One Company’s Approach for Ride-Alongs with Salesreps
At SMT’s conference last week in Orlando, Laurie Weed, Western Region Sales Development Manager at Ricoh, presented her company’s approach to ride-alongs (at Ricoh they’re called field rides) with sales reps.
We’ve seen different approaches to this critical reinforcement process at ESR. I really like Ricoh’s for several reasons. First is that they actually do it. Second is that they have a process. Third, it’s a good one.
Ricoh has very specific and measurable objectives for field rides:
- Decrease days to first sale;
- Reinforcement of skills learned in formal training;
- Evaluation of the degree to which skills are applied.
Eligible for field rides are new hires, those who are performance-challenged, those without a current manager, and even veteran sales people needing a tune-up.
Teresa Hiatt is the Director of Sales Education at Ricoh. Teresa’s staff includes Laurie and her sales development manager colleagues in other regions. The ride-alongs performed by this team are in addition to those (hopefully) done by sales management.
In order to have an effective ride-along program, knowledge of the sales cycle as well as training and development practices are critical. Laurie described other important competencies including listening (not leading), communication, and patience.
The sales development manager team members expect briefing information to be prepared in advance for each of the two to three sales calls for that ride-along day. There is also a checklist to increase the odds of the calls going as planned, including leave-behind collateral, business cards(!), pen/paper for notes, and a GPS or printed maps. You’d think no salesperson would miss any of those, but that’s evidently not the case.
Laurie shared with us two forms which Ricoh uses for reporting on and measuring the impact of these ride-alongs.
When we assess ride-alongs for our clients we often find these issues:
- Manager takes over the sales call, leaving the rep embarrassed and demoralized;
- Salesrep is judged, rather than coached;
- Salesrep isn’t coached to a call process, since there often isn’t one. They are told to do what the manager believes is the right approach for the situation based upon their experience;
- There is no ride-along process, so each sales manager handles each call with each rep differently;
- Sales managers don’t have the time for ride-alongs, since they have significant personal (in addition to team) quota responsibility.
Let me know of any successes you’ve had with ride-alongs, and any aspects of this important process that I didn’t include in this post.
Photo credit: © Imagery Majestic – Fotolia.com
Filed under: Measurement, Methodology, On the Road, coaching
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I would like to respond to Dave Steins recent blog “One Company’s Approach To Ride Alongs With Sales Reps”. There is no substitute for a sales manager riding along with their sales reps in the field. If the manager wants to sleep well at night they need to spend time in the field with their reps.
Dave is right. Most sales managers do not spend enough time in the field with their reps and in addition, few managers have received any type of training on how to conduct field coaching with their reps. There are six rules to effectively conduct ride alongs with the reps. It starts by understanding exactly what you want to accomplish on the call. Managers need to set the expectations not objective of the call. Here are the six rules for effective ride alongs:
- Don’t get sand bagged. Tell the reps what you are looking to observe (all phases of the sale)
- Establish the roles. There are three different roles for a call. You can be the leader and the salesperson observers you. Co-op the call. Both you and the rep jointly participate with specific roles. Observer. You simply observer the rep.
- Notify the prospect of the roles. If you do not the tendency is that the attention is drawn to the manager and the rep feels left out.
- Don’t change the roles. This can be very hard if the sale starts going south. You as the manager need to decide if losing a battle is worth winning the war, The best opportunity to make points and potentially change bad habits is in real-time. This is hard but.
- Start coaching immediately after the call. Ask reps how they felt the call went. Give feedback and suggestions on ways to improve on the calls.
- Set objectives (points of emphasis) for the next call. This gives you an opportunity to reinforce the correct habits or best practices immediately.
The ride along should be a very positive learning and coaching opportunity to help the reps develop the skill set required to be a successful performer when you are not available for the ride along. If the manager does not make it a priority it won’t happen. Make sure you identify what you want to see on the call and follow the six simple rules for an effective ride along and you will see dramatic improvement in your reps skill set.
Good selling!
Thanks for the comment, Steve.
For my readers, The Brooks Group is one of the firms ESR covers. In addition to other areas, The Brooks Group has proved themselves to be experts at coaching approaches.
Ride-along days are so powerful for the rep, the manager and the customers they visit. It is great to see a company formalizing that activity. They can be a waste of time or destructive if not done correctly. I think everyone wins when proper preparation and time is spent on this important activity. Thanks for the focus.
I got a chance to meet a bunch of the sales training team from Ricoh, Jill. What a committed, competent team.