Will you make it through the current economic turmoil?

Part 5.2 - Execution Power: Action

Taking Action

Slogans like “Just do it” and “If it is to be, then it’s up to me!” tend to somewhat trivialize what it takes to get off ones butt and “just do it!’ For many people it takes enormous will and often courage to act. The interesting thing is that the “doing it “part of the equation is never as difficult as we imagine it to be. It is this “imagining” which causes our execution issues. It’s the stories we tell ourselves as to how hard this thing will be do get done, that causes the roadblocks. It’s our fears that get in the way of us actually getting up and making it happen. As I wrote in my book, Bulletproof Your Sales Team, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Robert Downey Jr. stopped everyone in their tracks when he offered a profound piece of life wisdom. When asked “How hard was it to give up the drugs and alcohol?” he responded, and I paraphrase, “Actually Oprah, giving up was the easy part. It was making the decision to give up.... that’s what was hard!”

To use a metaphor, once one is on the treadmill, it becomes quite an easy process. We can adjust our speed, our distance, our pace and even our incline to meet our specific needs and abilities in the moment. This is no different to getting anything done. Once we start we can figure it out along the way. This article itself is no different to the concept I am talking about. Sitting in front of a blank screen conjures up all kinds of “internal stories” and self talk deprecations. Will people draw value from my thoughts? Where do I start? How do I convey what’s in my head onto the page in front of me...etc.etc. These are all thoughts and mental stories that often cause me to procrastinate and put off writing for some other time. Then along comes an external pressure and I finally sit down and put my thoughts on paper.  Time and again, making the decision to take action is often prompted by what I call an “Impelling Event!”

The Impelling Event

Let’s face it; much of the time, we just need a nudge and sometimes even a push to get us up and running. In the case of this particular article, for me, the impelling event arrived in the form of an email from Kate, the lady who is charged with the responsibility to load content onto my web site. A simple reminder email reminding me that I had a deadline to meet was all it took. Sure, in comparison with facing an overwhelming fear, a deadline to write a news-letter is no big deal. Absolutely! Bigger roadblocks call for bigger impelling events! The greater the fear, the more powerful the external force needs to be exerted to generate movement.

For some salespeople, just having to show up at your weekly one on one coaching session is enough of an impelling event to goad them into action. For others it might be an incentive that they have “decided” they must win, which pulls their action lever. Whilst carrot and stick events are always popular choices to drive action, like any strategy, they are often over used. In my experience this excessive usage is purely due to managers lacking any other strategy. As a sales leader if you want to impel action, you need to understand the motivations and drivers of each of your people. What buttons you can press that will galvanise them into action, and which will have little or no impact. Putting your people on notice or throwing money at them (carrot and stick), in an effort to get them doing what you want, severely limits your options. You need to develop your arsenal of levers you can pull to drive execution. There is no shortage of information on how to drive people performance, only a lack of willingness to go searching. After all it’s always easier to rely on a few old “stand by’s”, even if they don’t really deliver. Having said that, often all it takes in many instances is consistent follow up. So at the very least if you want to ensure action. Implement a consistent and regular one on one coaching session with your people to “project manage” their activities.

Procrastination

Sometimes when faced with a large task to get done, one of the biggest reasons it just hovers in the diary, moving from one day to the next is because it’s just too big. We get overwhelmed with the size of the project and push it out, with the “promise” we’ll get to it tomorrow. The problem with that is that tomorrow becomes the day before the deadline, where the impelling event compels you to action. The task needs to be chunked down into a small action something I can do today. A phone call, a slice of information, a one page outline. Something I can write in my TO DO LIST as an action. Write a training program is not an action. Write a training program is a project! Often our sales people need help simply to break up their strategy into tactics and then into easy actions they can take to move the sale forward.

Plan Do Check Act

In the 1950s, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who is considered by many to be the father of modern quality control, popularized the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle problem-solving process that is regularly used in quality improvement. The application of the PDCA process in driving execution is a powerful force towards ensuring that salespeople maintain their forward trajectory towards achieving their sales goals.

In other words, rather than the salesperson indulging in navel gazing and deliberating for hours to get their sales strategy perfect the first time, the PDCA cycle gets them out  “doing the plan”  as it is set, and rapidly learning what works and what doesn’t.

First you help them to chunk down the actions into small bite sized chunks. Then they take action on those small and easy to do activities.  As an example, if they are battling to make the initial call, have them first complete the research and determine the potential problems they might be able to assist the prospect to solve. Then the next step may be to contact a “user” way down the line from the decision maker to see how they respond to the problem and your potential solution. Then armed with that information they will then be in a much stronger position to make the introductory call.  All the time, as they proceed along the pathway, they (either with you or on their own) are continually evaluating the outcomes from those actions. The learning’s are then applied to modify their next actions, and so on and so on. The amended plans are reset based on “real market place feedback,” and the cycle begins again. Each PDCA cycle spirals the salesperson forward, ever-closer towards accomplishing their ultimate goal.

PDCA is another reason why it is so important to implement regular sales performance coaching. The fact is, at the inception of a sales campaign, both critical information and skills are probably lacking. Our sales strategies are often based on a combination of facts, supposition and conjecture. Not all relevant information is known. However, by bringing our newly gathered data and feedback from the field to the your one on one coaching sessions, you the sales leader can help your salespeople to quickly refine or alter their activities, and get back on track and closer to their sales objectives.

If your people aren’t getting what you need done, then the place to begin changing is with the person in the mirror. Review your follow up system. Begin a one on one coaching or project management regime. Identify your people’s motivations and de-motivations. (In the book Bullet Proof Your Sales Team there is a whole section devoted, with a questionnaire, which you can use to extract your sales peoples’ individual motivation map).