In Bad Times, We Need to Get Back to Basics
Managers these days have to reevaluate everything – processes, projects, team organization among many others. What was working for your team two years ago, one year ago and even only a couple of months ago is not necessarily working now. The volatility of the market has drastically changed the way business is conducted for many organizations, so what has your team done to adapt?
As a manager, part of your responsibility is to recognize when it is necessary to modify your team’s behavior and to determine how to best modify it. Otherwise, the results for your organization could be disastrous. Costs will be too high, goals won’t be achieved, and spirits will be low.
For example, let’s say you are a manager of a sales team, and you are provided a report (like the one below) from the accounting department which indicates that sales are flattening and expenses are gradually rising. Instinctively you know that some of this is due to the economic downturn, but you also recognize that there is a direct impact from the behaviors of your team too.
You have five sales people on the team, including yourself. Although sales for every team member across the board is down, you discover that the slump is hitting three team members harder than yourself and one other. The other productive person on year team consistently leads the team in sales volume and also follows the formula and protocol designed and proven to keep sales performance high.
The other three people had performed fairly well in terms of volume and sales revenue until recent months. Why is that? As the manager, you believe that it’s the fact that these other three people have not been following the standard, proven sales processes. When sales were up it wasn’t an issue, but now that sales are falling you want everyone to return to basics and become more efficient.
After looking into it you verify that your conclusion is correct: your lower performing sales team members haven’t stuck to the standard process and that has negatively impacted their performance. You decide that it’s time to get those sales team members to adapt and change their behavior by conforming to the standard, more productive sales process.
So you create a visual like the one below which depicts your organization’s sales funnel.
In a meeting with your team you discuss the report given to you by accounting and the sales funnel. Although the sales funnel is a simple rendering of the typical approach in moving prospects through the sales cycle, the point is to have the team remaining focused by exhibiting and illustrating the behaviors and functions of what has proven to be a successful formula for the organization.
It is important that the team understand that the way they conducted themselves previously is no longer working, so they need to return to the basics of sales and sales process – the “blocking and tackling.” You as the manager cannot change what is happening around you in the marketplace, but you can alter the behaviors of you and your team to adapt to those changes which will have an impact on the processes and projects they are responsible to carry out. Have you and your team adapted?
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