As it is with many firms, ours is made-up of individuals from diverse backgrounds with exceptional talents.  We have a singular goal, that is to guide organizations to creating, and sustaining profitable service based sales cultures.  However, as we grow our practice in types of industries, number of clients and staff, so grows our diversities.  In fact, one of the few constants in our organization is a principle practice model we call the KPE (Khoury Performance Equation); it is our business blueprint designed to optimize sales and service performance through three primary areas of actionable focus:

- Creating The Right Environment

- Ensuring The Right Personnel Fit

- Executing The Right Action

A few years ago, I embarked on a mission to aid our team in developing more synergy in the area of application of that blueprint. The mantra for this initiative … Synergetic Diversity.  This tenet, Synergetic Diversity, can be defined as being a system of “pooling” differences (i.e. cultures, economies, industries, experiences, etc) to act as a whole toward one common goal.  When well practiced, it creates cohesive movement – it becomes a structured yet fluid dance.

Regardless of your industry, products, staff experiences or customer base, a synergistic approach to key tasks and initiatives brings a unified fluidity to your team’s efforts, maximizies performance and bottom-line results.

Below is a quick exercise to ensure your business initiatives remain on task. 

• Make a list of a few critical principles or practices that should exist across all verticals.
• What are some of the diversities that are affecting your objective, “total installation” of those principles or practices in our organization and/or with your clients? 
• What synergies in behavior (performance) among your team and/or your clients must exist to ensure success of the objective?  
• If there are critical synergies that do not currently exist, what is you action plan to address them?

Diversity is a component of success in today’s global business community. Use this exercise to gauge the synergy of your team’s efforts toward sustainable profit and growth. 

Lynda Fleming – Director of Learning & Development, Frontline Performance Group

Most every frontline sales manager will agree that keeping staff encouraged when they have very price sensitive customers can be challenging. It becomes quite easy to fall into the trap of believing that by in large, customers are cheap. But here is the reality; customers are not cheap. They are value driven and want to know that they are receiving the best price and service available for their hard earned money.  Understanding and focusing on their need for value will allow for the message to be heard and more sales to be made. 

Here are a few of the many successful techniques to help your team command the attention of value driven customers:

-  When presenting a product or service, always focus first on the benefits of what the customer is getting, prior to quoting the price.  All too often the price is presented first and then the customer shuts down their listening skills.

-  Focus on the value of what they are getting vs. the price they are paying.  People remember most, whatever they hear last so when presenting a sale price, highlight the “savings”. For example: “It can sell for as much as $99, today it’s only $69, that’s a savings of $30!”

-  DO NOT PREJUDGE!!!!  Only assume every customer deserves the very best product or service you have to offer.

-  People buy from those they like. Focus on connecting with the customer and delivering a presentation centered on enhancing their experience – with you, the company and the products/services you represent. 

Most importantly, bear in mind that a salesperson’s perception of their customers will affect the presentation and ultimately, influence buying decisions.  It is critical that frontline managers do not “buy into” the same perceptions that can distract and dissuade their sales team.  How a salesperson feels about their customers and the sales opportunities determines how well those customers will receive their message.  Encouraging your frontline to focus their energies on ways to vary their presentation for the value driven customers instead of dismissing the opportunity will increase sales opportunities and generate more revenue.

Ken Stellon – Senior Vice President, Frontline Performance Group

Have you ever seen kids playing a game of American football on a playground? It’s pretty interesting because what they do could actually teach senior management at many companies a core secret to creating “inspired performance”. Of course inspired performance is when employees are totally committed to their company, their team and their customers. It’s when an organization has a team of players that doesn’t just do what they are told but that does what needs to be done – on a consistent basis, all the time, because they actually WANT to do it, not because they HAVE to do things. This is the exact opposite of a team that is only “compliant” – defined by a burning desire to “do their eight and hit the gate” without expending any more effort than they absolutely have to in order to keep their job.

SO…

What is it that kids do on a playground when they are getting ready to play a game of football? Well, they define the boundaries of the game first and they make sure that all the players on the field know exactly what it takes to succeed and move the ball down the field. Everyone knows what is “out of bounds”, what it takes to get a “first down” so they can continue playing and everyone also knows where the goal line is and how they can score a “touchdown” to be successful.

Even young kids know the importance of making sure that all the players on the field are on the same page and know what they need to do to succeed. Yet, astonishingly, many organizations never clearly define their organizational “playing field” to the team and they don’t even know what high performance looks like. Employees are sometimes running in the dark, not knowing where the goal line is and not really understanding what they are expected to do to score a touchdown. In some cases, accountability standards are set up and recognition programs are put in place when employees don’t even understand the definition of high performance. In essence, people are expected to “take the hill” with no clear long-term goal in mind even if they reach the summit. This is a too common scenario where people have no idea of how to be excellent and no standard to aspire to in order to be their best. It is hard to consistently exceed past, best performance when nothing is defined and the only constant within the organization is ambiguity.  

