Give Your Salespeople A Break!

A friend told me to start watching “Billions” so I watched the pilot this morning on the treadmill. There’s a line where a character says, “It’s like Warren Buffet says: Put a cop on anyone’s tail for 500 miles and they’ll get a ticket.” It reminded me that sometimes we need to give our salespeople a break! Another lifetime ago, I worked in an environment where managers proactively tried to target folks because results were slipping. Listen to anyone long enough on sales calls, and they will make a misstep from the process. I was pressured to write up, discipline or fire folks while running the top team in the business. When you’re up, ride the wave; tweak, run some maintenance, look for ways to improve the hustle stats and metrics where you’re weak. When you’re down, manage to process. Don’t lead with fear. As a leader, you will get the best results imaginable just by earning the trust of the people who work for you. It can take years to build but reacting to a slump by targeting your team can destroy it. Counsel them and don’t lose sight of your mission: understand your team’s motivations, sell them on why the process works better than their “comfortable way of failing/mediocrity” and give them the space they need to evolve their own craft to perfection.