There
are two basic types of employees inside most firms: internal and external. The
internal staffers have functions in operations and finance. While these
internal functions have impact on the invoice paying customers, for the most
part, these employees mostly interact with one another to complete the paying
customer’s order. The external employees are sales and marketing personnel
whose jobs are to interact with the end customer, and sometimes the customers’
customers.
The
external employees don’t have, as many people would like to think, the same
attitude and emotional investment in the inner workings, politics and organizational
challenges of the internal staff. Their world and work is more vague, more
unplanned and of a different kind than that of the internals. A big mistake
made by many top managers is to try to make their internal and external
employees work together toward some warm-fuzzy common goal. They beat to death
the “teamwork” mantra and, too often, blame their externals for their problems.
Top
management often has little idea of how to manage external professionals. They
tend to see their top priority as catering to the needs and issues of the
internal staff, rather than freeing
up the externals to beat the bushes for business in the field.
A Colossal Waste of Precious Time
Recently
I was invited to review the sales function of a sizable distributor whose sales
were declining and top management couldn’t figure out why. It is notable that
the top management was young, well-educated and good with numbers and
planning. I was one of a handful of consultants vying for a chance to help them
with a sales force problem.
I
was whisked into a glassed conference room with the latest office furniture,
where the executives proceeded to show me their great plans where “everyone was
on the same team,” along with state-of-art tracking and reporting systems for
their sales force and marketing department. The technology was truly
impressive, enabling them to track the daily activity of their outside sales
force with a variety of electronic gadgetry and laptops. They broke down
statistics on calls per day and per type of customer, including the time spent
and what was discussed. They could sort, sift and spit this knowledge out in
great detail and with vivid graphics.
During
this display, I noticed an old salt, the last remaining guy of the old-school,
in the corner and noticeably silent. During the graphics display, when all eyes
were on the wonders of technology, I locked eyes with the old guy and winked. A
wry smile came over his face.
After
showing me their version of the eighth Wonder of the World, the young execs
looked at me for some type of approval. I asked instead for some key
information about the sales force, including resignations of former top
sellers, customer defections and how much face time their reps got in a day. The
execs grimaced when giving the answers.
It
seems the best sellers had left long ago and took with them some of the best
customers, and the losses were accelerating. The execs couldn’t understand,
with all this technology and superior planning, what the problem was.
I
told them that their reliance on technology was the problem. I told them that
all of the information required of the marketers and sellers took a tremendous
amount of time away from listening to the customer. I explained that most
outside reps are lucky to spend 50% to 60% of their day in front of a customer.
And, if their day gets cut short by an hour or two by filling out detailed call
reports, they were cutting their productivity and potential by 25% to 50%.
I
told them the reporting was a vast overkill and a “colossal waste of precious
time.” I also told them that there likely was a strong correlation between the
resignation of key reps and the implementation of the super-duper call
reporting technology.
The execs winced, grew quiet, called the meeting to
a close, and quickly whisked me out. I was glad to leave, having identified
them as control freaks halfway through the technological fireworks. I didn’t
get the work but that didn’t matter much. Any work that I could do for the
betterment of the firm would involve sacking the technical wizards who called
me in.
Sales and Marketing Professionals
Good
outside salespeople and top marketers are professionals. They spend time in a
variety of ways interacting with suppliers, customers, customers’ customers and
one another. Their work is not geared to the clock. Ten-hour days are routine,
longer days not uncommon. The success of their work is gauged in the
incremental business and profits they bring in.
Their
methods of success are hard to quantify. Training them to be more sensitive to
the internal employees, working a standard predictable day, and filling out
detailed call reports are, largely, a waste of time. The way externals see it
is that the internals are there to support them. It is up to the internal staff
to give the externals the tools they need to fight the battle for the paying
customer. If the externals don’t have the proper tools or are tied down with
“teamwork” talk or detail to the max reporting, they become ineffective.
Of
course external professionals need to do some reporting and recordkeeping. Professionals
make time for this but keep it to a minimum. They know that recordkeeping is
necessary, but battles for the end customer are never won by call reports or
presentations to executive management. The end customer doesn’t give a damn
about these things.
