Mistake # 90: Fail to turn in assignments to your manager

What happens when you don’t get specific projects turned in by your direct reports? I have a laundry list of at least ten specific requests to a sales rep, and he never turned these in. It’s beginning to mount. I’m addressing these with him next week.

How can someone do that? What happened in the previous jobs? Pathetic.

Mistake # 86: Performance review to death

The company I work for conducts two annual performance reviews on direct reports. Neither are tied to compensation. I spend an inordinate amount of time on these with clear examples, facts, and offering suggestions for my direct reports to grow. What I get is garbage. No one spends time on these. No one provides examples on what they achieved, or challenges they have overcome, nor described how they did it. It looks like they spent a total of maybe 15 minutes on them.

I have advocated that these move to once annually and be performed on the individual’s anniversary date. I realize that the company goals may not coincide with the timing of these, but for me, it makes it easier to spend time on each individual. Otherwise, I’m cramming a half dozen reviews into two weeks!

Eventually, when the economy grows, they can be tied to compensation. For more information on performance reviews, Compensation Today blog provides a terrific overview.

Mistake # 81: Un-motivate and discourage your teams

Modeling. As a manager, you need to model your behavior to your staff. Motivate them and encourage them in order to drive high performance. Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?

Cripes! I eat lunch at my desk everyday because I never have time to go out with an employee and smell the roses. I jump in when they need me and end up putting fires out all day long. How is that modeling? I am frustrated with myself.

I read the Five Positive Traits that are Exhibited by A Successful Sales Manager. The first one, Lead By Example, is the hardest. You make one little mistake and they all know it and they spread it around in the company like wildfire. It’s so hard to be a manager. As much as I try to get better at it, sometimes I feel like a failure.

Well, enough already!

Here are three ways, and three goals, that I have for the remainder of the year so that I can motivate and encourage my staff:

* Take one employee to lunch once a week to talk. How’s their family? How are things going? What can we do to get better?

* Hold more department meetings – at least twice monthly.

* Develop a sales incentive program to launch 2010 to drive sales, bring moral up, and do some crazy, zany, fun stuff to make people laugh!

I can get myself more focused to do these! Really!

…I’ll keep you posted.

Mistake # 79: Create a sweat-shop environment

I signed off for someone to take vacation this past week. She is sales support and cranks getting quotes out and orders processed. However, all hell broke out. Someone (from another department) even recommended me calling her back from her vacation to help the overloaded staff.

What?! Did I hear that right? We’re not curing cancer, doing brain surgery, or landing men on the moon. We are selling products and processing orders for those products. Yes, it was chaos. Yes, it was not good timing. But when is timing ever great?

I realize that, as a manager, I need to focus on work flow, when people should, and should not, take vacations. I also realize that I have final authority to deny vacations at any point in time.

But even I had to be out that week (taking my son to move into his dorm as a first year college freshman); and another sales manager had to take her mother for testing and needed to be out most of one day. Further, the President of the company was out for two days at the end of the week to fly to a family wedding on the east coast; and the CEO was out for two weeks during this time (after being back only one week in the office after his vacation) for a family wedding on the west coast, traveling with his family, and seeing the California sights.

So I it really wasn’t necessary to even consider bringing this person back from her vacation. I think the company will still be standing when she returns on Monday. In fact, I’m certain of it!

Mistake # 74: Don’t hire sales savvy people

The news of the day (yesterday, July 3) was that Sarah Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska. The news of the week for me was that I had hired and just brought on board two incredible sophisticated sales people for my team.

Unfortunately, I had to fly to a particular metropolitan area to fire an individual a week ago and could not announce one of these new hires until I had let the other go.

Letting people go is always painful.  I did the best I could knowing that this individual has a family with family needs, and, let’s face it: who wants to be let go? It’s never a good thing.

However, I was totally convinced that this person was working another business on the side. I just wasn’t getting the production and results we needed. Plus, he was always arguing with me.  Being Italian, I love to banter when things just go right. But there was a difference: he was fighting me every step of the way.  He said he knew the industry and he said he had contacts. I saw no results of either. Plus, he couldn’t put a proposal together to save his life. He had an MBA. Go figure.

So now I have two knowledgeable, driven, and motivated people who know the industry, brought in a bank of contacts with them, and jumped in with only an inch of learning curve needed to run out there and bring it in.

Maybe I have hired one of Fast Company’s top 100 creative people in business!

Already my stress level is down 150%.

