Match Your Company Quality With The Quality Of Its Representation - Why Do Some Companies Not Get It? Because It Takes Time Not To Be Ignorant
September 1, 2005

I have a personal question that has nothing to do, at least directly, with how well you manage your business. Here it is:

If you were to attend your child's wedding, (let's say a daughter), a wedding which she has dreamed about for as long as you can remember, would you go with a shirt and tie that had ketchup and coffee stains? The answer, I imagine, is probably, "no."

Now, here is a personal question related directly to your business.

If you were to invest years of time, and hundreds of thousands of dollars or more into the development of your product or service, would you have the people representing your company go out to your customers and other stakeholders behaving like disconnected, untrained "professionals"? The answer, I imagine, is probably, "no."

Excuse my use of rhetorical questions. However, if the answers are so obvious, why do some companies permit their sales teams to interact with customers and prospects in ways that do not match up with the quality of the company, products and services they are paid to represent?

Here are some possible reasons, framed in the form of comments or subtext that I have heard around and about:

• "Our reps do great. They are well trained. If they didn't know what they were doing, they wouldn't be representing us"
• "Our reps are trained at the beginning of their time here. They know what to do."
• "We haven't had any customers complain, so what's the problem?"
• "Our numbers are decent, maybe a little below plan. But isn't everybody? Look at the economy."
• "We stay very close to our customers. We have all their business. We've been selling them for years."
• "We have all the business we can handle. And, our customers love us."
• "Even if we're not the best at listening, where else are the customers going to get what we offer? Our competition sucks."

The above comments are changed to protect the guilty. The facts are you, as a manager, lose control and throw faith to the wind once your reps and team members go out into the field, or phone or email their prospects and customers.

Ironically, because many companies tend to perform reasonably well, in spite of themselves, many managers don't stay close to the street and really prioritize matching their organization's performance and appearance with their products and service. Managers do a lot of great planning, and manufacturers do a lot of great work building technology and improving product performance, however the people representing their companies and these products and services are often left to their own devices.

Why, you may ask? My sense is not because managers aren't intelligent, or well-intentioned. They are, to be brutally honest, ignorant to what is going on.

The result, and the point of this little article, can be looming disasters. Here are some thoughts worth your consideration to avoid an imbalance of quality between your company and its products and services with the way it is represented:

• Be honest with yourself about each rep's performance. Avoid letting your busy schedule permit you to allow a rep to represent the company in an unacceptable manner
• Define what you want. If the rep doesn't understand how to match up his performance at the level of quality you expect, then make sure you are clear about the standards/expectations/behaviors that must be met
• If you don't know how to make these standards/expectations/behaviors clear, within the context of your company's vision/mission/promise to the market, then get some help. If you aren't clear, then everyone else is throwing darts trying to "get it"
• If you don't know how to evaluate your reps against these standards, once they are clear, then get some help. Learn how to effectively coach and provide needed feedback to your team. If you aren't able to analyze gaps and provide the needed feedback and training, whether internally or through outside sources, admit it and get some help
• When providers come to you with potential training solutions, pretend that you actually have some pain around the area they are addressing, and really listen. You may discover that an idea or solution being offered may enable you to help yourself and your reps/company. Take time not to be ignorant!

The bottom line, as it were, is that you would not send your kids out into traffic without being sure they knew how to be safe. You wouldn't show up at your daughter's wedding with a stained tie or shirt. You wouldn't let your company down by permitting your reps and team members interact with customers and other stakeholders by performing at a low level of quality in their performance.

Or would you?