14
Manager Priorities
When I was first promoted to manage a team of sales reps from Santa Barbara to San Diego, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
I knew three things at the time:
My compensation plan told me that I maximize my earnings by helping my sales reps sell. The more they sold, the more I'd get paid. Simple.
As a new manager, I didn't understand what was important internally.
That I didn't want to be like the other managers, who were always in their cubicles. How could they be so busy in a cubicle when their comp plan was the same as mine?
When I arrived on my first day, I chose the cubicle left vacant by the previous underperforming sales manager, who had left the company.
At that time, laptops were a thing but not the Internet. The vast amount of paper in my cubicle quickly overwhelmed me. Loose-leaf binders filled three bookshelves, and paper files stuffed three large file cabinets. More paper overflowed from the inbox on my desk.
Frustrated, I went downstairs to see John, who was the head of the Shipping and Receiving Department. He and some other friends, who I played softball with during weeknights, worked down there.
"Hey, John," I said. "Grab a few guys, some hand trucks, and empty boxes, and follow me upstairs to my office."
So, he did.
We stood at my cubicle for a few minutes. Then I said, "Can you help me box all the files and every item in the bookshelves and then throw them into the dumpster outside?"
Disbelieving, John looked at me and said, "What? You want us to throw everything in the dumpster?"
"Yes."
"Uh . . . OK. Boys, let's get it done."
Within minutes, John and his team had cleared my bookshelves and file cabinets.
Felt great.
After tidying everything up, I positioned the mail inbox on the far-left side of my desk and placed the trashcan just below it. Every day, I went on sales calls with my team. At night, when we returned to the office, I would take all the papers in my inbox and throw them into the trash bin.
After a few weeks, a couple of people would ask if they could speak with me.
"I sent you paperwork with a request several times, but I haven't heard back."
So, I'd ask them a few questions:
Why is it important?
Is it urgent?
Who says that it is important?
Why do I need to do it now?
Will it help my sales team sell more?
The majority of the time, it wasn't that important, nor was it urgent, and it wouldn't help my team. It was driven by a low level person trying to look busy.
Through this process, I discovered what was truly important. And that most things were unimportant because many people ask you to do things for their reasons. They wanted to look busy. "Take this survey," "respond to this email,"
"read this report," "please show up for this meeting." It all told their boss they were doing something meaningful.
Bureaucrats.
So many sales leaders in my company at the time took the bait. They let other people's priorities become their priorities. Most of the compensation plans for sales leaders are simple and very clear:
Your reps sell; you get paid.
Compensation plans are meant to drive a certain behavior. The comp plan should drive sales managers to do what is fundamentally necessary to help their people maximize sales.
I quickly realized that I was paid to recruit, train, and develop my people to maximize sales and so they could eventually take my place when I get promoted.
Responding to a multitude of meaningless phone conversations, bureaucratic conference calls, and internal meetings with no specific prerequisites, written agenda, or defined outcomes wasted my time.
So, I stopped.
When I focused on recruiting grade A players, developing their knowledge and skills during sales calls, and leading them, we all became better at selling as a team. When I taught my team to master the fundamentals of the game, they performed better. They learned new competencies. We sold more. They made more money. We all grew and made more money.
Forego needed to focus on what was important.
The fundamentals.
The basics.
15
Explaining the Basics
That night, after meeting with Jim and Andy, I stayed at the Citizen M hotel at 50th and Broadway, one of the newer, boutique, (read: minimalist) hotels in the city. The day had been informative, and I felt ready for tomorrow.
After a run in Central Park the next morning, I showered, grabbed a Starbucks, and took the elevator to the meeting room with all the first-line managers.
This time, I could feel something in the air when I walked inside and spoke briefly with a few of them. Anticipation. Uncertainty. Whatever it was, a sea full of eyes looked at me. Andy and Jim were amongst them—sitting apart from each other.
After reintroducing myself to the group, I explained that I was here to positively change their life as sales managers.
"Raj asked me to help advise you on leading and managing your teams, defining a sales process, qualifying deals and forecasting accurately. Before you can lead a team to become proficient with the basic knowledge of how to play the game
—or coach someone on the basic skills to play the game—you need to simplify things into the basics of the game.
"A good friend of mine, Cedric, told me a story that emphasizes why the basics are so important to master in any game. So, I'm going to start with a tale."
The Fox and the Hedgehog
There is a fox named Sly Smartass.
Sly is a very capable creature with a host of enviable assets. He has always been a sure winner. Sleek, cunning, and agile, he also has great eyesight and can run almost forty miles per hour.
On the other hand, there is a hedgehog named Billy Basics.
Billy Basics was born a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and an armadillo.
This left Billy with poor eyesight, so he has to rely on hearing and his keen sense of smell to get around.
