If you manage a sales team, you know that sales volume is an important measure of a salesperson’s success. But you also probably realize that other metrics are useful, too.

To keep your sales force productive over the long term, pay attention to these additional areas:

• Sales volume vs. units sold. One salesperson closes a single deal worth $1 million. Another lands 10 sales worth $100,000 each. Which sales pro is more valuable to your organization? Don’t overlook salespeople who produce consistent numbers in favor of those who score an occasional high-ticket shot.
• Profitability. Generating revenue is good, but if that doesn’t translate into profits, your efforts are ultimately futile. Make sure your sales force is pursuing deals that contribute to the bottom line, not just looking for break-even sales.
• Productivity and efficiency. A salesperson who spends 12 hours a day, 7 days a week to make his or her numbers probably isn’t managing his or her time as effectively as possible. Beware of honoring Sally for all her extra hours if Jill brings in the same sales figures in less time.
• Customer service. Retaining current customers is vital to most companies. It requires time that might be spent chasing new business, though. Do you reward salespeople for keeping today’s customers satisfied, or penalize them for ignoring existing customers in favor of new ones?

Taking care of your finances does not mean that you have to be well off. It simply means that however much money you earn, you keep a reasonable amount of it in order to achieve your goals. After all, it does not matter if you earn a fortune if you keep on frittering it away. You need to understand your own financial habits and one way of doing this is to create a budget for yourself (and for your family, if applicable) and then make certain that you stick to it. Be sure to have a solid understanding not just of how much you are earning, but also of your other assets – and of course, of your expenses and liabilities as well.

Having a plan is essential to achieving any goals you wish to set yourself and if you are in a position where it feels as though your finances are no longer in your control, then you need to seek professional help as soon as possible.

The longest case of hiccups lasted for 68 years, according to the Guinness Book of World Records (and Wiki¬pedia). A teenage girl in Florida was reported to have hiccupped 50 times a minute for over five weeks.
Most attacks of hiccups aren’t nearly as severe, but they can be annoying for the victim as well as those nearby. Drugs, and in some cases surgery, have proved helpful, but no specific treatment has been shown to be completely effective. That hasn’t stopped well-intentioned people from prescribing all sorts of remedies, including these:

• Hold your breath. The idea is to force your dia-phragm to relax. Take a deep breath, and hold it for 10 seconds. Let it out partially, then continue to hold your breath for another five seconds. Repeat until you run out of air. You may have to do this two or three times.
• Drink water. This popular method calls for you to drink a glass of water while holding your breath and pinching your nostrils shut.
• Plug your ears. Stick your fingers in your ears, or on the soft spots behind your ears, for about 30 seconds. This will stimulate your vagus nerve and cause it to stop or at least ease your hiccups.
• Stick out your tongue. Extend your tongue from your mouth as far as you can (preferably when no one else is watching!). This opens your throat wide and helps you breathe more smoothly.
• Try some sugar. A spoonful of dry sugar can overload the nerve endings in your mouth and throat, some say. One variation: Soak a sugar cube in lemon juice and hold it in your mouth until it dissolves. (Some sources also recommend slowly eating a slice of dry bread.)

Sleep is very important to our health. A lack of sufficient sleep increases the risk of serious health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and more. Poor sleep can also cause depression, premature aging of the skin and effects on the memory.

Therefore it is important to know how to get a good night’s sleep, especially if you have been having problems in that area. One piece of advice is to use your bed and your bedroom only for sleeping. Keep the room comfortable, dark and quiet at all times, because your mind associates light with being awake and darkness with sleep.

Regular exercise can also increase your chances of getting a good night’s sleep, as it improves your sleep patterns by regulating hormone levels and your metabolism. You should not try to go to sleep for at least three hours after exercise, however, so your body can cool down.

Technology and easy Internet access can be both a blessing and a curse, giving us remote access to email, smartphones, Skype and other tools. In theory at least, this gives us the ability to be able to work from home and achieve a better work/life balance, and yet in some cases all it has actually done is increase the number of hours that we spend working.
One way to win back some work/life balance is to negotiate the time spent working from home. Not only does working from home save a lot of time you would otherwise spend commuting back and forth to work, it also means you save money on both transportation and food, and it gives you more time to develop an exercise routine. There can be problems with working from home, however, such as lack of discipline and motivation as well as overwork.
The solution is to make certain that your work stays within the time period of a normal working day and does not add further hours to that workload. Some time-management techniques include creating to-do lists, managing your expectations, prioritizing your workload, learning to delegate, and making sure that you have regular meetings and catch-up sessions with colleagues.

It is also important to set boundaries with colleagues to respect your personal time. Switching off your cell phone and not checking emails during non-working hours is a good idea.

Keeping hold of your cash can feel difficult at the best of times, but when you’re in the company of big spenders, it can become all but impossible.

Although you might not normally be the type to be influenced by the behavior of others, there are actually three main reasons why people are sometimes tempted to emulate the spending habits of others.

1. The “keeping up with the Jones’s” effect.  They don’t want to be seen as any less affluent than the people they associate with and so they not only match the latter’s spending, but even outdo it.
2. Watching others spend freely gives them a sense of entitlement, even though they may not be able to afford the expenditure.  They tend to think, “If they can, then why shouldn’t I be able to?”
3. The loss of self-control.  Although it’s often easy for people when they’re alone to talk themselves out of spending their hard-earned cash on things they don’t really need, being in the company of big spenders can tempt some people to think only of today and deal with the consequences later.

Think about the people you associate with and whether any of them have any of these effects on you.  If so, you might want to think carefully about the situations in which you meet with them to reduce your chances of letting yourself be led astray.