Professional or
Career Goals
What do team members want out of their careers? This may or
may not be tied to the jobs they are currently doing and the company by which
they are currently employed. Somewhere in their minds, maybe from a seed
generated back in elementary or high school, they have a goal of what they’ve
imagined they could be someday. It may be to write a great adventure novel or to
open a charter fishing boat service in the Caribbean. Whatever it is, they will
either be happy that their present activity supports growth in that direction or
frustrated that it presents so many obstacles. You get only two or three chances
in a lifetime to achieve professional goals.
If personal goals are dependent on
achieving professional goals, we had better pay close
attention to what it will take to help people in their career plans. The result,
of course, is that they will justifiably feel that we are supportive of
everything that’s important to them in life. To help them feel successful, we
need to get a few more answers to key questions so that we can develop a career
plan, not just a sales plan, for each member of our team.
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What competencies and attributes are
required for the achievement of professional goals? What can you do to make
your salespeople successful enough to advance toward their professional goal(s)?
Up until now we’ve been concentrating on the skills necessary for them to be
successful in their current role, but what about preparing them for the future?
As their sales manager, you need to have a clear understanding of where they
would like to go and what it will take to get them there. Visualize the future
role they have in mind, hopefully in partnership with them, and identify the
characteristics and competencies required for them to be successful in that
future role.
For example, if they dream of becoming a sales manager, think of
all the skills we’ve talked about in this book that are different from the sales
role. Maybe they want to move into marketing or finance. What different goals
are necessary to position them for an opportunity in those departments, and what
will it take to succeed if they do get a chance for career advancement in that
direction?
I’ve even worked with a few firms that knew their direction
was going to change and that most of the sales team would be laid off. To their
great credit, they invested a great amount of time and financial resources in
preparing these individuals to be more successful as they moved on by providing
training and experience based on their individual goals. A pretty humane
approach, wouldn’t you say?
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Where are they in regard to the required
competencies and attributes? After you and your salesperson have identified
the competencies required to position them for, and succeed in attaining, a
professional goal, determine where they currently are in the particular
knowledge or attribute. Do they have only basic understanding or are they well
along in skill set development?
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What experience or training will be
required to gain these competencies or attributes? Consider what training or
experiential activities you might be able to provide that will help them along
the path to goal attainment. Of course, this has to be done as an enrichment
activity that won’t impact the sales department’s goals.
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What is a reasonable timeline for
achieving these competencies? How you structure these goal attainment
activities will be dependent on how fast people see themselves reaching their
goals. I know of some sales managers who over-loaded an individual by trying to
speed up the process when the salesperson had a much slower, longer
building-block approach to new competencies.
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What is a reasonable timeline for
achieving these goals? For both of your sakes, be sure you have a clear
understanding of when your salespeople expect to have absorbed all the
competencies required and would like to move on. More than one trust has been
damaged by a difference of opinion as to the releaseability (the effect on the
organization of the release) of a salesperson to move to another job.
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Are they working toward goal attainment
now? If not, get them on it at any pace acceptable. They will be happier,
and you will have a greater ability to manage for change.
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