The first Thursday of each month features a “best of” X5 Management blog. The intent is to showcase and revisit some of our blogs from the past. We hope you enjoy them!
When you mention the idea of training or professional development to your team, how do they react to this? Does your team recognize that this is a necessary part of any successful sales or customer service program or are they concerned about taking time away from their work and current customer commitments?
In a recent customer workshop engagement with a local Edmonton sales team, the CEO enforced once clear and simple message with X5 (the workshop facilitators) and the participants (his sales team). He indicated that the sales and customer service development workshop series X5 would be facilitating, was specifically about the personal and professional development of his team and not of his company.
He delivered this powerful message during his introduction at the beginning of our initial workshop. The CEO went on to suggest that if anyone was to leave the company at any point in between workshop sessions, they were welcome to come back and join the remainder of the workshop series to continue their personal development.
This was a bold move, by a progressive and innovative local CEO who cares for and believes in his people. After delivering this message, his team was shocked by his support and commitment to their goals, priorities and future direction.
Once this had occurred, it was interesting for us to be a part of the team discussions and exercises that resulted from the workshop. Throughout the initial session, the goals of the individuals were generally associated with career growth and generating greater income potential within the company. Their income goals were related to building better customer relationships and improving their commitment to customer service. Their professional development goals were tied to learning new skills that could enhance their ability to move up within the company, contribute more and earn more income as a result.
It turned out that this CEO’s selfless personal and professional development act for his team only instilled further passion and commitment amongst his employees to his brand. Through building his best asset (his people), he was positioning his company for long-term success and an employee base with very low turnover. Now that sounds like one sales-savvy CEO to me.
