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September 2003 |
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“We have met the enemy and he is us”—Walt Kelly in his Pogo cartoon strip
One of our consultants shared with us the following story: "I was reminded of the Pogo cartoon during a recent day of field travel. The sales representative being observed had just used an innovative approach to gain access to a target physician. When I asked if she had shared this approach with anyone else on her sales team, her reply was, 'No way!! That would help them and would decrease my bonus and my chance of being an all-star!' The more I worked with this sales force, the easier it was to see that this competitive attitude was common throughout the organization." Sales representatives and district sales managers need to be competitive –- against the competition. The best sales forces develop and continuously improve the best practices for selling their products. This effort requires teamwork by the sales force, marketing and sales training. This article identifies five key steps to executing a “best practices” approach to continuous improvement. 1. Gain a commitment Many managers believe that the key to improving performance is getting their team to work harder. This tends to produce short-term results whose gains are difficult to sustain. Identifying and coaching best practices creates long-term sustainable gains. Common reasons that organizations identify and transfer best practices for performance improvement include:
2. Establish baseline “best practices”. Some District Managers believe that their first task with a new hire is to “teach them the real world” and “correct” what sales training has just spent weeks teaching. As a result, there is a high degree of inconsistency across sales reps. A quick, effective way to rapidly develop baseline best practices and gain alignment is to:
3. Coach to “best practices” Ultimately the district sales managers determine the success or failure of the program. They need to believe that the “best practices” work and coach their sales team to follow these agreed upon methods. If they are not constantly reinforcing the importance of following the best practice and achieving expectations, sales reps aren't going to change and adopt the new practices. Through their coaching sessions, district sales managers should be tracking and monitoring performance improvement in both utilizing best practices and in identifying opportunities for additional process improvement. Seeing is believing: By observing 8 or 12 sales reps continually utilizing good selling practices, coaches can see firsthand the program's benefits, how additional changes can further improve performance and how championing new ideas improves performance. 4. Define “best practice” owner. Identify one person or organization (frequently in training) responsible for receiving, evaluating and sharing new ideas and changes in best practices. Let's face it: The day that you define and implement baseline best practices, they become obsolete. While you may hope that reps and district managers are identifying opportunities to further improve, if there isn't a centralized “best practice owner”, their ideas remain “local initiatives” and process variation begins to return. The “best practice owner” performs the role of a “suggestion box” to collect all ideas. This person should use former members of the core team to test these ideas. If the core team agrees that the idea should be added to the “best practices”, the “owner” has responsibility for implementation. If it is a small change, implementation may be as easy as an “all sales” voicemail or e-mail. More complex changes may require new technology or training. Will this change impact any metrics? Regardless, the change needs to be incorporated into new rep training and process documentation. 5. Reward and recognize “new” best practices. Sales people are still motivated by success and recognition. As the anecdote that began this article indicates, it is important that sales reps and managers are rewarded for their ideas. The firms that have done the best job of implementing “best practice” programs have reevaluated their entire compensation system, eliminating programs that emphasize “rep rankings.” New programs focus on what matters--individual and team improvement on key metrics like share, total sales and gross margin. Additionally, reps and district sales managers are encouraged and rewarded for their efforts to improve best practices. These rewards can be small incentives like getting paid to write short “success stories” for an internal newsletter to significant incentives like an “All Star” award to the top sales force innovator. Additionally, many sales forces are now requiring sales reps to demonstrate teamwork and “problem solving” before they become eligible for promotion. Committing to “best practices” requires both determination and a process. It isn't easy, but the payoff can be enormous at the rep, district, team and company level. A future edition of HIPS will discuss some of the challenges associated with maximizing the impact of this approach and maintaining the program's momentum. Prior Newsletters To view prior newsletters, please visit our newsletter index at http://www.rmcionline.com/html/news/ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Please click here to unsubscribe from the RMCI newsletter. Copyright Notice Copyright 2003, RM Consulting International. All rights reserved. Every viewer may copy, reprint or forward all or part of this newsletter to friends, colleagues or customers, so long as any use is not for resale or profit and the following copyright notice is included intact: "Copyright 2003, RMCI. All rights reserved." Contact Information RM Consulting International |
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