Tag Archives: Direct

What are Attributes of a Highly Effective Sales Force? Three Points

Situation: A CEO wants to improve the effectiveness of her sales team. As CEO of a young company she faces a choice between using contract versus direct sales reps. She seeks the advice of other CEOs as to what has worked most effectively with their sales approaches and teams. What are the attributes of a highly effective sales force?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Spend time vetting either contract or your own sales reps:
    • The choice of contract vs. direct sales reps is driven by market conditions and end desires.
    • Utilizing a contract rep is an effective way to gain entrée into the customer. Even though they are 1099s, they must be managed as though they were company employees.
    • It is important to spend considerable time vetting candidates for direct sales. Attitude, desire and commitment are much more important than experience and technical prowess. Spend as much time as necessary to make sure that you are hiring the best people. Test them, check references from employers and customers alike. Leave no stone unturned.
  • Measure:
    • What gets measured get done. Determine what behaviors are necessary for success and develop metrics for these behaviors. This enables you to manage success.
    • For one CEO, the biggest challenge is selling above the gap – selling high and wide within the customer organization. Most reps concentrate their efforts on a few people in the client organization – generally low and mid-level people – and fail to establish relationships with senior management.
    • It is important, and rare, to have those senior relationships. Getting them requires deep understanding of the customer’s business combined with confidence, determination and persistence.
  • Respect and manage reps:
    • Many companies treat sales as a “necessary evil,” setting up an antagonistic and ineffective relationship between sales and other departments. This causes the salespeople to hide much of their information or spend time “scamming the system” rather than working as part of the team.
    • The best companies treat sales as a revenue engine and encourage, value and respect input from the salespeople. This encourages sales to be part of the larger team.
    • There can be challenges transitioning people from a pure product sale to a long term service business relationship – a transition from Hunter and Farmer. Most believe that these are two very different personalities. It may be better having hunters who bring in the business and then transition the customer relationship to account managers to maintain long-term relationships.
    • It may be necessary to design two compensation plans to incentivize the desired behavior of each group.

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How Do You Reduce Interruptions in the Office? Three Points

Situation: A CEO of a small company finds it difficult to focus of company strategy and direction because on continuous interruptions to handle customer and company issues. Frequent phone calls and employees coming in to ask for guidance or to talk about issues make it difficult to focus on plans for the future. How do you reduce interruptions in the office?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company has grown to the point that it is time to build a management structure to facilitate decision-making. It’s time to delegate.
    • Identify promising individuals within the company who have the capacity to take on management responsibility. Provide them with the training to assume managerial roles and to handle direct reports.
    • If the talent is lacking in some areas, hire managers to oversee these areas.
  • The phone is the #1 problem – interruptions to deal with customer issues.
    • Hire an assistant to manage incoming calls and to transfer these calls to the appropriate department.
    • Learn to say no. For example, if an opportunity requires the CEO to be off-site to evaluate and estimate a project, that individual could not answer the phone in the office. Similarly, it is necessary to carve out concentrated time for strategic and critical tasks when in the office.
    • Explain to the team the challenge, and the benefits of spending uninterrupted time each day working on strategic direction. These benefits include additional growth and opportunity for both the company and employees.
    • Establish an official time – during regular hours – that the CEO is not available to respond to calls or other immediate needs. During these times, have an assistant direct these requests to the appropriate department or schedule time later in the day to handle an issue.
  • Any executive in a Fortune 500 company plans time for planning and other essential work when they cannot be interrupted. Working without interruptions is essential to efficient, high-quality work.

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How Do You Develop an Employee to the Next Level? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who wants a higher level of responsibility. Currently this employee is primarily focused on business development. He’s good at this but wants a higher level of experience. The CEO agrees. How do you develop an employee to the next level?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you ask this individual what needs to be done, what happens?
    • Revenue is number one. This is where he is focused, but he wants more than this from his role.
    • If this is also the CEO’s primary objective then the CEO needs to back off and direct him to split his time between closing high level opportunities and training his direct reports to be able to close lower-level opportunities on their own.
  • To the CEO – thinking about your own experience, how did you mature to a higher level when you had primary responsibility for business development?
    • Answer: I built and trained staff to do this and delegated these responsibilities to them.
    • Allow this individual and other key managers within the company to do the same thing, and coach them along the way.
    • Empower this individual to build his staff and enable them to take on more of the functions that he no longer wants to handle himself. Allow him to prioritize his time to focus on: hiring and training of his key staff and coaching and supervision as they grow into their new roles.
  • Consider this solution as a larger project manager role. Take a key product and empower this individual to design, build and manage the organization to deliver this product.
  • To frame this solution short-term, start with a 1-on-1. Ask about his vision – what he wants as his role and how he sees building this.
    • Follow by laying this out in terms of the company’s objectives – be specific as to what this looks like.
    • Look for a win / win reconciliation between the CEO’s and the employee’s visions that meet both of their objectives. Get on the same page with this individual, so that this fulfills both of your needs.