Next week I will provide five tips to take your organization to a new level of success. For this week, I would like you to think about being “explicit” instead of “implicit”. Many managers typically say things like, “Oh my people know how I think. They know what I want”. When, in actuality, since they are not mind readers, they really don’t know what you are thinking and they don’t know what is expected of them. The only way people can truly know what they need to do to succeed in the organization is to have that message clearly and explicitly communicated by the leadership.

“Implied” communication will never mazimize the performance potential of an organization. Although many managers tend to think an “unspoken request” will get results from their people, that only serves to create confusion and frustration. Go to a drive through window at a fast food restaurant and see how successful you’ll be with your order while executing a strong “unspoken request”. While that may seem like a ludicrous analogy, the way some managers expect to communicate with their people, through only vague implications, is just as outrageous.

This week, work on being totally explicit instead of just implicit with your communication. Next week we’ll delve into five specific and explicit tips to maximize your organization’s results.

Michael Stahl - Senior Performance Manager, Frontline Performance Group 

Successful business strategies are the backbone of thriving businesses and highly successful business people. Here are 10 random, yet essential business takeaways that have me thinking as we approach our 18th year in business and I reflect on this past year.

• Nothing is more powerful than what you can CONTROL in your business. Take inventory of what those ”controllables” are and focus on executing them to the fullest in the New Year.
• Nothing is more frustrating than what you can’t CONTROL in your business. Always work on making that list smaller.
• Your existing customer is always your best one! Take incredibly good care of them.
• In every situation, every challenge and opportunity, look for the win-win … there is always one there.
• A strong ego is a great driver for success. A big ego is the inevitable downfall of so many business leaders.
• Always have an open mind and listen to varying opinions, then distill them to come up with the best solution that fits your needs.
• Capitalize on your strengths and what you like and do best. Do the same with those around you.
• Fully develop and execute the 3 drivers of team performance; compensation, recognition, and accountability.
• An effective “sales engine” in your business is incredibly hopeful and rewarding. Focus on putting it in overdrive in 2011.
• Thinking in terms of logic and common sense always makes the most sense! Always consider things from the other point of view. Accept that for things to work over a period of time they have to always add up and make sense.

As you ponder these points I think you will agree, you don’t have to be a business owner to adopt them as principles. In fact, embracing these strategies is among the best ways to catapult your career in your own business or the business you work in. They will help you capitalize on the outstanding opportunities that exist today and pave the way for a most successful future.

Ziad Khoury – Founder and President, Frontline Performance Group

Dr. Paul Hersey said that “Effective leadership is not ‘different strokes for different folks.’ It’s different strokes for the same folks, depending on their level of readiness for specific tasks.” Have you ever heard a sales manager say something like, “Well this is how I manage and that’s the way it is”? Sometimes, the good intention of working harder, not smarter, has the unintended consequence for managers of their team not meeting goals or at least not maximizing the potential they have to succeed.

The challenge with this line of thinking is that one-size-fits-all management fits no one well and everyone poorly. If a salesperson is great at greeting and building rapport but needs work on probing questions, the style of management or influence needs to be different when addressing them as they are clearly two very distinct areas. When a salesperson, whether frontline or executive level, is treated with a one-way type of direction and is micromanaged for a task in which they already excel, it creates disdain and apathy for both the task and the manager.  A more effective approach is to define the salesperson’s current level of performance for every task of their job and then exert influence around that task with the leader behavior they need, not what they necessarily want.  Inspired performance (meaning that your team is committed and not just compliant), comes from understanding what your people need and providing it for them. 

Here are five tips for defining the performance level of your salespeople and giving them what they need for specific tasks …

1.  Understand the task itself. What kinds of traits are needed and what is the process that will make this task successful?

2.  Define if the salesperson has the ability to do the task and if they are motivated to do it. Sometimes people have neither the ability nor the motivation to do a task. Take new salespeople for example, typically, they have great motivation but lack the ability to perform a task.  Others have the ability but just plain don’t want to do it and a superstar is likely to do the task incredibly well and will love doing it.  Each calls for a different management intervention.

3.  Once you know where a salesperson is with a certain task, define what they need from you. For example, a salesperson with very little ability is going to need a lot of direction – not yelling or condescending, just good, strong explanation and guidance.  The more ability they have, the less direction they need. Those with very low motivation, depending on how much ability they have, may need strong direction.  If they are highly skilled, just a chance to “vent” may be the answer; in which case, you as the manager become a “facilitator”, not a “dictator”.  In the case of a person who is really good at a task and enjoys doing it, they don’t need much of your time – just acknowledgement and an occasional “check-in”.

4.  Understand that as with all people, a salesperson’s performance may change over time due to a variety of factors, some personal and some professional. Just because they have done a great job in the past, it does not mean they are still performing the same task at the same high level.  If this is the case, analyze their new performance level and react accordingly.

5.  Practice your ability to analyze and diagnose the performance level of your team for various tasks; then work on adjusting your behavioral management style.  Your influence style should be based on the analysis of current need for a specific task.

Remember, if you are one of those managers who is of the belief that, “This is the way I manage and that’s it”, you will only maximize your potential 25% of the time.  Why not learn to understand what your sales team needs and then exceed beyond, best performance 100% of the time?

Michael Stahl - Senior Performance Manager, Frontline Performance Group