Sales Awards Blog

The Stevie Awards are pleased to announce that the Sales Management Association has signed on as a sponsor of the 5th annual (2011) Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, which is accepting entries through December 31. This is the premier competition for sales awards and customer service awards in the world.

Get your entry kit for the awards here.

The SMA is a global, cross-industry professional organization for sales operations and sales management. The Sales Management Association promotes professional development, peer networking, best practice research, and thought leadership among professionals who support, manage, coach, and lead sales organizations. SMA provides on-line resources, tools, training, career development, and professional networking opportunities for members in 17 countries.

At the request of the SMA, a new category has just been added to the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, Sales Operations Leader of the Year. You'll find that category listed as #12 under the Individual Sales Categories.

SMA members get to enter four of the top Individual Sales Categories for free:

SMA members should contact SMA for the promotion code to submit to qualify for free submission.

Last but not least, sales awards honorees in the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service will be offered free membership in the Sales Management Association.

Finalists in the 2011 competition will be announced in mid-January, and the final results will be announced at a banquet at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida on Monday, February 21.

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?
There were certainly quite a few attention-grabbing news stories in the past couple of weeks that I followed closely--anything from the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing (QE2), currency wars, deflationary fears in the U.S. and other developed economies, elections in Brazil and the U.S., and of course a Royal Wedding in the U.K.!  But my eyes are fixed on the U.S. unemployment rate.  My work revolves around helping people find their next $100K+ job, so I am closely following all the economic trends in the U.S. that might impact private sector job creation and employment.  When I hear about the persistent lack of labor mobility caused by people stuck with their underwater houses, or that QE2 is ostensibly in full swing to fight deflation, it is unsettling. 

What book are you currently reading?
Well, I usually read in two tracks--one for fun and one for intellectual stimulation.  For fun, I’ve just finished reading The Millennium Trilogy by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson.  The other track is now dedicated to a variety of Six Sigma books as I am preparing for a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification.  It’s probably not the most exciting read, but it is certainly helpful for someone who always strives for excellence in managing customer-facing organizations.

What was the last movie you saw, and would you recommend it?
Food, Inc.; it promises you will never look at dinner the same way, and it’s true!  This movie shows how the mass production of cheap and low-quality food is really not that good for us.  I would recommend it to anyone who eats non-organic foods!

What is your favorite sport or hobby?
At the risk of coming across as old-fashioned, I have been knitting and crocheting with some exotic wools, and producing pieces that my girlfriends and I actually wear.  Recently I had to make three hats to settle an inner-circle war.

Who is your favorite historical figure?
Frederic Chopin. Although his name sounds French, Chopin was one of the greatest Polish composers; he was able to capture the sadness of the Slavic soul in his music.  I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, where society in general placed a premium on the fine arts, so l learned to read music, play the piano, and sing in a choir ... and looking back, Chopin was a major reference for me.

Oakwood Temporary Housing, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, won a Stevie Award for Sales Process of the Year in the sales awards categories of the 2010 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Oakwood, a provider of furnished and serviced apartments worldwide, knows that being successful in sales takes more than stamina and ingenuity: Having a process helps ensure reliability and success. Until 2009, Oakwood’s sales team had been functioning on the fly—doing what seemed right, with no metrics, no benchmarks, and no methodology. Based on the company’s experiences and research, Oakwood realized that identifying and institutionalizing its best practices would be a key driver in building its success.

As a result, Oakwood’s sales and sales operations teams instituted the “Sales Playbook,” a process that has completely transformed how they do business. The goal has been to achieve a best-in-class sales-and-marketing framework.

According to Oakwood, the main focus of this process was to teach their sales team how to “win fast and lose fast.” As a result, the team now spends less time on losing prospects and more focusing on winnable deals that positively impact the bottom line.

Challenges
Oakwood had no overarching best practices or processes for the sales force to follow. They needed to create a system that would achieve consistent results and reduce time between qualifying and closing sales.

