🍀 Effective Onboarding of New Supervisors Isn't a Matter of Luck 🍀

Just like four-leaf clovers, high performing leaders are hard to find and develop.  Creating an effective onboarding program for supervisors will help.

Most organizations have a onboarding program for new hires. Most don't have a good one for new supervisors and managers. 

In simple terms, onboarding is intended to help new employees learn:

1.HR basics (E.g. Safety, organizational policies, compensation, benefits, time keeping, where the restrooms are :) etc.)
2.Expectations of the work. 
3.Resources to be successful.
4.Rules of the organization.
5.Context of the organization (Culture, structure, values, management style etc.).

If onboarding is important for employees, think how important it is for new supervisors because of the ripple effect they’ll have in the organization. In addition to the standard onboarding topics 1-5 above, supervisors need  to know additional things for items 2-5 including policy administration, compliance, communication, performance management/development, and conflict resolution to name a few.


Many organizations only have vague expectations for their supervisors and managers such as "maintains good employee relations," "effectively supervises employees," "promotes teamwork" or "fosters a positive work environment."

Check out our blog post that highlights the importance of having crystal clear role expectations for supervisors: The One Thing New Supervisors Need Most

Bringing new supervisors and managers up-to-speed is tough. 

Whether you’re looking for a new, streamlined process to train your new hires, or want to supplement the existing program you’ve built, it’s tricky to quickly get a new manager up to speed.

…That’s not to say it isn’t critical.

One report found 60% of new managers under-perform (or fail) in their first two years likely because 58% of managers say they didn’t receive any management training or coaching.

Don’t fancy your new hires falling into that group?

Follow this guide to new supervisor and manager development and learn how to set first-time supervisors and managers up for success, along with the supporting material you can use to make sure they’re an asset in your organization.

Why Bother Developing New Supervisors and Managers?

You want to make sure all of your supervisors are successful, right? After all, supervisors have a huge impact on their entire team.

A bad supervisor or manager could cause a whole host of problems to start in your company, including unproductive staff. Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement which could be the reasoning behind why just a third of the employees in the US are engaged.

There’s more to it, though.

Low productivity levels, a lack of engagement and dissatisfaction at work could cause health issues–something American companies spend $360 billion treating each year as a result of bad managers.

Ever heard the phrase, “people join a company, but they leave a boss”?

It’s true. A study found half of all employees admit to leaving their companies because of a bad boss, which could result in high (and unnecessary) staff turnover; not to mention the loss of high-quality talent that could be more expensive to replace.

11 Key Skills a New Supervisor Should Learn

Now you know the importance of new manager training, it’s time to build a program that’ll teach them how to be a fantastic role model in your workplace.

But what skills need to be built through their training program?

Here are five essential skills your new manager training curriculum need to work on to set them (and your business!) up for success:

1. Making the Switch from Individual Contributor to First-Time Manager

It’s easy to work independently as the member of a team. You’re in control of the work you complete, not others, and it’s not your job to hound or motivate other people to meet their own deadlines. In fact, you were probably rewarded or even promoted because you were so productive as an individual contributor.

That’s not the job of a leader–which is why it’s so difficult to go from individual contributor to first-time manager.

You’ll need to teach your new managers how to deal with this change. They’ll need to learn how to get results through others, and paradoxically why they don’t want to quickly answer questions and solve problems. In other words they need to become more coach-like.

There are four transitions that new supervisors or managers need to make:

• A transition in relationships
• A transition of role
• A transition in skills
• A transition in perspective

These are perhaps the most difficult transitions for people to make, yet with the proper framework, awareness, training and coaching, it can be done. 

2. How To Give Effective Feedback

Employees thrive on feedback. It’s the best way to provide actionable advice that’ll help them improve in their job, especially when 92% of employees believe redirective feedback improves performance. In fact, not giving feedback will actually disengage team members as they feel that they they don’t matter, or they are not advancing in their skill set and career.

But there’s a difference between just criticizing someone and giving effective feedback. Instead of shying away from giving constructive criticism, or unknowingly de-motivating staff with the negative wording of their suggestions, educate your first-time managers on the basics of delivering actionable, effective and meaningful feedback. They need to learn when and where to give the feedback, and an effective 3-part strategy for making the feedback a positive experience for all involved.

Their entire team, and your organization, will benefit!

