I often see high-level managers and business owners express an almost irrational fixation on a singular internal metric or Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Their steadfast focus, while admirable, is often shockingly misguided and harmful to the business. This owner intensity typically drives the organization to dramatically improve one specific metric while ignoring others, which frequently results in business trauma, unintended consequences and collateral damage.

One organization I recently worked with focused all of their attention, compensation and recognition on their top volume revenue producers. They characterized these agents as ”top performers” and rewarded them as such. Upon closer inspection, however, the agents who had produced the most revenue were not the best salespeople. They were simply “churning” calls and skimming opportunities rapidly for the easiest sales. This “cherry-picking” does produce large revenues; however, it does so at the expense of more needy customers who require greater attention and patience. Once conversion of opportunities handled and a customer service index were added as performance indicators, many of the perceived top agents fell significantly in the rankings. Although they were producing large revenue sums, the hidden collateral damage they were doing to the brand through their insensitivity to other customers largely outweighed the positive sales results they were generating. This situation is tragic…and common. Conversely, with the new performance indicators in place the true capabilities and contributions of some of the near-top and average agents were seen for the first time.

In one industry, an owner might place all of his focus on sales revenue only to get burned by profit slippage from excessive agent-to-customer incentives or discounts, or on the back-end through poor quality sales resulting in high accounts receivable defaults. In another scenario, an owner may become fixated on utilization percentage (as in car rental or hotel room usage) while simultaneously neglecting to see the harsh effect of the lower daily rates needed to drive that utilization. If you had a four room hotel, would you rather have 100% occupancy at $100 per room night or 80% occupancy at $150 per room night? The first example produces a Revenue Per Unit of $100 while the less-used property produces a Revenue Per Unit of $120 — a 20% revenue premium for less work! Factor in the reduced labor needed to handle the lower number of transactions along with the reduced product cost, and you see a new perspective surface. In yet another case, transactions produced per hour may be the driving force while little or no consideration is placed on the profit or brand-building potential of those transactions to the organization.

All of these metrics, along with many others, are worthwhile and critical to your success. However, it is important to remember more often than not it is the calibration of several Key Performance Indicators that will ultimately drive the two metrics that matter most, long-term customer care and profit.

Chris Brown- Senior Vice President, Frontline Performance Group

In order to be truly successful companies must strive to reach their full potential, not just improvement.

Compare overall performance to your top performers. Now imagine the behavior of your high flyers becoming the norm in your organization. If you have found a few people who can perform at this level, why not duplicate them across your entire frontline team instead of accepting mediocre or poor performance from the other 90%.

Take a look at the tremendous impact each individual team member has on your revenue and profit. Many business owners and managers are experts when it comes to their P&L statement. However, when it comes to the revenue and profit potential just one of their frontline associates influences each year, they are amazed at what is being left on the table.

Aspire toward your peak potential not your perceived potential, which is artificially bound by the people and processes you have in place now.

Defining a theoretical frontline strategy for high profitability is not a difficult thing to do. Getting people to do it, and do it consistently, is.

In order to optimize sales and service performance, you must embrace three primary areas of actionable focus:

• Creating the Right Environment
• Ensuring the Right Personnel Fit
• Executing the Right Action

Changing behavior and sustaining high-performance sales levels cannot happen by training or effective coaching alone. A whole solution that is effective, efficient and systematically implemented over time is required.

Each of the three elements listed above – Environment, Fit and Action – are interdependent. They feed and build on each other as one element supports the success of the other. The Right Environment makes it easier to attract the Right Fit, which in turn makes it easier to produce the Right Action. Only by addressing all three components will your organization reach its full performance potential.

What is the definition of a frontline sales representative?

Any team member that interacts with your customers is considered to be on the frontline. This includes face-to-face interactions, phone interactions, and online communications.

Why is the frontline important to your business?

In this increasingly competitive market, it is more important than ever for companies to do more than the status quo of merely maintaining business relationships. Business leaders who seek to improve company profit must continually strive to differentiate themselves through the service and sales ability of their frontline.

Imagine what would happen if your frontline sales team was not only genuine, sincere and helpful, but built a good first impression and rapport with your customer, asked the questions they needed to ask to truly understand you customers’ needs, really knew your products and services, and built value into what they were selling. The results would be tremendous! New avenues of growth and profit would be created including additional and incremental sales revenue opportunities.

Understand and appreciate the role of your frontline as the vehicle that can transform your bottom-line and you will create the power to generate unprecedented profits!