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JUNE 1, 2021
GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL
COMMENT & OPINION
GUEST COLUMN Lou Glazer
Five essential economic development lessons
O
racle announced in April it is bringing 8,500 jobs at an average salary of $110,000 to central city Nashville. The company will invest $1.2 billion to build out its new campus, including $175 million for public infrastructure. The city, in its statement about the Oracle investment, writes: “We are thrilled that Oracle is ready to make a billion-dollar bet on Nashville,” said Mayor John Cooper. “Oracle will bring a record number of high-paying jobs to Nashville and they will pay upfront all the city’s infrastructure costs. This is a huge win for our city. In an unprecedented deal
What Michigan needs, first and foremost, is a human capital-centered economic strategy, not one centered on business creation, retention and attraction. The 21st century economic development foundation is high-quality education systems that prepare the next generation for the economy they are going to work in and communities where mobile talent wants to live and work.
structure for Nashville, no new debt is being issued and there is no burden on our taxpayers. Oracle’s presence will transform the East Bank, and I’m equally excited about the ways Oracle can transform education and career pipelines in Nashville.” The deal would not burden the city with any additional debt. The proposal does not require any funds from the operating budget. There are no job grants or bonds required as part of the proposed deal. In the proposal, Oracle will make a $175 million investment in public infrastructure that a city would ordinarily be required to purchase itself. This includes costs such as a pump station for water and sewer, a pedestrian bridge, wider streets and environmental remediation. Per the economic impact plan, half of Oracle’s future property taxes would go to reimbursing the company for its upfront infrastructure investment, without any interest payments. The other half of the new property tax base would benefit the city’s general operating fund, from which funds can be directed to investments in affordable housing and neighborhood infrastructure. “The remaining property tax revenue from the project, the ‘Oracle bonus,’ can fund investments throughout the city. Creating and preserving affordable housing will be my top priority with those
funds,” Cooper added. In addition to the increase in the property tax base, local sales and use tax collections from the proposed project are expected to reach about $8.8 million annually. News 4 Nashville describes Oracle’s reasons for choosing Nashville this way: “Oracle is in-
terested in Nashville because it provides access to world-class higher education institutions and a talented workforce, boasts a diverse population with a vibrant culture, has a high quality of life while maintaining affordability, CONTINUED ON PAGE 19
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GUEST COLUMN Dave Kahle
Developing your salesperson
W
hich of these issues are worrying you these days? •Keeping the good salespeople you have? •Motivating your salespeople? •Stimulating your salespeople to become more productive? •Attracting good quality, new salespeople? If you are concerned about any one of these issues, you are not alone. These are near the top of almost every businessperson’s list these days. With good reason. If you can positively resolve each of these issues, you’ll go a long way to profitably growing your business. If you can’t, you may have a very rocky road ahead of you. Now, suppose you could focus on one initiative that would help positively resolve each of these issues. With one simple move, you could help yourself on every one of these troublesome issues. Is there such an initiative? Is there one thing you can do that will help you keep the good salespeople you have, motivate your salespeople, stimulate your salespeople to become more productive, and attract
good quality candidates? The answer? Yes. It’s this: You can build a systematic approach to developing your salespeople. And in successfully accomplishing that one thing you’ll resolve all the others. First a definition. By “development” I mean this: “Continuous improvement in the knowledge, processes, skills and tools necessary to be ever more effective and efficient.” I don’t mean that once a month you have a sales meeting when you talk about problems, new company policies and procedures or discuss a new product. Those kinds of meetings are necessary, but hardly sufficient. Nor does it mean that you expect your salespeople to learn on the job by trial and error. At best, that is a very time-consuming and costly approach. At worst, it leads to mediocre performance, confusion and frustration on the part of the salesperson as well as his boss. Most companies who claim to do on the job training are really making an excuse for their lack of ability to do anything better. I don’t know of any other sophisticated area of human labor where it is expected that every practitioner will figure out how to do the job well on his/her own. I, for one, would not want to settle into my seat on an airplane and have the pilot announce that he’s figured out how to fly this plane on his own. Nor do I want to put my life in the hands of surgeon who learned a surgical procedure by trial and error. The list can go on and on. It includes almost any profession you can think of: lawyers, teachers, social workers, ministers,
engineers, repair technicians, etc. In every one of these sophisticated jobs, there is a body of knowledge, of principles and procedures, that the practitioners are expected to master. While all of these professions expect people to practice, none of them expect them to learn the basic principles on their own by trial and error. Are field salespeople somehow different? Are their jobs so simple that it’s easy to learn how to do it well? Or are they somehow super-intelligent and able to figure it all out on their own? Clearly the answer to both questions is no. Sales is an incredibly formidable profession that offers its practitioners a lifetime of challenge. No salesperson is ever as good as he/she could be. And salespeople are no more or less intelligent than their counterparts among teachers, social workers, ministers, and the like. Not only that, but every other profession expects its members to continually improve themselves. Show me a doctor, lawyer, CPA, teacher, social worker, minister, etc. who has not gone back for additional training and development in the last two years, and I’ll show you one who is either retired or dead. Show me a salesperson that hasn’t invested in improving themselves in the last two years and I’ll show you 80% of the salespeople in this
country. Why is that? One major reason is that most of the companies for whom they work don’t require continuous improvement. One of the main reasons they don’t require it is that they don’t know how to pull it off. So, they busy themselves with “product-oriented” sales meetings and complain often about unmotivated salespeople. Being systematic about development is far more extensive than that. Here’s what your organization might look like after you have invested in developing your salespeople. How to develop salespeople You’d have a structured training program for all new hires. There would be a body of knowledge they would need to acquire, skills and processes they would need to master, and benchmarks along the way by which you could measure their progress. This program would teach such important practices as: •Developing territory plans •Planning for sales calls •Strategic planning for account penetration •Relationship building •Prospecting and cold calling •Making appointments •Collecting information CONTINUED ON PAGE 19
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