More thoughts on the Tale of Two Managers and Relationships

Tanmay has written a post at QAspire blog today called, “Focus on Relationships and Tale of Two Leaders”.

Here’s its quick summary followed by some of my thoughts on the same.

Story of Peter
In his quest to achieve his sales targets, Peter was overly focused on “closing the sale“. When in front of a customer, he often focused on what the “next steps” would be. He sold from the mindset of “What all can be sold to this customer out of all my services?” Read more here.

Story of Jack
Jack, on the other hand, believed in “building a relationship”. When a sale was closed, he considered it as a beginning of a relationship. When in front of a customer, he mostly focused on “understanding/listening” what customer had to say. Read more here.

Unfortunately, in today’s so-called fast-paced environments; most sales-persons walk the Peter way.

Because their incentives, which make a big part of their CTC, are proportionately associated with their short term performances, they obviously choose to take the most traveled road.

Everyone wants to be rich. Or at least richer his neighbor. That’s also in a short time.

While Jack’s mindset is a surefire way to thrive over the long run, most of us do not want to sacrifice the short term benefits, especially when others are getting it just by doing the Peter thing. (Instant gratification monkey thought, anyone?)

Here are three things that any of the potential Jacks can do:

1. Focus on the big picture. Take a holistic view. Views are totally different when things are seen from 500 ft. or 5000 ft. Perspective matters.
2. Establish the best relationship with the self. This is the most important step. The better one is satisfied with the self, the more he’d be able to offer the same to others.
3. Evaluate the organization’s value system. Read and understand the organization’s vision, mission and value systems carefully. Answer the questions like
   1. What is #1 objective of the organization being in existence?
   2. Is it customer-service-excellence, short-term profit?
   3. What is precisely expected from your job role? Over the short term as well as long term.

Keeping these three points in mind, one can take corrective actions if necessary.

Many times, those corrective actions lead to change in the Key Result Areas of a person or a Job-change and either is fine as far as it offers win-win opportunities.