From the same organization that brought you this enlightened sales manager and his timeless advice on how to prosper:

"The only way that you will succeed on my team is if you are married to the job," and "The reason that I am not in any family vacation pictures is because I’m on the phone.  If I’m in the picture, you can be sure I have a blackberry stuck to my ear," is back with:

"The problem with you is that you care too much about people."

I love this organization.  There are very few other places where a simple phone call offers me a priceless quote on really bad ideas from lousy leaders.

The fact that this sage advice came from an upper-mid level sales manager makes it all the more curious.  I get the fact that this particular organization is the prototypical Darwinian company…survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten and make the numbers at all costs type of environment.  There are many organizations that manage their sales teams with a "churn and burn" style, and the right rep can make a killing for a few years if they hit a hot product cycle.  However comma, everything about these leaders, reps and their culture (or lack thereof) flies in the face of what it takes to sustain long-term growth.

(By the way, at last count, their annual sales headcount turnover was hovering in the 50% range.  Hmmm.  Hard to sustain great growth through tough times if one half of your sales force is constantly on the way out the door.)

Back to the "you care too much about people" philosophy described above.  The most effective sales leaders and representatives that I have known across too many years and a global view, have been individuals that cared passionately about people.   In fact, the individuals on the podium year in and year out have often shared a number of common traits that fly in the face of our friend, "the problem with you" author.

  • Great sales professionals are critically concerned about helping their clients solve problems or achieve goals.  Clients sense this, and of course, we all know that the deal is made with the person not the company.  (A wise and super successful sales executive recently gave me 20 minutes on why his best reps over 30 years were the ones that clients truly liked.)
  • Great sales leaders might have an unrelenting approach to accountability, but they are also relentlessly focused on supporting the development and pursuit of success of their sales representatives.  A sales manager chooses his or her reps very carefully and very deliberately, and once chosen, they become an extension of the manager.  Given enough time working and succeeding together, a sales manager develops an almost parental-like pride and sense of responsibility for his reps.While this might have a squishy kind of feeling to some and invite the question of whether the manager can stay objective on performance, I would argue that the best reps and managers have an implicit and explicit pact on performance.  It’s painful for a great sales manager to let go of someone that he or she has worked hard to support, but the fact is that the rep understands that in spite of the relationship, performance counts.  I’ve known many manager-rep friendships that have survived this hurdle.
  • When the going gets tough, the best reps understand that they can easily walk across town to the competitor.  The reps that have been cared for, supported and that have developed deep relationships with their managers and peers will be the best soldiers in working through a corporate rough patch.  I’ve seen sales teams hold companies together in situations when anything less than Herculean efforts would have resulted in business failure.  They stayed and fought because they had a personal career connection with the organization and its managers.

The bottom-line:

In my only nod to defending the author of the quote above, I suspect that his advice was spot-on for the type of organization he is working in.  At least he knows the rules of success for that game and he was willing to share with a subordinate.  I hope that the "not caring" thing works out for him in the long run.  My preference is to build success with and around people.  I much prefer the game where the rules say that people count.