3. How To Delegate Effectively

“Why should I delegate when it’s so much easier to do it myself?” is a common question that many first-time managers might ask. Granted, they do have a point. We all want to simplify our to-do list, right?

And in fact, it often is faster and easier for the manager to just do it. After all, in most cases they have more experience or talent than their direct reports.

But new managers need to realize that delegating isn’t just to save themselves time; delegating develops their team members. It increases the future capacity of the entire team.

And effective delegation is different than just dumping assignments on people. New managers need to learn how to prepare the task, assign it to the right person, do appropriate check-ins, and conduct a final evaluation.

As a result of delegation, the relationship between both can develop since trust is being built. That’s something you’ll need to focus on, considering just 20% of the workforce trust their management team.

4. One-on-One Meetings

Somewhere along the road, meetings have gained a reputation for being a huge waste of time. 

While you don’t want to be the type of company having meetings about meetings, first-time managers need to understand the power of weekly or bi-weekly one-on-one meetings with each team member.

One-on-one’s have the dual benefit of engaging the team member, and increasing work results. As the the 1:1 is considered the direct reports meeting, communication scores increase and feelings that the manager cares about them as an individual skyrockets.

The meeting is also great for alignment. Has the team member been working on the wrong thing? Have they been delivered the wrong information? Are they waiting for a co-worker to complete something, but a mismatch in communication means the project is stalled for no reason?

All these questions, plus many other common team problems, can be highlighted–and more importantly, resolved–with productive one-on-one meetings.

5. Being a Coach-Like Supervisor or Manager

Old school management was about setting expectations and measurable objectives and making sure employees were meeting or exceeding them. Falling short was often handled with stern warnings and “progressive discipline”.

Today, managers need to move from performance management to performance development. Managers need to be continuously coaching their team members to higher and higher levels of performance. This means new managers need to master a new skill set: coaching. How can they use goals, accountability and questioning to elicit the performance they need while engaging their team members in a positive relationship?

Coaching can come in a variety of forms. But whether they’re helping staff with their own professional development or career growth (something 87% of millennials say is very important) or addressing a more acute issue, it’s critical all new (And established) leaders work on this skill.

Open to Further New Supervisor Training and Coaching? Develop These Other 6 Skills

We all know there’s more that goes into a managerial role than just five skills.

Although each five are extremely important (and could make or break the success of your first-time supervisor or manager), you could also consider building these six management skills into your onboarding process:

6. Excellent communication: Deadlines, budgets and to-dos keep a team in sync, but you can’t achieve perfect harmony if your new supervisors can’t communicate effectively. Productivity improves by up to 25% in organizations with connected and informed employees, which is why your new managers need to learn how to listen, explain things clearly, and make sure their team understand what they’re saying. 

7. Team building: “Teamwork makes the dreamwork”, right? It’s true: Companies and organizations that communicate effectively are 4.5x more likely to retain the best employees. Your manager’s department won’t meet deadlines (or do the work) if they don’t work together. They need to learn what motivates their team, and understand how to foster a community of teamwork.

8. Reflective and problem-solving skills: Has something gone wrong? Whether it’s a mismatch in expectations or an individual’s fault, managers should be able to spot the problem by reflecting on it, and find a way to prevent it from happening again. 

9. Resilience: All leaders should be role models for their team, but that can’t be achieved if your new supervisors aren’t resilient. In the words of Amy Modglin, “the true grit of a leader is not how they perform during the good times but rather how they display emotional strength, courage and professionalism during the most trying times”.

10. Adaptability: It’s not uncommon for things to go against plan. (It’s why plan B is so popular!) But, if that happens, your new managers should know how to adapt. This is something 91% of HR directors predicted would major recruitment goal in the future.

11. Conflict prevention and resolution: Have two team members fallen out, or suffering with a bunch of employees that aren’t listening to their manager? Your new managers should learn how to prevent and resolve resolve conflicts in the workplace–something that causes 385 million working hours to be lost every year.

What Should Your New Manager Training Program Include?

Now you know the skills a new manager should learn, but should the new manager curriculum look like–what delivery options should it have–to be effective?

The Importance of Ongoing Coaching

Did you know that 87% of companies admit to not doing an excellent job developing leaders at all levels? The training and support you’re delivering to first-time managers shouldn’t stop when they’ve completed their training.

