When Nothing Is Ever Good Enough
Doyle Slayton | Aug 19, 2009 | Comments 12
If meets expectations isn’t acceptable, then it shouldn’t be “Meets”. Those goals should be “Requires” and an acceptable “Meets” expectations standard should be established. Of course that creates the quandary… If someone achieves the new accepted standard… Does that mean “Meets” expectations is good enough? Of course it does!
I’ll let you in on a secret. Early in my career, I failed in my first management position. I had people who couldn’t… or should I say wouldn’t hit their goals. Although there are many pieces to the puzzle, I will only pinpoint a few in this post.
Inability to Relate – I couldn’t relate to my people. I couldn’t understand why they…
Weren’t all highly motivated individuals
Didn’t commit to activity, activity, activity
Couldn’t think of and say the right things… on the fly… to get the deal.
Nothing Was Ever Good Enough – I failed in my first management position, because…
I didn’t celebrate the small victories.
When people achieved their “meets expectations” goal, I simply acted as though it was their job.
They had to be overachievers to earn my praise.
I had employees crying in my office, calls from human resources, and a terrible turnover problem. After one year in the role, I decided to step down.
“Embrace your failures as blessings in disguise.”
-John C. Maxwell
This time was a real turning point for me. I was lucky enough to get a second chance to take on a lesser management role with the same company. Among the lessons learned… make your people feel successful, develop them, and help them win!
When I looked across the organization, there was a pattern among most of the teams. It was true with my old team and clearly present with my new team. There was a massive gap between performers and non-performers. In other words, there were my “A” players… and then there were my “F” players… with very few others in between. That’s when I began to realize… what would happen if all… or at least most… of my team members were at “Meets” expectations or better? That result would produce MASSIVE team results!
But there was one overwhelming fear. I was afraid of making “Meets” expectations acceptable. What if my top producers stopped pushing for “Consistently” exceeds?!!! Then it hit me. The answer was within me all along. The very motivation and drive that originally caused me to fail with my old team would help me succeed the second time around. I realized that my top performers would continue to strive for greatness… no matter what!
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Filed Under: Blog • Leadership • Sales • SalesTaxi
Doyle,
If expectations are made clear at the beginning, whether that be the new sales year or your start as a new employee, then the language is just a matter of semantics.
I think a sales team is intelligent enough to get the message of expectations.
Ed Warner
Timely post Doyle,
It all goes back to having a goal built from the market up and not from the “ivory tower” down. As I discuss in my post : Market leaders know that Goals should not be a “Shell Game” http://nosmokeandmirrors.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/market-leaders-know-that-goals-should-not-be-a-shell-game/ I like to establish obtainable goals with my sales team members and stretch goals that if achieved result in compensation multipliers.
In one company I helped we implemented this and realized a 146% sales growth in 9 months.
Keep the great posts coming,
Mark Allen Roberts
Doyle, I understand failures as well as anyone however I must say that management IS dentifying the shortcomings of others and teaching them. Relating to them each as individuals is paramount, whether it is sales or honestly any other kind of management the managers job is to identify strengths and weaknesses of his staff and teach. It would be great if we could just sit back and say “you have failed me” but that is way to late, we need to see it much earlier than that and bring them along or dismiss them as necessary.
Sometimes it makes sense to have a pathway of performance- Minimum Acceptable- your reward is you keep your job- Expected Average- this is the old single goal often based new sales quota or estimates-the rewards are modest incentives- Maximum Probable- this is a real reach- can be done but requires a lot of key activities to be alligned- here are maximum rewards for the achievers-
You can raise these three standards as you become better at staffing your team with people who fit the position requirements.
Gosh Doyle!!!
I understand you so well.. I strived for exceptional results all my life.. and when I met that girl who was achieving exactly what was required from her (nothing more, not even a bit!!) and had 0 motivation to move on or to do something, I was angry, so angry at her.. I tried everything – find her a new position in a different department, so she could feel better, try to motivate her in different ways, spoke to her 1000 times and I failed… because I couldn’t accept that somebody can be happy with just being ordinary. And at the end of the day, it is absolutely fine, moreover for people like us, because it fills the employment places which we don’t want:)
I am damn good in sales, but I wish I could be more humble sometimes, if you know what I mean.
Thanks for the post,
Veronica
Question for everyone. WHEN do you decide that a salesperson is not meeting expectations. It’s easy to set all sorts of goals and benchmarks, but WHEN is it clear taht expectations are not being met. How long do you wait? Most sales managers are inclined to wait and wait and wait … hope springs eternal. I find that most managers wait too long for underperformers to do something they are nto cut out to do. Using Doyle’s language, we wait for the “Fs” to turn into As, when that is not possible.
MMcGowan
Meets is good enough for many people. We as managers have to understand this and in some cases live with it.
Well, experience makes the difference of course.
Totally agree with Mark!
Managers are WAY too stingy with praise. I’ve never met anyone who feels they’ve been overly praised- have you?
Still, you can’t praise people all the time… but there’s a right way to mix in the criticism.
Read “In Appreciation of Praise: Increasing Positivity to Improve Results” to find out how. http://bit.ly/31iuN
I love this stuff!
Mark in right on target. This is why we built KeyneLink in the first place. http://bit.ly/U3kJE You need to have clarity in the organizational initiatives first and then work together with your employees to establish goals that support the achievement of the initiatives. Top down doesn’t work but bottom up doesn’t work either. You need an end-center process. In fact, we’ve found dramatic increases in engagement and productivity simply by changing the way you setup the measurements for the goals.
SMART Goal Setting isn’t so Smart: http://bit.ly/14BoH1
Although I would’ve desired if you went into a little bit more detail, I still got the essence of what you meant. I agree with it. It might not be a great idea, but it makes sense. Will unquestionably come back for more of this.