Some
portions of the sales and marketing functions, including product management,
service marketing, and inside sales, require a lot of interaction with the
internal staff and their success is dependent on these relationships. But the
top marketers and sellers are professionals who are “out there” getting it
done. Executives who are worth their salaries understand the needs of their
professionals and do everything in their power to free up the marketing and
sales professional to win the customer over. Control-freak executives who try
to make them a “part of the team” often are building a coffin for the firm in
the process.
In
these blogs, I often argue for better measurements, processes and just good
thinking. There is, too often, a dearth of this in distribution and a lot of
profit is lost because of it. Some accuse me of being an anal-retentive numbers
jockey. I go through the numbers, in detail and exhaustively, to prove to
executive management what goes on and why they should change. But I don’t
confuse generating numbers and analysis with securing the end customer.
The Carrier Pilot
Many
years ago, in a class on professional services, I was given an article, written
by a carrier pilot about how to manage the flyboy. It was a great piece that
had great influence on me. As I have come to this stage of my career as a
consultant to marketing and sales entities of industrial firms, I am convinced
that the sales and marketing professionals are, too often, destroyed by the
control-freaks and growth suffers. The Carrier Pilot article explains this all
very well and I include it as a finishing part of this blog installment.
MANAGING PROFESSIONALS:
THE CARRIER PILOT
by David Kinser, MD
During
the Second World War, I flew in the Navy off aircraft carriers. We were called
the Air Group. It included three
squadrons - fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo bombers. The squadrons broke
down into wings, divisions, then sections. The two‑plane section was the
smallest unit of aerial command.
All
of this was laid out neatly on the organizational chart. Within the squadron
the line stair-stepped up to the squadron commander, or skipper, who reported
to the air group commander. The air group commander’s line stretched
horizontally, then vertically without break up to the executive officer and
captain of the ship. In other words, the
air group was on a line with all the other command departments of the ship‑‑Navigation,
Operations, Engineering, Gunnery, Air.
The
Air Department, as distinguished from the Air Group, was responsible for all
the services and maintenance of aircraft. It should be noted that the Air
Officer, with responsibility for the planes, and the Air Group Commander, with
responsibility for the pilots, were equals in the line of command, with neither
in a position to order the other around.
Looking
at the organizational chart, you would say at once that this was the orthodox
line and staff organization and that the Air Group was an integrated,
functioning unit of the ship. There was plenty of evidence to indicate that the
high Navy brass of those days thought so, too.
But
this was another organizational chart that concealed much more than it
revealed. The group most responsible for divorcing it from reality was the
pilots.
This
chart was one of the things, among many others, the pilots of those days
labeled as “strictly oatmeal.”
We
knew, you see, that this was our ship. It had been created for us. Obviously,
therefore, the officers and crew of the ship were in our service. If they weren’t
they belonged on shore. In our minds, these points were beyond argument, as
changeless as revealed truth. We weren’t helping the ship carry out its
mission; the ship helped us carry out ours. After all, what good was an
aircraft carrier without pilots?
We
weren’t at all impressed by the ship’s organization, probably because we rarely
thought of it as such. To us it was a place to land, a kind of floating service
center where all the details incidental to our missions were accomplished. The
ship therefore had to gear itself to us. The ones that accommodated themselves
to us most swiftly and efficiently were the best ships.
The
fact that they all made a try at doing this only served to confirm our point
that the chart was just another piece of Navy paper. With the pilots’ interests
in mind, the Navy had applied an overlay of special privilege that almost
concealed the ship’s formal organization. For instance, our ready rooms were
the only spaces aboard with air conditioning, except for the captain’s
quarters. A meal was always available to us, but not to other officers, on the
off hours. We were the only ones that could get legal “drinking whiskey.” A
pony bottle of brandy, a good jolt, was served up to us after each strike.
