Encourage creativity
The only limits that Toombs puts on his sales force are that they are selling MiTek products and services. Other than that, if the approach is ethical and it’s done with the right intentions, Toombs supports it.
“If a guy has some talent and some understanding and a good customer relationship, if he can uniquely put a program together and make money at it and it gets the job done, I’m all for it,” Toombs says. “He doesn’t have to follow the script.”
Toombs views a good leader as someone who serves a company as an agent of change.
“We rarely say to ourselves, ‘This is the way it has to be done at MiTek,’” Toombs says. “If we slip in that regard, shame on us because we learn things every day. We learn from our customers, our suppliers and, quite frankly, I learn a lot from our young people. I think it’s very healthy for a company to embrace change.”
Of course, it’s one thing to embrace change and it’s quite another just to give your team a blank check to do whatever they want. That’s a recipe for disaster, especially if you haven’t trained them properly.
“We do a little bit of in-house training and then we get people into their jobs and let them make mistakes,” Toombs says. “But they’re mentored. They are also hooked up with peers, people that are fairly new, but have made the first cut. They’ll learn from the mistakes they have all made together.”
Get your salespeople on the floor learning about how a product or service works so that when they’re out trying to sell it, they can answer questions about it.
“It’s not that we expect him to do complex engineering work,” Toombs says. “But we give him enough to have the basics so when he does get put out in front of customers, he is not just going, ‘Duh.’ He understands a bit about what we do and what they expect. It comes down to training.”
Making time for your people to actually use the equipment or software that you sell is the critical part of the training.
“I know when I’ve learned things myself or I’ve watched other people that worked with me or for me, it’s amazing,” Toombs says. “You get them in an environment where they are participating in what’s going on, not just writing notes in a classroom. They are literally doing things. That’s a better method of training, and we try to do that.”
How to reach: MiTek Industries Inc., (314) 434-1200 or www.mii.com
