skoter22's picture Submitted by skoter22 on
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Management and Leadership

I have the VP shadowing me tomorrow. He has only been at our operational site for around 3 months. My boss, the Director has never done this, he has been in the role almost a year, so I don't know what to expect.  I have written some questions down in my notebook but any advice would be much appreciated.

GlennR's picture
Submitted by GlennR on Tuesday April 30th, 2013 4:48 pm

Looks Like I'm a day late here, but in case this happens to anyone else, here's my response.

When I travel "in the field" I want to see a day in the life of a front-line customer rep. Specifically:

  • customer interaction and gain customer feedback,
  • What works well for the employee and might possibly be shared with others(prospecting, sales techniques, relationship building, account management, etc.)
  • what obstacles he is running into. Excessive amounts of paperwork, poor technology, outdated products etc.

A VP inexperienced in this might try to correct your behavior, but it would have to be especially unprofessional for me to say anything.

This is most definitely not an interview. You can make a positive impression by doing your job.

I encourage all senior managers to get out and visit customers with your front-line staff on a regular basis. I find it motivating and I usually come back with good ideas that in many cases have helped take a tiny load off of the backs of those front-line staff.