1

Jason Kanigan On Job Hunting

Jason Kanigan on Job Hunting

Why Jason Kanigan on Job Hunting?

Like most things, job hunting is a mental game.

You want to know the critical "secret" to getting a job? Refuse to continue being unemployed! Yes! Get mad! No longer accept being without work.

As long as you are sitting there, miserable, complaining, broken, you will remain powerless.

I've been helping people find work--and not just any work: work they enjoy--for two decades now. When September 11th happened, I was working with a non-profit organization that helped people figure out more about who they were, and return to the workforce. I conducted mock interviews on video camera. The candidate would be filmed, and I would play the role of the hiring interviewer. Then we'd review the tape to improve their performance.

These folks definitely had a leg up. And a step forward, because they were DOING SOMETHING by taking the program.

The problem with most job seekers is they are expecting someone else to do it for them. Their recruiter. Their network. Their next-door neighbor.

Just as in running your own business, I have to tell you: no one is ever going to care about your job search as much as you. No one.

You can see many articles I've written about successful job hunting methods on my old blog.

I've had employers create jobs that did not exist before I got there FOUR TIMES. No competition for those roles, either; they only wanted me.

The Modesto Bee even wrote an article about it.

Am I special?

Am I some kind of Superman?

Nope.

But I know more about successful job hunting than you.

Jason Kanigan on Job Hunting Success

Everything you've been told to do in your job search is wrong.

The idea that you should make a resume and cover letter, and blast it out to as many employers as you can in the hope that someone will notice it is just plain stupid.

A waste of energy.

A complete waste of time.

In fact, it makes you more depressed after you send that blizzard of resumes out and nobody responds, doesn't it.

A resume should be the last thing you give to an employer: the paperwork to seal the deal, confirmation to drop in the file.

You need a resume to get a job.

There's Job Search Lie #1. You don't.

Employers read cover letters.

There's Job Search Lie #2. They don't.

Okay, some do. All generalizations are false. But most--the vast majority--do not. All the agonizing you did over the precise wording of your cover letter is energy that could have been more effectively spent on another task. They drop the cover letter and go straight to a certain specific section of your resume...and if you don't tell them in that small space why they should talk to you, your resume goes into the trash.

Jason Kanigan on Job Hunting Effectiveness

I'll bet you're wondering what that small section is.

Getting this part right will at worst DOUBLE the effectiveness of your job search. If you want to keep using conventional methods to conduct your job hunt with, that is.

Other, better job search tactics do exist. Nobody has shared them with you because a) they don't know them, and b) if they did, they'd be afraid of you using them and taking their competitive advantage away.

I am not afraid of that. Since I own a business and am not at all interested in returning to being employed by someone else, I can share these unorthodox job hunting methods with you.

I have used them to get the attention of employers without depending on a resume many times. The fastest turnaround time for one of my job searches was four days. FOUR DAYS!

That story is detailed, along with these unorthodox methods, in my new Kindle book. You can click here to get it.

Inside, I share all the secrets of effective job hunting.

How it all starts, as I said above, in your mind.

How doing what the crowd is doing will get you nowhere fast.

How you can make use of modern methods to get on the radar of employers and get them to see you as an individual--

--an individual they have to meet.

That's the purpose of your resume, by the way.

Not to get you hired.

No resume can do that. People hire people, not resumes.

What the resume can do for you, if it's put together correctly, is entice the employer to meet you.

Remember, going forward, that this is the resume's goal.

Job searches are not about spending all your effort blasting out a blizzard of ineffective resumes hoping something will stick. They're about getting noticed by and having conversations with employers. Get enough of those, filter well enough, and you will quickly get the job of your dreams.

Details in my book, For Active Job Seekers Only: Get Hired FAST!

>> Jason Kanigan is a profit maximizer for $5-10 million firms who need help with Price, Power and Profit. Was this info helpful to you? Got a question about effective job hunting? Please Like, Share or Comment to let us know! <<

1

Does Sales Training Really Work?

Does sales training really workDoes sales training really work? Can you figure out an ROI on the investment? Rapid Learning Institute CEO Stephen Meyer says in Forbes you might as well have asked "to prove unicorns don't exist."

Among other credentials, I have a technical diploma in Operations Management...the discipline that trains you on how to develop Key Performance Indicators, ROI calculations and performance measures of all kinds. And as Meyers shares in his Forbes article, even *I* can't tell you how to mathematically figure out whether the investment in sales training is worth it in dollars spent vs dollars earned terms. Sure, I could do some fancy statistics work and get an 'r' factor to separate correlation from causation...but we still wouldn't really know if sales improved or declined because the economy had a hiccup, or the sales training had a fast impact, or another element came into play.

Prove It! Does Sales Training Really Work?

