Sales and Sales Management Blog

January 8, 2010

Guest Article: “5 Fundamentals to Help Others Achieve Success,” by Kurt Theriault

Filed under: business,management,sales,selling,team development — Paul McCord @ 1:18 pm
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5 Fundamentals to Help Others Achieve Success
by Kurt Theriault

It’s All About Them!

Managers often express how much they enjoy coaching because it provides the opportunity to help others become successful.  Yet various surveys, used to analyze the growing turnover trend, indicate that insufficient management support is a leading reason employees leave a job.  The best way to address this is to get managers focused on two key ideas: always provide value to each employee during every interaction, and make sure it is provided from the employee’s perspective.  This is only possible when a manager coaches from a mindset of making every interaction “all about them.”

Here are the 5 fundamental drivers for being “all about them.”

1.  Convey through action one’s commitment to helping others. 
Never miss an opportunity to help an individual improve.  Seizing every opportunity to point out things that are being done well and encouraging continuity is essential.  Likewise, it is vital to immediately address situations that need improvement.  Discuss why something is not happening and quickly problem solve together to drive needed change.  Be laser-beam focused on improvement, knowing that if progress isn’t made, an individual loses.

2.  Know and leverage each individual’s passions and motivations.
Take advantage of the fundamental truth that individuals do things for their own reasons. Help each person know how job tasks and requirements contribute to achieving the things most valued to them. Start by discovering what each individual wants most from the job.  Doing this is easy – simply ask and talk about it, individual by individual.

3.  Be versatile with different communication styles.
Communication synergy is vital to effective teaching. Reducing communication tension is also a managing must.  This makes it possible to have productive listening, comprehension, practice, and execution.  Be willing and ready to adjust to the styles of others in order to establish a productive communication setting.   If an individual prefers a faster pace, speed up the communication. If an individual requires more information before action, provide it.  Whatever individual adjustments are needed to improve learning, adapt the communication style to provide them.

4.  Have the courage and perseverance to do what must be done.
People are motivated by different things, learn different ways, and respond differently to various tactics. It takes incredible fortitude and multiple approaches to break through resistance. Challenge individuals to change and to rise to the next level of performance.  Often this is neither fun nor easy. Just take on the issue.  Great coaches know it’s more painful to be responsible for someone’s failure than to tackle the issues and tactics that may have a chance to help.  Keep coming at it over and over again. Focus on the outcome and celebrate every achievement milestone. Do not accept giving up.  Tolerate trying, use problem solving as a tool, make practice the means, and joyously celebrate execution.

5.  Measure success by how individuals view the value provided.
There are only two ways coaches know they add value.  One is by noticing performance improvement and success.  The other is through direct feedback regarding received value.  Measurement must be independent of how a coach feels about the value provided.  The best way to measure effective coaching is to directly ask if value has been provided.  Always check to make sure the right things are happening for each individual.  Covet direct feedback and quickly adjust to guarantee improvement.

Evidence is strong. Individuals leave jobs because managers fail to meet expectations.  Effective leaders exceed employee expectations.  They focus leadership on being about others rather than themselves.  As we get better at making sure our actions deliver value, we in turn receive the reward – those we coach succeed and stay. What could be better?

Kurt Theriault is Senior Partner and Chief Marketing Officer of Business Efficacy, a consultancy founded 16 years ago to help companies turn strategies and goals into measurable results.  Kurt has spent the past 13 years in sales, sales management, professional development, marketing and consulting. He is responsible for business and product development and helping spread the word about Business Efficacy’s belief in the importance of sales management’s role in driving sales execution.  Visit Business Efficacy’s website.

March 31, 2009

Consistency in Training Relates Directly to Consistency in Production

Filed under: career development,management,sales,Sales Management,sales training,selling,team development — Paul McCord @ 10:34 am
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I had an interesting conversation on Friday with a sales executive for a mid-size company that produces accounting and HR software solutions for the manufacturing and medical industries regarding the inconsistency of training messages to the sales force within the company.  David’s concern is that although the company has what is supposed to be a sales process that is learned, perfected and used by every salesperson within the company, there is no consistency in the training or in the training messages they receive from the various training sources the company employs.  What, he wondered, is this inconsistency doing to the sales team?

Although David’s company isn’t unusual in the sense that many companies have an ‘official’ sales process that they mandate but don’t teach consistently, in my experience, David is unusual since so few salespeople or sales leaders ever question the consequences of presenting inconsistent training.

David’s company spends a great deal of money training each new hire on the sales process the company has adopted.  Each new hire will spend well over 100 hours during their first 60 days on the job in classroom and field training inn the process the company uses.  This includes a four day stint at an outside vendor’s training center.  Every new hire is sent to the training session, costing the company a significant investment -airfare, hotel, meals, the training company’s fee, as well as the new hire’s salary.  Lots of money goes into each new salesperson hired.

You’d think they would want to ensure those dollars were well spent.

You’d be wrong.

When the new hire finishes the basic training program, they go into their branch and from there receive the same additional training as any other salesperson in the company.  This additional training comes from their branch manager, the company training department, the occasional outside training session, and the company’s video and audio training library. 

Sounds pretty good so far.  Actually, it sounds like these salespeople get a consistent dose of training.

And they do.

Unfortunately, the additional training they receive not only doesn’t reinforce the initial training the company spent huge dollars on when the person was hired, much of it actually contradicts that training. 

Branch managers hear of some hot new idea and the next Monday they’re training their salespeople on it.

The training department attends a seminar that excites them and they immediately go back to their office and create a training program around it.

A company executive hears a great speaker and insists the company hire them for their next sales conference.

The sales library has all of the popular books and DVD’s on the market.

