A Culture of Accountability

 

“Evaluate, intervene, and encourage” is the advice given by John Fleming and Jim Asplund in their business best seller Human Sigma. Six Sigma changed the face of manufacturing quality, creating excellence by reducing variance in finished goods, revolutionizing business, and boosting profits. Human Sigma is poised to do the same for sales and service organizations.

 

“Agents join companies but leave managers”. The one number a business needs to know and track is the percentage of existing customers who would serve as strong advocates for the company by recommending the firm to others. Most financial data are lagging indicators. Human performance metrics are leading indicators of growth or decay.

 

Are your team members r-o-a-d warriors (retired on active duty)? Anything that makes agents passive vs. active participants is counter- productive. Great managers provide their agents with accurate information about the company vision, what they can achieve, and how well they are doing meeting their goals.

 

“Customers want more than transactions. They want relationships”. Human Sigma begins by evaluating how well you are meeting your agent’s emotional needs. It is estimated that 80% of the market value of S&P 500 companies comes from intangibles.

 

”The ultimate goal is to inspire passionate advocacy at every touch-point and location, because passionate advocacy pays significant financial dividends”. Internal and external customers need to be engaged, enabled, coached, and mentored to avoid an exodus to firms that will appreciate them.

 

Goethe said, “Correction does much, but encouragement does more”.

The authors believe success must be encouraged, celebrated, and rewarded. Not every agent desires to be recognized in the same way. Strength based performance reviews, sharing success stories and personal articles in company publications are a few ways to create a culture of encouragement and accountability.