With sales margins being pushed south I was reminded, yesterday, by a sales Director of a statement that I made from a conference stage a few years ago “Sales teams are often blamed for poor sales when it’s not their fault”.

So who or what is to blame?
Too often sales teams limp along with undiagnosed problems when a “new process” is implemented in the hope that it will have immediate improvements. In my experience there are a number of issues that need to be considered before rushing into another and potentially expensive new sales process. These include:

• There is little understanding how departments such as legal, accounts and IT impact on sales
• Senior managers don’t appreciate how the existing sales process works
• People don’t understand why the business makes sales and more importantly loses sales
• Too few of the sales team contribute too much of the sales result
• Sales forecasting is based on “Gut feeling” and “Hope”
• Sales forecast is made on a short term basis (This month or next)

Take time
There are many actions that can be taken to solve the above list but “blaming the sales team” isn’t always one of them. Instead correctly diagnose where the business needs to look for improvements in the sales cycle. The other thing to remember is that there’s no pill that will provide instantaneous results. Time, good analysis and correct implementation needs to be taken when delivering sales improvements.

I’ve been advising business on avoiding “New hire failure” for over twelve years. Too often, however, I’m asked to advise on a business after they’ve experienced an expensive and very time consuming new hire disaster.

Causes
Despite a great CV (Resume), powerful past experience, great qualifications (MBA) the biggest cause for new hire failure is an inability of the individual to make the transition from one job to another (promotion or business change).

The reasons given by team members and colleagues for a leadership failure always include some of the following:

• Inability to solve specific business problems
• Troubled relationships with the team
• Intimidating or bullying management style 
• Failure to develop team or subordinates
• Unable to deal with conflict
• Failure to adapt to new boss’ managment style
• Failure to build team (recruitment isues)
• Overuse of one mentor or advisor
• Inability to think strategically

The question is why?

After a robust interview process how is it that so many senior new hires fail due to the above list?
Here are some, but by no means all, of the reasons I find so often:

• Friend being appointed (always a problem)
• He did a great job for his previous company (But are the circumstances the same?)
• Sloppy hiring process (Failure to follow up on information)
• No integration process (or ignored due to seniority of hire)

I’ve noticed over the past few months that many businesses are concentrating on restructuring their sales teams as part of their business strategy. The problem is that so mant sales appointments fail to deliver what was anticipated.

Sales teams have contacted me to advise on how to select good salespeople. The point I always make is that whilst the interview is useful always worth check on the information given by the candidate. Follow up references,  check sales statistics given for previous posts and so on.

The next step is to integrate the individual into the team. Relying on just past experience for the individual to succeed is a recipe for job failure too often. Remember that only 60% of new hire salespeople succeed.The 40% that fail cost huge amounts of management time and lost opportunity costs.

One of my joys each week is listening to Lucy kellaway on the radio. Her latest broadcast focusses onto corporate guff and how sick-making words have arrived in China.

Her examples of “management bullshit” had me listen to the broadcast twice. (though in itself not unusual I would love to tell her that I prefer to listen to her in bed instead of reading a book)

“Uplifting meaningful customer experience”
The examples that had me laugh most were Standard Life’s use of “Employee Journey” to describe, I think, a job. Then there was “Uplifting meaningful customer experience” which is so woolly as to be meaningless and finally the company that was sharing “Thoughtware”.

In my experience the problem with corporate guff is that too many that listen to such rubbish nod their head sagely as if they have complete understanding of what’s being said, when they don’t. A few years ago I came across a business consultant that was always desperate to use the latest corporate guff to his customers. He said that his clients were always impressed by his knowledge. As far as I knew most of his customers didn’t understand what he was talking about and he’s since ceased trading!
That’s what I call “A malfunctioned career experience”

My thirteen years of working with teams to make them more effective and profitable has taught me to never “count one’s chickens” as far as agreed team actions are concerned.

The Greek Prime Minister’s decision to announce a referendum on the aid package to solve its debt crisis demonstrates that very effectively. Too often I’ve been asked to help a situation where everyone thinks they’ve come to an agreement only to find that someone has changed their mind. It leaves everyone stunned, perplexed, angry or open mouthed. So I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall in Angela Merkel’s office in Germany when the news broke of the Greek announcement, I bet the air was blue!

Often happens in Board Rooms
But then I’ve seen it happen so often. Team agreements, Board Room discussion or Partnership meeting often agree a course of action and almost immediately afterwards someone changes their mind and does the exact opposite! For some it’s a game, for others it’s “Playing politics”

However, it generally happens when one person has been bullied into an agreement. Often it’s only after the meeting that the individual feels brave enough or angry enough to make a U-turn.

How to prevent it

• When you think you are helping an individual or team don’t assume you’re giving them “a gift” and that they’ll thank you for it
• Don’t bully people into a corner where they are obviously at a disadvantage and then assume that you have agreement.
• Secondly, provide the “loser” with lots of reassurance after the agreement that they’ve made the correct decision.
• Finally, provide support to take action that makes the individual “look good” to their team and to those being affected.

It’s Halloween but twice last week I came across a gory story that sent a shiver down my back. They were both business teams that were failing because the leaders of the team had recruited people without establishing or following procedures.

I won’t go into the blood curdling details of each story, just to say that they were messy, very messy. The results were taking up more management time than would have been needed had the leader made correct employment checks, developed need assessments and written work briefs and so on.

Is it laziness, desire to save money or a feeling that “It’ll probably be OK”?.
I don’t know the answer, except that team leaders with such problems are often surprised when they’re told that that it’s their fault the problem exists!

