For those engaged in sales work, I think besides high-frequency terms like "sales tasks" and "receivables," "execution" is also certainly familiar. I have come into contact with many companies' sales forces and observed many business teams, and the following phenomena often occur: the marketing department questions the sales department's weak execution of plans, leading to greatly diminished results; top management questions frontline personnel's inadequate execution, causing tasks to remain unfinished; third-party planning companies question the company's execution problems, making "30% planning, 70% execution" an automatic reply mode. In this article, I do not intend to discuss whether the marketing department or the sales department is wrong, whether it's top management's or frontline personnel's problem, or whether the planning company or the company is incompetent. I only want to use this article to elaborate a model for constructing an execution system in business teams for reference.
It's not about the number of soldiers, but their quality! The core element of elite soldiers lies in efficient execution; without efficient execution as a guarantee, everything is like a moon in water or a flower in a mirror. So, how to build a business team with efficient execution?
Establish an awareness: A business team is an asset that requires strengthened management and has great potential. Before elaborating on the above viewpoint, we briefly summarize two common views on business teams: First, companies need to bear the wages and various expenses of the business team, so the team is a cost; second, the business team can achieve company sales, so it is an asset. Both views have significant problems, easily leading to biased decisions. Treating the team as a cost leads to blindly cutting staffing, hiring "cheap" salespeople, and trying to reduce benefits. The second view easily leads to blind expansion, neglecting the value of personnel management, and ignoring the destructive potential of personnel. Therefore, the correct concept should be that the business team is a corporate asset with great subjective initiative, requiring strengthened management and correct guidance. At the beginning of my career, I briefly worked as a salesperson for a home appliance company in Shanghai. The company had significant problems in its use of the business team: blindly recruiting, failing to systematically train newcomers, and lacking restraint and guidance during use, leading to many new members being unable to adapt, low work efficiency, and frequent business errors. The result was predictable!
Establish four safeguard mechanisms (hygiene factors) These four safeguard mechanisms are: team member entry and exit mechanism, position promotion and demotion mechanism, reward and punishment mechanism, and communication and participation mechanism. Without these safeguard mechanisms, the building of team execution will lack environmental support.
Team member entry and exit mechanism The entry of new members will impact the existing team execution culture, so management must be cautious when screening new members. On the other hand, due to objective factors, the exit of original members is inevitable, so it is necessary to build an exit mechanism. In practice, the entry and exit mechanism generally adheres to the principle of "strict entry, lenient exit," meaning strict assessment before entry, and careful handling of the following types of members: (1) Frequent job hoppers; (2) Older applicants for grassroots sales positions; (3) Non-local individuals who have not settled down; these types need special judgment, better to have none than to have unqualified ones. "Lenient exit" means quickly clearing out those who do not adapt to the execution culture, those who idle away, and those lacking execution, cutting through the knot. There are several common rules for member selection: (1) Virtue outweighs talent; avoid those who gamble, have bad lifestyles, or lack integrity; (2) Judge people from details, especially from words and deeds, which can reveal traits that determine whether one can adapt to a team with an execution culture.
Position promotion and demotion mechanism A good promotion and demotion mechanism can enhance team execution and combat effectiveness. Currently, many companies have not truly formed such a mechanism, leading to serious problems: (1) personnel can be promoted but not demoted; (2) promotion channels for grassroots personnel are blocked; (3) once the company forces adjustments, those demoted become obstacles to team execution and easily form cliques. Because many companies are "smart," they create numerous nominal positions to accommodate those demoted. In building the above mechanism, two methods are for reference: (1) Build a clear promotion path so grassroots members can easily learn the path and methods for promotion; (2) Establish a team atmosphere where one can go up or down, encourage members to strive for the top, and take necessary actions against those who do not strive, even clearing them out of the team.
Reward and punishment mechanism The carrot-and-stick approach is important for building team execution and culture, but establishing a sustained and effective reward and punishment mechanism, preventing inappropriate, arbitrary, or human-determined rewards and punishments, is more meaningful. In some business teams, due to team leaders, these behaviors easily occur, leading to good-natured members swallowing their grievances, stubborn members resisting and not obeying, and team management falling into endless trouble, let alone execution. A good reward and punishment mechanism should ensure: (1) Punishment must be reasonable: Punishment should be fair, not overly subjective, and not arbitrary. It is recommended that team managers clearly stipulate possible punishments before management and give members some adaptation time. Once consensus is formed, punish every occurrence equally, without mercy. (2) Rewards must be timely: When team members complete specified instructions, promised rewards must be promptly fulfilled without discount (additional rewards are allowed). Efficient teams can achieve orders and prohibitions, which is related to the efficiency of reward fulfillment. (3) Focus on rewards, with punishment as a supplement: Rewards as positive incentives and punishment as negative incentives are effective in stimulating members to complete tasks and execute instructions efficiently. However, from the perspective of long-term team development and human nature, "rewards as the main, punishment as the supplement" is more conducive to maintaining team development.
