A famous chimpanzee which, at the age of around 60, was recently euthanized by the Oregon zoo. May the gsk Coco also be euthanized because it too has suffered a stroke.
Someone needs to have a heart to heart with our leadership team. When you open each interaction the same way, every time you visit a customer (or any human being) you sound like an out of touch moron. COCO works at times. You need to pick and chose your moments. Please GSK, listen to your people. Also, we have heard about the great "GSO" achieved around the globe by those using the COCO methodology. Can you please share the actual study that was conducted? Can you show us the endpoints used?
Good point #3. Agree that COCO has utility when used intelligently, strategically. The same was true for MCE which showed that asking the right question at the right time could yield much better progress. The issue is that gsk has a remarkable capacity to take a good idea, commit to it, then screw it up royally by excessively mandating its use. Again and again, gsk does not fully learn from its repeated mistakes and the blame goes to middle and lower management. It unfolds thusly: a good idea is accepted and rolled out to sales and marketing leadership, who then roll it out to SVPs. SVPs like to put a little signature on it before handing it to RVPs. RVPs add their own competitive spice and then challenge the FLLs to be successful with it. FLLs mandate the new idea to be used on every call (or else you get a bad FCR or two, a low calibration score, then the boot). Field reps overuse the good idea, arent strategic about it, but brainlessly “give management what it wants” as the reps have been trained to do for the last decade, and VOILA - gsk keeps failing. Helloooooooooo.....
I’ve seen some moronic initiatives in my time at GSK, but this one ranks near the top. 2 things: being forced to use certain language like “convince” repeatedly is not only idiotic, but completely ineffective to providers (not to mention soul crushing to SPs). Like previous poster stated, leaders like Court H. take decent idea (sales effectiveness) and it just goes sideways. The framework of COCO-SOB-CBC is fine, but the way it is being implemented and evaluated in calls is absolutely absurd. Bottom line, let the SPs use their own style/language within the framework and be evaluated on whether it’s a GSO outcome or not. Lastly, the feedback loop to management is totally broken for this type of thing right now. FLLs are so beat down and running scared from upper management that they don’t want to hear real, honest feedback from the field that contradicts anything from the top. Best of luck to everyone in 2019!
Post #4 and #6 nailed it! Coco is a nice framework but to mandate it is ridiculous. Question to "Half-court" horn-blower. If everyone is implementing the coco sales model in the field and sales are not meeting goal, shouldn't you be implementing performance management on RSDs and FLLs? It seems as if the only ones who are held to any accountability measures are the field reps. As former military you should know what happens when the grunts do not have leadership accountability. You get apathy at best and mutiny at worst. Leadership needs to take accountability. Your grunts have been through the mud here at GSK. Sales model after sales model. Layoff after layoff. The ones that are left have demonstrated tenacity. Continue to treat them as dispensable and you and your team will eventually be the ones looking for work. Show us true leadership! Show us what you're mad of! It's time for you to convince us! Not the other way around!
Coco comes off even worse than a used car salesmans pitch at the end of a quarter at the Buick dealership.
