Sales Team Building

Business Success Means Learning to Multiply

Here’s a common fantasy we often hear from business coaching clients, “If I could just afford to add one more person to my team, we’d really start making money!” Why do I call that a fantasy? Because some of the most successful teams we’ve coached are also some of the smallest!

If you’re scratching your head over that statement, stay with me. You see, what we’ve learned as business coaches is that, contrary to common belief, more people don’t always equal more productivity. That one statement should have you, as a business team member or manager, jumping for joy! That means, my friend, that with the right hiring and leadership strategies in place, you can actually reduce your workforce while increasing your company’s income.

What’s the secret? It’s simply learning to multiply. Here’s how Brian Tracy explains ( read Focal Point if you like) if you’ll strategize your recruiting so that you’re hiring team members with complementary skills, rather than hiring a team of people with identical skills, you’ll build a more productive team. And you can keep building that productivity by facilitating the use of each team member’s skills in a way that multiplies the team’s productivity.

How would that look in a real-world situation? Imagine a company that sells washers to hardware stores nationwide. If you, as the sales team manager, hire a team of high-powered sales people with connections to hardware store chains, you’ll probably start out selling a lot of washers. Predictably, though, if all of your sales people are working the same market, you’re eventually create an atmosphere of cutthroat competition for the same customers. That kind of sales force will stagnate unless the sales manager learns a new strategy.

What if, instead, by hiring one person with strong connections to the hardware store chains, plus someone with a network of buyers in the manufacturing sector, as well as a real go-getter who’s constantly looking for new markets for the products she sells, you were able to multiply the impact of your sales team into new markets?

You could really ramp things up by encouraging, at the same time, an atmosphere of excellence that challenges the team to provide great service, appreciate each other’s accomplishments, and work together toward reaching team goals.

Do you see the difference? It might be easiest, in the beginning, to just hire a lot of really good sales people and let them “have at it”. But you’ll see better, more profitable long-term results by hiring a team of people with complementary skills and encouraging an atmosphere of excellence within the team.

Wondering if that could work for your team? I hope you’ll comment on this post about the challenges of maintaining great teams. Remember, you don’t have to know how to do this by yourself. That’s where a professional business coach can help. This is a great time to become an expert at hiring good people and multiplying their efforts with good management strategies. Let me know when you’re ready to get started!


Steve Thompson,
President,
FocalPoint Coaching, powered by Brian Tracy