Mentoring talent in the modern age is arguably more important now than it has ever been, with ever younger employees occupying ever more senior positions, the time for mentoring is definitely upon us. The drive to succeed is stronger than ever and therefore having someone you can turn to and discuss with all confidence, I feel, is a growing requirement. Knowledge transfer opportunities in the work place exist in every organization and in abundance, sadly as is often the case everyone is always far too busy to impart or pass on knowledge, the more senior the sales person often the busier they are. This is such a shame as huge benefits lay dormant because of it. As I see it there are 4 real reasons why sales people need a mentor, now more than ever;
1. A lack of experience. How many times have you heard “I wish I knew then what I know now”. Mentoring enables someone to have wisdom beyond their years by plugging into and allowing those with experience and knowledge to work alongside in developing their career progression and future success, whatever that may ultimately be. Working closely to develop key strategies that will platform your future success and happiness.
2. Moral & ethical management. By the very nature of sales you have to be incredibly disciplined, those actions you do every day, all day, are the disciplines that will bring success. But what are they? What priorities should I place next to each of these actions? Getting a plan and working it is fundamental to the success story of you, but getting there is going to be hard. In all my career I never found any job or position I held easy, in fact I would go as far as to say I found it difficult. But looking back I now think that if you are in sales and you find it easy – you are doing it wrong! Sales is tough and if you want to be the best, a leader, in this space you need to be tough as well, sales by nature is cyclical, at anytime during a normal year one of your team will be pulling up trees and shouting from the roof top, when they are get out of the way and let them run, offer support from purely an administrative aspect, have their back. At the same time others will be struggling or languishing with “bad luck”, and for some this is not the cyclical nature of their business pipeline but perhaps some short comings in their approach or execution. Knowing how to recognize this and then put in play the right activity to resolve it is important and fundamental in stabilizing a team, reducing turnover in staff and therefore reducing cost in this area.
3. Impartial advice. The fact that most businesses should be falling over themselves to lock in and capture the long term efforts of their best sales staff – but don’t, shouts volumes to the value some enterprises show towards the sales function, understand that it is not personal but perhaps a frustration because they cannot readily see a plan or path. How to establish a solid and professional sales platform for your organization is not easy, it also depends how far down the developmental process you are, and having impartial advice and feedback is crucial in what can be a very lonely position sometimes, my “tip of the spear” approach helps you to visualize the developmental route and process. Filling in gaps, mitigating risk or recognizing your path is probably not the right one can help quicken the road to success and, very importantly, give you the mental strength you will need to absolutely know what you are doing is right for the business.
4. Outputs not inputs. How the world has moved on. How quickly the world continues to change, unfortunately most organizations are set up in a way that harks back 50-60 years, where organizations have a hierarchy and leadership model that is outdated. The old chestnut that big is beautiful has been well and truly tested in the last few years (Carillion, Connaught, Interserve etc…) Companies are structured to maximize profits by managing as small a resource as is possible whilst pushing (sometimes too hard) to increase efficiency. Scale was good and bigger is always better – right! If an organization is wholly focused on SOP and inputted process then all they do is cap the talent, much better in this rapid and quick moving world for an organization to say “here” these are the outputs we want from our organization, now you go and develop the plan on how we get them.
Happy to have a chat…
NJA Consulting 