So what's up? Is there a danger to the performance of salespeople in fighting routines at all costs?
Not sure! Although they sometimes hide a lack of motivation, a loss of confidence or a lack of skills, certain routines also serve to structure and mark out the business activity. They become fixed points of reference in an activity that is by nature mobile, obligatory passages that you must know how to identify in order to remain in control of your time.
There are generally two types of routines. Firstly, there are those to be combated, those that lock salespeople into counter-productive logics, which slow them down in their sales actions. Then there are those to be maintained, which must become markers, those that lead to greater efficiency in customer relations. The challenge for the manager? To identify them and make them a management tool!
Be aware of "negative" routines!
Among the routines that are counterproductive for salespeople's performance are the little rituals that everyone likes to follow at the beginning of the day or during the day: having a coffee, checking email, surfing on favourite websites, etc. These are recurrent, but they do not really penalise the activity. Rather, they should be seen as a way of moving from a personal to a professional environment.
On the other hand, other habits can be adopted and clearly become counterproductive. For example, staying in a timetable of back office tasks. Have you ever experienced this?
A salesperson who is locked into an overload of quotations, who systematically accepts all his incoming e-mails and manages them in the process, who solicits his manager and colleagues at every turn... Result?
The essential job is not done: routines over-invest the time available and there is nothing left to exploit business opportunities, to look for prospects, to sell.
Another example with the telephone...
The salesperson is a routine telephone caller, which has become a reflex to make progress on his or her files and generates many negative routines linked to communication methods. Who hasn't seen a salesperson remain in a purely reactive logic, i.e. wait for incoming calls to propose an appointment or an action?
The salesperson then locks himself into an attitude that prevents him from leading and steering the relationship in the interests of the customer and the favourable development of their business. He then optimises neither his time nor his performance, and he also increases the risk of seeing the relationship disintegrate. Telephone routines prevent them from taking a step back from their actions. Worse! They give them the illusion that they are fully active and contributing when they are not.
Encourage efficient routines!
Fortunately, there are beneficial routines that salespeople can and should incorporate into their work: consulting the CRM on a daily basis, monitoring their activity indicators, keeping up to date with customer news, etc.
The effective salesperson knows how to set up these routines. Not to fill gaps in activity, but to ensure that nothing is missed and, more importantly, to maintain the lead in the conduct of relationships and the successful completion of opportunities. Repeated like the protocol before a plane takes off or the athlete's warm-up before a competition, it guarantees performance.
Other positive routines can be activated in the case of difficult cases, for example. They allow us not to run away from the problem, to remain in a positive, efficient dynamic.
It doesn't matter whether you ask an internal expert or your manager, or consult the intranet, as long as a reflex routine exists to overcome the difficulty. If it is not in place, it opens the door to counter-productive behaviour!
Developing these routines means capitalising on knowledge, planning and optimising time, and relying on simple and reliable benchmarks to control performance.
This is why a coach must intervene to ensure that these structuring routines are well known to the teams and effectively in place.
We can consider that everyone is potentially under the influence of positive and negative routines. The challenge for the manager is therefore to be able to identify them in order to act in the right way and at the right place.
Counter-productive routines will provide an opportunity for rich managerial action, first with dialogue to raise awareness and then to see how to abandon them or replace them with better ones.
For example, get the salesperson used to asking the right questions before taking action: What is the best action to take now? How much time should be spent on it and in what way?
As for positive habits, they enable the salesperson to establish the elements of his or her autonomous management of the portfolio and his or her schedule, to move towards a virtuous attitude and practices. The manager can thus create points of convergence with his team, routine and shared benchmarks that create common references to be even more effective, individually and collectively.
It is a strong line of work for the manager and his team. It is a positive way of getting together and making progress. Getting employees out of their solitary routines also means creating a dynamic of shared practices and fuelling the development of skills.
KestioLive collaborative coaching enables the manager to work efficiently in this direction. Helping the manager to question his or her real knowledge of the routines of his or her team at a collective and individual level. Find out how to identify and break negative routines over time and facilitate awareness of their impact on results; highlight positive routines, encourage their sharing and appropriation by everyone for the benefit of collective performance.
Did you know that 95% of your success is linked to your state of mind? To learn how to manage your emotional charge more effectively, discover the Triad method in this webinar: How to manage your emotional charge effectively?
