I had this thought when talking to a customer – he has an employee to whom he pays a set wage (hourly pay, but same number of hours every pay period).  Week in and week out, there is no discernable, tangible output of work from this employee.  Does this fact make this employee’s pay infinite per hour?

Just a thought.

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Remember back a few years ago when Radio Shack fired employees via email?  Well, here comes another tone-deaf approach by retail management.  I think the title of the Inc.com article explains it well – PetSmart Fires Employee Who Brought Dog to Work.

Here it is:

Eric Favetta, a 31-year-old PetSmart employee, was fired for "theft of services" after bringing his dog to work during an overnight shift he’d picked up as a favor to his manager, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

…

Favetta – a former military dog handler who’d worked at PetSmart for 18 months – didn’t want his 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, Gizmo, to be home alone all day and night. So he put Gizmo in the Secaucus, New Jersey store’s doggie day care facility. The store was empty, and Favetta checked in on his pet every 15 minutes.

Two weeks later, store and district managers requested a written report of his overnight shift. He complied – and promptly was fired for "theft of service."

“I was shocked,” Favetta told the Star Ledger. “It makes me sick that because I brought my dog to work with me when the store was closed to do the company a favor, I was called a thief and terminated.” "Theft of service" was just a convenient excuse to axe him because he didn’t get along with his manager, he argues, noting that he opened the store and handled money without incident.

Astounding.  In all fairness to PetSmart, they did change course and offer Mr. Favetta his job back and a transfer to another store.  I am still amazed that the corporate people did not see the irony and idiocy of this situation.

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I have had the opportunity to work for many different sales managers over my career.  I’ve seen many styles, but I think this article in SalesHQ.com hits upon the most dangerous style:

The Good Buddy is everyone’s friend. Managing is a popularity contest that he intends to win. He’ll be a great drinking buddy, a top notch shoulder to cry on, a guy you can trust to cover for you. He’ll make sure the office atmosphere is loose, that everyone feels welcome, that the office is a fun place to be.

Discipline? Well, that’s not something you’ll find in his office. An insistence on hitting quota? Something else that isn’t a priority. Coaching? Nope. Lots of back slapping and high fiving, but no coaching. Decisions? Don’t expect The Good Buddy to make the hard decisions because he might hurt someone’s feelings.

The Good Buddy is weak and lets his team members run the office. Ultimately, most everyone in his office ends up unhappy.

The reason this style is so dangerous is that the first order of sales management is holding salespeople accountable.  Accountable to their forecasts, their activities, their communication, their sales, etc.  It is the ultimate coaching position that requires the leader to have earned the respect of his or her team.

The Good Buddy I worked for used to hold court in his office for most of the day.  It was always stories, jokes, happy hour plans, etc.  Lunches were 2 hour investments.  Sales discussions were minimal.  Strategy discussions were non-existent.  We were simply expected to do our job, make our numbers and don’t bother him.  It was completely dysfunctional and ineffective.

The sales manager was eventually fired, but the damage was done to the company.  It eventually folded in the mid-1990’s.

This style is one of the reasons why objective assessments are a critical piece to any successful sales manager hiring process.

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The stresses of this economy are affecting entire sales departments from the leadership down to the trenches.  One piece I have noticed is a distinct aversion towards customer relationship management software.  Interestingly, the resistance is coming from sales managers.

What I believe I am seeing are sales managers with less than solid forecasts…and they know it.  However, one of the oldest games in sales is fudging the forecast.  Sales managers typically inflate the forecast to buy time.  They know certain deals are soft, to say the least, but they are hopeful they can cover those loses with new, undiscovered opportunities.  It is some twisted logic for sure.

I once worked for a sales manager who knew – knew – his forecast was inflated by at least 33%.  However, he also knew that if he reported the real forecast to the overseas headquarters, his department would be slashed within a month.  He figured the remoteness of the corporate headquarters would make it difficult for them to get a clear view of the veracity of his numbers.

The obfuscation approach has a tendency to buy time, but the sales manager has to pay either by not making the number or by creating doubt about their knowledge of the pipeline.  If they make the number, upper management tends to view it as luck, whether right or wrong.

One of the simple, critical steps in managing revenue in this economy is to conduct a scheduled, thorough pipeline analysis.  This analysis must include the salespeople responsible for the opportunities along with the sales manager to whom those salespeople report.  The end of the calendar year is a natural time to analyze every opportunity presently in the pipeline and those on the horizon too.

Failure to look at these opportunities under a microscope will place a certain amount of hazy ambiguity into your 2010 revenue estimates.

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It has been a hectic week of crashed computers, new blogs set up, new video integrations, business deals, etc.  Suffice to say, I have been worn out by the myriad of tasks.

In the middle of this busy week, I talked to a strong salesperson I know who has been quite successful in an industry that normally would suffer during this economy.  Unfortunately, he is starting to fade in his current position.  What I mean is that the company is grinding him down to where he is looking for another opportunity.

The main reason is disgustingly simple – he can successfully close deals in this economy, but his company struggles to deliver the product/solution.  The owner is absent from critical, time-related decisions.  The production department misses deadlines.  Installations fail due to installer error.

I met with this salesperson for coffee to discuss the situation and you could see the light fading in his eyes.  I’ve seen this scenario play out many times.  Companies want to hire strong salespeople, but they do not have the structure to support them.

The key here is to make sure you have the proper structure in place before hiring a strong hunter.  These hunters will stretch your company in new directions.  They will expect fast responses.  They will prefer to pass along the deal to a support person while they track the next deal.  These principles are simple to understand but difficult to put into action.