You need to offer coaching to your leaders–even if they’ve passed their first few months of management with flying colors.

Here’s how to coach your first-time managers, and make sure they’re leading your team effectively in the months (or years) that pass their initial training. 

Set Regular Check-ins
The “sink or swim” method shouldn’t be your motto throughout the first few months of your new managers’ role. Why? Because your new managers might be struggling with something, and not realize there’s an easier way to do it until their mentor shows them. 

However, setting regular check-ins can prevent this from causing problems in your workplace. By setting weekly or bi-weekly (but no longer than monthly) catch-ups, you can spot and solve them before their entire team suffers.

Get Feedback from Their Team
It’s hard to self-evaluate. Even if your first-time managers know what they need to work on, they might not be as good at confidently saying the things they’re proud of.

However, supporting their sessions with feedback from the team they’re managing can help them quickly improve–and give them confidence they’re doing a good job!

That’s why you should regularly ask the mentor you’ve chosen to survey the new manager’s team for feedback. What are they doing well? What can they improve on? The answers to these questions could give them a confidence boost, while also create a list of next steps to make them even better.

How to Measure Your New Supervisors' Success

Your new manager and their mentor have had weekly meetings for the past six months. But, you might still be questioning: Are there any other methods I can use to determine how successful my new managers are? 

The short answer is yes.

Here are two types of survey you can use to get a broader take on the performance of your first-time manager:

Employee Engagement Survey

After your managers have at least 6-12 months of experience, you should establish a quantitative measure of their performance. 

One reliable measure is to include them in your employee engagement surveys. These feedback forms help you to analyze how engaged your entire workforce is, their happiness at work, and discover how effective their managers actually are.

But, don’t keep the results of your employee engagement surveys private.

Once your staff have filled-in this survey, give your first-time manager their own score. That way, they’ll be able to see their performance, and how it stacks up to other managers.

360-Surveys

You could also factor-in 360-surveys as a way to measure the success of your new managers. 

Robust multi-rater 360 surveys gather feedback from the manager’s team members themselves–giving individual managers personalized feedback on their work.

A 360 survey typically includes feedback on:

• Overall team satisfaction
• Manager effectiveness
• Performance against a variety of competencies

[Smart Development has a simple and cost effective way to do 360's that is combined with 1:1 leadership coaching.]

Final Thoughts

As you can see, bringing a new supervisor or manager onboard is a complex process. You’ll need to build a comprehensive first time manager training program, evaluate their skills, and commit to a coaching program that’ll encourage them to constantly improve.

But, offer an inclusive onboarding program that covers all three and you’re bound to set all new supervisors up for success.

Contact us if you'd like to learn how we can  help your organization design or enhance a new leader onboarding and development program.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Keeping Sales Simple Is Hard

The path to success in sales is simple.

Be human. Ask great questions. Listen slowly. Deliver value at every opportunity. 

The challenge is that keeping your selling simple is hard work. 

It’s easy to get distracted by the latest shiny object that promises to magically transform your results. 

Or become anxious when you see yet another report that claims you’ll soon be replaced by a machine. 

What you have to keep in mind is that your buyers aren’t clamoring for you to use technology to make your selling less personal. 

They aren’t anxiously waiting for a machine to sell to them. 

Buyers want a human experience that helps them quickly gather information to make a good decision with the least investment of time and money possible. 

That’s why it’s essential to keep your focus on developing your simple human sales skills. 

Technology, methodology and process are vital in selling. 

But they aren’t constant. Technologies change. Methodologies and processes go in and out of fashion. 

What doesn’t change or become outdated is the fundamental and irreplaceable human connection that is at the heart of the B2B sale.

And, it’s up to you to keep educating yourself about the human skills of sales that enable you to make that connection. 

To master how to connect with another human, engage their interest, build their trust and inspire them to take action. 

Without a strong foundation built on these simple human sales skills, even the greatest sales tech, sales methods or sales process won't help you reach your goals. 

Actually, I shouldn’t label them as “essential.” 

Essential makes them sound important but not mandatory. 

Don’t kid yourself. These are not optional sales skills. 

Being human is not an option. 

Asking great questions is not an option. 

Listening slowly is not optional. 

Delivering value is not optional. 

You don’t have a future in sales if you aren't continually improving these simple skills. 