Little or no thought is given to how these training messages integrate with the company’s mandated sales process.  Training becomes nothing but a jumble of different messages that if any fit within the format of the company’s stipulated sales process, it is only by accident.

And what is the message all of this sends to the sales team?  Simply that they are free to pick and choose what they want to do since the ‘mandated’ sales process really isn’t mandated-it’s just a suggestion of a process they might consider using.

And then the management of the company wonders why all the training they do isn’t working.

Training is far more than simply exchanging information about a particular aspect of selling.  Training has far more to do with behavior change than it does information exchange.  Training doesn’t work for many companies because the behavior change is never implemented-it never has a chance to be implemented because the sales team is confronted with so many different-and often contradictory-behaviors that no one behavior is ever really learned before they are confronted with a new behavior.

This same lack of consistency is experienced by salespeople who must seek out their own training.  They too are confronted with a sea of training concepts and ideas that are often in conflict with one another. 

There are many sales processes that are viable.  There are a great many individual strategies and techniques that produce results.  But none of them will produce the desired results if they are not learned and implemented-if the right behavior isn’t ingrained so it comes naturally.  To learn a process to that point, what is often called unconscious competency, takes time, practice, and reinforcement.  If your company isn’t generating the results from training that you want to see, maybe the culprit isn’t the process or the strategies you want to use, but instead is the inconsistency of message your company is unconsciously sending your sales team.

December 23, 2008

Top 12 Sales Articles of the Year–July: “The Three Types of Team Commitment,” by Kevin Eikenberry

Filed under: business,Leadership,management,small business — Paul McCord @ 6:24 am
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The July monthly winner at Top 10 Sales Articles was Kevin Eikenberry’s ”The Three Types of Team Commitment,” originally published at Eyesonsales.  Kevin’s article is one of 12 monthly winners vying for Sales Article of the Year.

Top 10 Sales Articles selected the 10 best out of the thousands of articles published each week.  The weekly winners then went to head to head competition with each other, the best being named the Article of the Month.  Now, out of the over 500 articles nominated, the 12 monthly winners are now competing for Article of the Year honors.

Each day I’ll be posting one of the monthly winners.  Read them and then head over to Top 10 Sales Articles and vote for your favorite.  Better yet-go there now, read all 12 and cast your vote (for my article, of course).

The Three Types of Team Commitment
By Kevin Eikenberry

Larry, Michelle and George had been friends a long time. They met in college, and though they each went to work in different organizations, they committed to getting together once a year to discuss their careers, opportunities and challenges. Over the years they had each risen to senior leadership roles within their organizations. At their most recent annual retreat the topic of team commitment came up.

As it turned out, they were as puzzled after their conversation as they had been before they began. Why? Because they all believed that team commitment was important, and they all felt they had it, and yet the performance of their teams weren’t as strong as they hoped for or felt was possible.

Listen in to part of their conversation . . .

Larry knew something wasn’t connecting for his team in terms of productivity, but wasn’t sure just what. “If anything, we have great team commitment. People understand the organizational goals and have truly bought into that direction. It’s clear from their words and actions that they are committed to our organizational goals. And yet, something is still missing. I’m not sure what it is.”

Michelle said, “We’re missing something in the productivity area as well, but my team is committed too. They are staunchly proud of the team – in fact they wave the team banner regularly – I’m surprised they haven’t had t-shirts made! They believe in the team’s role, they know that what they do is important, and like I said, man, are they proud!”

George concluded the comments of the trio. “My team is tremendously committed to each other. They are supportive, give each other great feedback and are always looking out for each other – more so than any other team I’ve ever seen. With all this commitment I’m baffled why they aren’t more successful!”

The conversation continued along a similar vein, with no real conclusions, until the next morning at breakfast.

The Morning Aha

At breakfast, Michelle said, “I was thinking about our team commitment conversation last night, and I woke up this morning with an idea! I think we do all have committed teams – but they aren’t committed to the same things. I think what we really need is a combination of the three types of commitments each of our teams have! Look at it this way . . .”

Michelle then drew three concurrent circles. In the inner circle she wrote “Commitment to Each Other.” In the middle circle’s area she wrote “Commitment to the Team.” And in the outer circle she wrote “Commitment to the Organization.”

With this picture the group discussed the idea at great length and how to build the two types of commitment their teams didn’t have. They also decided to talk in a couple of months about their progress.

The Three Circles

Commitment is critically important to team success. Of course there are other factors for success (like relationships, clear goals and more), but commitment is one that often is overlooked. More specifically, teams need three forms of commitment to be most successful:

1. Commitment to each other and each other’s success. Teams that are comprised of individuals that actively support, believe in and care about the success of each other will be more successful. This type of commitment promotes the comfortable shifting of duties and responsibilities among team members as necessary and allows teams to have less stress and higher productivity.

2. Commitment to their team and the team’s success. Team pride and commitment is important to ultimate success. The commitment that arises from a team that understands their role and relishes achieving it is hard to undervalue. Teams with this type of commitment will overcome long odds due to their strength and unity and willingness to band together to get through a tough situation. Why? Because they see the effort as worth it for the good of the team.

3. Commitment to the organization and organizational goals. When teams see their work as supporting valuable and important organizational pursuits, this type of commitment is strengthened. This can’t be built without a clear understanding of company direction and goals, but with those in place this commitment can grow. Like the internal team commitment, this manifests in organizational pride and a clear sense of obligation to the greater good.

Thinking about each of these separately as a team leader or a team member will help you determine where gaps might be. Hopefully your team has high marks in each area. If not, this list gives you a place to start in building higher levels of commitment in the areas that might be lacking.

Potential Pointer: The important team commitments include commitment to the organization, the team and each other. The stronger and more balanced these commitments are, the more successful and productive any team will be.

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