You can never hope to reach 100% compliance, but an organization that is able to drive a significantly higher percentage of “right” decisions than its competition can create competitive advantage that will be difficult to duplicate.
Your reps are making literally hundreds of decisions every day, the sum of which, over time, will determine whether you meet your organization's expections. Should I spend my time cold calling on new prospects or grow revenue from my existing accounts? Should I maximize this revenue opportunity or discount for the quick sale? Should I take time away from selling to resolve a customer service issue?
In a perfect world, every decision made by a rep would be the absolute best decision for the organization. The problem is that “tensions” often draw reps away from making the “right” decision toward a decision that favors their personal interest. You can never hope to reach 100% compliance, but an organization that is able to drive a significantly higher percentage of “right” decisions than its competition can create competitive advantage that will be difficult to duplicate, even assuming the competition can figure out what it is that you are doing at all.
Tensions can result from any number of forces that create misalignment between the interest of individual reps and the organization. Some common examples include:
In a perfect world, every decision made by a rep would be the absolute best decision for the organization. The problem is that “tensions” often draw reps away from making the “right” decision toward a decision that favors their personal interest. You can never hope to reach 100% compliance, but an organization that is able to drive a significantly higher percentage of “right” decisions than its competition can create competitive advantage that will be difficult to duplicate, even assuming the competition can figure out what it is that you are doing at all.
Tensions can result from any number of forces that create misalignment between the interest of individual reps and the organization. Some common examples include:
- Differences between what management tells reps to do vs. what they are paid to do.
- Differences between market realities and the organization’s perception of those realities.
- The demands of short term goals vs. the need to create long-term customer relationships.