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How Do You Build a Young Company? Four Perspectives

Situation: An early stage company is positioning itself for growth. The CEO believes that they need to adopt a new model to grow. She is focused on a new channel – an affiliate model using the web. How do you build a young company?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Introducing a new product to a new market is very difficult, especially for an early stage business that is still establishing itself. Shifting from direct sales to ancillary services presents a new challenge and a new demographic. In addition, in your market there are low barriers to entry so it may be too early to diversify. You are more likely to be successful marketing to your core.
  • Evaluate and decide whether there is growth in your core business. If so, stick with your core plan. If not, then you either must change or decide that your core market is not what you thought it would be.
  • You offer a valuable, important service. The issue is branding and a clear vision of what you want to be. Start by identifying your revenue stream. Then assess ways that you can move from one-time sales to an annuity revenue stream without major adjustments to your model.
  • Is it feasible to build a revenue share model for ancillary services with your core business partners? Here are the steps:
    • Develop a model.
    • Talk to both your business partners and customers – test the concept. See how they respond.
    • There are two things to look for: does it turn out that that the model is easy to sell and implement, with little effort or distraction from our core business, or does it compliment your core business. If either or both is the case, you may want to pursue it.

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How Do You Address a Customer-Supplier End Run? Three Ideas

Situation: A company’s top customer has approached one of the company’s suppliers with a request that the supplier sell directly to them rather than through the company. The supplier normally does not sell directly to OEMs, and has neither the sales force nor the customer service capacity to work with these companies. Nevertheless, following the customer’s request, the supplier has asked the company’s CEO for a meeting. How should the CEO plan for this meeting? How do you address a customer-supplier end run?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • You need well-placed advocates both within the customer company and your supplier company. These advocates can help you to better understand what is behind the customers approach to your supplier, and what the true issues are. You will also better understand how the supplier is reacting to this request.
  • Talk to the boss of the purchasing manager who initiated this and let him know how this will impact your ability to supply other critical parts for their operation.
    • Ask for fast track approval as a preferred supplier.
    • Try to cut this off before the supplier representative arrives for your meeting.
  • You know from your history with this customer that you have had to make frequent delivery adjustments to meet their needs. Further, as a value add you make modifications to the parts supplied to meet the customer’s engineering specs. This level of flexibility is not part of your supplier’s business model. When you meet with the supplier, paint a picture of the downside of working directly with this customer to convince them that they don’t want to take this business direct.

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How Do You Hold High Performers Accountable? Five Guidelines

Situation: A company has a key employee who is a high performer; however the company has not developed a good accountability structure to direct this person. The CEO wants to add additional accountability to cover everyone, both current employees and new people as they are hired. The system should be fair and apply to all. How do you hold high performers accountable?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • High performing employees are essential assets to a company. They thrive on meeting and exceeding expectations. However they need to recognize and accept accountability for the inevitable mistakes or misjudgments that will occur.
  • Lay out the challenge, and ask your high performing employee, and this individual’s manager, to help design the system for monitoring accountability around results.
  • Within position descriptions, include not only the role and expectations within the description, but also expected progressions for development. These should be objective, measurable and based on specific skills or capabilities within the development progression. Gather input from current employees as you create position descriptions, so that they reflect the experience of employees rather than idealized generalities.
  • Set your expectations for new employees appropriately. Expect perhaps 60% of optimal performance early on. As new employees gain understanding of the company and their roles, coach and expect them to increase their performance over time. Provide training to assist their development.
  • James Fischer, in Navigating the Growth Curve, argues that expectations, for the CEO, management and employees, change as a company grows from start-up to a large firm. If a company is small, it doesn’t want the same structure or processes required to operate a 250 person company. Too much structure stifles creativity and growth if applied to small, nimble companies. Institute a level of structure appropriate to the size and stage of the company.

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How Do You Resolve a Conflict Involving a New Employee? Four Considerations

Situation: A company has hired a new employee with excellent skills who reports to a Director. This person is a self starter who prefers little supervision. Friction is starting to develop between the new employee and the Director. How do you resolve this conflict?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This person was hired for their talent. However a successful hire takes account of talent, but also role, cultural fit, organizational placement and the needs of the company.
    • For example, if this person is strong in operations but they are now in client services, is this the right role?
    • Similarly, if the culture of the office emphasizes teamwork, collaboration and support, is this the right culture for this individual?
  • Be cautious before tweaking the org chart to create a new role for this person..
    • Consider both your current staff and the new person. You may be creating additional conflict if your actions appear as favoritism.
    • The dominant factor is YOUR plan. If the employee is wrong, replace the employee.
  • If an employee can’t get along with others it is a difficult situation to repair.
  • When you meet with the employee what should be said?
    • First, don’t try to solve the situation before you have a clear strategy.
    • Question and listen. “You’ve been with us a short time, and I want to check in with you. What do you think of your role?” Let the employee talk, probe for clarification of what is said. Take note of what is said. Acknowledge any requests but indicate that you will put them under advisement.
    • Do the same in discussion with the Director.
    • The key is that you are in control. Look at your objectives, and where you fit resources best within the org chart. Once you have your plan, communicate it.

Key Words: New Employee, Conflict, Friction, Talent, Role, Fit, Organization, Company, Needs, Strengths, Skills, Report, Personality, Act, Direct, Concerns, Boundaries, Response, Conversation

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