Our sales team was thoroughly impressed with the assessment instrument and the personal consultation Eric provided.
Mastering the Mundane
My wife worked for a terrific sales organization and had a great manager while she was there. After her training period ended and Kelly was ready to take on her own sales territory, her manager told her that she had a lot of potential and was going to be great at her job. Then her manager told her that for the first 6 months of her job, she wanted Kelly to do exactly what she told her to do. This included seemingly mundane items such as how to organize customer files, the right way to utilize her appointment calendar, even where to make notes to herself about returning calls.
To some, this might appear to be micro management. To Kelly’s manager, however, it was the best way to free her new sales rep to do the real work of the job – interacting effectively with customers.
Performance Principle: If you want your people to be effective, you must give them systems to quickly master the mundane. Good systems are proven ways to get the daily activities of a job done. There is no reason that each person should design his or her own system from scratch. Instead, you should give them systems for quickly mastering the basics, in order that they can focus on higher value activities such as serving customers and proactively managing projects.
If your organization is struggling with productivity and efficiency, consider having your most effective people document some basic processes for how getting things effectively. These processes become tools for coaching employees on the basics of their jobs. Remember, the purpose of these systems is not to squelch creativity – it is to focus people’s creative abilities on the most important and valuable activities.
Questions to Consider:
- When it comes to handling repetitive tasks, are people on your team recreating the wheel?
- Have you invested the time to standardize systems and processes for getting mundane tasks done with a high level of quality?
- Are you using systems to free your best people to achieve even better performance?