The system also needed to outline what “success” looked like for Oakwood, to identify top performers’ practices, and to propagate them among the masses. This system would develop a definition for managing opportunity that would provide clear, measurable objectives to determine if a sale was progressing.

Major Initiatives
Oakwood sales leadership conducted an intensive interview process and led a cross-functional team to identify top performers’ best practices. By combining those ideas with outside best practices, they decoded the tools and resources needed to gather, get, and grow business and to focus on the Single Sales Objective (SSO).

SSO moved Oakwood from an account-management mindset to an opportunity-management mindset and provided the objectives necessary to determine if sales were progressing.  The system also defined a common language to articulate key strategic components.

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Preliminary judging opened this week for the the 2011 (5th annual) Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's premier honors for customer service and sales professionals.  There are more than 40 sales awards categories in the competition, and more than 30 customer service awards categories.

Once of the great things about preliminary judging of the Stevie Awards is that anyone can apply to participate.  Interested?  Apply online today.  If your application is accepted you'll be able to judge online, at your convenience, anytime through January 7.

There are two big reasons why you should spend a few hours participating as a preliminary judge:

1. Judging is a great badge of honor to put on your resume or CV.  Active judges are always acknowledged on the awards web site (here's the list of the 2010 judges) and in the awards dinner program.
2. You'll get to read and evaluate a lot of great success stories in your field, whether it's customer service or sales, and there's no better way to measure the pulse of achievement in your professionals, especially when those stories of success are coming from industry leaders.  Last year's winners, for example, included Macy's, FedEx, AT&T, SAS Institute, DHL Express, Royal Caribbean International, and more.

And here's a bonus third reason why you should participate: the two preliminary judges who score the most entries will receive two free tickets to the 5th annual awards banquet, slated for Monday, February 21 at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.

One of the big changes/additions to the Stevie Awards this year is in our 5th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.  In the past this program honored only the achievements of sales, customer service, and call center professionals: individuals, teams, and entire departments.

For the 2011 awards (entries are being accepted now through the end of 2010), we've added a slew of new product awards categories in the SASCS.  We now have new product of the year categories as follows (the numbers are our internal categories codes):

90. Collaboration Solution – New
91. Collaboration Solution– New Version
92. Contact Center Solution – New
93. Contact Center Solution – New Version
94. IVR or Web Service Solution – New
95. IVR or Web Service Solution – New Version
96. Marketing Solution – New
97. Marketing Solution – New Version
98. Relationship Management Solution – New
99. Relationship Management Solution – New Version
100. Workforce Management Solution – New
101. Workforce Management Solution – New Version

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I'm getting very excited about our next edition - the 5th - of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's premier program of sales awards, customer service awards, and call center awards. 

We had the early-bird deadline a few weeks back and entries submitted through that deadline were up about 25% from last year.  We have another deadline on November 12, and then we'll continue to accept late entries through the end of the year.  (The late penalty is just $35 per entry.)  If you don't have your entry kit yet, get it here.

I wrote the other week about all the new categories we have in the competition this year - check them out on the awards' web site.

Finalists will be announced in mid-January, and the program will culminate with an awards presentation and banquet at the lovely Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida on Monday, February 21.  Some people have asked why we would schedule the event on a holiday (it will be President's Day in the U.S.A.), and we did that so that attendees can make a long weekend of it in the sun and surf of Miami Beach, without having to miss full day in the office!

Today I'd like to welcome ValueSelling Associates back as a sponsor of the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.  ValueSelling president Julie Thomas is a long-time support of the Stevie Awards, and we're delighted to have them back.  

From their web site: "ValueSelling Associates is the creator of the ValueSelling Framework, the sales methodology practiced by sales executives at FORTUNE 1000 companies around the globe. Through customized classroom instruction, e-learning, train-the-trainer and consulting, ValueSelling will arm your sales force with strategies, skills, tools and processes to:

• Increase revenue
• Access and dialogue with executive decision-makers
• Increase forecast accuracy
• Eliminate discounting
• Increase deal size"

We have several sponsorship slots still available.  To learn more, get our 2011 sponsorship guide.