One of my guys from the field is now helping me with sales. He’s pretty good at it and wants to do more. My concern is that as the season builds, I’ll need him back in the field. I fear that he’ll lose sales momentum, and might get discouraged about working in sales. Any advice?
Moving people around the organization is a smart idea. Don’t overlook the challenges. Do keep building the organization from the bottom up by giving other people opportunity to fill in open slots. Find replacements now, before you need them. Learn how to let the people in operations solve the problem, without relying on you. Building up sales by taking people from operations who want to make the move, can lead to long term growth of both revenue and profits.
Peter Drucker cited Frances Hesselbein’s experience moving personnel around the organization, when she was with the Girl Scouts as a model of organizations to consider. He called it Frances’ Wheel of Fortune. This development model let to higher levels of cooperation, less insularity in silos of the organization, and better communication throughout the organization. Moving an operations person into a sales position can be just plain smart.
One way to ensure a smooth transition is to encourage operations people to spend time, pre-transition, building their skills talking with customers and prospects. Ask people in the field to report back on conversations. Meet to discuss what’s going well and where they need help. Consider customer service training for your field people in order to increase their ability to listen to, report on and react to customer needs.
Realize that it may be challenging for people to make the transition from operations to sales. Focus on the advantages that operations personnel have: a network of client relationships and experiences they can draw upon. Operations personnel also have an intimate understanding on how the company performs it’s work, how to make things come out right and what problems to avoid. These skills will help them when they talk to prospects about potential future contracts.
Plan out the needs of operations, as it learns to cope with the loss of the person who moved over to sales. Look for people in operations who have the desire and potential to learn and grow. Ask who wants to move up to fill the shoes of the person who just moved on. Make a list of skills that a replacement would have to have, and ask internal candidates for the job what they need to do to get ready.
It’s easier to think of the organization as always planning to move up. Keep people energized and focused by having each person in operations build a personal development plan. Ask people who want to move on to other departments to identify their replacements and get them trained. Once people learn to bring forward their replacement candidate, at the same time they ask for a chance to move up, your job gets much easier.
Ask operations supervisors to meet regularly to discuss their organization. Who’s ready to move up. Who needs more training. How well people are doing at training their replacements.
Give them information to work with. How many additional sales will they have to deal with this year. What other parts of the organization might need to draw on their people. How many people will they likely be able to hire this year.
Keep in mind that your most experienced sales people are likely to come from operations. If they understand how the company works, and how to avoid problems in operations, they’re less likely to sell problem projects or underestimate the scope of work. Of course operations skills are often very different from sales skills.
Communication, working independently, knocking on doors, using a database to keep track of prospects are all essential sales skills. People will need to demonstrate some degree of skill before they transfer over. If they can make the transition, look for them to turn their operations background into fewer mistakes in the sales process and better transition of new work into operations.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION:
Looking for a good book? Essentials of Capacity Management by Reginald Thomas Yu-Lee.
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Andi Gray is president of Strategy Leaders Inc., www.StrategyLeaders.com, a business consulting firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurial firms grow. She can be reached by phone at 877-238-3535. Do you have a question for Andi? Please send it to her, via e-mail at AskAndi@StrategyLeaders.com or by mail to Andi Gray, Strategy Leaders Inc., 5 Crossways, Chappaqua, NY 10514.
