Page 171 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

150 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

I have a resource in Atlanta. . . . I flew into Atlanta [at] midnight
on Wednesday, and yesterday [I] spent all day with that person in
a series of customer meetings and a series of interviews for their
sales counterpart. They sat with me in all of those meetings and
provided their color commentary specific to [the] market. But I re-
ally took the lead in presenting to the customer, asking the ques-
tions, shaping the responses. . . .Then we spent time in between
the meetings—in drive time—talking about what just happened,
what we learned from it, what we think the challenges are going
to be, and what the next steps are. It is really about focused pres-
ence in [the] market, side by side with that resource, to provide
that mentoring and also offer them the opportunity to provide that
feedback. One of the things that came out of that day yesterday
was my resource there had an idea for something they would like
to see added to the product—one of their MBOs. . . .We had an
opportunity to really discuss in detail why they thought that was
a good request, who might be the right person to put that request
in to, and how they should phrase the request and the associated
business justifications. It really provides both an opportunity for
leadership by example and a conduit for feedback to the company
and to myself.

The situation with training is the same: John starts new
employees with a minimum of three days at the corporate
location with fairly intensive in-person training. They then
go back to their markets for a week and dig through and read
the library of content they have online, which is extensive.
John drops in to see them in their market the third week,
and they both go on a series of customer calls so the new
employee can see John execute them firsthand while they
listen and observe. Then, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth
week the new person shadows one of the professional ser-
vices people as they deploy a customer solution or execute
a service engagement with that new customer.