Hamish Knox

Like a coach in pro sports, your primary function as a manager is to improve the performance of your team.

Unfortunately, traditional approaches to performance management may have initial success, but are difficult to sustain.

When distilled out of their packaging traditional performance management looks like:

Last year I stopped offering my most profitable service. As William Faulkner would have said, I killed one of my “darlings.” In working with businesses of all sizes a common challenge for leaders is failing to holistically analyze their product/service offerings to determine if one or more are impeding the growth of their organization.

When looking at growth through existing clients many salespeople take a linear view, which boils down to “sell them more stuff.” That’s okay, but that's a limiting view that reduces opportunities to both grow through existing clients and create clients for life.

As the leader of a sales team the two best ways to develop your people are role play and debriefing prospect meetings. By creating a list of debrief questions and sharing them with your salespeople you're holding them accountable to getting that information from a prospect in their initial meeting or having a confirmed next step in the calendar to get the answers.

Your employees work for you because working for you helps them reach their personal goals faster than working for someone else.

The traditionally more relaxed summer months present an opportunity for leaders to reset and refocus their organisations.