CNN reported that HSBC has announced that 3,000 people – roughly 10% of its
workforce – will be out of a job by 2013 and are part of the bank’s plans to eliminate 30,000 positions worldwide.

Other banks making huge numbers redundant include Bank of
America, the largest bank in the U.S., plans to shed between 25,000 and 30,000 jobs as reported in the Charlotte Observer . In Stockholm, Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordic region is to cut 2,000 workers. The Dutch bank ABN Amro has announced that it will cut 2,350 jobs. The Daily Telegraph has reported that Lloyds TSB will be cutting 15,000 jobs, Barclays 3000 and Goldman Sachs 1000.

A payroll cut is instant money
Banks are looking for ways to boost their
bottom lines – and as employees
represent around 60% of a bank’s expenses a payroll cut is instant
money.

Another reason is that as banks increase salaries and reduce bonuses they find that whilst bonuses could be easily adjusted to reflect the bank’s financial performance, salaries are a fixed cost. So rather than axe bonuses, banks are axing bankers.

A future problem
In my experience when team personnel are restructured there is the need to restructure work processes and determine new targets and work outcomes. In effect there is a NEW TEAM and new teams are likely to achieve their anticipated results only 60% of the time.

This failure rate (40%) can cause huge losses on the bottom line and delay mission critical outcomes unless clear management of the transition situation is carefully implemented. In my experience the more team change that’s implemented at the same time the more likely there is to be a failure. 

I was asked last week what I felt was one of the biggest mistakes in sales team management and my answer was “lack of accountability”. Though I wasn’t talking about allocating blame for missed sales targets!

Lack of Sales Accountability:
Blaming poor sales results to uncontrollable forces such as
competitors, the economy, poor marketing or poor management is often the starting point for sales teams that seek to justify poor sales. There will be times when salespeople exceed monthly targets and others when they fail to meet monthly target. There is an urgent problem if the sales team fails to exceed target 80% of the time and when they do fail to reach target the shortfall is greater than 15%. 

Who is responsible for the lack of performance?
However, when failure does happen too often it’s because the business lacks a clear policy of sales
accountability. Sales people that under perform will often not accept personal responsibility, instead they will blame the economy or other reasons. Sales management are often no better and will blame training or marketing and so on.

Accountability
All good sales teams benefit from an accountability policy. Accountability doesn’t mean having people accept failure as if they were in a confessional. It does, however, involve the whole team as well as any support mechanisms such as training and marketing in determining the aspects that went wrong during a given time period and then the maturity and ability to determine how to improve the situation.

Creating a culture of sales accountability doesn’t happen
overnight but it’s an essential aspect of having a successful sales team.

I had an interesting Skype conversation with a friend of mine in California last night who has just taken over a new sales team after the departure of the previous Sales Manager.

First stage
I asked him about the indicators that told people that things were “going wrong” before the departure of his predecessor. The process began, he said, with the Sales Team saying things like “It’s just not working” but being unable to agree on exactly what “It” was.

The second stage
was people outside the team saying things such as, “The sales team’s sucking in loads of our time”, “the restructure’s not working” and “We’re not going to meet target”

Third stage
Was when senior management started to get involved. This was about four months after stage one. It then took another six months for the sales manager to be dismissed. Total time when opportunities were lost amounted to ten months and further delay is likely to occur before the new manager gets a grip on the situation.

Result and main reason
Estimated lost income is hundreds of thousands of dollars!
One of the main reasons for the failure, and one that is so common, was that The Sales Director felt unsupported by the senior management and the sales Director was not willing to say that he “was struggling”. 

In the past few days I’ve heard of a sales team that’s finding things difficult after a restructure. The restructure slimmed the team, redistributed clients and rationalised the workload but they seem to be failing.

HOW *!* MUCH
Actually, that’s not unusual because my research and other statistics show that 42% of all restructured teams fail to deliver the anticipated results. The problem for the company is the cost in lost opportunities. Brad Smart in his book Topgrading estimated that failed teams cost between 8 and 24 times the salary.

Change needed for success can be very small
The change required to move from failure to success is, in my opinion, very small and a slight adjustment in in team actions could well change things around. But then that’s so often the case. As most of the team play golf they will understand that a slight adjustment in club face can be the difference to a great round and playing like a crab! Perhaps this clip of Tony Robbins explaining why he plays golf, badly, might help!

Tony Robbins – Tiny Changes Mean Huge Results

Ten days ago I was talking to Carl, a good friend of mine, who’s “Ticked off” with the co-operation he’s getting from superiors and colleagues. Now those very people may have to work that bit harder! 

A trail-blazing project
Carl, together with his management team and staff of two hundred, have spent the past year leading a trailblazing project that saves huge amounts of money and delivers enhanced service to the local community. People have said to him “What would we do without you?” and “What you’ve achieved is brilliant”. To achieve these plaudits he’s had to work long hours, hiring a large team and creating process, systems and culture and often without a “model” to follow.

