by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“You can have the greatest vision and positioning in the world but, if your people are not fully on board most of the time and are not equipped to meet the task, they will only end up with disappointment.”

There was no doubt in Alex and Susan’s mind that their recent Envisioning, Positioning and Pathfinding sessions with their SalesSMART Advisor’s strategist team had gone well. Such success was achieved by good preparation on their part, as well as ensuring the team was involved all the way. Team members clearly felt that the upshot and conclusions of each session were just as much part of their input as Alex or Susan’s. No one was looking for individual heroes!

Prior to their next collaborative session, to shape the future of start-up SalesSMART (SS), Sarah –Expansionist , Jeff – Promotionist, Julia – Operationist , and Sheila – Humanist, met separately as a foursome to reveal anticipated optimum role dimensions and attributes of future customer SalesSMART Advisors. After much discussion and debate, they arrived at a consensus view of seven key attributes in accord with the acronym ADVISOR – see above. They arranged them in the form of a staircase – as shown above – since such attributes naturally build upon each other to produce a fully-fledged, competent Advisor.

Taking them in their reverse order for obvious reasons to the way they are depicted above, i.e. bottom-up, the foursome then added notations of explanation as follows:

» Appropriate Territory Sales Strategy – “Paired” advisors would be assigned specific market territories. They would do their homework to identify A, B, C and D level prospects. Even though the A’s would be of greatest potential, it was also recognized that they would be the most challenging to secure as customers. Pairs would therefore be encouraged to secure C’s and D’s at the outset, although start cultivating the B’s and A’s as soon as they felt confident enough to do so. Jeff, Malcolm (Innovationist) and Sarah had already produced a potential, initial sales presentation.

» Develop Strong Customer Rapport – Sarah, Jeff and Sheila agreed to separately prepare protocols for building initial to ongoing customer rapport with Sales Leaders. “Pairs” would then decide, after any initial joint meeting, which one can best gel with that prospect. It enables them to coach each other, too.

» Verify SalesSMART’s Protocol Adjustments – Advisors would be educated in ways to adjust onboarding-orienting “newbie” client protocols – where customer= Sales Leader and client= customer’s “newbie” salesperson. Different customers clearly have different sales and product strategies.

» Inspirational Coach with Client Sales “Newbies” – Advisors would initially become Proficient, then Expert and the possibly Masters at coaching customer “newbie” salespeople. Proficiency in the SMART sales acronym approach would be their minimum competence standard. They could then, based upon experience and formal In-Team Discovery sessions, progress to Expert and possibly Master levels.

» Sticklers with Follow-Through – This should happen with both customers and clients. Such follow-through would encourage advisors to demonstrate professionalism, build strong customer-client relations, and develop stronger coaching-mentoring skill sets. As “pairs” they would encourage this.

» Open-up Strong Opportunity Pipelines – By regularly thinking 3, 6 and 12 months ahead, “paired” advisors would build strong opportunity pipelines with both existing and future customers. Done right, it would always provide a flow of fresh assignments coming their way along with corresponding revenues. Invoicing and advisor remuneration will always be handled by the SalesSMART Advisors’ venture.

» Ready to Lead Other Advisors – As SalesSMART Advisors inevitably grows, opportunities will arise for selected, talented and people-oriented Experts or Masters to lead its teams of up to six Territory Advisors – of varying levels of competency. They should receive an appropriate share of team bonuses to compensate for their success in coaching, mentoring and giving customer/client support to Advisors.

With the above sub-team output at their disposal, the full strategist team met for their next agreed Saturday morning session to further deliberate and sign-off on this Advisor staircase. After due discussion, all agreed that it formed a comprehensive roadmap that would be appropriately attractive to potential, initially “independent” Advisors. It would then be incumbent on their SalesSMART Advisor venture to provide sufficient culture-glue and the motivational environment to engage competent advisors until financial flows could facilitate salaries and “contribution bonuses.”

Advisors would be looked upon as “contributors” rather than low-on-the-totem-pole “employees.” From there they would be encouraged to become high contributors, contributors or non-contributors toward Sales-SMART’s financial health. In the latter case, they would be constructively encouraged to take their skills elsewhere. Have you ever taken a similar, constructive course of action?

Sarah-Expansionist, Malcolm-Innovationist, Mark- Provisionist, and Sheila-Humanist would also receive a percentage of fees for any new clients they introduced as initial assignments. That would encourage them to contribute wherever possible from the get-go. Added to that there would leadership team bonuses from any monthly profits until revenues allowed them to join as part-time or full-time remunerated leadership team members. (NOTE: These initial monies would be in addition to salaries they were already earning elsewhere.)

Beyond that, the team agreed to concentrate all its efforts within a reasonable geographic area where potential customers are concentrated until “SalesSMART Advisors” has pretty much saturated that area. Only then should they consider further geographic expansion. Assuming that happens, the team agreed they should be identifying leader talent from within their venture as early as possible to start grooming them for future leader assignments. Can you envisage the time it takes to groom leadership talent?

Following another incredibly successful morning, they all participated in a prudent lunch and demonstrated their enthusiasm for further collaboration. They all mused about the possibility of joining forces in a full or part time capacity going forward. Their next meeting will be about collaborating as a team and how to collaborate with appropriate outsiders from the outset. Is it again now clear that funding should not be a major issue at the outset with the right strategy and product/service offering?