Decision-making is critical to all management positions. However, decision-making is even more important to you in your role as a sales team leader.
Sales leadership can be defined as the ability to positively influence the actions and attitudes of the sales team to achieve or surpass their goals. Part of this influence involves how effectively you handle the myriad decisions you face every day.
As a leader, you routinely have to make numerous important decisions on a daily basis, including decisions regarding people problems, customer problems and/or opportunities, upper management issues, setting performance goals, and so forth.
Your ability to influence your team is directly related to how you make decisions and ultimately on the quality of your decisions. Decision-making, especially in regard to leadership, isn’t always easy, but well-calculated decisions can result in achieving your sales goals and in enhancing your overall image as a leader.
So can you become a better decision-maker?
The answer is yes if you use a systematic process for making important decisions. The R.O.I. (Risk/Opportunity/Investment) Decision-Making Process will help you improve your ability to make decisions about problems and opportunities that you face in your quest to accomplish your goals.
Ask yourself how important the decision is. How much time, other people’s time, money, and energy should be expended on making the decision?
Although this sounds obvious and simple, it is easy to be deficient in completing this step. The natural tendency, and sometimes-unavoidable necessity to make quick decisions, can cause the decision-maker to disregard the fact that pertinent information is missing. Once you acknowledge that there are missing facts, you must determine if they’re worth finding and if you have the time to invest in searching for them.
Ask yourself the following questions in searching out relevant facts/information:
The most effective decisions are made with as many facts and as much time as the decision requires. The answers to the questions above will determine when you might have to move a little faster than you normally would, or make the best decision possible with limited information.
For example, if a salesperson were in danger of losing his or her third account this quarter, you’d probably want to get out there quickly. If you take time to analyze call reports, or talk to other salespeople or customers, you may not be able to help the salesperson maintain his or her confidence level and you may end up losing even more business. In this case, you may not have all the information upfront, but time is of the essence.
In this step, you want to list all of the possible options, before evaluating ideas and selecting one to implement. First, write down a list of obvious options. Then brainstorm creative option additions and add them to your list – be creative without evaluating any of your ideas. Finally, narrow your list down to two or three of the most doable options.
Now you are ready to compare your most doable options in terms of Risk, Opportunity, and Investment using high, medium, and low rankings.
One common decision-making bias leaders have, is down-playing the non-monetary costs of decisions that otherwise look like Low Risk, High Opportunity decisions. For example, such “hidden” costs or Investments can include longer than expected ramp-up time of new hires, lost productivity implementing new systems or processes, or time out-of-the-field attending in-person meetings.
The last step in the R.O.I. Decision-Making Process is to select the best option based on your Risk, Opportunity, and Investment rankings. There are four components in selecting the best option:
One quality of effective leaders is that after selecting the best option they implement their decision quickly.
Why is time of the essence in implementing a decision?
Because it is likely that if you have followed a systematic decision-making process, revisiting a decision after it has been made (assuming no new information has surfaced) won’t improve the quality of the original decision.
On the contrary, you risk losing a valuable opportunity through delay or letting an existing problem worsen. Moreover, unnecessary delays can frustrate your team and hurt your image as a sales leader.
As a sales team leader you have to make numerous decisions every day, some important, others minor. Your ability to influence and lead your sales team in part is a function of how well you make decisions. Using this systematic decision-making process will help you make better decisions more quickly and become a more effective leader.
Do you have any additional tips for making sound decisions in a sales setting? Share your tips and experiences here.