As is usual there has been criticism from other areas of the business that feels overshadowed and exposed. As a result Carl’s team have felt pressured and unappreciated by the very people they are helping to do a better job.

A well earned holiday
A few weeks ago he went on holiday with various senior people and colleagues promising to deliver work whilst he was away ringing in his ears
…was it done when he got back?…daft question…because out of sight was definitely out of mind!

The result is that he’s even more tired than he was before his holiday. Now he’s updated his CV (Resume), bought a new interview suit and is looking for a job and has some interviews even before he’s formally applied for a position. I wonder how the people who’ve said “What would we do without you” will cope when he’s gone!

Cost of replacement and restructure…could be huge!

A couple of days ago I was telephoned by Barclays Bank call-centre. The caller was enquiring if the business was “happy with the service I was receiving from the bank”.

Happy with my bank?
Now moving bank is a tedious and time consuming operation and something only done if one is very upset with the level of service or to make substantial savings. I will say that I’m not unhappy with my bank, HSBC, and I told her this. Nevertheless, after discussing the business history and some of our future plans she persuaded me that a visit to the branch of Barclays could highlight some useful benefits. A convenient appointment with the branch Business Manager was made.

When I sat down with the “Business Manager” to discuss how Barclays could help my business it became apparent that he thought I was to “open a new account”. He didn’t “sell” Barclays as an alternative banking possibility and was confused as I sat there expecting to hear some “good news” that would encourage me to move my account.

Intrigued by the lack of awareness of my visit I questioned him and he confirmed that he had not spoken to the person who generated the appointment. As a result he knew nothing about me nor my business other than my name and the time of my appointment.

We agreed that by arranging the appointment for me the operator had simply fulfilled her objective of getting appointments with him. So, despite being told to the contrary, it was now obvious that the Bank’s staff were no more interested in me or my business…simply fulfilling their quota and meeting targets.

A costly lost opportunity?
The problem was that in fulfilling their individual targets the bank’s team had completely missed the larger target, which was to persuade me to to move my money to their bank.
As a possible customer my resulting view of Barclays is that it’s inefficient and doesn’t even to communicate between cross functional teams. Good for my business?…probably not!

It was a wasted opportunity for the bank, wasted time and money in contacting me and via this blog some avoidable adverse publicity.
Was it a waste of time to me… absolutely not…I had the topic for another blog post!

Last Saturday I visited my Mother and little did I realise that I would have a lesson in how embarrass customers, employees and in poor management.

An outing for Mother
My Mother has just broken her arm and is feeing very sorry for herself. So I decided to take her to a hotel for a favourite outing of afternoon tea. With great anticipation we drove up the long hotel drive in Miskin, South Wales, for a relaxing afternoon overlooking the large gardens to find that there was just one other couple in the lounge.

To say that the meal of sandwiches, cakes, scones and even the service was disappointing would be an understatement.  On leaving my Mother, an excellent cook in her time, caught sight of the manager and mentioned the fact and said that at £25 ($32) she considered the meal overpriced and lacked value.

The person responsible
The manager asked us to wait a minute. I wondered if some adjustment was about to be made to the bill. To my surprise he reappeared with the chef saying, “This is the person responsible, make your complaints to him” and then without waiting to hear what we had to say ran off on another errand. My Mother was at a loss to know how to handle this unusual situation and I outlined the problem in the gentlest terms to an embarrassed and petrified member of staff.

“The scones had been freeze-chilled and therefore had a consistency of being stale, the profiterole was similar and lacked any taste in the filling such as vanilla and the bread on the sandwiches was too thick to be able to taste the fillings…”. By this time I began to feel extremely sorry for the chef who was looking quite helpless. I end his torment I smiled and described the meal as “uninspiring”.

Not a customer’s job
We left vowing never to return. Not because of the poor tea but because, as customers, it was not our job to instruct the staff, that’s the manager’s job. It’s also not the kitchen staff’s job to be appraised of a “poor job” by customers, that again is the management’s job. I also attached the chef’s poor performance on lack of training and expectation by the management.

My offering of help!
However, as I love to cook cakes, pastries and have a wide collection of Indian, Chinese and Japanese teas I would be delighted to offer to show the manager how he could instruct his kitchen team and waiting staff to deliver a fresh, great tasting and perfectly served afternoon tea. That way he can manage to do his job!

A few days ago I answered a question on delegation on LinkedIn and then on Friday was having a robust discussion on delegation with a friend in my network and thought I would share the discussion with you.

“Delegating could harm a career and promotion prospects”
Was the statement made by the senior manager in my network. He reasoned that obvious errors cost the business money and impacted on mission critical outcomes. Then with the time taken to recover from from errors delegating tasks took up valuable management time and could “harm his career and promotion prospects”.