Peter C. Mclees, Sales Coach and Trainer

Smart Development

Mobile: 323-854-1713

We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales. 

The One Thing New Supervisors Need Most

Every day, in organizations everywhere, people are promoted to their first leadership role. They receive titles like supervisor, lead, foreman, or front-line leader. The titles matter less than the situation – people are moving from doing the work to leading the work. And every day, these people are congratulated, patted on the back, and sent into their future. They are scared, excited, anxious, and likely unclear about what is now expected of them.

The Situation

The support that organizations provide these new leaders varies widely. While some have a very clear process of training and development for these new leaders, others provide little or nothing. However, in my  experience, most all organizations miss what those new leaders need most and need first …

Put yourself in that role as a new leader. Once the excitement of the promotion wears off, what are you thinking? Yes, you are probably thinking you need some more skills, but you have a more immediate question. 

The question is some version of:

• What am I supposed to do now (and everyday)?
• How will I know if I am successful?
• What is expected of me?

Whether asked in exactly these ways or not, these are questions of clear role expectations.

In our experience, most new leaders move through the most challenging job transition of their life without knowing exactly what this new job is, what is expected of them, or how to be successful.

Let me be direct: If you want your new supervisors to be more successful immediately and for the long term, give them crystal clear role expectations.

What Clear Role Expectations Look Like

For your leaders to be successful, they need clarity in at least these four areas:

1) The work itself. New leaders need clear answers to questions like: 

• What is the level of work required?
• What should their activities be?
• How much of the work of the team should they do (or not)?
• What should their relationships with team members look like?
• What is and isn’t a part of their role?
• Are they representing their team, or representing the organization, or both?
• How will I know I am succeeding?

Questions like these go far beyond the job description, which sadly is often all that is provided.

2) Communication. 

• With whom do they need to communicate?
• In what ways and with what frequency?
• What topics should they talk about, and what things shouldn’t be asked?

Don’t leave this to their personal preferences or their past role models.

3) Priorities. Once in a leadership role, the amount and variety of work expands immediately. Consequently, new leaders are asking themselves some version of: What is the relative importance of different parts of my job? Help them have a clear answer to this important question.

4) Culture. Make sure your new leaders understand how you expect them to go about their work. Without this conversation and understanding, leaders will operate based on their comfort zone and past role models, which might not be what you want leaders to do, say, and think in the future. Help your new leaders see themselves as a leader of culture, not just work.

Who is Responsible?

For something this important, everyone shares ownership. It is easy to say everyone is responsible, but that typically means everyone thinks someone else is doing it. But for this to be most successful, all three of these parties need to work together:

The Organization. Whomever is responsible for any other training and development of the new leader has a role to play here. They can provide answers to some of these questions with the offer letter, in any onboarding of new supervisors, or in some other programmatic way. While this is helpful, it isn’t enough.

• The Leader’s Leader. As the coach and supervisor of the new leader, this person plays a critical role. First, in clarifying the expectations for the specific situation, and then coaching that new leader as they work to reach those new explicit expectations.

• The New Leader themselves. If you are a new leader, you need answers to these questions. If you don’t have them, you can ask for them. While you need to be proactive, hopefully, you don’t have to do all the asking yourself. If you are in one of the other groups, don’t rely on the leader to ask if they aren’t clear. You can assume they don’t have the level of clarity they need, and you want them to have.

Hopefully this is helpful, and may have outlined a gap in your current new supervisor process. If so, please support those new leaders with clear role expectations as soon as possible!

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your new leaders? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

How to Set Expectations That Employees Fully Understand

“What do you expect?”

People say that all the time in an earnest or quizzical way, or sometimes with outright exasperation. However, more often than not, people simply think it without ever taking the extra step to clarify what is expected of them.
That leads to mistakes, conflict, shoddy work and productivity losses, because your employees and coworkers ask or think of asking that question when:

• They really have no clue what is expected of them.
• The task is new, and they don’t see the context of the request in the big picture of their work.
• What they were told didn’t make sense or was shared in a one-way medium like an email or text message.
• They were seemingly given autonomy to complete the task, but in the past they’ve been burned because they didn’t deliver what you wanted.
• You don’t really know what your expectations are and you are taking an “I’ll know it when I see it” approach.

