As I sit here with two days left in the quarter I realize what a bump in productivity we get when the pressure is on. Sales has several new prospects who could close for the quarter, all the reps are pushing to get a few more opportunities passed, the directors are pushing for the best possible results as they look to prepare our clients quarterly reviews.
The team is dressed to impress visiting clients and prospects, the reps are working the phones, the office is abuzz with intensity. Love it!
It never ceases to amaze me what can be accomplished when an individual, team, or an entire company is totally focused. I have seen it for years. The top tier companies and individuals have the ability to stay focused and stay focused on the things that will make them successful. For a company, it’s all about staying focused on providing customer value and improving the customer experience. On an individual level it’s still about the customer or prospects seeing value and enjoying the customer experience or the process of working with a sales rep through the buying process.
When I look at the our team, it’s no surprise that the reps that are at their desk speaking to prospects a majority of the time are the ones passing the most opportunities to our clients. Having great managers, great technology and a great process is very helpful in helping the team to maintain focus. But it ultimately comes down to the individual. It’s not easy, I know, I have been in sales for a long time. However, if you are able to harness the power of focus, the rewards are substantial.
I know it is not realistic to maintain “end of quarter focus” all the time, we all need to relax have a few laughs and enjoy the people we work with. It’s important to build a culture where people enjoy coming to work. A couple things we have done to bring our overall level of focus and productivity up are contests, sounds obvious, but they are a lot of fun and really work. The other is building teams with a specific goal, which people can participate in above and beyond their normal job description. People love to be a part of something bigger than their everyday job that has a direct impact on the company’s success. For example, we have a social media team, a company morale team, a technology team, and a recruitment team. Each team meets regularly to discuss how they can affect improvement in each of their specific areas of focus. Amazing what happens when you give autonomy to a bunch of smart motivated people.
Not limiting our team members to their job descriptions has turned out to be a real win win for our organization. We’ve created a happy, fun, driven team, who has more opportunity to focus on driving an alignment of customer, company and personal goal.
