Know what is happening outside your office

BY RICH SCHMITT

Management specialist

In flying, pilots are trained to keep their eyes moving. They are watching outside the cockpit for any sort of danger while keeping on course, and also scanning their instruments periodically to catch mechanical or other problems before they turn into an emergency. The pilot’s first reason to look outside the window periodically is to prevent an inward cockpit focus from causing him to make contact with the terrain (aka crash into a mountain.) As pilots scan the panel, they are taught to watch several core instruments aggressively while others are scanned much less intensely. The core group helps them keep the plane upright and level because all else becomes their second priority when they are hanging upside down from their seatbelt.

The prescription in wholesaling is very similar these days. Keep your eyes moving. In wholesaling, looking out the window is the process of getting out of your office to see how things are in the real world. Your management reports that show key measures or metrics are your instruments. The management team, at all levels, of every company needs to be continuously working these two areas to steer clear of emergencies -- or at least those emergencies that are avoidable.  A person’s level and role in the company determines the scope of the measures and view of the horizon. In other words, a branch manager will be focused on his assigned trading area and his branch’s measures while the president will be focused on all markets and corporate measures.

This month, let’s cover looking outside the cockpit/office. 

Avoid ivory tower thinking

In wholesaling, some managers fall into the ivory tower trap. They begin to think that the world rotates around their throne in their office. The field team, vendors and customers travel from great distances to sit near the manager and to be graced by their wisdom. We have seen that bigger and more successful wholesalers seem more susceptible to this disease than the smaller, more humble wholesalers -- but it can happen anywhere.

Managers who locate their office specifically to isolate themselves from customers and their team have fallen into this ivory tower mindset. The customers and the team are the very people who will give managers the data and insight to make high-quality decisions and to lead the company. When managers become isolated and receive their market insight through sanitized reports and through biased team members, they  are more at risk than those who see the world through their own eyes. Regarding biases from you team: Some of your team are intentionally biased and some are unintentionally biased but all are biased.

Too busy to leave the helm

Most managers really do have way too many tasks on their “to-do” list. So out of fear, and sometimes ego, they slave away in their offices thinking that removing items from the list is the same as running/leading their piece of the company. Personally, I have found Steven Covey’s Important/Urgent matrix helpful in reminding me that urgent tasks are not always the important tasks. For more info about this matrix, e-mail me at rich@go-spi.com. 

It also reminds me there are important tasks that are critical to the business that fall off the table because they are not urgent and thus get lost in the shuffle. The key is to doggedly focus on the important tasks whether urgent or not-urgent. Getting outside your office is a critically important task.

The world will come to an end

Other managers think that the branch, division or company cannot operate without them sitting in the driver’s seat every day. When one of your managers has this view, it can be a symptom of one of the following:

• The manager is overwhelmed -- He is not competent for the role that he is in. As we promote people in this industry, we often promote them one job beyond their abilities into a role that they cannot reasonably perform. I think we sometimes unconsciously create job descriptions that even Superman might not be able to fill and then wonder why we cannot find a decent person for the job. Frankly, I see this happening most often in the branch manager role. We expect them to have all the skills of a business owner, which is already more than most humans can handle. Then we load onto that all of the reporting, compliance, training, saluting/butt-kissing and politics that hq requires. Some owners boast, “I did all that when I was managing our single location.” The truth is:  Probably not. Even with all the computer assistance, running a branch in some companies is far more complex than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
• He is stealing from the company -- One of the telltale signs of embezzlers is that they cannot let others fill in for them, for fear that their replacement will discover their crocked game. I don’t want to put dedicated employees under scrutiny, but when their dedication becomes unreasonably irrational you may have a problem. 
• So when they stay in the office, when they don’t allow others in “their business,”  when they don’t take vacation, or when they are so controlling that even their team is afraid to dig into problems, you just might have a problem.
• He has not built a good team --Sometimes they cannot leave the store because they have hired or inherited a team that resembles Moe, Larry and Curly. This might mean that the manager is a good doer but not a good leader. Whenever a manager tells me that he cannot leave because there would be no one to cover the counter, build the stocking order, get the orders out or help the customers, I know there is a staffing issue, a management issue or both.