Communication and participation mechanism The fundamental purpose of forming a communication mechanism is to solve practical problems, enhance consensus, and reduce execution resistance. Teams must always center on the above purpose when building the communication mechanism. However, many business teams repeatedly make the same mistakes: (1) Lack of platforms for feedback; (2) Team leaders lack patience in communicating with members; (3) No response to members' complaints, opinions, or suggestions; (4) Prevalence of cliques within the team; (5) Too many meetings; (6) Habitual one-person talk. An effective communication mechanism should be built on solving practical problems, increasing team consensus, and reducing resistance to task execution. Meetings for the sake of meetings and over-reliance on positional power to suppress team members are harmful to building an execution-oriented team, ultimately damaging the entire team's morale. Therefore, in building the communication and participation mechanism, we suggest:
Actively respond to problems raised by team members, strive for problems to have results, results to have feedback, and feedback to be timely;
Encourage team members to report problems and propose solutions and suggestions, not ashamed of members raising "stupid" questions;
Hold fewer formal meetings and more practical ones; one meeting should solve a bunch of problems; strictly control meeting time to prevent marathon meetings and one-person talks;
Encourage putting problems on the table for resolution, resolutely stop the phenomenon of not speaking at the table but gossiping privately, and deal with each occurrence.
Emphasize three core projects (motivational factors) The establishment of the above four mechanisms is like laying the foundation for a building; the next three core projects are the key elements determining the creation of an execution-oriented team. These three core projects are: team value construction, team member income growth plan, and team training system construction.
Team value construction I had the opportunity to come into contact with the dealer sales team of Xuanjiu, a dark horse in Anhui's local Baijiu market, in Suzhou, Anhui. In just one and a half years, the team achieved sales of over 100 million yuan for Xuanjiu in Suzhou, making the Suzhou market one of Xuanjiu's few base markets. In communication with its team members, we could clearly feel the strength of its team values, even to the point that these values were deeply integrated into the members' thoughts, and their confidence in established strategies was explosive. Only after interviewing the boss did we learn that such confidence came from long-term construction of team values. In fact, team values are like human values; they help team members easily judge what is right and wrong, thereby regulating and guiding unified action. A business team without values is like a body without flexibility; how can we talk about team execution? In the process of team value construction, we should consciously highlight the following core values (including but not limited to): (1) Business success comes from persistence and continuous repetition; (2) Market competition requires us to dare to show our swords and be brave in fighting to win; (3) A single tree does not make a forest; personal success cannot be separated from the team; (4) Continuously improve business skills through learning; (5) Work is a way of life; either choose to accept it or choose to leave; depression and pain are not normal states.
Team training system construction The establishment of values requires training, business skills improvement requires training, and team leadership can be obtained through training. The construction of a training system is essential for building an execution-oriented team. In building our own training system, we need to focus on three aspects: team value infusion training; team member business skills training; and team leader leadership training. The vast majority of companies can realize the value of training for building team execution, but in practice, they often make mistakes and cannot extricate themselves: (1) Training forms are single; companies easily think of inviting a professor or so-called marketing expert to give lectures, resulting in either being excited in class, impulsive after class, and motionless at home, or you teach your strategies, and I play with my social circle; (2) Training content is single; (3) Neglecting leadership training for team leaders, leading to frequent leadership jokes, especially after the 80s and 90s entered the workplace, leadership training is even more important. In the construction of the team training system, two rules are worth referencing: (1) Example is better than precept: As a team leader, you must lead by example and educate team members through practical actions. Team management is mental work, but also physical work; hoping to lead a team of howling wolves just by talking is wishful thinking. Even President Xi often participates in various field research. (2) Strict implementation of systems is also training: Strict implementation of various systems is also a form of training, and it is real training. In this process, not only can execution be formed, but also core team values can be formed. Team leaders should pay special attention to this.
Member income increase plan Say a thousand words, in the end, you need to make money. Team members, as humans, have basic material needs, and income is the most concentrated expression of meeting material needs. The idea of "wanting the horse to run fast but not letting it eat grass" does not work in reality, at least not in the long run. As a company or team leader, in building an execution-oriented team, you need to seriously formulate a member income increase plan. This is very important but often overlooked because it is sensitive! In specific operations, we suggest: (1) Ensure members' income is not lower than the industry average; (2) Encourage "small horses pulling big carts," i.e., make work as saturated as possible to ensure members' income levels. For example, sales can increase the number and level of customer service by reasonably arranging time and improving work planning, thereby increasing income; (3) Do not artificially set limits; encourage challenging high salaries, and those with more ability get more; (4) Completely break the habit of "eating from the same big pot," linking personal income to personal effort; (5) When conditions permit, encourage business teams to contract work and establish an Amoeba model.
"Execution without excuses," but for a business team to truly achieve this step, companies or team leaders still have much to do. The "143" model, as a methodology for building an execution system, provides a path to solve problems, but it needs to be flexibly applied in combination with the actual situation of the company. I wish every company can have a team that howls!
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