Hi,
I'm designing a workshop for a team of account managers on Commerciality - how to increase commercial thinking and then apply this to decision making.
I'm covering the finance for non-finance basics and applying these to business figures. I'm not sure though how to ensure it doesn't get too technical especially as it's aimed at sales people and I want to ensure the course is as practical as possible to keep their interest stimulated.
Has anyone experience or ideas on how to help?
Many thanks,
Carol
Carol Walton
4 Responses
Let them care about what they do.
Carol
I was working with a guy in South America and he told me that he was the sales manager for a large detergent company.
He had a sales force of 55 who spent the whole year driving around the country on appalling roads trying to cover their territories.
They each had a large imported american car that was run under a two year lease. The roads were so awful that after two years the cars were returned to the leassing company for scrap.
The manager was under pressure from his management to reduce his costs, a large one of which was the fleet of leased cars.
Willie, that was the managers name, had an idea.
Instead of two year leases he asked the leaseing company to extend the lease period to three years for a price reduction and instead of taking the cars away for scrap, give them to him at the end of the three years.
At first the sales team were quite angry.
What was the point of giving them three year old cars that were wrecked when they were two years old.
Willie persevered and soon he saw things that he had never seen before.
He saw salesmen in the lunch hour washing their cars.
That had never happened before.
He saw other changes, here a chromed exhaust, there a Madonna on the dashboard, cushion on the parcel shelf.
After three years the cars that went home to start another life as the salesmens family cars bore no resmblance to the wrecks that after two years had been consigned to the scrapheap.
Willie had figured out the power of allowing his salesforce to own their vehicles. They took care of them.
The power was that the salesmen profited and so did the company.
The moral of this story is,
forget the details.
Figure out how to let the saleforce care about what they produce.
Traditionally the answer is money but if you really want to make a difference try to figure out what you could do to allow them to take pride in what they do.
Now that is powerful.
If you can’t figure it out give me a call.
Peter
The Wine Bar Game
Hi Carol
The best method i have found is a game called the Wine Bar Game. You break your group up into teams of 3 or 4, and each group is given the task of setting up and running a Wine Bar. To do so they have to get to grip with costs, break even, pricing, market research and various other aspects. They get instant feedback on their decisions and have to try to develop the right balance between stocking levels, pricing and their other overheads. Their is plenty of opportunity between each round to explain new concepts, and how these can be used to create better business decisions. If you want to know more please drop me an email and I will get back to you.
Eric Sutherland
eric@neuralpathways.org.uk
look at delivery
You could get the team to map the process of delivery of the product or servcie that they sell, then get them to cost all the steps of the process. that will give them an idea of the cost to deliver rather than the sale price. If you can get some people from the delivery side of the business to help you will also get the advantage of accuracy and barrier breaking.
I did something like this once and it scared the willies out of the sales people when they realised just how often they had sold services at a loss without knowing it
Thankyou!
Many thanks to you for your ideas and suggestions all of which are greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Carol