On a recent flight I had the opportunity to talk with a soldier who recently returned from Iraq. One of his comments on the experience was that for all the training and preparation, he was not fully ready for the good and bad experiences he faced in Iraq. Until he was there actually in the midst of the situation he didn’t really understand it. I am certainly not comparing the bravery of our service men and women with what we do in wholesaling -- I’m just pointing out that nothing quite compares with being there. (As an aside, I found it pretty darn humbling to spend a little time with one member of the latest generation of individuals who, over the last 230 years, have gone in harm’s way for their country. It was a good reminder for me to say thanks to all of you who have served the country and gone in harm’s way on our behalf.)

Of course you cannot be in the field every day, but there must be field contact on a regular basis. Frankly, most managers kid themselves saying, “I spend a lot of time with customers.”  When you look at their calendar, it often is, in reality, a tiny, insignificant part of their schedule. It seems like it was just yesterday when, in fact, it was two, three or 10 months ago. For all the excuses that I have heard from managers over the years, I have not heard one that justifies not getting out into the battlefield where the war is being fought. 

Go see your customers

How can you understand the customer’s point of view if you never see the world from their point of view? While I think customer appreciation events are important, they are not the same as a visit to your customer’s shop. Sitting in the customer’s shop and listening is far more enlightening than hearing about the customer second-hand from a sales person. My favorite questions for each customer are:

• What are we doing wrong that we should fix? (If the customer says, “Nothing,” don’t pat yourself on the back yet. You need to probe further because your company is probably not perfect. The customer just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Get him to level with you. Don’t be defensive. Follow up if you address his concerns.
• What are we doing right?
• What products should we stock for you? Make him promise to buy them from you if you stock them.
• What can we do to deserve more of your business?  (My favorite.)

Also consider visiting your customers’ job sites. When the owner, foreman and crew know you, it gives you an edge when they are ordering product and evaluating bids. Plus you can see whether the project is on schedule -- which might be related to your getting paid.

Ride with your sales team

There is no better way to see what salespeople do and to provide coaching to that team. Many of them will see it as an intrusion, but I think it is almost always worth the time. I like to do it unannounced so you can see how the process works without the typical pre-visit customer grooming that can occur. Grooming is where a customer gets coached on what to say and might be given an extra discount for his support.

Ride with your drivers

Your drivers often have more direct customer contact than the rest of your team combined. They can give you insight, plus you get to see the customer’s business from the garage door side. Sometimes the back side of the customer’s business provides a lot more information than the office. You can see who else the customer is buying from, whether his shop is in order, how many trucks are sitting idle in back and you get to talk to some of the other people involved in the business.

Visit your suppliers

While personal relationships are less effective than in the past, I still think they matter. Vendor visits shouldn’t be like a college road trip, they are done so you can remind your vendors what you do for them and to understand what they need you to do going forward.

Visit potential acquisitions

If your company is thinking about acquisitions, visit logical acquisition targets and tell the owners that you are interested if and when they are ready to get out.

Visit new market areas

I have heard stories about companies moving into new markets and no one from the senior management team has visited the area. That’s just wrong. You greatly improve your odds and reduce your risks when you know the territory before you invest.

Do a competitor drive-by

Not in The Sopranos sense -- even though you may want to. Instead, just drive by the parking lot to see who is there and how busy they are. You can also check the inventory levels in their yard. Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether business is off in the market or if a competitor is eating your lunch. If the competition is busy and your location is not, you might be losing share.

Visit your branches

Again, go unannounced but with an agenda. Show the team you care about inventory accuracy by counting several skus. Do it first thing in the morning before the place is open. This eliminates the team’s excuses for why the counts don’t match. Check out how everybody looks. See if the counter and warehouse are in shape. See if your trucks were headed for deliveries at the crack of dawn, not sitting at the dock being loaded until mid-morning. Really talk with people, ask real questions and really listen. While you’re there, be sure to do some coaching and to follow-up on the problems.

Next month I will focus on the measures and reports that ought to be your instrument panel. I will discuss the group measures that ought to be your core instruments to be scanned often even when you have time for nothing else. For reprints on field and branch visits, e-mail me at rich@go-spi.com.

If you want to improve your pricing game, we are conducting our High Performance Pricing seminar on April 26 in St. Louis. For more information, e-mail me, call me at 314/872-9199 or visit www.go-scg.com.