If you have strong salespeople today, be sure to monitor their internal company tasks.  What areas are slowing them down?  What could be done to be more efficient?  Don’t allow lethargic internal procedures to wear down the drive of a deal-closing hunter.

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This story will do down in the annals of management malfeasance.  A good friend of mine works for a small company that had an atrocious employee.  This employee couldn’t show up on time (if at all), didn’t seem to know what she was doing and created great dissent within the team.  Unfortunately, the owner made the emotional hire and didn’t want to admit his error, at least not in a timely manner.

So this employee continued her employment with my friend’s company for almost 6 mos. and the stories that surrounded her were almost unbelievable.  She missed work all together and offered these excuses:

• overslept
• reaction to medication
• robbed while she slept
• didn’t know she worked that day

You get the idea.  To top it off, money was missing from the petty cash – something that had never happened before her arrival.  A terrible hire and a worse employee.  The owner finally came to grips with the situation and terminated her employment on a Friday.

Later that same day, the former employee sent a text into one of the employees to say she was mad that the employee had posted something on Facebook regarding her termination. The employee did not know what she was talking about.  The employee had not posted anything of the sort.

The former employee would not back down via text and know that something had been posted.  It took a day to sort out the complaint, but they did discover someone had posted something about the termination on Facebook.

It was the owner.

He ended up removing the post and apologized to the former employee.  Unbelievable.

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Good leaders must be good followers.  That is paradoxical, isn’t it?  This article from CNNMoney.com chronicles an M.B.A. students journeys from grad school to the Marines to a tour of duty in Iraq and back to grad school.  It is a fascinating first-hand account (h/t to JustSell.com).

This is profound (emphasis mine):

In many ways there’s probably no better preparation I could have had for the business world than joining the Marine Corps. The Marines teach you how to be both a leader and a follower.

I don’t have to lead in every situation – but I’ve come to enjoy stepping up in a time of chaos. When I’m working with a group now, I can honestly say that I think about the team first. The “I first” approach has been drilled out of me.

Therein lies a common problem I encounter with business leaders – they are not good followers.  Leadership has a way of removing empathy over time.  Some leaders forget what they personally experienced when they were in follower positions.  Other leaders develop what I refer to as “god complexes” where they believe they are all-knowing.  Usually they are not, but you can’t illustrate that point to them.

For instance, I know of one business owner who is a subject-matter expert in his field.  Unfortunately, that field is not a business field.  However, he believes his subject-matter expertise transcends the subject into business management.  His employees, some of whom do have business expertise, attempt to contribute to him in these areas.  He will not receive the input.  Instead he forges on making independent decisions that have cost the business dearly.

If you read the entire article you will see a unique process, employed by the Marines, to teach team-building amongst leaders.  The best sales leaders I have encountered are the ones who know how to empower their employees, direct through difficult situations and make the tough decisions at critical junctures.

That last sentence sounds trite, but it is true.  The gist of it is the opening sentence of this post – good leaders must be good followers.

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This is an 8 minute video on failure from Honda via JustSell.com.  The 8 min. may change your perspective:

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What makes a good sales manager is a question we hear all the time from CEO’s, Presidents and Owners.  We have worked with hundreds of sales managers over the years and each one brings his or her own strengths and weaknesses.  One variable that is oftened overlooked is whether the corporate culture allows the sales manager to do the job for which he or she is being held accountable.

Jonathan Farrington has a great quote that not only answers the question of what makes a good sales manager, but is also the foundation of the sales culture of any organization (emphasis mine):

The Sales Leader’s role is one of catalyst – constantly helping their team to keep up with events, to change in the light of events and to succeed. . .

If you not only hold your sales manager but your organization accountable to this statement, you will allow your sales manager to react proactively to the revenue goals of the company.  This approach is far more aluable than forcing them to be a firefighter (constantly having to put out fires).  The post goes on to give 7 objectives that a sales manager should be thinking about with their team to achieve superior performance.  They are simple, direct objectives, but they provide a clear and concise picture of how your team is performing and where effort will need to be placed to achieve your goals.  Here are the 7 objectives:

• Do you understand their motivators – what is driving them?
• Do you have visibility of their numbers – year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
• Activity levels – are they working hard and smart enough?
• Engagement – are they talking to the right level in their prospects/accounts?
• Messaging – are they capable of delivering an appropriate message at the right level?
• Qualification – are they only spending time on deals where they can compete and ultimately that they can win?
• Closing – are they constructing successful campaigns and closing business?

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I think I may be a bully because this Wall Street Journal article, to me, borders on the absurd.

New research highlights the prevalence and dangers of workplace bullying. In a 2007 survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, 44% said they had worked for a boss they considered abusive. The survey was sponsored by the Employment Law Alliance, an association of 3,000 employment lawyers.

In a 2004 survey by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heath, 25% of companies reported bullying incidents in the previous year. More incidents were attributed to co-workers than to supervisors. The study was part of the institute’s research on work-related stress.

This year, two Canadian professors concluded bullying can take a more severe emotional and physical toll than sexual harassment, perhaps because companies provide greater support for victims of the latter.

“Abusive” is a completely-loaded word that is difficult to define in this context.  I’m also thinking this bullying movement could spell some trouble for High D managers.

However, I think this paragraph sums up the motivation situation:

Some business groups and lawmakers say workplace bullying is too difficult to define, and a poorly worded law would expose businesses to unnecessary lawsuits.

I think there would be a flood of frivolous lawsuits if this idea became law.

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