No matter where I work, regardless of the region of the country, there's one situation I encounter that virtually all businesses have in common -- some degree of internal conflict between sales, operations and administration.
Operations Manager: "Those sales guys are prima donnas. There's one -- Kevin -- who is the worst offender of all. He'll invariably blast into my office at the eleventh hour with an emergency delivery one of his customers absolutely has to have the next morning on a "first-out." He is always armed with every reason imaginable as to why he couldn't give me more notice, but the bottom line is that he wants me to "bump" another customer's order and slide his customer in its place.
"I'm telling you, I've had it with him. Last week he got in my face once too often; we had it out. I told him that he could either get his orders phoned in and scheduled like all the other salespeople or his customer could just wait. I told him that his customers are no more important than the company's other customers.
"Now, Kevin won't speak to me. He now communicates with me through a manager. You'd think that a man making a six-figure income would be organized enough to get his act together and plan ahead. I can't possibly do my job when every order he enters is an exception to the rule."
Salesperson: "Getting our operations manager to cooperate is the biggest hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.
"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crystal ball. How does he think I can anticipate my customers' needs when my customers can't see any further ahead than the end of their nose? Flexibility is the key to success in this business and he's about as rigid as they come. I can't do my job unless he can do his."
Credit Manager: "These salespeople around here are like a bunch of grade school kids. They practically never fill out their credit applications properly. And when it comes to credits, we need a full-time person to correct their mistakes. Customers are forever refusing to pay invoices because they're priced differently from the prices they were quoted.
"We could save a lot of money in our department if we didn't have to correct so much of the salespeople's work. They are the most disorganized bunch of guys I've ever had to deal with."
Sound familiar? Could this be your organization?
What's wrong in these companies and what's contributing to so much hostility is customer service-related. Not external customers, but internal customers.
The operations manager sees Kevin as a highly paid, but selfish and inconsiderate salesperson who totally disregards the systems the operations department has designed. Of course, the operations manager is partly correct. Kevin does appear to be a last minute sort of person who could benefit from some additional training in the basic principles of time management.
Kevin is also operations' internal customer. Kevin generates the sales and gross profit that make the operations job necessary. Without Kevin -- and others like him -- this company would not need an operations department.
There's also validity in the credit manager's criticism of the sales personnel. By nature, many salespeople are better at building customer relationships than they are at meticulously filling out credit applications. Salespeople need to be sensitive to the additional work they create for administrative personnel when they are sloppy with paperwork.
Salespeople are internal customers to the credit department, however. Without salespeople, there would be little need for any of administrative staff.
If salespeople are wise, they will do everything in their power to work just as hard at building good relationships with both operations and administrative staff as they do at building relationships with customers. Serving customers can be an uphill battle without the support of operations and administration.
Intelligent salespeople must eventually learn that getting "in the face" of the operations manager is a formula for eventual failure. The manager may take the salesperson's side because he cannot afford to allow internal conflict to interfere with customer service, but human nature usually dictates that operation managers will make life miserable for salespeople who show too little respect for their job function.
Operations is the internal customer of the sales force.
Without their willingness to service customers, salespeople are helpless.
It helps when employees in various departments take time to understand that different talents are required to perform different jobs. Frustrations can be lessened when all employees understand that stress caused as a result of human differences is natural. In fact, when we appreciate the value of human differences, we are usually more tolerent of them.
And more importantly, it's only through this kind of natural conflict that organizational synergy is achieved. Even though it can be uncomfortable working with people who possess different personality characteristics from yours, these characteristics are almost always necessary to efficiently perform job functions that require different types of talent.
Try this: Regardless of your job function, ask yourself this question:
How efficient would this organization be if everyone here possessed my exact strengths and weaknesses?
The answer is obvious. None of us possesses all of the characteristics, talent and chemistry necessary to perform all jobs in the company. The sooner everyone becomes willing to admit how much each employee needs each other, the quicker teamwork will improve.
Begin immediately doing your part to be more understanding of human personality differences!
Suggestion to managers: If you've never administered psychological assessments to the key people in your organization, I strongly suggest that you do so. The investment is less than $200 per person and the insight your people gain into their strengths and weaknesses can be really eye-opening. You can email Bill Lee @ Bill@BillLeeOnLine.com.
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