As you can see from that list, the question indicates that there is a serious gap in communication and understanding. You want people to say it out loud to you, rather than simply thinking it. The problem is a good bit of your employees aren’t asking you that question. Perhaps they worry about looking foolish. Or maybe you responded negatively to their inquiries in the past, and they want to avoid dealing with your anger.

If you want to improve both productivity and the quality of people’s work, you need to encourage people to ask the question. More important, however, is that you want to do everything you can to establish crystal clear expectations so that employees don’t have to ask the question. Here’s how you can do that.

• Make it part of every conversation. To avoid even small gaps in expectations, make a conscious effort to talk about expectations regularly.

• Be clear yourself. You can’t provide clear expectations if they aren’t clear to you. Understand exactly what you want the outcome to be for each request or assignment before you speak to employees.

• Talk about the big picture. Put your request or task into context. Tell employees why each assignment or request matters and how it contributes to team and organizational goals. Once people see what the overall goal is, your request will be much clearer.

• Share boundaries. Perhaps you have some parts of the task that you want done in a specific way, so provide specific instructions. However, if you care more about the result, and not how employees get there, let them know the budget, time parameters or whatever else matters in the situation, and explain where they have latitude and flexibility.

• Confirm understanding. Always take the time to confirm with employees that they fully understand what you expect, the next steps to take, and what success will look like. Ask them to paraphrase back to you to confirm their understanding.

• Provide the needed skills. Sometimes people aren’t able to meet expectations because they don’t have the necessary skills. When this is the case, provide them with the advice and skills needed so they can meet your expectations.

Finally, while this isn’t required, I highly recommend that you don’t be too rigid. You don’t want to tell people exactly what you want in such detail that they have no room for creativity, self expression, personal commitment or an opportunity to create something even better. Giving people some room to work within your expectations will garner you greater commitment and better results. Be willing to let employees go about a task in the best way they see fit, if their way works.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

70 Percent of Accounts are Lost from [drum roll....]

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You don’t send me flowers, you don’t sing me love songs, you hardly talk to me anymore. Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond sang these words in their iconic love song “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” where two lovers, who have drifted apart, describe the feeling of being taken for granted.

Have you ever been taken for granted? Can you describe the emotion? Does it make you feel unimportant, small, resentful, angry, and indifferent?

The reality is, and the data tells us, that almost 70% of customers are lost because of neglect. Not prices, not products, not the economy, not aggressive competitors. Neglect! They feel taken for granted and unimportant.

Often when customers defect to a competitor we fail to face the real reason. When you ask your customer directly why they left, more often than not, they respond with a litany of “logical” reasons because it is difficult (and painful) to articulate the emotion of neglect. In other cases, post modem surveys ask only about the rational reasons for defecting rather than the emotional reasons.

Organizations also, more often than not, accept the excuses of their sales people and customer success reps for the reason the customer moved to a competitor. They’ll tell you it was price, product, service, or an unscrupulous competitor – but you’ll never hear, “I just didn’t pay enough attention to the customer and make them feel important and like we cared. So they moved on to someone else who loves them more than me.”

This leaves executives chasing expensive pricing, product, and service fixes instead of focusing on improving the customer’s emotional experience which almost always delivers a higher return on investment.

Neglect Creeps Up on Customer Relationships

Neglect happens slowly. It creeps up on customer relationships. It happens when businesses get into the habit of fighting fires rather than preventing them.

The cure is a system that  proactively engages customers. Some organizations set up monthly or quarterly account reviews that focus on account updates and problem solving. Others set aside time each day to proactively reach out to customers by phone or e-mail. This daily focus is powerful because the cumulative impact of touching a few customers each pays off over the long-term. Those calls and e-mails keep you connected to your clients and let them know you care.

Protect Your Turf

A simple, regular, inexpensive phone call check-in goes a long way. Sondra, is an account manager for a company that sells digital advertising  Her product is not superior—she and all her competitors are about the same. Since her clients pay by monthly credit card billing, it is easy to forget about the account. 

Sondra doesn’t forget though. She checks in with her accounts every week. Sometimes by phone, other times by e-mail. There is nothing special about what she does. How are you doing? How can I help you? I have an idea; can we schedule a call? Have a great weekend? Yet her regular contact ensures that her clients never forget about her and her company and when they have additional budget to spend on advertising, she always gets it.

Sondra understands that you’ve got to protect your turf.

