March
2001
Great brands don't live in the past. They continue to grow -- and growth is important because consumers jump on bandwagons. Whether they're investing 401k funds or buying a sport coat, consumers pay attention to trends. They're attracted to what is growing and are apprehensive of what is not.
Does your sales force have an identity crisis? Are your salespeople confused about what or how they should be selling? Mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and changes in sales strategy can cause sales forces to fizzle. Two myths could be at the heart of the problem.
GMJ's first national survey found that, of all U.S. workers 18 or older, 24.7 million, or 19%, are what we call actively disengaged. This term describes people who not only fail to be enthralled by their work but are fundamentally disconnected from it. Actively disengaged workers tend to be less productive and report being less loyal to their companies, more stressed and less secure in their work. They miss more days and are less satisfied with their personal lives.
You may be reluctant to investigate your strengths quite simply because you don't believe that your true self is much to write home about. Whatever the label -- a feeling of inadequacy or "imposter syndrome" or plain old insecurity -- the symptoms are familiar. Despite your achievements, you wonder whether you are as talented as everyone thinks you are.
Marketing 101 reduces the main determinants of customer loyalty to the familiar Four Ps: Product, Place, Promotion and Price. But a fifth P is typically left out of the reckoning: People. The delivery of the brand promise often happens by human agency at the point of sale and proceeds through service, complaint, and resale. Yet marketers, who have the bottom-line responsibility for brand health, rarely focus on the Fifth P.
Many factors prevent suppliers from really "seeing" their customers or intimately understanding customer needs and requirements. These factors include managers who succumb to an "us versus them" mentality, organizational structures hostile to customer needs and short-term pressures that favor expediency over a long-term view. These invisible barriers are tall and sturdy. But seeing beyond or through them is possible when managers think like those athletes who nourish a mental picture of the finish line.
Today, salespeople must be deeply connected to clients, savvy about the marketplace and disciplined about the bottom line. But Gallup research continues to reveal the importance of core talent requirements that have not changed since the dawn of the hawker's art: courage, persistence, motivation, personableness. Companies that don't know this risk hiring "MBAs of sales" who can't take rejection or close the deal. Below, a look at sales force effectiveness then and now.
The virtue of cultivating strengths may seem obvious, but that's not how we usually behave. Instead, most of us spend far more time trying to cure our weaknesses. That's a big mistake, to judge by the world's best teachers, salespeople, lawyers, stockbrokers, athletes and others. They always play to their strengths.
Five years ago The Gallup Organization decided to create a better feedback process for employers large and small. The primary goal was to identify and measure the elements of worker engagement that are most powerfully linked to improved business outcomes -- be they sales growth, productivity, customer loyalty, and so forth -- and the generation of value. The result was a 12-question survey in which employees are asked to rate their response to each question on a scale of one to five.
"Engaged" employees are likely to be more cooperative, helpful to colleagues, and punctual. Engaged employees make better use of time, show up for more days of work, have longer tenure and earn higher performance ratings. But the key question for business is, what conditions govern the increase and decline of engagement within a company and its workforce? If these can be identified, can they be influenced? Do workgroups with higher rates of engagement generate significantly higher performance outcomes?