Developing Your Sales Force's Potential   

While some of what makes a Sales Organization successful is outside of Sales Management's

 control (and is written about in other papers we have published), there are some critical areas where you can improve your sales force's potential. In case you missed it, our last new paper looks at some of them. 

 Read the paper 

Dear James,

That maxim has been around for a long time and is an accepted tenet by most experienced managers. We need to be reminded that measuring the wrong things can result in managing the wrong outcomes. Measuring patient satisfaction in healthcare may be such an example.

Measuring patient satisfaction is the "new" metric of many larger healthcare organizations and hospitals. However, what outcome is patient satisfaction actually measuring? Especially when the patient is not the payer.

Asking your level of satisfaction with the Ritz Carlton compared to a Motel 6 is likely to produce a preference for the Ritz Carlton in most people's ratings. And if you don't have to pay the hotel bill and yet have a choice where to stay anyway, most people would select the Ritz Carlton over a Motel 6. However, if one factors their own money into the equation, it may be that the two properties would score about the same because one's expectations of Motel 6 are different, and if they meet those expectations at a fair price, they may score just as well as a Ritz Carlton does with its customers who expect more and pay more.

If you remove the payment from the equation and ask people how they feel about their medical outcomes, doctors are finding that for many patients over-treatment results in higher patient satisfaction scores. Not necessarily better medical outcomes. But if you are spending other people's money (or at least you perceive it to be other people's money) then who cares about over-treatment?

The three major organizations that now purport to be the arbiters of patient satisfaction, Press Ganey, Gallup, and National Research are establishing themselves as the standard. Given that a part of ObamaCare includes a reduction in Medicare reimbursement for lower patient satisfaction scores, hospitals have a dilemma. Of course the arbiters claim that "nobody wants to be evaluated" and that may be true. But if what gets measured does not actually improve the desired outcome and drives up costs, how is it helpful?

 As always, before you start to measure, make sure you agree on the outcome you are trying to produce and that what you are measuring is reflective of that outcome. If patient satisfaction is the desired outcome, then the current metric is right. If better patient outcomes most efficiently are the desired outcome, the metric is likely wrong.

As regular readers know, We fly a lot. Over the last few years we have increased our travel on Southwest Airlines. This has occurred because with all the mergers we rarely get upgraded on the "legacy" airlines, and with fewer planes flying most flights are full, as Southwest's have been historically.

Many who fly Southwest note that their flight attendants often (sometimes) do fun things with their PA announcements. Some are heard often such as "Thank you for flying with us. Nobody loves your money more than Southwest." Or, upon arrival at the gate "Wait for it, wait for it, Ok get out." Or one of our favorites: "Did anybody lose their wallet? Ok, now that we have your attention, listen to these announcements."

What fascinates us about Southwest is that in an industry where employees seem to hate their employer (have you seen the stickers on some American Airlines pilots cases that say "Don't fly American Airlines"?); Southwest employees seem to really like the airline.

This was brought home again on a trip to Tulsa. When the plan landed the lead flight attendant broke into song that was a parody of God Bless the USA. Her short song, which she sang well, was God Bless SWA and was a tribute to the airline. Of course she was applauded. I can't imagine this happening on any other US airline for two reasons: It's against FAA regulations (not) and the employees don't love their airline.

Would your people be inclined to sing about your company in this way? It is provably true that the better you treat your people, they better they will treat your customers. How well would you like your customers treated?

U.S. movie theaters have been outstanding at extracting money from their patrons with expensive snacks. A $10/ticket experience can easily be upgraded to another $10-$15+/person with popcorn, soft drinks etc. In truth we understand that the business model for movie theaters depends on this "cross-sell" to survive.

Well AMC has taken share of wallet to a whole new level with the dine in movie experience. This combination of a movie and complete dinner, waiter/waitress served is an interesting option. Based on our experience trying the concept, we say it has merit, and drawbacks.

Firstly, the food and service were excellent and the food pricing fair for the product delivered. And dinner is much more expensive than the usual popcorn and soft-drink so the added value caused an increased share of wallet, thus allowing AMC to make more money.

The negatives, for us, were potential interruption of the movie experience by the waiter and excess noise from the other diners. Our experience was on a non-busy night so the theater was fairly empty and the wait-staff was reasonably unobtrusive. This theater allowed kids, and one dad insisted on admonishing his child's food choices ... loudly. We suspect that in a full theater the experience might be off-putting, at least to us.

However, we would definitely do it again and it is an excellent example of increasing share of wallet by increasing the value-add.

Updates. If there are others you feel would benefit from this issue, use the Forward email link just below on the left.