The costs?
Classically between 10 to 25 times the salary of the failed individual or the whole team if that fails.
So a salary of £40,000 can cost up to a whopping £1,000,000.
Now if that’s not an incentive for CEO’s and company recruiters to get it right first time then nothing will be

I was interested to read that two leading academics have predicted a revolution at work over the next ten years. Alison
Maitland and Peter Thomson, visiting fellows at Cass Business School and
Henley Business School respectively, are predicting that employees will soon be deciding when, where and how they do their jobs and that in future workers will be paid by results and not by the hours worked.

Revolution will help boost output
Reported in People Management, the pair maintain that such a
radical change in working practices will help businesses boost output,
cut costs, speed access to new markets and afford employees greater
freedom.

They highlight the Clothing
retailer Gap that is said to have halved the turnover rate of employees
when it introduced a ‘Results-Only Work Environment’ in the production
and design department of their outlet division in California.

A flawed prediction.
I see there being a flaw in their argument. Can you imagine shops, banks, and other places where staffing is needed during opening hours, allowing complete flexibility in how, when and where the job is done?

Then there’s their proposal of paying for results. Now that sounds like a great idea and would have much support from people all over Europe that would love to propose that we start by paying Bankers, politicians, Estate agents (Realtors) and civil servants purely on their quantifiable results. I can see there being thousands of applications to be “Productivity assessors”
Now there’s a revolution! 

What a storm the report proposing change the rules regarding unfair dismissal has had. This is despite the fact that any changes, in the current climate, are unlikely.

Unproductive workers should lose rights
As reported by the BBC The report, commissioned by the prime minister, argues that unproductive workers should lose their right to claim unfair dismissal”. The Daily Telegraph
quotes the report as saying that under the current rules workers are
allowed to “coast along” with some proving impossible to sack.

Sarah Veale head of the equality and employment rights department at the TUC said that there were less than a million unfair dismissal claims last
year which was “absolutely nothing” out of a large workforce. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “The clue is in
the name. Employers already have plenty of powers to make fair
dismissals”. I find myself agreeing with Mr Barber! The only problem is that almost 40% of applicants withdraw their cases, but employers still have to pay legal fees in preparing a defence.

Informal discussions
I believe that employers should have the right to informally discuss with their staff issues surrounding employment, such as retirement plans, production and productivity without the fear of having to face an industrial tribunal. To do so would allows the employer to plan staffing needs, recruitment and other issues that make a business profitable.

In fact, if done properly, can’t an employer have these discussions already?

After answering a question on leadership on LinkedIn I was advised that it would make a great blog entry. So here goes!

Building a great team is similar to opening a restaurant
I’ve spent thirteen years working with team leaders to make them effective and I often make the analogy that building a successful business team is similar to opening a restaurant to serve great food. It needs a capable, stable and motivated brigade in the kitchen as well as a team of people to serve the food and make the eating experience memorable.

The ingredients good or bad are often immediately noticeable by customers. If the team, in both the kitchen and front-of-house areas can’t work together then either the food or service will suffer and customers will IMMEDIATELY stay away in droves. 

Staff turnover a universal problem
The first task is to have a stable team. Staff turnover is a universal problem, and not just in the catering sector. Each new appointment seems to carry with it a high risk of failure.  Let’s explore why this is …

There seems to be three common mistakes that team leaders can make. The first is failing to communicate the results that are required from the team. Job descriptions provide an indication of the required results but success in a job depends upon the boss’s assessment. The team, therefore, needs to understand what constitutes a success in the boss’ eyes and how such success will be measured.

Gaining a clear understanding of what success looks like can be achieved by holding a series of meetings with the the team. As such they are best undertaken as formal 1:1 discussions, as opposed to short conversations over the coffee machine or at a team meeting.

The types of questions that need to be asked include:

·    How has the current situation reached this point?
·    What problems have been identified if the situation is not improved?
·    What actions the leader expects in the short and medium term?
·    What would constitute success in the leaders’ eyes?
·    How and when will performance be measured?

Understanding the leader
The second mistake is failing to communicate the boss’s management style. This means understanding how the leader likes to be communicated with and how often? What decisions the leader likes to make personally and what decisions are clearly delegated to individuals in the team?

Culture a major ingredient
A big mistake a leader can make is to ignore the culture of the business or not to consciously develop a culture for a new team. To ignore culture makes introducing change more difficult. In addition the leader needs to consider that all change will have an affect on other people, particularly in other areas in the organisation, so prior to making changes it’s important to consider the consequences both upstream and downstream.

Then there’s the aspect of training. A leader wanting to build a strong team needs to ensure that the team can deliver what’s expected. One of the lessons from Restaurants is that there’s little point in placing Duck a la Normande on the menu if the kitchen brigade haven’t the ability to cook it properly and restaurant team don’t know how to serve it.  (Or what it is).

Now, isn’t that a recipe for business success?

I was thinking today of some of the egos I worked in past jobs. Like Sales Director that at their first team meeting announced, “I’ve come to save the company”, which came as a surprise to all who didn’t think that the business needed saving.

And the HR Manager who, on being appointed, introduced herself to her well qualified team by saying “I’m a fellow of the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development) and I’m a professional!”

Tricky things to handle
Huge egos are tricky things to handle and handle them we all have to do. Teams that are expanding want
strong characters, who are self-motivated and who have a 
desire to win! But too often the appointment of a new leader can go to their already big
heads and makes them tough to deal with? So I was fascinated to come across this article in Management Today that addresses the topic. Not in much the detail and doesn’t provide too much that’s of help but the article makes you think.