Interpersonal Business

Those who’ve survived in business have done so by never deviating from their model of insuring a positive and rewarding customer experience. Now’s the time to analyze just how user-friendly your company is. Make sure everyone on your staff understands their importance in the total “sales process.” Create a customer experience mission statement, including minimum standards of performance, and then provide the training to fulfill the objective. It’s time to dazzle the marketplace.

Management struggles with the dynamics of effectively communicating to the staff its own perspectives relating to the needs of the individual team members and the impact those needs have on the organization as a whole. Staff members have three allegiances to their careers: Personal accountability to be the very best they can be by continuing to challenge themselves and grow, responsibility to the manager for a mutual commitment for collective success (this does not mean equal authority!), and a responsibility to the organization as a whole. While organizational relationships are not structured to be equal, they shouldn’t be competitive.

The manager-managee relationship and balance of power has significantly evolved in recent years. We have often asked those we manage to begin to “think like a manager.” The old school of “management by dictatorship” will only serve to limit the fundamental quality of your staff. We understand the need to nurture and delegate to our staff, but are we willing to relinquish power in the process?

At some point, a manufacturer’s expectations for growth will exceed even the super human efforts of your top producing sales person. Management should encourage the sales person’s options of hiring office help, service assistants, or bringing on a customer service associate to handle a portion of their accounts. While territory divisions and line packages are ultimately the responsibility of management, a single executive decision to divide a territory should only be made as a last resort.