He's so slow that he can't even run.
Billy Basics waddles.
Sly Smartass is nocturnal and likes to hunt when the sun goes down. He waits in silence and stays out of sight because he loves subtlety over brute force. Sly crouches down to camouflage himself, then leaps out and lands on top of his prey with a scream. "Aha, I've got you now!"
Billy Basics is also nocturnal. He hides in vacated burrows, under rocks, or in thick vegetation. When Billy Basics thinks he is being attacked, he rolls into a tight ball in self-defense, causing all of his 5,000 spines to point out. Then he lets out a loud snort, like a large hog.
When Sly tries to attack Billy Basics, Billy's acute smell and hearing alerts him to the attack. Into a ball of spikes, he goes. When Sly sees Billy's impenetrable defence, he calls off his attack.
Every day, the same battle occurs.
With the same outcome.
Sly, armed with cunning, agile assets, creates a new change in his strategy to attack Billy Basics. But Billy, sensing a new attack, relies on the basics. He uses his guiding principles—his fundamentals, which are now natural instincts—to fend off Sly Smartass's multiple-angle attacks.
Sly Smartass sees the world in all of its complexity. He pursues many methods to attack Billy at the same time. He always believes there must be a new strategy or a new way. He constantly changes his methods and never integrates his thinking into a few guiding principles.
Some say that Billy Basics is stupid. On deeper reflection, he's quite clever. He understands that the essence of profound insight is simplicity.
Billy simplifies his world into a few basic principles that guide his everyday plans. No matter how complex the world becomes, Billy Basics reduces all challenges and dilemmas into a few simple hedgehog principles.
He has mastered the fundamentals. The basics.
Simplicity becomes a limitless gift presented to individuals that master the fundamentals.
At this point, the sales leaders murmured to each other, clearly catching on to the main point of the story.
Each of them had their own sales process and own way to analyze deals, none of which ever seemed to work on a consistent basis. It seemed to me that they were ready to start simplifying their lives by learning the basics and mastering the fundamentals, which was right where I wanted them.
Billy Basics would become an imaginary hero at Forego.
The best place to start was with the basic items that the management team, as a whole, lacked during the QBR. Those foundational items would make them constructive qualifiers, potent forecasters and more effective leaders, immediately.
16
The Basics
Basic #1: A Common Vocabulary
First thing on the agenda was a common vocabulary.
I'm constantly surprised to learn that sales teams don't have a common vocabulary. The leader asks questions, the rep answers, but they aren't really communicating. They believe they're communicating, but they're not understanding each other, because they use different definitions for the same words.
"Your forecasting session revealed a lack of common vocabulary," I said to them. "There was an obvious disparity between what the reps said and what the managers asked. I was curious, so during a few coffee breaks at your QBR, I picked some commonly used terms and asked different reps and managers to explain their definitions.
"For instance, when I asked, 'What is a Champion?' I received four different definitions. Who is the 'Economic Buyer?' Different answers. 'What's the
difference between a Champion and a coach?' 'What is a technical buyer?' Every answer came back different."
A few of the sales managers fidgeted. My eyes skated over to Andy, who frowned at the floor in front of him. Even Jim seemed thoughtful. I could imagine them running their own terms through their minds.
"The team must adopt a common vocabulary for all your sales terminology. It's fundamental to effective communication and it's the basis for accurate qualification and rep development.", I added.
Perhaps now they could see that it was impossible to operate a sales force, describe an account scenario, qualify a deal, or run a forecast session when different people had different definitions of the same words.
Basic #2: Listening
"Did you know that people can listen and comprehend 250 words per minute?" I asked.
A few heads shook, and low mumbles followed.
"But most people speak at only 150 words per minute. What does that create?
Impatience.
Since we hear and comprehend faster than most people speak, our minds wander.
We get impatient.
"You were guilty of impatience. Do you know how I know?" I asked. "I observed you at the QBR. Your questions and your advice were ineffective. The reps were trying to tell you about the account situation, but you were too impatient to listen to what they said. You interrupted them and you told them what you thought was happening in the account. You told them they could do better."
There's no benefit in simply telling someone to perform better when they're struggling. You're yelling "SELL" to a struggling sales rep. It's like yelling
"SWIM" to a drowning man.
We often get ahead of ourselves in conversations, especially when, as leaders, we hold the power. Sales managers in a QBR tend to think about their next question, think about what they are going to say, instead of really listening to the reps.
Of course, they may have heard what the rep said, but do they truly comprehend?
Likely not.
More efficient questions are formed when the manager seeks to understand, not to be right.
"Raise your hand," I said, "if you believe you listened carefully, took the time to digest the reps' information, and countered with a pertinent question or constructive coaching feedback."
No hands lifted into the air.