What’s Your Exit Strategy?

I don’t like good-byes; never have and never will. Even in my training, if you’ve been in any of my sessions, the ending is usually a quick thank you and good-bye. That’s it.

When I observe the corporate scene, I watch new hires come through to fill old cubicles. I watch managers take on their new roles and directors get promoted to VPs. And I wonder, what is their exit strategy? How will they be remembered? Will everything they’ve built still stand long after they leave?

When an inside sales person leaves, it’s critical they leave clean tracks. There’s nothing worst than poor documentation or messy tracks. Even the brightest reps can fall short of good information capture, making it tough on the ones who proceed them in the territory.

I had lunch with a VP of world-wide sales yesterday, an extremely bright and talented woman who made her mark as Director of Inside Sales for a Fortune 500 company. She worked there for three years and cleaned it up, setting up new systems, hiring high-quality talent, motivating them, cheering them each month to exceed their goals and always fighting for their viability. When she left, her department quickly crumbled and suddenly people who had no idea what inside sales is all about stepped in to manage the organization.

How can something unravel so quickly? There are few people out there that really understand telesales and inside sales. Some know how to build it, others know how to grow it, while some know how to pull it apart. It’s a communication barrier that’s been around for many years. When it works well, it’s a synchronized machine that hums and when it doesn’t work well, it can fall apart very quickly.