Informed Is Empowered

Being in control requires you to know what’s going on, and your salespeople are no different. To close sales, serve customers, strategize and plan effectively, they need to know what’s happening with company policies, goals – anything that might affect or improve their sales and service performance. The sales team that’s in the know can make sales grow, so use these ideas for sharing information that helps them do what they do best.

Understand that people are your most valuable resource. You will probably be more likely to keep your team informed if you understand why it is important. Even with the best product on the market, a company needs people capable of and committed to pleasing customers. Customers may stay with or leave a business based on how well employees treat them and handle their questions and complaints.

Sharing information not only gives your team the facts they need to make customers happy, it may also improve team motivation by making salespeople feel more valued and respected.

Trust your team. When you hire well, you should be able to trust your team to act responsibly with the information you give them. Give your team credit for being willing and able to increase sales with the information you provide. Let them know the value of the information you share and what they should do with it. By reminding them that using knowledge to act in the company’s best interests benefits everyone, and that increased company profits also benefit them (in pay raises or more lucrative incentive programs, for example), you will help inspire them to put the information to good use.

Make your business an open book. A shift from “traditional” to open-book management makes your salespeople privy to information that once might have been for management’s eyes only. With that information, your team better understands how their actions affect the company and how to maximize their contribution to it. To convince one restaurant company president to share financial information with employees, one of our consultants asked the employees how much of every dollar they thought went to the bottom line to be returned to investors as profit or reinvested in the business. Not until the employees found out that only five to ten cents of every dollar amounts to profit did they realize how much one burned steak or broken dish cost the company. Reconsider what information you feel is too sensitive to share with employees and ask yourself if you can afford to keep it secret. Try releasing information in a newsletter that presents how to use it and how it can help salespeople do their jobs more effectively.

Although making your salespeople more knowledgeable is reason enough to keep them filled in on company affairs, sharing information also makes sense for some other very important reasons. You can tell your team that you’re one of them, that you’re there to help them and that you believe in them, but sharing information shows them you mean what you say. With every fact you provide, you strengthen the bond between you and them along with their motivation and their ability to sell efficiently and effectively.Being in control requires you to know what’s going on, and your salespeople are no different. To close sales, serve customers, strategize and plan effectively, they need to know what’s happening with company policies, goals – anything that might affect or improve their sales and service performance. The sales team that’s in the know can make sales grow, so use these ideas for sharing information that helps them do what they do best.