Devin, on the other hand, was devastated as he reluctantly called his boss with the news that he’d lost a top ten account. He knew that with this loss, his job was on the line. Earlier that day his customer emailed to let him know that they were not going to renew their contract and were going with one of his competitors. Devin explained to his boss that the competitor had promised significant service improvements and a big price decrease and that the buyer was convinced that making the switch would save lots of money. “With our pricing the way it is,” Devin whined to his manager, “my hands are tied.”

The truth that Devin kept from his boss was that he hadn’t spoken to this customer in over six months. Since the customer never called or complained, Devin assumed they were happy. He figured the contract would just automatically renew and roll over. But while Devin neglected the relationship, his competitor filled in the emotional gap.

An Onslaught of Relentless Competitors

This same scenario plays out again and again across the business landscape. It is the reality of the hyper-competitive marketplace. You must retain customers against an onslaught of competitors that relentlessly pound on the door. When you fail to proactively manage your customer relationships, those competitors slip through the cracks and encourage buyers to consider other options. Aggressive competitors don’t miss an opportunity to topple embedded, long-term relationships. The battle never ends and vigilance is the key to protecting your turf. Losing your customer base can be catastrophic. Customers are essential to the survival of your organization.

Take Nothing for Granted – Keep Your Fingers on the Pulse of Your Customers

You and your team must take consistent daily action to protect your turf. You must take nothing for granted. Every customer and every relationship is at risk. Hoping for the best is a losing strategy. You must take systematic action to shore up and strengthen your relationships and reinforce the value of your product or service. You must respond swiftly to any real or perceived service issue no matter how small. And you must get proactive in meeting with your customers to learn about their business issues, uncover problems, and proactively suggest ways to solve those problems.

I’m not saying this is easy. One of the hardest things to do is keep your fingers on the pulse of your customer base. It is made even harder by the fast pace of twenty-first-century business. Strong, trusting relationships are the key. Devin was unaware that he was in trouble until it was too late. However, had he been managing the relationship, it is highly likely that he would have been given a heads up that would have allowed him a chance to save the business.

A Systematic Approach to Account Management and Customer Success

The key to protecting your turf is a systematic approach to account management. Start with ranking and segmenting your customers based on revenue and profit contribution. Once you know where your customers rank by revenue and profit contribution, take a closer look at how often and in what ways you are connecting with them.

• How often are you contacting them through phone, e-mail, regular mail, or face-to-face interactions?
• How are you using social media to remain in their bubble of familiarity?
• What are the objectives of those interactions?
• Are some customers getting lots of attention while others are getting none? Why?
• Where do these customers rank on your list?
• Based on segmentation what might be a more impactful proactive outreach process?

Take an honest approach. Keep it real. Make an effort to view your account management activity through your customer’s eyes.

Do your relationship-building efforts cause your customer to  want to buy more from your company? Where is the evidence? Does your customer feel like really care about them? 

How do you know?

Do you really understand your customer’s business problems and unique situation? If not, what needs to change?

Based on your analysis, develop a more systematic approach to contacting and building relationships with your customers. Decide on the frequency, objective, and methods for staying connected. You may be constrained by budget cuts and travel restrictions so be prepared to get creative. Then execute your plan. Staying connected will put your finger squarely on the pulse of your highest value customers while they’re still customers.

Good selling,

Peter C. Mclees, Sales Coach and Trainer
Smart Development
petercmclees@gmail.com
Mobile: 323-854-1713

We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales. 

Four Things That Keep Managers Up at Night (And how to sleep better)

The Inevitable Challenges Every Manager Must Face with Surprising Regularity

The research shows that the overwhelming majority of the seemingly inevitable problems that vex managers almost always flow from these factors:

• Staff discontinuity. People come and go. That’s always been true. But employment relationships today are far more short-term and fluid than they have been before in the modern economy. So you are always losing good people. And you are always trying to get new people on board and up to speed. On top of that, one great employee is worth more than 2-3 mediocre employees. Sometimes you have to go to great lengths to effectively reward, retain and develop the very best employees.

• Constant change coming at you from every direction. Technology. The markets. The weather. Geopolitics. Micropolitics. Customer requirements; vendor requirements; employee requirements. Change regularly forces rework, often involving lots of moving parts, and therefore lots of counterparts here, there, and every where.

