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You have previously worked in a similar role, so feel you can bring a different perspective on the sales team’s work to help members develop and improve. There is an ambitious sales plan to deliver, and you know your progress will be scrutinised by senior management. Some members of the team have been in post for a long time, and you have heard they are very apprehensive about you coming into post, especially the changes you might make to their working practices. One of them has already gone off sick, and only half of them have accepted your recent email invitation to a team meeting. There are a couple of team members who are noticeably more positive and have sent you emails welcoming you to your new role.
Motivational strategy
Your motivational strategy plan needs to work out how you will get the whole team on board to enable you to meet business plan targets. Working as a pair, you will produce a comprehensive motivational strategy that considers both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation alongside social, cultural, and organisational variables. The strategy should be supported with appropriate literature. It should be clear how the strategy supports the achievement of business objectives. In the first part of the training session, you and your partner will deliver a 10-minute presentation on a motivational strategy plan that considers a range of financial and non-financial incentives to both encourage successful performance and support unsuccessful performance.
Business scenarios
The second half of the training session focuses on enabling team leaders to put into practice leadership skills and approaches for motivating their teams and improving performance. You are to role-play in pairs different approaches for managing performance and continuous improvement. There are six given business scenarios. You and your partner will take turns to act as the team leader and employees in given situations. You will then share feedback and evaluate your performance. This will be part of recorded video evidence and a written performance review that makes recommendations to ensure continuous improvement based on your reflection.
You and your partner are to role-play the following scenarios.
1) Your team has a regular `problem` customer that they are actively avoiding.
Unfortunately, you have received a complaint from the customer about the way one of your team members handled their latest request when they came into the store. Your role play brief is to decide on an initial tactic to deal with this complaint and gain team members’ support in devising a team strategy for dealing with this type of customer.
2) One of your team members shows values inconsistent with company culture (e.g. shows a lack of transparency, overpromises on deliveries, stirs up drama with colleagues). They are relatively new, but already showing signs of being quite a negative influence within the team. They were out of work for a year before starting this job and seem to be finding it difficult to adjust to employment and meeting the company’s expectations around behaviour and attitude. You suspect one of the apprentices who works in the team is also being influenced by the negativity of the new team member, with whom they spend their whole working day. Your role play brief is to decide on how best to move forward and how issues the discussion raises will be handled.
3) You chair weekly team meetings. You are concerned because the meetings do not seem to be very productive – a lot of time is spent discussing administrative details and/or problems with processes. Your brief is to role-play your next meeting, when you want to address this with the team. How will you approach it?
4) Your team is exceeding sales targets and members work well together. Recognising their abilities, you feel they can now work more on their own. You have begun to redirect your energies to other projects and teams, and they have continued to work effectively. You must now ask them to accept additional tasks and responsibilities. Your role play brief is to delegate and empower the team at the same time.
5) An employee who is brand new to the company joins your sales team. This person is enthusiastic, willing to help and keen to progress. Their working style is very organised, and you can consistently rely on them to deliver within timescales. However, you have noticed that their enthusiasm and the speed of their work is sometimes at the expense of detail and providing exemplary customer care. They do not always explore multiple sales options, upselling products and services before deciding on a course of action, and they sometimes make errors. This has led to you feeling you need to observe their work yourself (at short notice) to ensure it is of a high enough quality. Your role play brief is to tackle these areas for development without dampening the staff member’s enthusiasm and ability to deliver.
6) The company has recently introduced a new Health and Safety policy you feel is not in the best interests of customers or the business. However, it has been made very clear that the policy is fully endorsed by senior managers, and you will be responsible for ensuring it is implemented by your team. After a few weeks, team members tell you the policy is causing complaints from customers and taking up a lot of their time, and that they do not understandwhy it has been introduced. Your role play task is to balance the competing demands from senior management, your team and customers to address the situation.
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