What Values Guide Your Selling Activities

Please forgive the delay in returning to my blog but I have been finding it difficult to resist the lure of these beautiful sunny summer evenings. The temptation of strolling down along the Grand Canal and stopping off for a chat and some refreshing beverages along the way is a stronger pull than sitting and writing. However it's back to business and the topic of effective leadership.

The third component (111) Beliefs and Values have a lot to do with the leaders ability to win co-operation from others. This as you can imagine is vital in successful management as the whole job centres on the task of getting work done through other people, that's why leadership is such a valuable skill for any manager to possess. In the context of managing salespeople its not so much valuable as it is absolutely essential because motivating salespeople is the key to enabling them perform at a level required to achieve the organisation's business development objectives.

But are we not getting a little too analytical here? Surely a sales manager can motivate his/her team without coming under scrutiny regarding their belief and values? What about sales incentives, bonuses, commission etc after all money talks and if you want to motivate somebody 'cut the crap' just show them the money. Well, we will explore this way of thinking later, for the moment however you may be wondering how exactly beliefs and values impact on performance in a business context?

Our beliefs help us provide stability in our lives; we learn to put things into compartments so that they will make sense to us. Beliefs are assumptions or convictions that we hold true regarding people, concepts or things. They are the material, which we use in the construction of our value system.
Values on the other hand are the standards by which we operate. They are fundamental to our identity. They are rules that dictate our behaviour and inform our choices. Our values act as guides towards decisions we have to make and the manner in which we implement them.

The global economic crisis and the role financial institutions have played in this have focussed attention on the structures of these organisations, the way they were managed and the people who were managing them. The revelations of excessive greed, personal enrichment, corruption, contempt, belligerence, selfishness and arrogance, endemic in the industry, surprised many. The model of American capitalism replicated throughout the western world, that worked so well to raise the fortunes of millions of people in the last century appears to have come to an end. Founding Values such as integrity, honesty, commitment, compassion, patriotism, fairness and generosity, which contributed to the formation of stable and harmonious societies, have become so unfashionable that their very mention in some circles would attract humorous scorn. According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor of business adminstration at Harvard Business School in her new book 'SuperCorp 'vanguard companies' like IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Cemex, Banco Real, and Omron are using values to rewrite what it means to be successful in the 21st century.

Of course any company can say it has values but Kanter's book cites examples of companies that actually embed them in business practice and use a codified set of values as a strategic guidance system. There is sufficient evidence also that talented people are increasingly attracted to companies because of compatible values; they also stay longer and seem more content.

So now you are working in an organisation as a sales representative and you get along reasonably well with your manager. I have got you thinking about values and you are beginning to wonder how these are evident in your daily working life. Well I' m going top let you think about it for another while, in the meantime if you have any thoughts on the topic drop me a line.
I will return, to advance this subject a little further, soon.
Cheers
Dave http://www.davidquinnandassociates.ie/