I love it when a plan comes together
When I was growing up, one of my favourite TV shows was The A-Team. Each week, the group of mercenaries would get into a crazy situation but Hannibal, the leader, always formulated a brilliant escape plan. It helped that he had Mr. T’s mechanical skills, Face’s charm and Murdock's pilot skills but the important thing for us all to remember, is that like MacGyver (who came much later), he analysed the situation and put together a solution based on the resources he had.
But what happens after you formulate the plan? In my first blog, ‘Good systems make business sense’, I explored how to establish a successful lead management process. In this installment, I want to focus on the implementation of the system itself. How do you ensure that it works, is it accepted and is it progressing in the right direction? The next bit is the hard bit, implementing your best laid plans to ensure success.
Communication is key
Before you implement the global lead process then make sure you communicate the plan with your entire team. It is important to let everyone know about the roll out — before you do it. People fear change if they don’t know what it is for, why they need it and why it will benefit them. So to avoid resistance, don’t let it be a surprise to anyone.
Advocacy
You could have spent weeks or even months putting a lead management process in place but it means very little if you don’t have your senior team onboard. They don’t have to submerge themselves fully into the entire process but they do have to understand what you are trying to achieve, help you police behavior and be responsible for their respective teams. However, if you are in charge of the process, you are its biggest advocate and unless you live and breathe it, you can’t ensure its success.
Design and implement real-time reporting
Aim to react as soon as something happens. Within 24 hours of something going wrong you have your best shot at discussing what went wrong and hopefully fixing it. Real-time reporting gives you the opportunity to continue to educate your teams on real life examples and lets everyone know that Big Brother is watching!
Share, share and share again
Be prepared to share details of your lead management process repeatedly. You don’t just do one implementation presentation to the sales team and hope for the best. This is an initiative that is going to take time. If you are responsible for the process be prepared to allocate your time and patience until the understanding is instilled.
Remember, this system belongs to the company
Perhaps the most important thing to remember as you implement your lead process is that it is never your personal process or one departments’ way of dealing with leads — this is bigger. Your process is for the betterment of the organization as a whole and is something that should be seen as belonging to the entire organization.
So that is implementation. The main elements discussed here should help you avoid common pitfalls when rolling out a lead management process or initializing a new way of doing things. Stay tuned, in my last blog I want to conclude by talking about what happens when you complete the initial roll-out.