A Step to the Right and Execute

Because the salesperson hasn’t been trained, developed, coached, and led, the sales manager who is responsible for their success takes a step to the left, ensuring the outcomes they need by becoming the super-closer, thereby vacating the role of sales manager. Because that role is vacant, the rest of the sales manager’s team are not being trained, developed, coached, or led.

Because the account manager is not ensuring the client’s success, the salesperson steps into the role of account manager, managing the many relationships inside strategic accounts in order to ensure that the client achieves the outcomes they were promised, thereby vacating the role of opportunity creation and capture,

The account manager has stepped into the role of customer service, only because the team tasked with this role has been, for any number of reasons, unable to resolve the client issues, leaving their role vacant, but for the salesperson who sold the client in the first place.

The customer service team is stretched because the operations team isn’t executing well enough, and that failure is creating an enormous number of challenges for the client, all of which are serious enough that the client is considering vacating their role as client and moving on to someone else who may produce a better outcome than they are receiving now.

The operations leader is concerned about the loss of the client, but being overwhelmed with challenges, he has placed his hopes in the customer service leader to take care of the client.

The customer service leader, struggling to produce better results, is counting on the account manager to leverage her relationships to retain the client, in spite of their many challenges.

The leader of the account management team, hoping against hope, and working very hard, looks to the sales team to manage the client. The sales leader isn’t sure how to make their number without executing on the deals they’ve already won, and asks for more resources to do the work that her sales force can no longer do.

Everyone in this scenario has taken one step to the left, occupying the space next to the space in which they belong. To remedy this scenario, all parties have to take one step to the right and occupy and execute their role. Not without challenges, but well enough that no one has to step to the left.