We
were the only officers that weren’t obliged to stand a ship’s watch. The ship’s
day was split into three equal segments and its officers and crew were parceled
out so that the ship’s operations were fully covered at all hours. But our day
was not the ship’s day. It was never that predictable. They couldn’t occupy us
with routines, because we had to be ready to scramble for our planes on very
short notice. So we did a lot of waiting. Often we did our waiting in the sack
in wardroom cabins. That was another privilege. If a pilot was found in the
prone position during general quarters, it was because he was tired. Any other
officer so occupied would have been up for court martial.
The
pilots, in fact, could be counted on to break even the most rational of Navy
regulations with regularity. We were unquestionably the sloppiest group aboard
the ship. Anyone who has seen a Navy crew at sea knows that is quite a
distinction. It used to amuse us when senior career officers would suddenly be
confronted with one of our unkempt and unshaven pilots. He would turn his head,
pretending he hadn’t seen him, and walk the other way.
We
were convinced, though, that the privileges of perpetual readiness were more
than offset by the responsibilities. Sometimes it meant taking off so late we
had to land by night, or else taking off so early that we had no horizon as we
mushed off the end of the deck. Sometimes it meant long stretches of furious, rushing
activity without sleep. The hard part about these periods and what made them so
exhausting was that, all the way through, you never felt you could let yourself
make a mistake.
While
we were never happy about this aspect of the carrier pilot’s life, we were, to
the last man, proud of it. This, we were convinced, was the ultimate reason why
we were set apart from (and above) the ship’s organization. The rest of the
ship, we said, was geared to the clock; we were geared to the demands of our
calling.
The
training period was an eternity of torture. In no time, it had almost erased
our lazy and carefree pasts from memory. The only direction we could see was
ahead. Dangling on the horizon was a pair of Navy wings, which not only had
become a symbol of nearly impossible attainment but were, like the flight pay,
a perquisite in themselves. After all, who else but pilots could wear wings?
When
we finally did make it, we had become so single minded about our ultimate
position and function that all our other “selves” were nearly invisible. There
was not the slightest doubt in our minds about what we were. We were Navy pilots,
members of a tight and united community of Navy pilots, the most select, the
most promising, the most needed, the most God‑gifted of all men.
Not
content with just educating us, the Navy had to study, test and evaluate us,
too. In the later stages of the war, sociologists, psychologists and an
assortment of other obscure functionaries in the human relations field began to
close in on us. The word had gotten out and up, you see, that the pilots were
“a problem” all through the fleet. One central thesis had apparently won full acceptance
- that if someone could just figure out a way to build an identity of interest
between pilot and ship, the war would quickly be won.
Our
response to all of this wasn’t exactly gratifying to the Navy. The pressure
seemed to create its own resistance. Being preoccupied, we were easily bored
with this kind of attention. Besides we quickly found that about half the ideas
they had for us didn’t work. You don’t teach anybody to dogfight an F6F at
30,000 feet by writing a memo and holding a meeting, but these things were
tried. We went to meetings sure that
none of the ideas were any good.
Sometimes
it got so heavy that whole squadrons would work themselves into a kind of
frenzy. “Why don’t they leave us alone,” we would ask each other, “and spend
their time learning how to keep the damn canopies clean.”
The
point is this: The only real “team” relationship the pilots had was with the other
pilots. This had meaning. When the
fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes did what we called a coordinated
attack on an enemy ship, and actually coordinated it, that was teamwork. This
was something quite different from our relationship with taximen, wing folders,
or mechanics. They had to accommodate themselves to us, like the trainer on a
football team. Certainly it was important to work smoothly with them, but when
they asked us to understand their problems and make their jobs easier‑‑in the
analogy, run interference for them‑‑they were asking too much.
We
were rightfully suspicious of this kind of “team” talk. It is significant that
it was most prevalent on the worst ships. That the men in command really were
asking was for help in solving their problem. They had to make a complex
sometimes-unwieldy organization work; it was all too easy to blame its failures
on the group upon which all activities focused.
Those
who spent more time coordinating and perfecting these supportive activities had
many less problems with the pilots. This is where administrative genius could
have been used to good effect but usually wasn’t.
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