“Management style didn’t encourage mistakes”
It seemed that his “management style”, and that of the business, didn’t tollerate mistakes. I pointed out that if the management don’t tollerate mistakes then there will be little room for experimentation. If people can’t experiment then, those that use experimentation to learn, will become frustrated and tend to leave to businesses that will allow it.

Experimentation is healthy. It’s how we learn to improve at any hobby, computer programme and game, even how to socialise and make friends. But, it seems that when people become managers they often have to be trained in how to encourage and manage it.

In any event lack of experimentation, from my experience, only helps competitors forge ahead with more efficient processes, products and customer focussed thinking.

The process
I explained the process my mentors showed me and which I’ve have adopted and train:

a) Discuss the subordinate’s idea with them. Be open minded, highlight potential problems as you see them, business issues and consequences of success and failure.

b) If the subordinate still wants to proceed then discuss the process they will be using and then provide support (physical as well as verbal) and have a plan to pick up the pieces.

c) If the subordinate is successful. congratulate and say how delighted you are and tell everyoneone else what a success it’s been. If it’s not a success then discuss the reasons with the person, then ask how they intend to recover the situation. Again provide increased support but don’t blame, chastise or bad mouth to others – (after all you made the decision to allow the experimentation and would have looked good if it had succeeded).

d) Turn the entire process, success or failure, into a learning situation by analysing what went right / wrong with the subordinate and what could be done differently next time. Either way make the subordinate “feel good” about the process and your support.

I’m not sure my friend was convinced by my arguments. Then I must admit he’s been secure in his current job for the past twelve years, despite higher than average team turnover and mediocre company results and doubtless will be there for a good while longer!

Much of my time is spent working with executives on increasing their personal impact and team productivity. An important area is social intelligence.

Social intelligence includes the ability to read people and predict behaviour. I’m not talking about body language.  am talking about how one can influence other people’s behaviour through observation and creating appropriate actions as a result.

Let’s take an example: During our career we have used our understanding to predict our boss’s, colleagues and even life partner’s reaction to certain situations or news. The result is that we know, or think we can assess, the right time to deliver bad news.

Another example of when we heighten our use of social intelligence is at the job interview. The candidate tries to identify where the interviewer stands on certain topics by reading the reaction to answers. Generally this involves detecting negative responses to what’s being said and then to modify or alter the answer accordingly. It’s called self-preservation.

However, many executives don’t use their social intelligence most  effectively despite there being many occasions when they want to influence their team to undertake a new project, accept company targets and then looking for buy-in versus compliance.

When this happens the executive will rely on compliance. The problem with compliance, however, is that it’s often destined to fail or achieve only fleeting short-term gains. Using Social Intelligence increases the chance of long term buy-in and project success. TOne of the main keys is understanding normal human traits. 

• People are natural pleasers: They will try to look good to those that lead them 
• People like simple solutions: So managers should reduce the number of alternatives when outlining a new project. 
• People want results “Now”: The Latin term is Myopia Temporal and it’s where poeple will discount future consequences in place of a  result that looks good for them right now. (Supermarkets use this to get people to buy sweets at the checkout, even when they are on a diet)
• People will follow a crowd: This is useful to a manager to persuade others to buy into a system 

Command and control cultures have a tendency of delivering only short-term results. Alternatively Social intelligence is a process that most managers should find easy to develop with practice. Two keys include: 

1) Identifying with the team the actions and values that generate success. Then support those that are considered valuable and move away from those considered less supportive.

2) Sharing decision making with the team. That is not to say that they share in the decision making just that they understand the route to the decision process. This allows for dissent but in the face of a majority a dissenter will generally align with the majority. This style of consensus management creates creativity and innovation and is used with considerable effect at Google and Apple. 

Creating buy-in with a team used to command  and control systems isn’t always easy. However, using the techniques above eventually creates teams that will begin to operate in a more incluse manner.

As Mahatma Ghandi suggested to one observer “I must hurry, for I’m their leader…and there they go”

This information is taken from the new event: “You’re Here…But How To Get There” that shows Executives how to utilse their personal presence to deliver outstanding team results.

If you would like more information on the event “You’re Here…But How To Get There” or on this article please contact me at Stephen@assimilating-talent.com or phone 01727 838321. 

How to motivate the sales team to achieve target is a topic that keeps sales managers awake at night. Yesterday a group of sales managers in my network talked about retaining and motivating salespeople at one of our regular meetings.

Their insomnia was the thought of their top sales people leaving the team. In the past huge rewards could be given to top salespeople but in these times throwing money at saslespeople to retain their loyaly is more difficult and in any event in the long run it will fail as, one day, all the best salespeople will leave.

A lot of suggestions were made and the group asked if I could put some of the ideas on film for the one absent member of the group. Having made the first I think it’s worth sharing with everyone in my network and, if popular, then I’ll create a series on salesteams.

Motivating A Sales Team For The Long Haul