State your case
After discovering the gap between clients chased and clients caught, Mikan was essentially telling his sales executives to limit the amount of opportunities they had to make money. Salespeople don’t want to hear that, so you better have a compelling argument or data to back why your idea is worth giving a try.
“Anything you do like this, you’re going to have to have a result,” he says.
You also have to present the change in an understanding manner. Mikan stressed that he knew the company was doing great, but he thought it could do better. He showed everyone the data he researched and asked, not told, employees to give his idea a chance. If his idea backfired, he wouldn’t hesitate in admitting he was wrong and switch back to the old method of doing business.
“It wasn’t the sort of thing, ‘Here it is, like it or lump it,’” he says.
You want to communicate you aren’t fixing something that already works; you are just trying to improve in areas you know can be better.
“But we’ve never really said to anybody, ‘If you do this, you will be an overwhelming success.’ That’s ridiculous,” he says.
“But we did say, ‘We think that your chances of success will increase if we do this.’”
Yet, no matter how you present the change, not everyone will be happy.
“It’s like anything you do, you always get people to buy in to that very quickly and some who are slow to come to the game.”
You have to take resistance by a case-by-case basis, and go from there.
“You have to take a look at who’s resisting it and what their current track record is,” he says. “If you’ve got someone who is resisting it who has been an average performer or below expectations … you take a look and say, ‘Based on your track record, you want to continue what you’re doing? Let’s take a look at what you’re doing, and let’s be candid about that.’”
The conversation with that employee can be short if he or she continues to resist and does not improve performance.
“Because you really say, ‘Well, the truth of the matter is based on what you are doing; you are doing OK,’” he says. “‘But, we’re really not in business to do OK. We’re really in business to do an excellent job. Not even a good job, we want to do an excellent job. And doing what you’re doing pretty much guarantees that you are going to be OK.’”
As far as your best performers, you need to be a little more lenient with them.
“Now if they are doing really well and resisting this, you say, ‘OK, I get what you’re doing. I have no objection to you challenging these ideas, but I think I can make you a little more effective,’” he says. “’So, let’s try this on a couple of opportunities going forward. If I’m wrong, maybe you and I need to re-evaluate our approach.’”
