I was speaking with a client of ours on Tuesday evening. Specifically, this was the owner and CEO of a client that Jamie (our Director of Marketing Services) works with on a regular basis. The reason for the late call had nothing to do with marketing, though. He was upset with many of his salespeople. After listening to him, I realized that his sales team wasn’t his problem, his sales manager wasn’t his problem, nor was the situation his problem. It was the owner’s perspective of the situation – that was his problem. Here is the situation…
The owner has been frustrated for months with the lack of new accounts being penetrated by the sales team. His company has a very organized method of business development, with each salesperson owning a list of named prospective accounts to target. During the five completed months of 2022, not one of those prospective customers has requested a meeting with a salesperson. To be fair, seven of these accounts have entered the selling process in 2022, but these incoming requests were results of marketing efforts, not because of the efforts of the salespeople.
On Tuesday, he addressed the issue with the whole sales team, and their responses led to his phone call to me - one of those “talk me off the cliff” calls. After he vented for about 10 minutes, I realized the problem and his problem. The salespeople claimed to not have enough time to prospect. They were spending dozens of hours during the work week building quotes and putting out fires. Poor management of their activities was the problem, but not his problem. The core of the owner’s problem became clear to me after one statement:
“When I was in sales, I did my quotes at home at night, not during the workday.”
The source of his frustration and anger was his perspective, not the actual issue. His perspective told him that all salespeople should work like he used to work. His perspective showed him a bunch of lazy salespeople that were earning a lot of his money. He was pissed. However, within 90 seconds, a simple commentary shifted his perspective and relieved him of his anxiety of having to recruit a new sales team. I said …
“Yes, you used to do your proposals at night. You then became the boss. Then, you started your own business and have grown it to where it is today. That’s you. You work harder than 99% of people. You’re insane. Your salespeople are not you. Most of them just want to make a nice living and go home at night. If they were like you, they’d be competing against you. They’re not. They’re working for you and from what I remember, they’re pretty good people.” (For the record, I really did tell him that he was insane.)
Within 90 seconds, he was calm. He then started saying things like “They actually are good and most of them work really hard. I just needed to vent.” (At this point, I explained that the problem wasn’t solved – his team needed to understand how to prioritize their activity, etc., but that’s beyond this blog post.)
Do you ever get frustrated with the people on your team? Before getting too upset, make sure you’re looking at the situation with the right perspective. You’re the boss for a reason. You can’t measure them by what you used to do when you were in their role. That’s why you’re the boss. When you get frustrated, step back and ask: “Are they doing their jobs and following our values?” If not, take action. But don’t get upset because they’re not you.
