Teryl @ Work

Is the employee toxic or simply disengaged?  And how to tell? Dissecting Employee Behaviour We spend hours of management time dissecting employee behaviour to ensure that not only is each employee delivering to a minimum expectation, he or she is not actively undermining the effectiveness of the business. We design KPAs (or KPIs, or whatever we want to call them), we run regular appraisals, we discuss career paths and succession plans, and  as long as toxic employees are delivering on their job description, we keep them! It’s only after they leave, when you hear the collective deep breath of relief from colleagues and management, that you can be absolutely sure of the negative impact. Underperformance vs Undermining My view has changed – rather an underperformer, than an underminer. So what to do? Once you have firmly established that undermining is the problem, the first step is to tell them that you are onto them! Never an easy task, because very few p...

Are your salespeople included in setting targets?   Very few are.  Sales targets are based on previous individual performance, sales division performance and budget requirements.   In some companies everybody gets the same target, regardless of abilities or previous successes, while in others it is an enormously complex beast with all sorts of criteria used. While the business requirements have to be met, it is important to discuss and collaborate with the salespeople themselves. Sales is a game, and each time you play a game, you should want to do better.   If you are not competitive by nature, sales can be a very tough career.  It is, anyway. More and more, sales management is about coaching, not managing, so it really important for sales managers to understand how coaching works.  There are great courses out there which guide sales managers through the coaching methodology. A simple, but structured approach to target setting with lots of commun...