Manage by sharing

One monday morning, early 2008. I am preparing for the quarterly sales meeting with the ladies who run the boutique at the airport terminal. I started to manage the boutique a few months before and noticed during my visits at the store, that some products were actively ignored. I could read in the eyes of the sales ladies that when a customer would get near these products, they would influence the attention of the customer to safer bestseller products. The fact that struck me was that those actively ignored products represented the core of our brand´s value. I needed to fix this bug in the sales process.

As a preparation to the meeting each sales lady was asked to list and describe the top 3 preferred and the top 3 most dreaded products. Instead the expected presentation of product features and company values, I let them take the lead and present their top3. I knew that I was running the risk that the items on the top 3 lists were redundant. Amazingly, very few were repeated. The ladies while being entertained picked up quickly new arguments in favor of both their dreaded and their preferred products.

Throughout the following two years this approach has led to improved portfolio sales and an even more engaged sales team.

#Management #Sharing #Customer #Sell #Selling