Sustaining Jump-Start Initiatives – The Four Keys to Success

Many sales organizations dedicate substantial effort and resources to "jump-start" sales performance through tactics such as product campaigns, call blitzes, marketing events, and incentives. Typically, these efforts produce short-term performance increases in a targeted area. Frustrating for organizations, however, is the predictable performance snap-back which occurs once the catalyst which improved performance goes away. How can snap-back be avoided? The solution entails avoiding the pitfalls inherent to short-term tactics, human nature, and long-term change. By paying attention to four critical success factors - activities, measurement, management, and attitude - you can produce a return on investment which includes long-term success.

Right Activities

Most initiatives focus on one aspect of the sales process such as increasing the quantity of customer interactions, contact with targeted customers/prospects, or sales discussions of a particular need/product. The issue arises when management does not ensure there is focus on long-term high-impact activities salespeople must execute differently in conjunction with the “jump-start” objective. Product campaigns are prime violators. They motivate salespeople to "promote this product." They don't emphasize becoming proficient at how to uncover needs and promote product benefits relevant to the long term. The result is salespeople product pushing with a campaign-added price advantage for a short period of time. Performance reverts to previous levels once the promotion/sale pricing ends. The activity "promote this product" is not a long-term high-impact activity which integrates into a salesperson's regular routine. To create long-term behavioral change, identify behaviors you want your sales team to integrate into their regular routine. Make sure to build the campaign around these behaviors instead of short-term results to truly drive long-term performance.

Measuring Results

Salespeople are predictable; what you measure, they will do. Deciding what is measured is vital. If you only measure results, salespeople will figure out how to use old short-term tactics to produce a quick lift. If you measure the right long-term activities you want completed differently in conjunction with results, you have a chance to motivate salespeople to do the right things, become comfortable and competent at something new, and generate increased success.

Management

Sales management unconsciously minimizes its role in “jump-start” initiatives by assuming other groups are responsible for the initiative and its success. Most managers understand they must express support in large group settings. Few recognize the opportunity or responsibility to coach the high-impact activities stressed by a “jump-start” initiative which hold the key to sustaining change. Why is this missed? The organization focuses entirely on the sales staff and skips the critical step of equipping management to productively coach the real change desired. Management becomes so busy trying to make the initiative a success by inspecting whatever the program emphasizes they don't think to look at what needs to be altered in their coaching to produce long-term change. The key to sustaining momentum is management setting individual activity expectations, productively analyzing performance of those activities, developing skill/knowledge gaps, and holding salespeople accountable for execution. Few organizations understand how vital these activities are or expect management to implement and/or change them. Sustainability and continued progress of an initiative is only a dream if management does not incorporate coaching high-impact “jump-start” activities and measures of progress into their regular coaching routines.

Attitude

Any improvement driven by a “jump-start” initiative will only be maintained if everyone involved believes the results are sustainable. Most sales managers and salespeople expect performance to revert to previous levels after an initiative ends. As a result, they resume old behaviors. Why? It occurs without conscious thought. Once a “jump-start” effort is over, salespeople assume they should go back to business as usual and/or they cannot maintain increased results without the support the effort provided. The organization stops measuring sales activities and results from the campaign. Salespeople are no longer held accountable or recognized for effectively completing the emphasized activities. Without these variables, activities and results snap-back to previous levels. This critical success factor is the most difficult to address. Once an organization has a pattern of snap-back, it's hard to create any other kind of mindset. This change requires that one, two, or all three of the other critical success factors be completed differently and everyone be made aware of the change. You can't change attitude if you do what you've always done. Nobody will believe anything is different. You can drive change in attitude by executing the other three critical success factors well and by demonstrating how management is going to coach differently in the future. This factor is the most difficult because management must first be convinced that performance can be sustained through their coaching efforts.

Many top sales organizations are questioning the value of “jump-start” efforts. The push-and-pull nature of their results is like a crash diet; nothing is more frustrating than regaining all of the weight so painfully lost. However, done effectively, “jump-start” efforts can be very powerful tools to push performance to new levels. If short and long-term success goals are correctly identified, and the four critical success factors detailed above are considered and addressed correctly, these efforts can be highly effective. If they are not, “jump-start” efforts can become addictions that will forever get in the way of any real sustainable performance change.