Are Your Sales Professionals Involved with Your Online Sales?

It is quite normal to find that the development of systems and processes for online sales is the preserve of the online marketing and web development teams within most companies. While this is indeed where most of the work will take place, companies could be missing a trick by not involving their sales force in the development and testing stages. Aside from the technical and functional aspects, one of the major elements of the development of online sales platforms to get right is the user journey. This is where your sales teams should step in. Sales professionals deal day in and day out with customers, so become very familiar with their behaviours and learn to recognise their motivations for purchasing. This knowledge can be invaluable when determining the content on your web pages, which take a customer from landing on a site to progressing through to a sales transaction. Your sales expertise will know what information is required to clinch a sale, so this needs to be reflected in your site. Sales staff can help you map out the ideal customer journey and flag up anything that may present itself as a barrier to buying. While some of this can be determined at development stage, the sales professionals can really add value when it comes to rolling out the site and testing it. Sales staff should be asked to use the website to complete sales transactions when they are in face-to-face meetings with customers. They should ideally ask the customer to carry out the online transaction for themselves while they record any issues or blockers that the customer encounters. Getting immediate feedback from a real customer is a great way to ensure your site is meeting the expectations of your target audience. The same can be done for testing signing up to membership schemes or registering to receive newsletters and updates. The sales industry demands a range of skills and abilities from its professionals, and it's not all about hard negotiating and not taking no for an answer. A quick review of vacancies being advertised by sales recruitment agencies in Worcestershire will show you the variety of sales roles on offer. If you are good at listening to customers and finding solutions to problems to ease processes, then there are any number of opportunities you could take advantage of. Talk to sales recruitment agencies in Worcestershire to find out which roles might best suit your skills.

Still Time to Update Your CV

Getting your CV just right can be the difference between making it through to the interview stage of a recruitment process and not hearing anything further. But do you find that all too often you see what looks like the ideal job with only a short space time to get your application together? Our first instinctive thought when we decide we need a new job is to start looking at what’s out there, and we don’t really think about reviewing or updating our CV until we see something we want to apply for. Ideally, unless you really are confident you have a job for life with your current employer, you should periodically review and update your CV. Good times to do this could be when you have achieved new goals, had a promotion at work or gained new qualifications. Not only will this mean that you have a good CV ready when you have a last-minute chance to apply for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but for the longer term picture it is an easy way to keep an up-to-date record of your career and professional and personal development. Periodically updating your CV means that you won’t forget any important information when you come to need it years down the line. If you need a prompt to get working on your CV, then a date for your diary is the 23rd of May, 2014. This is when the Jobs Fair will be coming to Coventry, showcasing the opportunities that local businesses and organisations have available. The recruitment fair will be held at the Belgrade Theatre and will be publicising vacancies from across a broad range of sectors and industries for a variety of job types. Even if you are not actively job hunting, it can be a good idea to keep an eye on what opportunities are out there. If you are looking for promotions and pay rises where you currently work, it can be a good way of assessing what the market rates are for the type of work you do. If you don’t get the promotion or pay rise, you will at least know what is available should you decide you need to apply for something new instead. It is a good idea to have your CV ready to pass to recruiting employers if you are interested in the vacancies they have available. However, if you still feel you need to work on getting your CV just right, then it is still worth coming along to the event to take advantage of the CV advice sessions. If you know what type of work you want to do, but not necessarily which companies you want to work for, it might be a good idea to speak to recruitment agencies which specialise in particular areas of work. So if you are interested in working in sales or business development, then speak to sales recruitment agencies in Coventry. Recruitment agents will often also have a presence at jobs fairs alongside hiring companies, so check out the exhibitors list for the Jobs Fair to see which sales recruitment agencies in Coventry will be attending.

Lights, Camera, Interview

So you have your CV ready, your interview suit pressed and have tidied your hair, but have you checked out how you look and come across on camera? No, this isn’t usually something we think about before heading off for an important job interview, but it might be time to start thinking that way. We carry out so much of our work and our everyday lives using technology of one form or another that we shouldn’t be surprised to find it facing us in the interview room. With the increasingly sophisticated forms of connectivity now available to businesses, the potential to generate a global market seems to be open to any type of business of any size. This will inevitably bring the necessity of developing a global business presence to support it. So even if you are applying for a job based in your home town, you may find that key decision makers in your appointment operate from a distant office location. Being faced with a camera automatically changes the dynamics of an interview, especially if you have a combination of a face-to-face interviewer alongside a video link-up to another interviewer. Simple things which we know are important but which we take for granted, such as establishing good eye contact, can become very complicated if you are not used to them. If possible, you should get some practice in using Skype and other video link-up systems to see how you come across. Getting used to how to look at a camera rather than at the other person’s face on the screen can be tricky, as the cameras are not always aligned to your line of natural sight with a screen. If you hate having your photograph taken, then appearing on a video can be even worse. For some people the presence of a video camera can make them extremely nervous and they can end up like a rabbit caught in headlights. The only thing that is going to help you settle your nerves is to get some practice at using and being seen on video. When you are job seeking with the help of sales recruitment agencies in Warwickshire, ask them if they can give you a mock interview using their video-conferencing facilities. If you really cannot face applying for jobs in this way, then ask the sales recruitment agencies in Warwickshire what the recruitment process is for different jobs before you apply for them.

