Subtracting Negativity From Your Team Is A Winning Strategy
I've been consulting for entrepreneurs and business leaders for decades now. My recommendations aren't always easy to follow. Some of them hire me as an "overhauler" to clean up their teams because many of them have a difficult time removing people who are no longer helping the team grow. I have proven that the "it's not personal; it's business" model of team management is sometimes crucial.
Let me tell you about a call center organization which I'll keep anonymous for security and confidentiality purposes. We'll call this company Peter Pan (not their real name). I often use the alias Peter Pan in my stories because it helps me show how in business, we all have to learn to grow up. So let me tell you about this Peter Pan.
I was hired by Peter Pan to come in and do an assessment of why their company was not growing, why their numbers were not reflecting their years of experience, and their desire to provide a higher level of service to their people. They had hit a wall and could not get past it.
When asked who their bread and butter people are in their business model, they answered just like most service companies answer and said it is their salespeople. They had a salesforce of 18 total people and while some were doing great, others were struggling, and still a couple had not produced a new deal in more than 2 months.
After spending two weeks interviewing their different department managers, and then interviewing the different team members, I quickly learned on face value, they were not completely wrong. Their salespeople were the new business drivers for the company. But, salespeople were not the first or the last point of contact with potential clients, but they were the ones carrying all the blame for Peter Pan not experiencing the level of growth they wanted to experience.
The pressure on Peter Pan's salespeople was causing them to lose hope. They were losing hope in the process. They were losing hope in the system. They were losing hope in the leadership. They were losing hope in the product/service. They were losing hope in the clients. Worse of all, they were losing hope in themselves.
Peter Pan's salesforce was increasingly growing negative, even the salespeople who were actually making deals happen and making enough money to pay their bills. Those who were not closing deals could not meet their own financial responsibilities on the base pay. Every week they fell deeper and deeper into debt while trying to make sales happen so they could get out of their own debt.
Peter Pan's leadership knew that these frontline team members were the bread and butter of the company, but they were paying them as if they were the disposable napkins people throw out after using them just once. As a matter of fact, the salespeople were not the bread and butter at Peter Pan, they were the main course, but were treated like the decorative garnish on the plate.
When I first assessed the company, I watched from the outside. I then told the company's boss he was to give me a job as a salesperson. I demanded he pay me exactly what he was paying the person earning the smallest base pay on the sales team. I told him I would work as a salesperson for 2 weeks without the team manager knowing I was a consultant. I went in as a brand new salesperson and was introduced to the salespeople and the managers as a salesperson.
After two weeks, I learned just how broken their system was. First of all, as a salesperson making minimum wage as a base pay, which didn't allow me to pay my bills. I would not have been able to support my children, pay my mortgage, feed my family, pay for gas to get to the office, pay light, gas, insurance, etc., and eat something in order to have the energy to make it to the office to continue working. I could barely afford the car insurance and gas to get from home to work.
When I went back to Peter Pan's leadership with my findings, they became very defensive. The first thing the owner of the company said was, "so now you want me to pay the salespeople more money as a base pay? All they do is make calls!" That is the problem here. He could not subtract in order to add and multiply.
Peter Pan's owner was not ready to subtract from the company's current bottom line in order to take care of the people who were in charge of adding and multiplying to the company's future bottom line. He didn't know the importance of rewarding his company's producers accordingly in order to motivate them to continue. His resistance to sharing the company's wins with the people that produced those wins created an environment where the top talent left at the top of their game, and no one was motivated to do more than they had to.
I asked him to implement a bonus structure, and to double the base pay for all his salespeople. He asked, "how am I going to be able to pay the bills?" I asked him to give me the freedom to write the announcement for him as long as he agreed to read the announcement word for word. I also offered him a full refund of my service fees plus an additional amount equal to my fee if the strategy didn't double his company's profits in the next six months. He agreed.
Want to know what I wrote out for him? Let's talk about it. Schedule a complimentary 30 minute consultation with me. Let me learn more about you so I can prepare an action plan for our consulting firm GC Rosario Group to implement in your own company and help your entire team win.
By the way, Peter Pan won! Peter Pan's owner became a believer. Why? Because while I told him our company's strategy would double his company's profits within the next six months, we actually tripled them! Peter Pan's owner still has me as a consultant with the company, though I'm no longer an acting salesperson for his team.
Those two weeks as a salesperson for Peter Pan's company drained me. I would get home tired and brain dead. 150+ calls a day to hopefully get 3 or 4 applications. The constant pressure to break the100 call mark daily, and the demand from the sales manager to have us deliver a minimum of 3 qualified apps a day, from a pool of prospects that were facing uncertain times in our nation's economy left me feeling empty by 3 pm, even though we worked until 5:30 pm. Many of the salespeople showed up an hour before the start of the day, worked through their lunch and stayed after the day's schedule ending time of 5:30 and were still not making enough to pay their bills.
This experience taught me a valuable lesson about how inadequately many companies treat and compensate the people that have the entire company's survival riding on their shoulders. They treat their sales department like a group of low-level phone jockeys who don't deserve recognition, respect or recompense for their performance. Want to change this? Let's talk about it. Click here and I'll share with you what I shared with Peter Pan that changed how they approached the treatment of their sales force.
Let's Talk About It! Book your FREE Consultation Here and we'll get started on it immediately.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
George L. Rosario is a Brooklyn NY born & raised businessman & entrepreneur turned consultant. He started GC Rosario Group with his lovely wife Claudia. With over 30 years of service to the marketplace in NYC, George has relocated and been graciously adopted by the business community of South Florida. He now travels the country helping businesses and organizations thrive in today’s noisy environment. The post-Covid era forced many to close their doors, but also opened new doors of opportunity, growth and prosperity for innovative thinkers. George & Claudia Rosario help companies, businesses, organizations and teams develop the necessary skillset and plan of action to not just survive, but thrive in this new world. GC Rosario Group helps both secular and Christian based institutions meet their goals. #GeorgeTheSpeaker
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