I had to call a time out on an inside salesperson rant the other day. They were just shy of an all-out tantrum about a team meeting they’d just attended.
It went something like this… I can’t believe THEY keep harping on behaviors, this job is hard enough without micromanaging what I do every day, it’s ridiculous. SERIOUSLY, I don’t think I can work like this much longer. It’s insane the level of scrutiny on the littlest things.
Their manager had handed out a post-it-note to each of the 16 people in the team meeting. It had three numbers on it:
Then asked each person to write down the answer to “what do you think?”
Without sharing who wrote what – the sales manager wrote the team’s thoughts on the white board – putting tick marks next to responses with multiple people mentioning the same theme.
The highest “thought” answers became where the conversation started and then went from there.
Hmmmm, it didn’t seem to be worthy of the salesperson’s outburst.
In fact, I liked the approach to the meeting.
Even crazier, to me at least, is that the salesperson is comfortably over any minimum requirements the company has for activity-based behaviors. Plus, for results (in this case new business opportunities created) is well over the average. Never being at or below the minimum since I’ve known them.
- HOLD on; I’m not belittling your feelings, I’m truly curious why you are so upset?
- When I was handed the post-it-note it felt like MORE was expected. That what was written wasn’t enough effort OR a good enough result.
- Why?
- Why else hand out the number and ask the question “what do you think?”
As the coach; I asked – so what did you think?
- That my conversion from conversation to finding new business opportunities was strong last month, I was happy with that.
- # of Dials was lower than usual, but it makes sense that when I speak with a lot of people – I dial less.
- I knew I’d focused on prospecting for at least 3 BURSTfocus® hours every week and was satisfied with that for last month and already had scheduled an hour a day for this month to keep building up my chance of closing a new logo before quarter end.
None of that sounds negative to me, plus all the points were logical and well thought out. So, I asked;
- Is that what you wrote? No, that wouldn’t have been acceptable.
- How do you know? I just do.
As we were talking, it occurred to me that other people on the team most likely were below minimum expectations in activity and/or results achieved.
Although I didn’t have a conversation with the manager, I suspect the meeting was:
- focused on the people who hadn’t met expectations
- looking for positive ideas from the high performers
- to spark a conversation about how activity breeds results
Which lead me to ask;
- What if the exercise has nothing to do with your personal activity level or results
– instead being about generating the ideas the team shared? - LOOK of SHOCK
Which is why this week’s #BeingYourBest tip is to ignore it!
All those things that are shared, emailed, posted, brought up in meetings – that annoy you because you’re doing your best and exceeding expectations at every turn… it’s probably NOT about you.
Drop the annoyance and realize it’s about someone else on your team.
Listen politely and move on.
With the greatest of expectations,
Lynn
ps: Of course, if you’re lollygagging and not doing your best… it probably IS about you – that’s a whole different story. Drop me a note if you need to work on your activity level and/or results, we’ll schedule time to figure out a plan.
Comments (0)