“It’s no use having the best product, the perfect location and an enviable distribution system if we don’t have an extremely motivated sales and operations team.”
It has been on my calendar for some time to address this topic, which is not only important for our sales segment—sports, vacation, and residential tourism—but actually covers a fairly wide range across the spectrum of business-generating industries.
Why do I differentiate between sales teams and operational teams?
Let’s look at it this way; the description of this structure is very simple. In fact, I like to use illustrative examples so that we can all understand it:
Sales Teams: They are in charge of redirecting and capturing all the commercial traffic that moves within their specific markets and generating business for their company.
Operational Teams: They are responsible for receiving the diversified traffic captured by the sales teams in order to provide the service according to the company’s corporate quality standards.
Are we aware of the work these structures do? I am not going to give an imperative answer; however, I do want to emphasize in this post the importance of the care that corporations must take with them, as well as the monitoring and motivation plans that a company’s supervisors and directors must establish for such important work teams. As I said at the beginning, it is useless to have the best product, the best marketing tools, the best location, or the best-allocated budget if the person leading the sales and operational teams does not know how to motivate them.
Many of you might say that it is an “open secret,” that what I am saying is nothing new, or even that it is very obvious—a “truism”—to have an incentive plan for sales and operations staff. The real question we should ask ourselves is: Manager, supervisor, department head, do you actually do this with your teams?
We live in a time when large companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Maersk, and Microsoft provide their staff with impressive incentive plans—not only financial, but also social and recognition-based within the company. Today, Human Resources departments have the immense responsibility of optimizing the work, motivation, and talent of their teams, rather than just expanding the payroll. In an era where we have all possible technology at our fingertips, it is still necessary to reward the specialization and aptitude of our employees to ensure excellent work. We can confidently state that we still have a long way to go.
I say this without hesitation and with the freedom and responsibility we all share to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive market during this “Information Revolution.”
Great cataclysms are what truly generate changes, much like the recent and current crises.
I wonder:
Why wait for these crises to arise in order to react?
Why continue with obsolete structures and methods?
Aren’t we aware that we are operating in constantly shifting markets?
Why not react in time?
I express this from a place of conviction, knowing the impact this problem has on the current structures of sales and operational teams in many golf resorts—and, frankly, in many other companies as well. We all know it; we are all aware of it. The truth is that this topic deserves a doctoral thesis, not just a humble post or article like the ones I usually write for this professional blog.
To dig deeper, I would like to ask a series of questions to find out if all team leaders actually carry out these actions and analyses with their staff. Because, after all, “we are all in sales, right?”
Questions for Team Leaders:
Do you know your staff perfectly? Do you know their strengths and weaknesses?
Have you ever wondered if your sales and operations teams are motivated? Do you act accordingly?
When was the last time you analyzed your staff’s payroll? Do you think their remuneration is fair?
Do you have a progressive and fair payroll system in your income statement?
Do you establish variable income remuneration based on the achievement of business objectives?
Is your staff involved in and informed about your company’s income statements?
Do you establish variable motivation systems and financial incentives? Or do you advocate for maintaining an inflexible salary tied only to CPI (inflation) variations?
Do you meet with your staff enough in regular meetings? Do you take these meetings seriously, or treat them as just another formality?
Do you establish incentive plans for your staff? Do you use internal promotion systems?
Does your human resources manager genuinely care about each individual profile on your team?
If you have answered these questions, I am sure that upon reflection you will have realized that sales do not only depend on the result of structural investments (CAPEX), but also on knowing how to invest in, manage, and motivate human capital.
Therefore, after all the above, if we were to put just 40% of the proposals in this post into practice, we could openly state that in our company…
«WE ARE ALL SALES»
