Managing My Not-So-Hidden Agenda For Sales

Since Sales is my business-life, I’ve had a not-so-hidden agenda for quite awhile. That is to make everyone in the organization I’m part of a Sales Person. Or, at least, that’s how I think of it. In reality, if I turned everyone into a Sales Person, forsaking the role that they were hired for, the organization wouldn’t function very well. So, maybe a better way to express this plan is to equip all my colleagues to help stimulate Sales, in addition to carrying out their assigned duties. Here’s what I have in mind:


One of the Fortune 500-level companies I’ve worked for is my career-favorite employer. The top reason for this was that this company truly looked out for the best interests of its people, knowing that the people would do the same for the company in return. That genuine caring attitude extended to other critical areas, such as: the company’s demand for quality in its products, their determination to have the best of mutually beneficial relationships with Customers and Business Partners, etc. Of course, as a Sales Person, it was great to be able to represent a firm with sincere enthusiasm that came easily. However, I discovered that the qualities that were the source of my zeal were effecting the behavior of others in non-Sales roles in ways that were positively impacting Sales. My favorite example of this was a great guy, named Sal, who ran the warehouse. Sal was as “on fire” as I was about the terrific company we worked for and I’m sure that was behind the excellent way he carried out his job. But, I found that this impacted Sal’s conduct elsewhere. When Sal ran into a friend at Trader Joe’s and they asked him about our company, you could count on him to tell them about our remarkable employer and our excellent performance. You can’t buy PR like that! But, you can bet that I saw to it that, in addition to Sal’s natural gusto for our company, he was equipped with an “elevator pitch” of matching quality, to help him express his views. And, as you might expect, it was from that point I started looking to do this with all my co-workers and thus, my “not-so-hidden agenda” was born.

I can’t imagine any sane business leader not wanting to have the sort of win-win culture I’ve described embedded in their company. Just the same, there are pitfalls to avoid. One of the biggest is what the folks who teach soft-skills call “unmet expectations”. This didn’t happen with Sal but lets say that, as the result of an encounter at Trader Joe’s Sal brought a Customer to the company and he took the Customer directly to Order Entry and asked that his name be placed on the order as the Commissioned Sales Person. Fraught with problems, right?! You talk about your unmet expectations! … The Sales Manager expected that Sales People, not enthusiastic Warehouse People, would handle all Sales. Sal expected that he would get paid commission. The Customer didn’t expect to get caught in some internal conflict with their supplier. Etc., etc. Wow!

Unmet expectations, commonly, occur because two parties expect different things and that’s because they didn’t set an expectation in the first place. If Sal’s Trader Joe’s contact resulted in revenue for the company, certainly it would be in line for him to receive recognition and remuneration. However, there should be a policy in place to define this and typically, that would define the appropriate steps for the not-really-a-Sales-Person to hand the connection off to Sales. That should apply across the board, even if the connection is made at a higher level … a situation that could be even more problematic. A good place to start, in general, is to make sure that everyone is on the same page about the legitimacy of Sales in the business process. My posting on The Pride and Prejudice of Sales touches on this a bit.

What experience have you had along these lines? Please let us know so it can be shared with others!

Comments
 
Dan Waldron Says:


October 15, 2008 at 5:16 pm edit

Well said� Great information, keep up the great work!