 per cent said they have recruitment plans aimed at older workers and 24 per cent have strategies to keep their most senior employees.

Keeping the workers with the most experience is a thorny problem, Rogers said, because they're also the staff financially most able to retire.

The secret, she said, is flexibility, including part-time or contract work, and more telecommuting. Spicing up that recipe, she added, is the need for continuous training and early retirement incentives for those whose skills are no longer needed.

"Savvy employers are going to find ways to keep these people, otherwise your intellectual capital is going to go out the door," Rogers said.

Naresh Agarwal, of McMaster's DeGroote business school, said the Manpower study points again to a problem that has been looming for Canadian firms for many years.

"Many sectors of our economy are facing a human resources shortage now, and it's going to get worse if the current situation isn't changed," he said. "With the population trends we have in this country, this issue is going to continue to be a problem. And older workers are becoming a very important source of additional labour."

Today, he noted, the average retirement age of a worker is between 61 and 62, compared to 65 just a few years ago.

Flexibility, he added, is a critical way of appealing to this group.

"If the only choice is between working zero hours and 40 hours, then many older workers are going to choose to quit," he said.

Research by Statistics Canada has shown a willingness by older workers to stay in the paid labour force longer.

In 2005, the agency reported 68 per cent of men aged 55 to 64 had jobs, up from 59 per cent in 1998. Among women the number was 51 per cent, compared with 41 per cent six years earlier.

Jobs companies will find most difficult to fill

in the future:

1/ Sales Representatives

2/ Skilled Manual Trades (primarily carpenters, welders and plumbers)

3/ Technicians (primarily production/operations, engineering and maintenance)

4/ Engineers

5/ Accountants

6/ Labourers

7/ Production Operators

8/ Drivers

9/ Management/Executives

10/ Machinists/Operators

April 24, 2007

Steve Arnold
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 24, 2007)
(Source: Manpower Talent Shortage Survey 2007, 2007 Hot Jobs

2010, a year to grow!!!

Economists are cautiously optimistic that “recession” will no longer be a prominent phrase in the Canadian vocabulary in 2010 as the economy continues to trudge out of the so-called “great recession.” Statistics Canada reported Wednesday a modest 0.2 per cent month-over-month growth in real gross domestic product in October, leading many economists to believe growth in the last quarter of 2009 could reach as much as four per cent.

The recovery is largely being fuelled by activity in the real estate sector, which rose 7.2 per cent in October in a strong market for existing home sales.

Retail and wholesale trade and some tourism-related industries also showed growth, while the finance and insurance sector slipped. Goods-producing industries grew 0.1 per cent, with gains in utilities and construction.

CIBC World Markets economist Krishen Rangasamy said the October numbers did not reach the 0.4 per cent he had predicted, largely because of slips in mining and manufacturing.

But he said the expansions in September and October still put Canada on track towards achieving a GDP growth rate of four per cent in the final quarter of the year.

Rangasamy added that output expanded in October for the fourth time in five months, suggesting that the recession is “now well in the rear-view mirror.”

Increased retail sales in the past couple months have been consistent with November gains in employment, he said, adding that increased consumer confidence will drive holiday spending higher.

“When the labour market fares well, good things tend to happen because consumers have more money in their pockets and they spend more.”

Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist with BMO Capital Markets, says four per cent growth for the fourth quarter of 2009 might be too optimistic. He predicted growth would be closer to three per cent, after receiving less than impressive early results from November.

Porter added that following modest growth in the third quarter, three per cent growth in fourth quarter would be enough to declare the recession officially over.

“That would pretty much do it, if you end up with two full quarters of growth, that pretty much ends it,” he said.

BMO forecasts that Canada’s economy will post GDP growth of 2.6 per cent next year, which hovers close to growth in an average year as well as consensus for 2010 growth in the banking industry.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada’s forecast growth rate of three per cent is at the higher end of that spectrum.

If growth expands at the median rate economists are predicting, it would essentially reverse the 2.5 per cent decline seen this year.

In 2009, Canada saw the second worst economic decline it has faced in the past 50 years, with only 1982’s recession faring worse, Porter said.

Millan Mulraine, an economic strategist at TD Securities said that although the economic recovery is fragile, Canada is already out of recession mode.

He said the economy will fare much better in 2010 than in 2009 and expects at least a three per cent year over year growth for 2010.

“That would suggest that not only are we away from the recession but we’ve retraced some of the lost ground that the Canadian economy experienced during the recession.”

Even with a three per cent gain, economic growth would still be below 2007 levels, Mulraine said. However, that would at least leave the economy close to where it was before, as if recession hadn’t happened.

But with thousands of people still out of work and an unemployment rate of 8.5 per cent, it’s difficult to imagine the recession never happened.

Despite the growth, the Bank of Montreal is predicting the jobless rate will still average 10 per cent in the United States and 8.5 per cent in Canada next year.

But Mulraine said that over the next few months, there will be a significant pickup in the labour market and Canada could see close to a quarter of a million jobs added by the end of next year.

“That will take us close to the pace of job losses — we’ve lost about 300,000 jobs so far — and (we) will have retraced most of that by the end of next year.”

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Tuesday he is optimistic the Canadian economy has stabilized and will experience moderate growth next year.

Flaherty said he is seeing enough evidence that the economy has weathered the recession that he is sticking with his plan to end the $46.6-billion stimulus program as planned in the spring of 2011.

Courtesy of Stats Can Thursday Dec 24 2009