A client in the FMCG industry has annual revenue of over 100 million yuan and a national sales team of over 300 people. In the past two years, the efficiency of this sales team has not improved but has declined year by year, from an initial per capita sales of 500,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan. To reverse the downward trend, the boss recruited several managers from large companies to help him.
The sales vice president from a private enterprise advised him: "We should strengthen management of sales personnel, set hard sales targets, increase rewards for those who meet them, and publicly criticize or even ruthlessly eliminate those who fail."
The sales director from a multinational corporation gave him the opposite advice: "We should not manage results. You originally managed results, and you saw that it had no effect. We should manage the daily behaviors and activity details of salespeople, such as the number of customer visits, the duration of communication with customers, whether they are talking to important customers, etc. If the process is managed well, the results you want will naturally appear."
Should he listen to the first or the second? Use the wolf-like management of private enterprises or the refined management of multinationals? Manage process or results? The boss was in a dilemma. He came to ask my opinion, and my advice was:
The management approach depends on the maturity of the people being managed and the maturity of the tasks. For mature people, you can manage only results, but for immature people, you must manage the process. For mature tasks, you can manage only results, but for immature tasks, you must manage the process.
Managing results is simple; managing process is complex. If managing results is effective, you can manage only results, but when managing results is ineffective, you must manage the process.
In any case, you must manage results. The process can be left unmanaged only when both people and tasks are mature and managing results is effective.
How to judge whether people and tasks are mature? If your team has many newcomers, people will not be mature. If your methods and models are new, your tasks are usually immature. If your approach is new, even old hands are immature relative to the new approach, and you should manage the process.
【7 Suggestions for Making Good Plans】
Don't be afraid of planning errors. A plan is certainly not reality, but it is a roadmap to achieve goals. Having a plan is always better than having none.
Make plans from far to near, from coarse to fine. From 3-year to 1-year plans, then from 1-year to 1-month plans. Plan the big goals and required resources for the long term, and then plan all specific actions to ensure goal achievement in the near term.
Focus on two key points of a plan: the logic of the plan and the actions in the plan. A plan without actions is meaningless; a plan without logic is foolish. The process of planning is the process of managers sorting out their management logic and actions.
The farther from the present, the greater the effect of changing actions. So plans should not distribute annual goals evenly, but should increase later (except for seasonal factors).
Continuously (e.g., monthly or even weekly) adjust the actions in the plan based on specific circumstances, and based on adjustments, forecast the future, and then re-evaluate current actions based on the forecast. This is the essence of planning. Because plans cannot be correct, the planning process is a learning process, a process of continuous adjustment based on what actually happens after the plan.
In addition to normal plans, there should be innovation plans. Normal plans only bring normal results, sometimes not even the results you want. Only by experimenting with innovative approaches early can you possibly maintain goal achievement.
Don't be a slave to the plan. Any plan has its limitations; it is the best choice based on current knowledge. If actions in previous plans prove ineffective, bravely abandon them. If there are new opportunities and possibilities, don't ignore them just because they are not in the original plan.
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