The owner of a football team tells his GM to stop trying to improve the players. The owner says "all I see is we're spending more and more money and not winning any more games."
GM -vs- The Owner.
Who's right -and- what's wrong?
Both are right, but both are missing a possible cause of the failure. Here's my take.
Who's training the managers?
With all the new tools, we're totally focused on the sales reps performance. I'll ask, Who's scoring the managers performance? And, where are the management trainers?
We've got the cart before the horse.
IMO, for highest ROI, train your managers 1st. Train them in leadership skills, business skills and decision making. Teach them how to listen and train others. Teach them to hug the top 20%, turn over the bottom 20% and train those in the middle. Teach them goal setting, for themselves and their players. Show them how to strengthen the team by eliminating team killing players like the prima donnas, the bad attitudes, and the lazy. Teach them how to recruit talent and why they should recruit ("you can hire smart or work hard").
Lastly, the chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. If you don't have a buy-in from the top, to the managers, all the way to the sales staff, then it's gonna fail.
