By David Flint - Integro Learning

In their book First, Break All The Rules Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup organisation reveal what great managers do differently compared to ordinary managers. Their conclusions were based on research of in-depth interviews with more than 80,000 managers at all levels and in companies of all sizes. Basically what they say is that the best managers break all the rules of conventional wisdom about how to manage people.

So what is it that the best managers do differently to ordinary managers to create a great sales team?

There are four basic keys that these managers use to create a great workplace, and a “great workplace” was defined as one that delivered the highest levels of productivity, profitability, employee retention and customer satisfaction.

1. The first key is to Select for Talent not Experience. Do you know what talents you are looking for? A good place to start is to identify the talents that your best sales people have. Don’t look at their experience; look for the talents that make them better than the ordinary. You will probably find that their attitude has a lot to do with their success. Another major contributing factor to talent is emotional intelligence.

Instead of poring over candidates’ resumes to see whether they have the most appropriate experience, try coming up with some questions that determine whether they have the following emotional competencies: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation (or self-control), Self-Motivation, Empathy and Interpersonal Skills that Daniel Goleman identified in his book Working With Emotional Intelligence.

2. The second key is Define the Right Outcomes. The best managers understand that people do not perform best when they are being controlled. Ordinary managers believe they have to control the process to get the best results. They tell people not only what to do, but also how to do it and often write detailed policies and procedures for their people to follow to ensure that everything is done perfectly.

The best managers focus only on defining the outcomes they want and allow their people to use their own talents to determine how to achieve them. They let their employees develop the policies and procedures that will achieve the best outcomes.

If you have difficulty letting go of control, perhaps you should ask yourself why you don’t trust your people to do the job. The Chinese have a saying: “Hire only people you can trust… then trust them.” If you don’t trust your people to figure out the best way to achieve your outcomes, why did you hire them?

3. The third key is Focus on Strengths. There is a tendency among some managers to take people’s strengths for granted and pay more attention to their weaknesses. Do you know what your employees’ strengths are? The best managers know that they can’t fix people. Everyone has weaknesses, but they also have strengths. So they focus on capitalising on those strengths by making sure their employees have the opportunity to use them. It helps if you hire for talent to start with, as you’ll know what their strengths are.

4. The fourth and final key is to Find the Right Fit. In most companies, promotion to the next level is seen as inevitable if you excel in your current role. And so the Peter Principle is alive and well, people are promoted to their level of incompetence! However the best managers steer people into the roles that best utilise their talents, whether that is a promotion, a lateral move or a demotion. We have all heard of a company promoting their best salesperson to sales manager only to find that not only is he/she a lousy sales manager but their sales have dropped at the same time. It’s obvious what you should do, isn’t it?

Maybe your commission and reward systems penalise people if they are not promoted (or are demoted). If that is the case, change the system. The number one priority is to get the right people into the role that best uses their talents.

First, Break All the Rules challenges the way companies have been traditionally run and one of the barriers to change is always the existing culture. Both managers and employees will resist change if your culture will not support a change of this nature. If you would like to find out more about these concepts feel free to contact me at dflint@integro.com.au

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David Flint is the General Manager of the Integro Learning Company Pty Ltd. Integro specialise in learning and personality systems and distribution.

Phone: +61 (2) 9453 4555
Email: dflint@integro.com.au
Website: www.integrolearning.com