Sometime... Often, when we promote our top Salesperson to Sales Management, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.

Why?  Two key reasons:  

1. We take one of our best Salespeople off the road... at least for a significant part of their time.  

2. The characteristics and attributes that make a GREAT Salesperson 'SELDOM' create a great Sales Manager.

We see examples of his frequently and we find ourselves feeling disappointed for business owners who felt they were doing a good thing.  While it makes some sense that having direct selling experience should help you to understand the rigors of the sales job and how to coach others, this nice idea seldom converts into results.

Raise your hand if yourleadership is continually encouraging innovation, but when it comes down toimplementation, everyone continues to do things as they’ve always done them.Don’t worry; you’re not the only one with your hand in the air. It’s notuncommon for us to revert back to what we know, what is comfortable. What youdid five or ten years ago worked for you — it got you to where you are today.Perhaps what you did back then was unbelievably innovative, and ultimatelysuccessful, for your company. Do you know what your next steps are for aninnovative and successful future?  Do youhave the tools and talent necessary for your company’s evolution?

Approximately seven yearsago, a TTI-certified consultant, Vicki Lauter, was working with a healthcareconsulting company. A small, entrepreneurial company, the leaders were having ahard time hiring the right people. This isn’t to say they weren’t hiringgreat people ­— they were hiring recent cream-of-the-crop MBAs from Duke andChapel Hill. These extremely intelligent, driven graduates were staying withthe company for about a year, then moving on to run divisions at Fortune 1000companies. They were tomorrow’s CEOs, and this particular consulting companydesperately needed dedicated healthcare consultants. Moreover, the leaderswanted employees who would be trained on how to be the perfect healthcareconsultant the way their company envisioned and how they had experiencedsuccess.

Lauter and her teambenchmarked the healthcare consultant position by identifying the keyaccountabilities of the job, and then determining the most successfulbehavioral (DISC) style, motivators, acumen and competencies (soft skills) anideal candidate would possess.  As theyrecruited and onboarded candidates who aligned with that particular benchmark,they found that their retention rate increased substantially, and the firstbatch of benchmarked consultants stayed on staff a minimum of four years.

Let’s fast-forward now to2011.  Five years after the original (andsuccessful) job benchmark, the company’s leadership came to the realizationthat their clients were changing, and thus the company needed to change aswell. Lauter’s team was brought back in to re-benchmark the company’s standardconsultant position, and during the benchmarking process, the leadership teamtruly realized how much their talent pool needed to change. Originally, theywere looking for highly compliant, technically savvy individuals who woulddeliver the company’s strategy precisely as they were taught. Afterre-benchmarking, the position, the company leaders recognized that they neededconsultants who were comfortable talking and meeting with clients, anddelivering solutions to each client depending on that client’s individualneeds.  This was a very different type ofemployee.

Implemented successfully,this healthcare consulting company developed a cadre of talented consultants,equipped to evolve with the company’s strategic plan, but before they couldinnovate, they needed the right people working to fulfill the vision of thecompany.

Click here to read more blogposts featuring job benchmarking success stories:http://www.ttisuccessinsights.com/blog/categories/job-benchmarking

Is Your Company’s CultureReady to Innovate?

At this year’s Front End of Innovation event, George Buckley, executive chairman and recently retired President and CEO of 3M, said, “A company can only be innovative if you have the culture to accept change and risk … innovation comes down to people and how you lead and inspire them.”  As companies seek opportunities to innovate, they will rely on their people to move their company forward. So what can organizations do to ensure their employees are optimized to be the most productive, most innovative they can be?

ATTI-certified consultant, Mark Debinski was recently working with a client where innovation was a key initiative in the company’s strategic plan.Despite this tenet of innovation, the company’s culture prevented it from changing and taking the risks necessary for its people to be innovative. The company, a hundred year old national law firm, had recently acquired two boutique firms located nearly 3,000 miles away. The clash of cultures from these polarized entities virtually paralyzed the managing partners’ ability to innovate and grow the firm, despite the fact that the acquisition was a vital part of that strategy. The people working within the firm were stuck in its legacy culture, continuing to do things the way they've always done them. Thisculture supported only the ideas of department directors, eliminating the opportunity for other employees to contribute to the growth of the firm.

Debinski and his team applied two distinct techniques to help the firm transform its prohibitive culture into a more objective one where employees had an opportunity to help innovate the company. First, they took the firm’s employees through trust-building exercises. This was necessary to create an atmosphere where employees feel a sense of safety and security. With this feeling of safety, employees were more likely to take the necessary and valuable risks that make for creative and innovative outcomes, which in turn will create high quality business results.

Once trust was established, Debinski’s team engaged with different departments throughout the firm using TTI Success Insights’ TriMetrix® HD assessment. Every employee was assessed, and the comprehensive TriMetrix HD reports revealed the distinct value each employee was capable of bringing to the firm. Breaking out of the habit of only trusting the words of director-level employees, the assessments quantified the value of other employees. And, because trust had been built throughout the firm, cross-collaborative teams were developed and began innovating. By eliminating personal biases, the firm was finally operating at its desired level. The assessment process provided a space for objective conversation to take place and true talents to be revealed.

Tolearn more about companies that have used TTI Success Insights assessments tocreate innovative human resources solutions, read our collection of case studieshere: http://www.ttisuccessinsights.com/why/case-studies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Favor Larson is Senior Business Services Consultant for TTI Success Insights, striving to improve the quality of the workplace through the application of assessments in businesses using an in depth knowledge of behaviors, motivators, personal skills, emotional intelligence and acumen.

Amazing but true.  Try it.  Get a length of chain, any length and any gauge.  Lay it out on a table, floor or ground. Now, pick up one end and try to push the chain across a surface.  

YEP!  Can't be done.  A simple lesson about life, work, friends, negotiations, leadership or just about anything you can think of.

Leadership is about bringing people along, willingly, behind your leadership.

Think of this every time you are about to push.  Sometimes you may have to, but most of the time... probably not.

Thoughts?

Any organization can make a mistake. Things go wrong. People are people. ** IT Happens.

What drives me crazy and drives me away from a business is indifference. We feel indifference from the staff, but indifference comes from the owner and executives of an organization.

The employees usually have little or no control over the processes and mechanics of how a business runs, so focusing on the staff is useless.

I recently stayed in a major chain hotel that didn't have towels. Something had gone wrong. 

It was a pain in the *** to have to use a t-shirt to dry myself, but what boiled my blood was that the staff thought it was a joke. Not even a hint of an apology but lots of "Nothing I can do about it" and "Oh well."

This attitude comes from the owners and executives.

Needless to say, Trip Advisor is speaking loud and clearly for me, especially because it is so complex to let the hotel chain know about my displeasure that I can't be bothered.

Lets be clear... I NEVER fault a problem or mistake. What I find fault with is the ATTITUDE and the staff learns it from the Owners and Executive.