The Importance of Integrity

The latest in Mike Kelly’s series on implementing the Integrity Selling system focuses on what’s really important.

The

Importanceof

Integrity

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Don’t wait for critical We have always had great pride in the work we do here, as I hope is evident by the quality of our design and editorial. Still, in the first hours of the course, we were able to highlight areas of our work that needed improvement. To me, the importance of working through these issues was strikingly clear. I realized that if I waited for a critical moment that would focus my attention on these issues, they would no doubt prove painful, both physically and financially. That critical moment could easily be fielding a call from an upset customer, losing a key employee, or allowing morale to reach a low point.

The wonderful thing about the Integrity System training course is that it allows you to tackle all these issues. Because the course is based on a customer-needs approach, it forces you to focus on delivering the best service for your customer, rather than just trying to make money. (Obviously, if the customer is happy, it’s hard not to make money.) When the customer is happy, so is the sales guy, and when sales guys are happy, morale is not an issue.

I

recently read a great article in the Wall Street Journal that made me realize what a bad practice it is to focus on the critical things in life and not pay attention to the important.

For example, it’s important to go to the dentist regularly to make sure you catch any problems early on. Of course, I often reschedule dentist appointments, since I always seem to have something more pressing. But waking up with a raging toothache in the middle of the night and having to get an emergency appointment the next day not only ruins my workday, it also hurts—both physically and financially.

Running a sales program like Integrity Systems is not critical for us. As the owner of a company that is moving to larger offices and growing so

MANAGEMENT

A word of caution, though. There are two areas where buy-in is vitally important. First, your participants will no doubt be a mixed bag, from seasoned pros to raw recruits and everything in between. Combine this with a range of individual personalities, and you’ll get reactions from ‘Wow, this is fantastic’ to ‘Yawn, double yawn.’

My estimation is that by the end of the eight weeks everyone will be in the “fantastic” camp.

I realized that if I waited for a critical moment that would focus my attention on these issues, they would no doubt prove painful, both physically and financially.

fast we’re constantly employing new people, there are literally hundreds of things I need to focus on. Running a sales training program, while a nice thing to do, wasn’t at the top of my list. But once I’d started this program, it became apparent this course was excatly what we needed to evaluate our sales processes.

The real buy-in for this course has to come from senior management. If they don’t truly—and I mean truly—believe in it, it can have negative implications for you. (Integrity Systems does a great job making sure the buy-in is there by regularly offering a free place on their courses to people who influence the buying decision in companies.)

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In this competitive world, not putting the interests of

I’m in a fortunate position. As the publisher of the magazine, and therefore involved with the sales process, I’m in a position to change the way we operate. Not only that, but because I’m also the president of the company, there is little political fallout for me in implementing new procedures.

your customers first is stupid—but to what extent do you actively serve your customers’ interests in advance of you own?

Sales realities One of the main benefits of the Integrity Selling course is that you are forced to address the realities of your sales processes. In this competitive world, not putting the interests of your customers first is stupid—but to what extent do you actively serve your customers’ interests in advance of your own? Trust me, your sales employees are the people who know the answer to that question. Some may happily work the angles, some may do it and feel uncomfortable, others may have done it, not liked it, and left.

As the facilitator, if you allow your sales staff to discuss issues that should be resolved and then do nothing about them, you will lose people. More than likely, you’ll lose those sales people that have strong moral and ethical values.

The basic tenet of this course is if people truly believe in their company, the value of their product, and themselves, hitting quota will never again be an issue. If you highlight the areas where you could improve and, because you don’t have the full backing of the company, are unable to do much about it, you’ll lose more than you gain.

Where the Integrity Systems course stands head and shoulders above the traditional sales training course is in the follow-up. Having rolled out the first one-day seminar, bringing concerns to the fore (along with some terrific, practical ideas), it

would be easy to walk away saying the course is great, but never addressing those issues or implementing the actions required. With the Integrity Systems process, each week for the next eight weeks I’ll be conducting a one-hour training session to continually reinforce the learning until it becomes an unconscious behavior—so we automatically perform the right action at the appropriate time.

The folks at Integrity Systems tell me the learning really cranks up between weeks three and four, but even in these early stages, I am seeing real results and improvements. There were two people on my team that I felt would really benefit from the course, and—far quicker than I expected—their day to day performance has dramatically improved. But the surprise for me comes from people I viewed as my “big hitters.” I expected the impact of the course to be less for them, since they are already successful. Watching them through the initial parts of the course, I saw there were lots of issues affecting them that I was totally unaware of. Were it not for this course bringing them to the surface, I’m sure those issues would have lessened their success in the future. If over time I can see dramatic improvements in my more successful team members, as well as the big improvements I had earmarked for the rest of the team, I will be a happy man.

Finding the time to attend the initial course and then facilitating the one-day course and eightweek follow up session (not to mention getting buy-in from all concerned) is a lot of work. And I know it’s not critical that you do this. But I’m seeing the benefits, and I can tell you: it’s important.

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