Most successful executives I have worked with have an indefinable intuition for the business that drives their decision making. This ability presents itself in a variety of ways, but is best revealed when they are forced to make decisions for which there is no clear right direction. In those cases, the executive uses their best judgment and hopes for the best. Executives that are able to make the right judgments continue to see their firm grow, while others are left stagnant repairing the repercussions of poor decision making. But what happens when a staffing company grows and decision making becomes more and more complex? Can intuition effectively guide decision making? While I don’t completely disregard the role of intuition, a common mistake I see owners make is to believe that their intuition is a unique gift that shouldn’t be challenged even as their operational knowledge wanes. This perspective is often justified by the book Blink by Malcom Gladwell. In this book, Gladwell discusses rapid cognition or the thinking that happens in the first two seconds when placed in a new situation. Many people walk away from Blink with a higher regard for instincts as the key driver of decision making rather than fact based … Read More
The Power of Habit
I was just reading a book called the Power or Habit by Jack Hodge. The primary narrative of the book is that we, more than anything else, are defined by what we do, and close to 90% of what we do is determined by habits both good and bad. I am not sure how he determined the 90%, but we all know that our habits are a powerful force in our lives. However, I would argue that we as managers may underestimate the power of habits in managing and coaching our teams. This make me think back on a conversation I had with one of my past employees a few years ago. She came into my office to discuss the relevance of my monthly training topic. Her point was that everyone already understood the best practice we were going to discuss. It was in her eyes a waste of time. It was then that the light bulb went off. I wasn’t training because they didn’t already understand the best practice; I was training because they weren’t doing the best practice. So in a way, my training was an infomercial on the best practice and a platform to explain my expectations to the … Read More
Establishing a Culture of Performance
Having discussed the internal drivers of sales culture, the next step is to explore what leaders can do to establish a culture of performance. Since culture is largely defined by human behavior and decision making, it’s important to understand there is no one size fits all approach. The variability within the three internal drivers makes that clear. Companies have unique sales strategies, leadership styles, and team compositions. So if there is no one right answer, then how does a company establish a culture of performance versus a culture of adequacy? I believe the key for leaders to build a culture of performance primarily relies on three factors; clarity, communication, and consistency. Clarity Every company has a culture; the question is whether that culture has a clear purpose. This clear purpose is largely defined by executive management and gives their team a roadmap on what is desirable behavior. By not providing clarity, the culture is much more vulnerable to counterproductive or even destructive behavior. Strong leaders understand this threat and respond by providing a clear purpose for their team to embrace and rally around. In the business community the most well established approach for providing a clarity of purpose is the … Read More
What Drives Your Sales Culture?
In the last blog article, I discussed how the Global Workforce Study on workforce culture reported the highest level of employee dissatisfaction in the study’s 23 year history. Employee dissatisfaction can be especially damaging to a company’s sales culture, threatening client relationships and overall company growth. There are many companies that have compelling products and services and good people to sell them, but have a weak culture that undermines performance. Understanding your sales culture is required in order to determine what changes are needed to make a team more effective. The first step is to determine the drivers of a company sales culture, and the threats to its effectiveness. What is Culture? Before we dive too far into the drivers of a sales culture it’s important to understand what culture is and how it impacts team productivity. Company culture can be described as a set of unwritten rules that determine employee behavior and decision making. Culture determines what is appropriate and inappropriate for interactions between employees, their managers, and clients. Measuring the impact of an effective culture is very difficult, but anyone who has witnessed both high performance and low performance organizations understands its impact on company effectiveness. Internal Drivers … Read More
Drivers for Sales Success
Identifying key sales drivers and being able assess the health of those drivers is critical in building and successfully managing a sales force. There are many staffing executives who believe that most sales issues begin and end with the quality of their sales force. While the quality of sales personnel is an important factor it is not the only one. By not appreciating the other drivers, managers are vulnerable to making to poor hiring decisions, causing unnecessary turnover and consistent underperformance. The book Building a Winning Sales Force defines these drivers within five different categories. This blog will discuss those categories and why they all play an important role in the execution of your sales strategy. Definers: A successful sales organization has clearly defined sales roles Definers determine how your sales organization should be structured in terms of size, territories, and specific roles within the sales organization. Definers are determined by the value proposition you are bringing to the marketplace and buyers you are targeting. If you do not have your value proposition or buyers clearly defined then you have no sales strategy and therefore no way of knowing what drivers you may need. Shapers: Hiring and developing the right people Now … Read More