The Forbes article points out some scary stats on how companies go about determining the effectiveness of sales training. Look at how the interest level declines in management's attempt to find out "Does sales training really work?":

1. Nearly every time, management asks how the sales employee feels about the training program.

2. Just over a third of the time, they try to find out whether the salesperson learned something.

3. Less than one time in six(!) do they check if the sales staff are doing the behaviors they learned in the program!

4. And a whopping 97% of the time they cannot map the training to a positive result.

You might react to these numbers by saying, "I'll never get sales training again!" But that would be a mistake. The error lies not in the training, but in management's inability to quantify something that may not be directly quantifiable.

Meyer's real killer question about sales training is: "Do you want a salesforce that consistently deploys selling best-practices that lead to strong results, or an untrained salesforce that lapses in to bad habits that lead to mediocre results?"

And with that, I agree in the strongest possible terms. An untrained salesforce lacks a consistent sales process. 'To manage we must measure'--this is an Operations Management maxim. Without consistency, we cannot measure...or improve. If each member of your sales team is doing their own thing...following their own set of steps or lack thereof...stressing different aspects or techniques and ignoring others...you don't have any consistency. And so you cannot manage. The net results are purely accidental.

Ways To Help Answer "Does Sales Training Really Work"

Australian trainer Sue Barrett says online video training is a great option. I agree: it's effective, cost-saving, frees the student up to learn on their own time, can be easily added to with new content, and makes ongoing reinforcement consistent.

Richard Ruff recently reiterated: "Stop viewing training as an episodic event and start viewing it as an ongoing process." Change is the only consistent factor in the new world of selling, and a one-time attempt at improvement is not going to do the trick. Ruff also supports the idea of video training as an expert way to train new hires.

While quantifying a distinct ROI for sales training may be tough, the fact is without a consistent sales process your team will be conducting scattered, confused and uneven behaviors...leading to scattered, confused and uneven results. The answer to "Does sales training really work?" is the investment in sales training does pay off, with a process you can measure and manage.

>>Jason Kanigan helps companies position themselves with the right Price to gain Power in the marketplace, with which to maximize their Profit. Questions about the value of investing in sales training? Comment below to let us know! And please Like or Share to get this content in front of someone who needs it!<<

1

Improving Sales Performance–Not As Easy As You Think!

Improving Sales PerformanceImproving sales performance is often thought of as a pushbutton solution by sales training clients. We'll just buy the training, the clients believe, and everything will turn out great.

The cautionary truth is the results are often lackluster. And there's a key reason why.

So is sales training a waste of money? Is it never going to have an impact on improving sales performance?

Whenever you hear an absolute like that ("always"..."never"), trainer Jason Forrest says it's time to start digging. Are absolutes ever always true in the real world? You mean to say every single one of the prospects you spoke with came back with that same response?!

Failure In Improving Sales Performance

In his experience with sales training failures, UK trainer Jonathan Farrington notes "the habit of many individuals to treat training as a CV builder, absorbing little but the most basic understanding of what was being taught and [how] a recipe for systemic low productivity is created". This is an amazing and disturbing statement, and I want you to read it again. "A recipe for systemic low productivity". Is that what you want in your organization? Do you feel the pit of doom opening in your gut?

All the trainers I have found commenting on this critical issue agree knowledge transfer is not enough to induce behavioral change. (Your 'Forrest Alarm' should be ringing, however!) Merely stating the skills in a lecture to the sales team will not result in better sales performance. The individual salesperson must adjust their behavior. Farrington's article on The Key to Why Sales Training Fails is good, but it misses the key idea that is the major stumbling block of most sales training implementations. We'll look at this idea in a moment.

Behavioral Changes Aren't Enough for Improving Sales Performance

Marketing and sales consultant John Graham gives a list of seven such behavioral changes. But here's the problem: without a change in BELIEFS, the salesperson is unlikely to alter their behavior.

I'm talking BASIC beliefs. All the way down to "Why am I selling this widget?" and "What does money mean to me?" "What does the prospect represent to me: a foe to be overcome, or a partner to be collaborated with?" "How much cash is 'a lot of money' to me?" These beliefs and others must be brought out into the light of conscious thought and understood for each member of your sales team--and if you're the company president, you too; selling is your job and you'd better start believing it.

The Secret to Improving Sales Performance

Sales training sticks--and sales transformation happens--when the sales team changes their belief about why they are selling. It's dead easy to change your behavior when you change your beliefs. Look at dieting. I'll bet you know someone who skinnied down successfully. And I'll also bet you know someone who tried dieting, but stayed at XXXL. Why was one individual capable of losing weight while the other was not? Changes in beliefs. Our now-thin friend started believing they could be thin. That too-large portions were bad for them. That more exercise was good and necessary. Our plus-sized buddy just couldn't make the jump.

Behavioral changes are obvious and straightforward to make once you have changed your beliefs. So instead of starting with behaviors in sales training, begin with looking at your beliefs. Make these match up with the results you want, and behavioral alterations will be simple...and the results will quickly follow.

>> Jason Kanigan helps organizations that know how to competently fulfill a product or service maximize their profit. Have a question about improving sales performance? Comment below to let us know! And please Like or Share to get this info in front of someone else you know it can help! <<