Focus on Exports

The West Midlands has long been a stronghold for engineering and manufacturing, but during recessions it has suffered a series of setbacks and relative decline. However, overall the sector has been showing healthy signs of recovery, with the last six months in a row showing growth figures which outstripped the same months last year. Last month the sector showed a growth rate of 3.8%. While this is all great news, manufacturing still has some way to go before it gets back to its pre-recession high. But the expansion signs are promising, and according to some experts the speed of growth was quicker than expected. Areas which have significantly contributed to the recent growth are the production of plastic and rubber products for export along with the traditional West Midlands industry of car production, where sales again have been boosted by exports. The effects of the recession, combined with the ease with which technology can now connect business to the global market, means that businesses which are looking to expand naturally look overseas for their new customer base. The growth in export sales means that UK businesses have been working hard at promoting and marketing their products abroad. Approaches may vary from business to business, but are all likely to involve a combination of online activity and sales reps visiting target markets and delivering product presentations or attending exhibitions in overseas locations. Many companies will work with agents overseas who can co-ordinate work with distributors and liaise directly with customers when the company doesn’t have its own sales representatives on the ground. The move to a more heavy reliance on overseas trade means that sales professionals may need to broaden their horizons when preparing for their next career move. Second and third languages can become a much more valuable asset, and an ability to learn and communicate across different cultures will set some sales professionals ahead of their peers. You may be lucky enough to learn new skills in your current role if your employer is moving into new markets overseas and you get to develop your role alongside this progression. But what should you do if you don’t have the experience but all the firms you are looking to apply to seem to be moving in the same direction? For some expert advice on what companies are looking for from sales roles, or what additional training you could do to boost your skills and therefore your appeal to employers, visit sales recruitment agencies in the West Midlands. At the very least they will have vacancies advertised and associated job descriptions so you can see what is being expected from roles within companies that are moving to the international stage. Some sales recruitment agencies in the West Midlands may also have been involved in advising their employer clients on what to look for from new recruits, and they may also have helped them shape the role profiles for newly created international sales roles. Internet searches can also be helpful, and at the same time you could search for related training programmes if you need to improve your skills.

Social Media in the Interview Room?

Many applicants who have been through recruitment processes in recent years will have become very familiar with the rise in competency-based questioning and psychometric testing. Aptitude and personality tests have not only become increasingly popular with hiring managers, but they are being tweaked and tailored to meet the increasingly high demands of company recruiters. However, if you are looking for your next career progression step, then you might start to find new challenges in the interview room. Just when you thought you had the recruitment process under control, it is time to jump back on to the learning curve to prepare again. It is becoming more and more common for hiring managers to enquire about a candidate’s online and social media activity. They might even undertake their own online research prior to the interview and could possibly make assessments on what they find. You may think that social media is just something you do in your personal life, but with it being such an important communication vehicle for business, they have a vested interest in understanding how effectively you use it or in the worse-case scenario how you might fail to understand its impact and potentially misuse it. It is no longer a surprise to find yourself being quizzed about your social media activity and how you manage your reputation online. With so many of us now communicating our lives online, it is not surprising to find that this is a point of interest for our future employers. If you are going to be the next new representative of a company, you can be sure that your bosses will want to know how you manage your profile online, as so much of what we communicate is now linked with our jobs. While it might not be the first thought going through your mind when using social media, it’s not a bad idea to keep a sense check on how you are using it and what you are saying. By using the measure, ‘what would a prospective employer think of this?’ you could save yourself a lot of trouble and maintain a respectable profile and online reputation if you aren’t already confident that that’s what you have. If all this seems as if companies are going to extremes to get to know the individuals they are interviewing, then get ready for the next new trend from America. There have been reports of companies using computer games to assess a number of skills or personal traits such as a candidate’s learning abilities, how they empathise in given situations and even to what degree they are a risk taker. The games have been specifically designed for the purpose and track each candidate’s movements and which parts of the screen they touch and will even record how long a candidate hesitates. For all the latest news on how employers are recruiting and what techniques they may be deploying, it is worth speaking to marketing recruitment agencies in Wolverhampton. If you are looking for a new job and can’t decide which of the marketing recruitment agencies in Wolverhampton to register with, then why not check out their online profile and social media activity to see which might suit your needs best?

Membership Matters

Communications are crucial when it comes to membership matters. Organisations which depend on membership subscriptions to operate can be in danger of turning away their basic income by overlooking the value of member communications. Taking members for granted is a recipe for disaster. If a member is ever left wondering what value there is to be derived from their membership, then you have a problem. Sales and marketing departments can often, understandably, be focused on winning new business. However, if the balance between that and keeping good relationships with exiting customer isn’t maintained, then they could risk alienating existing customers and find themselves in a never-ending cycling replenishing membership numbers rather than building on them. There is an art to member communications, as it can be a fine balancing act of keeping your members informed of what is available to them without becoming an overbearing nuisance whose contacts and calls become an irritation. The key to managing the right levels of communications with your members is to establish the preferred forms and frequency of communications when a member is first signed up. Also, at sign-up stage your sales and account management staff need to be absolutely sure that the new member is aware of all of the benefits which their membership brings and how to access them if they are not automatically delivered. When signing businesses up as members, you may find that the person who registers for the membership is not always the best person for future communications to go to. There may be a number of interested parties within an organisation, so make sure get the contact details of all the right people and their preferred forms of contact. Getting your communications right means putting the right efforts into getting to know your customers. Communication requirements won’t be the same for each member, so you need to be prepared to tailor your activities accordingly. Your communications team should be as skilled in listening to their customers as they are at communicating to them. When communications are all one way, engagement will quickly die away. If you are a skilled communications professional and relish the challenge of building the perfect communications strategy, look out for that next career step in vacancies being advertised by marketing recruitment agencies in Shropshire. If you are keen to work in a membership-based organisation, then ask marketing recruitment agencies in Shropshire if they already work with such companies and look for an introduction, even if only speculatively.