The WIIFM Factor

Priti Mohile, a reader, responded to my article Metrics and Matrices in the February issue of Biz Mantras by wondering "how do we change the mindset of sales personnel to fill them (reporting formats) completely and the first line managers to analyse them?"

Sales personnel think of report writing as a chore and offer the excuse that time spent 'working' in the market as a more productive activity. If as managers, we have to make our reportees do what we want them to do, we must first tackle the WIIFM's (what's in it for me) factors. For sustainable results, managers need to make their reportees experience the benefits of filling the forms accurately and to post them on time.

This can be done in various ways, but here is how I did it; I called for a sales review meeting where the managers had to make their sales presentations in 9 formats. The formats were designed in a way that they helped them ( and the reviwers) trace the history of their achievements in a structured manner. The presentations required the managers to discuss important performance indicators such as Target to Sales achievement along with Inventory and Receivables, as also critical success factors such as the sales force attrition rate and delays in recruitment, among others.

At the end of the meeting, one manager remarked, "We were unguided missiles until now. Now we are guided missiles" - a powerful affirmation of the useful learning from the presentations.

Now that they have bought into the idea of the importance of generating (and acting on) certain critical data, I have designed the managers' reporting forms to include all the performance indicators which the managers had found useful in undertanding their markets.

The WIIFM issue of the managers has been successfully tackled. Now to move on to enforcing their compliance of collecting and filling up the information accurately, and sending in the reports on time.

And in that will lie the success of the initiative.