Are you listening? Your Sales Man wants to talk to you!

Let me start with a caveat; while the headline mentions “Sales Man”, I believe in gender diversity and would like to see many more women in what we call the sales function. However that’s not the topic of this post.

By “Sales Man”, I refer to the front line / customer facing team, either selling goods or services.

Most of the organizations aspire to turn into Sales Organizations. In a Sales Organization, you are either selling, or supporting the sales team. But most fail on one count, they are not listening to what the Sales Man has to say, hence are not a real Sales Organization.

Anyone who has been living with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual targets, business plans and then revised business plans, the achievement of these targets gives the most exhilarating feelings one can ever experience. And the good part is, if you enjoy the kick, you can’t live without it. While you may have many trapped scientists or politicians doing the sales job purely for economic reasons, I can safely say, that for a true Sales Man, there is no pleasure other than seeing his product/services being sold and consumed.

Being at the forefront of the everyday battle, the Sales Man gets the credit of winning it or also the discredit of losing it. Yes, it is true that many a battles are lost because of poor execution of strategy, I can safely state that an equal number get lost because, the strategist did not listen to the foot soldiers.

Unfortunately, the Asian cultural context where people ask for even their due leaves with an apology, getting a real feedback is near impossible. So, as a Manager/Strategist, you need to listen to what has been spoken and also what has been not. How do you do that?

Want to listen to your Sales Man? Work as one!

When you do that, you understand what he/she faces in executing what you have planned. You will learn the ease or difficulty with which your plans can be executed and what the key challenges to solve for are. A listening Sales Organization will ensure that all key Strategists, weather line or staff, will work as or with the Sales Man. The more you face the moment of truth (the moment when a customer decides to buy your product/services), the more you hone your listening skills.

Look for what’s not spoken!

Sales slowing down! Customers switching to competition! New products not taking off! A losing sales team or one which continuously comes with excuses! These are all signals of a larger malaise of either an imperfect strategy or poor execution. If you do not lay down a platform to engage and create a meaningful dialogue with your first customers (sales team); you will struggle.

Watch out for Sales Man Myopia

Sales team generally is more price sensitive than your customers. They will always remember the last customer which broke away because the competition gave a better price, however will not remember how many they lost or won because of reasons other than price. The best way to actually show them the real picture is to engage in an open discussion asking them pointed questions which clears the cataract and corrects their vision.

Less is more!

The more reports you seek, the more crap you get. Your Sales Man loathes sending those reports, I am telling you from personal experience. Rather than asking him update on twenty different KPIs, you should feed him on limited number of focus KPIs and then have a discussion if something is working brilliantly or something is not.

Finally, respect your Sales Man’s views

Don’t be dismissive, even if you think that the feedback has zero merit. It’s important to take it with all humility and then if needed have an engaging discussion, where you should reason it out with them. The best approach which has worked very effectively for me is creating a bottoms up strategy group, where your front end team works in partnership with the strategists to create strategies and execution plans. These are real plans where there is an immense amount of ownership of the plan from the Sales Man.

Disclaimer : The views expressed in my blog posts are my own and do not represent that of my present or past organizations.