.

Art Turock

Elite Performance Provocateur

HELPING CLIENTS PRACTICE WITH A

HEALTHY DISREGARD FOR THE UNREASONABLE

Copyright 2010Art Turock & Associates    425-814-3038    Webmaster Haley Ashland

Competent is Not an Option

Boost Your Associate’s Selling Capabilities, Without Working Longer Hours or Increasing Your Training Budget

Most businesses seem to be managed brilliantly for producing competent contributors, but managed miserably for developing consummate professionals.

In a money-is-tight future, supermarkets can’t rely on lowering prices to spark traffic and sales.   Instead, sales growth leaders will turn to their associates on the “sales floor” to raise their A-Game.  For decades, the standard of competent performance has been defined by qualities like being polite, friendly, and responsive to shopper’s requests, but only with vague mention of sales capabilities.  Supermarket executives point to tight margins that limit labor hours, high turnover that wastes any time expended training employees who leave, and the greater importance of hitting production numbers over developing team member’s sales proficiencies.  Developing talent occurs as a vital activity, but one that’s not practical given competing priorities.

Supermarket sales leaders will dispense with this seemingly justifiable compromise—either work gets done or associates selling skills are developed. 

Three Pronged Approach

1. Reconstituting roles in the store.

First, leaders must reinvent all roles in the store to include standards for selling.  Associates will master such capabilities as story-telling, suggestive selling, educating about product benefits, and inviting add-on sales at checkout.   For instance, the pharmacist transforms from a prescription-filler to a consultant on food products (e.g., produce) to replenish a drug’s depletion of essential nutrients.  The bagger’s role is not merely a manual laborer but an orchestrator of final impressions.  

2. Learning while working culture.

To reach the requisite 1000s hours of deliberate practice to become an expert, leaders must galvanize a culture where work is a process of growing capabilities, while in the process of producing results in order to be better able to produce future results.  Managers learn to orchestrate 18 varieties of job-imbedded learning opportunities so ongoing honing of skill proficiency replaces reliance on one-shot offsite training events.

3. Coaching with a healthy disregard for the unreasonable.

Managers must rethink their over-weighted responsibility for planning and directing work getting done in favor of revitalizing their role in improving sales capabilities and continuous professional development.  The pivotal moment of truth in coaching comes when a coachee’s skill proficiency plateaus, and the only intervention left is to alter how the perceived barriers to continuous improvement occur to them, a capacity very few managers possess.

“Competent is Not an Option,” describes a potential solution, which constitutes nothing short of a management innovation.

Forget about benchmarking best practices in your industry!

This interactive presentation helps you adapt best practices from Competent-is-Not-an-Option organizations; Former-USC Football Coach Pete Carroll’s Win-Forever philosophy; military special operations, Baldridge award winners,

hospital emergency rooms, food industry leaders in leadership development.

Talent + practice = skill and artistry. All make a consumate professional.

Custom Food /Consumer Products Industry Topics