COACH'S CORNER
By Barry Knepper
As Seen In Queensborough - The Magazine of the Queens Chamber of Commerce

Employees That Refuse to Adapt

TAB Member's Question:
My company has inside and outside sales persons. We have experienced rapid growth and I want to put in place new policies and procedures for the inside sales people to better reflect the current needs of the company. Of the seven inside sales people, four are very resistant to change. Of the four resisters, one is the biggest producer and two have been with the company for a long period of time. How can I get the resisters on board to ensure that the new policies and procedures (which have been discussed but not yet put into writing) will be followed by all?

TAB Coach:
The key is to make sure these changes are inclusive rather than exclusive. If the discussions have simply been you verbally sharing the changes that you would like to make, as opposed to discussing what changes are required to meet the current needs of the business WITH the current staff, it would simply be human nature to expect resistance.

You could get all the sales people together and say something like, "I have a set of new policies here but am reluctant to put them into effect until we can be sure they are the best answers to the problems of..." then, one-by-one, deal with the problem and the proposed solution. Get real buy-in to the problem. Once they agree the problem exists, ask for solutions that might be better than the one you have proposed (it's best if you haven't yet proposed any, but it sounds like that opportunity is lost). If they don't have any, ask for any problems they see with the solution on the table—push for any negatives, problems and any unattended consequences—any reason why they would not want to implement it. Give them time to digest and implement one at a time while monitoring compliance.

If they are salespeople, then they are on commission. All incentive programs should require appropriate compliance with the rules and presumably higher compensation if they do so. If they aren't on commission, then they really aren't salespeople and he has been getting performance unrelated to reward.

If you are being held hostage by top sales "producers", it sounds like the company has managed to grow sales despite a major sales management deficit. If things don't change, trouble awaits. I would recommend that you face this issue head on and address it. It should be in stages to develop easy wins to get buy-in from those challenging change. Change should be incentivized with money and recognition.

Barry Knepper is the certified facilitator and coach in Queens for The Alternative Board® ("TAB"). Board members meet monthly to learn from one another's successes to grow their businesses to the next level through a combination of peer advice and coaching He also serves a part time chief financial officer ("CFO"), utilizing his 30 years of full time CFO experience to help business owners maximize the profitability of their business through the development of a budget, business plan and monitoring of financial operations. He can be reached at 516-724-0351 or bknepper@tab-queensny.com.