Leadership Experience
An exceptional leader must have a clear vision, infectious passion, and the ability to put their team ahead of themselves. As a successful leader for over 20 years, Eric Hiller has demonstrated the ability to motivate large groups of people to apply their unique and individual skills toward achieving a common goal.
Motivation
The key to motivation lies not in trying to motivate a person, but instead discovering what motivates the individual and constantly reminding them of that thing. This requires detailed discovery of the individual’s personal goals, linking their goals to job performance, and constant follow up.
Discovery
Time and money are often mistaken as goals and motivators. In reality, they are only a means to an end. To get closer to the true motivator, one must discover what the individual would do with more money or time. Once the “what” has been discovered, one can uncover the true motivator…the “why”.
For example, an employee wants more money. For what? To buy a car. Why? What benefits will the car bring, how will it improve their life, and what pains will it alleviate? Will it bring freedom from the restraints of public transportation, or the end of sharing one vehicle with their spouse, or confidence in meeting new people? Drilling down to the core motivator and linking that goal to job performance is the only true way to motivate.
Recognition
Many people are motivated by public recognition. Eric Hiller has created numerous ways to recognize employees based on their contribution to key company metrics. Examples include announcements, multimedia presentations, introduction and testimonials to new hires, newsletter articles, plaques and certificates, hall of fame, titles, jackets, caps, pins, and trophies.
Competition
For some, the joy of competition and the desire to win is a prime motivator. Even those who claim to have no interest in winning can find motivation through contributing to the success of their team.
One low budget contest consisted of taping 100 one dollar bills to the wall, in plain site of everyone. Each time an employee accomplished a specific task, they were allowed to pull one dollar down and keep it. What made this effective was not the reward. The metrics of the contest were structured so that most people would win only one or two dollars, the best would win only five to seven. Instead it was the visual stimulation of the money on the wall, the prestige of being watched by coworkers when pulling one down, and the perceived benefit of instant gratification.
Another example was based on the fact that a large sales staff could not seem to remember their daily and monthly performance numbers as it related to key company metrics. Yet they did seem to know every statistic about every player in the NFL. Consequently, the company metrics were renamed to reflect football performance statistics. The sales staff was divided into teams, a football-season-like schedule was established that culminated in playoffs, and every team fought hard to be in the super bowl. They also now easily remembered not just their own statistics, but those of their colleagues.
Rewards
Created and implemented rewards to fit every budget. For some people, public recognition is reward enough. Other low budget rewards include lunch with an executive, a new parking spot, small improvements in work equipment or location, or a “get out of jail free” card.
The key to effective rewards is that they must present a balance of value and prestige to the majority of contestants. If the reward is something they could purchase themselves, for less effort than winning it, it will not be effective unless there is a high level of prestige associated with winning it.
Results
There is no “A” for Effort in business. Hard work and long hours are meaningless if the desired result is not achieved. Likewise, quality of service, product, and employee morale cannot be sacrificed for short term gains.
Eric Hiller has demonstrated the true art of leadership by leading his teams to produce sustainable results in sales, marketing, new client acquisition, time to market, growth, and bottom line revenue.
Team Building
In business and in life, an efficient team is always greater than the sum of its parts.
Communication
Lack of communication breeds gossip, rumors, and separatism. When left to their own devices, people will always suspect the worst. People may not always like the truth, but they do respect it. Trust is essential, and comes only with timely communication. Experience includes daily and weekly briefings, monthly company-wide meetings, an internal newsletter, and of course, an open door policy.
Common Goals
When individuals understand how their actions affect their peers, they are more likely to strive for positive results. By creating and demonstrating how individual performance metrics impact departmental or company wide goals, in basic, easy to understand terms, Eric Hiller has successfully created natural breeding grounds for team building.
Sales Leadership
Is leading a large sales team akin to herding cats at a goat rodeo? No, it’s not that easy. But it can be done with constant follow up combined with appropriate consequences for both positive and negative actions.
Inside Sales
Successfully led both face-to-face and over the phone inside sales teams. Experience includes product sales, service sales, lobbying campaigns, and fundraising. Teams ranged in size from 20 to 200 sales reps. Led teams both onsite and remotely.
Outside Sales
Experienced local and regional field manager. Led teams of B2B Account Representatives and teams of B2C door-to-door Fundraisers and Sales reps. Successfully implemented communication, tracking, and follow up techniques necessary to stay connected with outside sales agents’ performance.
Marketing Leadership
Led teams of graphic designers and copywriters in the creation and production of print ads, direct mail campaigns, and newsletter publishing. Directed multimedia artists in producing flash, power point, and digital film projects. Project manager for market research and analysis projects.
Customer Service Leadership
Experienced in managing both inbound and outbound customer service teams. Inbound included order status, product information, service requests, and conflict resolution. Outbound included post sale satisfaction surveys with a major focus on retention and renewals.
IT Leadership
Directed teams of programmers and database designers to create proprietary applications for use in the financial and non-profit industries. Managed both network administrators and help desk staff.
Event Leadership
Created, wrote, directed, and produced both live and recorded multimedia events. Audience sizes ranged from ten to over one thousand. Locations included corporate offices, hotel ballrooms, and large convention centers.
Worked with surround sound, monitors, projectors, wireless mics, digital video cameras, spots and cans, live video, prerecorded films, PowerPoint, and Flash presentations.
Experienced with events of all types, including training, motivational, informational, achievement celebrations, and employee recognition.