• Inter-dependency. Again, more and more of our work involves lots of moving parts and therefore lots of counterparts here, there and everywhere. Most people must rely on many others within and outside of their immediate work group in order to do their own work.

• Employees being human. Human beings have strengths as well as weaknesses. Humans are not always great a self-management. They have habits, and not always good ones. Not only that, but everybody has bad days. Some people have bad weeks, months, and years. Productivity and quality of work are highly variable, sometimes due to employee performance. On top of that, humans have attitudes, and not always good ones.

How Managers Spend Much of Their Time

Many managers spend too much of their time on four insidious time drains.

1. Attending Too Many Mediocre Meetings

Group meetings, team meetings, cross-functional, special projects, committees. Meetings are a big time suck for managers. Ask any manager.

Most of us work in highly interdependent workplaces where we all must rely on each other on complex projects with lots of moving pieces. With more and more people working interdependently, there are more and more meetings.

A well-run meeting can be good for:

• Communicating in-person information that everybody needs to know.

• When multiple people need to discuss and solve a problem together.

• Shared experiences to build cohesion, commitment and motivation.

But so many meetings are not very good. Too many people attend too many meetings in which they neither add value nor take anything valuable away. Five people in a room for an hour—that's five hours of productive capacity in the room. You better make those meetings good.

Meetings (Unless intentionally designed for it) are also not very good for creating real accountability. It’s too easy to hide in a team meeting. It’s even easier to point fingers and divert attention.

2. Wading Through A Never-Ending Tidal Wave of Email

Electronic communication is at everybody’s fingertips all the time. You inbox pulls you in and demands you reply. It’s so hard to resist.

At its best, email is great for:

• Communicating remotely information that everybody needs to know.

• Documenting verbal communication.

• Maintaining asynchronous conversation in between scheduled conversations.

But so much of email is unnecessary, duplicative, and/or sloppy. The pernicious thing about all that email is that mixed in with all the bad email is important information, and we want to assume that, because we sent it, the recipient had read and understood it. Even worse than a message never sent is a message sent but never received.

3. Touching Base, Checking In, and Shooting the Breeze

“How are you?” “How’s everything going?” “Is everything on track?” “Are there any problems I should know about?”

These are questions managers most commonly ask their direct reports, yet they tell you very little about what’s really going on. They are gestures, mostly. You might as well say, “Tell me you are fine.” “Tell me everything is going fine.” “Tell me everything is on track.” “Tell me there are no problems I should know about.”

The worst thing about managing by “touching base” is that it makes you feel like you are staying on top of things, but it takes a lot more than rhetorical questions to really stay on top.

The right questions are: “What did you do? How did you do it? What steps did you take? What step are you on right now? Questions like that can’t be asked and answered in a meaningful way if the conversation happens just in passing.

4. Interrupting and Being Interrupted

Something pops into your head, you interrupt them. Something pops into their head, they interrupt you. “Do you have a minute?”

When you are interrupted, you are not at your best. Most likely you were in the middle of something. You have to break your attention. Pull yourself out of whatever it is you were doing. Try to focus. But you are not prepared. And what you really want is to get back to whatever it is you were doing before you were interrupted. Your responses to your direct reports (and anyone else) when you are interrupted are never going to be as thorough and accurate as they would be if you had time to prepare. The same is true for your direct reports and other colleagues when you interrupt them.

So what’s a manager to do? 

What do the very best managers do? The managers whose employees consistently deliver the highest productivity and quality, with high retention of the high performer and high turnover among the low performers, with the best business outcomes and high engagement/morale and team spirit, whose direct reports are most likely to describe the manager as “one of the best manager I’ve ever had.”

What is the common denominator among those managers? An abiding commitment to the fundamentals—relentless high quality communication. Consistently engaging every direct report in an ongoing, structured, content-rich one-on-one dialogue about the work that person does and the internal and external customers they serve. Things go much better when managers consistently make expectations clear and provide candid feedback for each individual every step of the way. Use team meeting only for what team meetings are good for—and make the most of them.

When managers build and maintain high-quality one-on-one dialogues with their direct reports, they almost always increase performance and engagement and achieve significant measurable improvements in business outcomes.

Check out these related posts: 

The Single Biggest Mistake A Leader Can Make

Keystone Habits: The Hyperlink to Accelerating Your Leadership Impact. 

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

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