SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
Big Shoes to Fill: Are You Ready?
December 01, 2006
How to avoid the early retirement of expertise
By Rebecca Aronauer
Picture this: One of your top sellers retires after more than 20 years of service. And along with him go his long-cultivated customer relationships, sales tricks and intimate knowledge of the trade. It may sound scary, but it's not hard to imagine. In the next five years, 19 percent of the American executive, administrative and managerial workforce will retire, according to a study released in October by IBM and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). While 82 percent of the learning executives surveyed believe that changing demographics will have a notable influence on their company, only 14 percent have made this issue a priority.
Fortunately, there is time to address this challenge. "This demographic transition is not like the Y2K phenomenon; it's not going to happen all at once," says Mary Kay Vona, a global executive at IBM Learning who is based in Tampa, Fla. Still, losing years of experience in one retirement party could be a serious problem for any company.
Actions can be taken to mitigate the problem. To preserve the talent of retiring salespeople, IBM and ASTD recommend:
Increase awareness of the demographic shift in the human resources department.
Develop a strategy to transfer knowledge between salespeople, that takes into consideration their learning preferences.
Identify opportunities for older employees to train coworkers in traditional and non-traditional settings.
Quicken the cycle and effectiveness of internal promotions.
Vona advises that companies return to basic training techniques such as peer-to-peer learning along with e-training and blended approaches. "Transferring knowledge between generations is crucial," she says. The best way to do so, she believes, is through company-promoted mentoring relationships. "Developing a mentor model is invaluable," she says. As organizations develop plans to cope with changing demographics, soon-to-be-retired salespeople should also choose successors to carry on their sales legacy and build on their client relationships.
Learning the latest sales techniques is great, but lessons and insights from your veteran sales people should not be lost in the upcoming demographic shuffle.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
|
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Marketing Index |
|
|
