Inspect What You Expect | Create Winning Sales Culture

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential…these are the keys will unlock the door to personal excellence.   Confucius

This article is the last in a series of summaries of proven schemes for driving business growth. These are listed below.

                   Growth Strategies  

• Make People First – Disciplined Coaching, Employee Development and Committed Support
• Maximize Overall Team Performance – Collaboration and Sharing Best Practices
• Create a Business as Usual Environment for Stretch Goals – Joint Planning and Ownership\Demand Excellence –  Accountability, Visibility, and Consequences
• Inspect What You Expect – Systematic Inspection and Review Processes

The concept of “Inspect What You Expect” was a simple and yet profound key learning for me. Thoughtful and systematic inspection and review are fundamental and a requisite to confirm functional alignment and operational efficiency/effectiveness as to the quality of overall execution for driving growth and delivering a high-quality customer experience. And, of course, a disciplined inspection provides clarity and visibility as to necessary employee coaching and development.

The sales organization within the winning culture can be likened to a high-performance sports car (This brings back memories of my little red Porsche). When finely tuned and operating at its peak, the sales engine can be a remarkable phenomenon to behold. Yet, to ensure that this machine is always operating at its peak efficiency and power, a consistent schedule for maintenance, calibration, and adjustments is essential.  The following are just a few examples of ways to maintain the peak performance of the sales machine:

• Schedule sales operations reviews – involves a thorough assessment of the execution of internal processes and procedures for the sales team – to confirm that the operation is running as efficiently and effectively as possible.
• Observe sales personnel interactions with customers, conduct joint visits with sales team members to customer premises, etc.
• Schedule forecast/pipeline reviews, etc. on a regular basis.
• Conduct routine and random inspection of processes relative to customer touch point to confirm that these interactions remain customer friendly. This involves face to face communication with the customer, as well as contact by mail (electronic and hard copy), social media, website, etc.
• Design a program for random and planned visits – for example, inside sales teams and telemarketing should be inspected for sales process and customer interactions – for retail reps observe customer interactions and examine merchandising compliance (when applicable).
• In each of these situations, even for well-managed organizations, coaching opportunities will exist. In an earlier article I mentioned that when you find people doing a great job, there are few things more satisfying and motivating than recognizing and praising an employee on the spot, at the moment, for a job well done. And, of course, coaching and disciplinary consequences should be administered with discretion, at the appropriate time and place. Finally, when warranted, SMART action plans should be developed to ensure systematic, disciplined follow up on areas requiring correction and adjustment.

In conclusion, each of the five growth strategies that we covered over the past few months, have been proven to drive immediate growth that can be reliably sustained over the long-term.

Here’s a question: Do you want to put a proven program in place to generate robust, sustained growth for your firm?  If yes, I can help you with that!

For the month of January, we are offering a complimentary assessment/review of areas of opportunity to drive growth in your respective business. No commitment will be required of you and this discussion in most cases lasts only about half an hour.

If you have an interest, please sign up now as time and scheduling will allow a limited number of consultations. Here is a link to my calendar scheduling our call: https://calendly.com/adam-vital

I look forward to our call and helping you drive significant incremental growth for your business in 2019!