Mistake # 66: Create confusion at all levels

Do you have a boss that gives you a mandate, only to have his superior give another mandate and another direction? Welcome to the club! I was on a path of purpose, and putting together the process and procedures of a workflow (which followed much discussion from chief executives), only to be pulled and told that I was doing that wrong and needed to go in another direction. This creates a waste of time spent on a task, derailing efficiency and effectiveness. 

 

Need I say more?!

Mistake # 60: Lie

It has been a very rough week. I found that one of my sales reps had bid for one of our products at a fourth of the cost. Moreover, as the week unfolded, the sales rep never told me that there was a “special discount” for this particular customer that was verbally agreed upon – but not in writing – and has been going on for a year.

 

An order came through on the fax that the CFO picked up and brought it to my attention. The CEO was involved, the President was involved, and it took me a week to pull together legal documents to ensure that the product (basically our livelihood) was going to be protected as it was shipped out the door.

 

The problem is that another order was brought to my attention by the rep. “Here is another signed order that they are waiting for.” But, the rep NEVER proceeded to tell me that this was something that had been going on for nearly twelve months. Instead, the distributor called me ranting and raving. I indicated that “Bill” was never authorized to give that particular discount. “We’ve been doing this for a year!” was the response. So, “Bill” had been keeping this from me, and, when the huge product issue came up, STILL never mentioned, “and by the way, I had this discount in place for twelve months now.”

 

Finally, I asked the rep for a variety of materials so that I can produce a letter to the customer, indicating that effective on X date, we will no longer honor this (ludicrous) discount that they had been enjoying for a year, blah, blah, blah. I needed some things to finalize and place a call to the customer next week. I’m a very visual person, so I always need to see scenarios on discounts, why they wanted this particular bargain-basement price, how much it impacts us, etc. So, I called the rep and said I needed it. Here’s his response:

 

“When do you need this? I’m a little overwhelmed since I’ve been dealing with this all week and need to get to other things…”

 

If I could have crawled through the phone I would have and I would have went straight to the jugular. Instead, being Italian, Type-A, and probably (but not diagnosed) ADHD, I let him have it and asked for everything by noon.

 

This particular rep is lucky. In any other company, not only the rep, but myself, would have been on the firing line.

 

My advice to everyone is:

 

(1)   Don’t ever lie or withhold information to your managers!

 

(2)  Be sure that your manager knows exactly what is going on. Special terms, special discussions with customers, and special arrangements need to be in writing and approved by your manager.

 

Please!

Mistake #23: Walk in and tell your boss you are worth it (without proven results)

Before you walk into your bosses office and demand a $100 week raise, think again. No, don’t think, do leg-work. Put a document together that shows your value and to show your boss your that you’ve earned it. Give bulleted lists of how you saved the company money; brought in revenue; increased revenue; increased the client-base; improved a product; enhanced customer service – whatever it is, document, document, document. Why?

Because. (I know, it sounds like my mother…“Because I said so!”) It’s not that no one notices what you do, but you better have good reasons on why you are worth it. I just had an individual

Is he worth it?

His sales are down. Well, no, I take that back, his sales are up by $30,000. But, $27,000 is with one client. The other clients are down. Significantly down. We just had a several-day meeting with this specific high-roller client. This guy (who asked for the raise) didn’t lift a finger. He didn’t “know how to put on an event; had never done it before; wanted to learn from me…” Lots of reasons, but, damn it! I had to do all of the work! And, I am the supervisor!! Instead of asking others for help, he leaves it for me. And, why weren’t contracts finalized this month? “These are ‘beyond my expertise.’ Damn it! And why are the contracts late? “I sent them to “Bob” (the CEO!!), but he never had a chance to read through them. Damn it all!

Want to hear one of the reasons he asked for a raise? “His wife had to take a second job…” Pardon me? Did I hear that right? We know he is making slightly less than he was making at his previous job. However, he works from home in another city. Thus, no commute to an office. He doesn’t have a degree (which is not a good reason to being paid less, but, sorry, I had to get that in there.)  To me it’s all about performance – but there are tons of skilled people with degrees out there that will read contracts and rewrite contracts and it would not be beyond their expertise, and is not required to move to the city in which the company is located.  So, for the money he makes, the effort he puts in, the sales he generates, and the other areas that are “beyond his expertise,” I believe that he is well compensated.

So, before you ask for a raise, be sure you are worth it. Very sure. Be very sure that you can demonstrate that you are very, very worth it. Keep reminding yourself that timing is everything. And, please, ask for a raise, and get it like a man.