“Straight Talk” is the Only Way to Change Your Business.

Get ready to be uncomfortable.

I wasn’t planning a performance review. Yet I had to be straight with Dan.

I sat down with my VP of Sales to review his business performance.

He had 150 reps and Dan was tracking monthly performance. He was sending the scoreboard to me also.

I see something. The same people are at the bottom of the list every month.

Dan had been in his role for 6 years and I was new.

Feeling that he might be sensitive to my questions, I asked him to explain to me the rankings for the current month.

Questions are the answers.

“Well Mike, the report shows individual sales performance to goal ranked #1 to #150.

I asked if Dan saw any trends in the month-to-month ranking. He said, “Not that I can see.”

“Dan, how do you use this report?”

“I send it to my Field Managers, and we use it to track performance so that at the end of the year we can give out awards, like Sales Rep of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Top Growth Rate of the Year, and things like that.”

I asked, “Do your Region Managers review this report with the sales reps monthly?”

He answered, “Well, I think they use the report in different ways.”

Evasive answer. He doesn’t know.

Leading the Witness

“Wouldn’t it be valuable if your managers shared the report with their sales team monthly and discussed the performance with each rep, their trends, growth, or decline?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

“Dan, you send me this report monthly and I have analyzed the rankings.”

He is now uncomfortable.

“Do you know that over the last 6 months, the same names have been at the bottom of the rankings? Little change. Can you explain this?”

“Ah, Mike, it takes time to get momentum going in sales.”

“My guess is that the bottom 30 have been the same people for the last 2-3 years. Do you know if this is true?”

“I don’t know,” says Dan.

Dan is getting frustrated with me because he did not anticipate these questions.

“Now, Mike I’m a little confused about where this is going?”

Conflict at its finest.

“I don’t want to confuse you, Dan. Today, North America, the organization that you lead, is missing its sales budget. We need you and your team to grow revenue at least by 9% by the end of the year. That’s how simple this is.”

“It appears to me that no one is taking your scoreboard seriously.”

“How many of the bottom 30 sales reps are on “Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs)?”

Dan doesn’t know.

Then abruptly, Dan says. “Are you saying that you want me to resign?”

Where did that come from? Anxiety is rising.

Straight Talk deployed.

“No Dan, I want you to improve your results. The company needs you and your team to perform. You are accountable for sales growth, and you are not achieving at the level we expect. That is not acceptable.”

“I expect you to get into the details with your leadership team and use the reports you distribute monthly to find new ways to grow your business. Build a plan and execute it.”

“I know it’s not easy to grow the sales in our company. However, that is what this company pays you to do.”

“If you don’t know how to get there, ask your team, ask your colleagues. Ask me and I will help. I don’t have the answers, but as you have just experienced, I know what questions to ask.”

Conflict at its finest.

I let 4 days pass, then arranged a meeting and asked Dan about his plan to begin to grow sales.

He did not have a formal plan to share with me.

I said, “Dan, I am disappointed in you.”

“We need to course correct your sales team’s trajectory, so I decided to prepare goals that we need you to achieve to get your sales growing again.”

I walked him through the Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time-Bound goals process. SMART Goals.

One for example,

Sales will need to increase monthly by 1.5% on a per-billing-day basis compared to the previous month no later than July 31. We will review your results individually by the 10th of each month. Then we will jointly communicate to your team monthly for the remainder of the year about corrective action needed to achieve this goal.

Dan said, “I am submitting my resignation today.”

“Oh. Why, Dan?”

He said, “I know you have clear expectations for my role and the sales team. This hasn’t been the case in the past. It will take a radical change to re-organize around the markets we need to pursue to grow sales. I’m not up for that.”

“Well, I appreciate you being honest with me. We will collaboratively work through this.”

Change is good, you go first.

Together, we planned a series of announcements to the organization.

We hosted a call with his direct reports and then announced to the organization that Dan had resigned.

I immediately got his former direct reports together on a call.

Since there was no one else to manage the field managers, they began to report to me. I shared the goals that I had established for the remainder of the year and had Dan’s direct reports provide the same update that he would have.

Working directly with the field managers was a ton of work, yet it gave me a more intimate view of the competency of our field management team. They needed to step up their game and I would help deliver this.

At the National Sales Meeting a few months later, I heard some rumors regarding Dan’s resignation.

I was stopped by one of the sales representatives. He was being a smart ass as he said to me. “Hey Mike, your announcement of Dan’s resignation was very well done, but we all know that Dan was fired.”

In an astonished manner, I said, “I’m sorry, do you think that I would lie to the entire organization about Dan’s resignation? That would have been foolish.”

Then I said to him, “Hey wait a minute, I remember your name from the monthly scoreboards. My memory says that you did not make your quota for the 3rd year in a row.”

With a serious look on my face, I asked: “Are you achieving your quote this year?”

At that moment, he said “Wow, I’m late for a meeting” and walked swiftly away.

Straight Talk delivers change.