I hear the phrase, “Pay For Performance,” all the time.  I think it’s a reasonable concept, that is, the better you perform, the better you get paid.  Naturally, we want to pay our top performers the best, who can argue with that?

Somehow, it seems as though Pay For Performance is getting distorted.  If we want the sales person to do something, other than get orders, we put a bonus on it or add it to the commission plan.  We want the CRM system updated, put a bonus on it.  We want forecast accuracy, let’s pay the sales people for accurate forecasts.  We want the sales person to participate in a task force, let’s put an incentive on it.  Somehow, things seem to be getting confused.  Too often, our solution to motivating sales people to do we need them to do is to put some form of compensation on it–a bonus, a commission element, an incentive.

I get into a conversation about this issue at least once a week.  A sales manager or business executive calls me to ask, “How do I get my sales people to do what I want?  What if I added something to their compensation plan?”  Throw money at the problem, it will motivate the right behavior!

Somehow that seems to be a temporary and, possibly, an expensive fix.

In a comment on this blog, my friend Jim Keenan, reminded me that much of this is all about leadership.  Jim’s right, somehow, the issues, seem to be rooted in leadership.  Leadership–getting people aligned to achieve the organizations goals and objectives, providing them the skills and tools to achieve them, motivating and inspiring them, coaching them–helping them improve their performance.  Leadership is all tough stuff.  It’s demanding, it takes time and patience.  It’s dirty work, a leader actually has to get engaged with their people, they have to set expectations, they have to manage performance–both good and bad.

Getting a sales person to keep the CRM system updated is not just something managers can dictate, we’ve seen the failure of these strategies.  Leaders have to show sales people how the tool helps them–the sales people–become more productive and effective.  They have to help the sales person understand the impact of this information on the rest of the company.  Producing accurate forecasts is important for the company–other functions set their plans and schedules around the forecast, they allocate resources based on the forecast.  Accurate sales forecasts are a cornerstone to overall company performance–leaders need to make certain their people understand this importance of this to the organization.

Leadership requires the leader to clearly identify roles, responsibilities, expectations.  It requires the leader to define expected behaviors, and to model them in their own performance.  It requires the leader to clearly communicate these to the sales person, making sure they understand and own these responsibilities and expectations.  Leadership requires leaders to manage performance.  Thise means they need to invest time in their people, coaching, developing, and helping them achieve the highest levels of performance.

To borrow a term from Jill Konrath, in the “crazy busy world” of sales managers, it’s often tempting to take the easy way out, to substitute pay, an incentive, a bonus to get what we want.   Rather than doing the tough and time consuming work of leaders, we throw money at the problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I think bonuses and incentives are very powerful in motivating certain actions and behaviors.  I think they are best applied over a short period of time for very specific and short term goals.  For example, in a new product introductions, an accelerator or incentive around the sale of that product can give a quick start.  Accelerating penetration of new markets by leveraging a bonus for sales into those markets can be very powerful. 

However, in my experience, bonuses, commissions and incentives are not effective in driving sustained behavioral or performance changes.  Bonuses or commissions to get the sales people to do things that would be considered “conditions of employment,” set the wrong tone for the organization – both the sales organization and the overall organization.

None of these are substitutes for solid leadership!

I’m participating in a discussion with a group of people I deeply respect.  It is about managing sales performance, particularly about getting sales people to do things they don’t like to do.  You know what those are:  Spending time doing reports for management, updating the CRM system, attending one more training class they think they don’t need, getting those expense reports in on time, participating on an internal task force……..   The list goes on.  The argument of sales people is always the same, “You’re keeping me away from the customer, don’t you want me selling?”  “This will keep me making my number.”

In the discussion, a suggestion has been made, “we should base some of their compensation on having them do this [activity].  What if we based X% of their bonus on doing these activities?”

I think this is a fundamental problem.  Sales people are motivated by compensation–aren’t all of us.  However, tying everything to the compensation plan is wrong.  It dilutes the plan–pretty soon the plan gets so confusing with the number of bonus elements, that it no longer becomes a motivator.  What are we saying our people should do?  Where should they focus?  Do we want them to sell?  Do we want them to do other things?  Which is more important?

This is a common problem, I think too often, managers try to leverage the compensation plan to drive the behaviors we want.  It’s kind of like a parent, giving a child a reward for doing what they have been asked.  Over the long term, it drives dysfunctional behaviors  –”You want me to do this, you have to pay me for it.”

We need to remember, there are several dimensions to performance management.  One is the compensation plan.  It should focus on the 2-3 major behavioral and performance expectations you want the sales person to focus on—in the case of sales people, that’s probably something directly related to sales.  We want to keep this clear, simple, unambiguous.

There is another side to performance management, that’s the performance plan or review process.  Too many managers don’t use this–frankly they do a bad job of managing this process and reviewing performance.  Just a point of clarification, many think a performance plan is something you put in place for people who are on notice and must improve their performance or be terminated. 

The performance plan is (or should be) something different.   It should set the basic standards of performance we have for each person in the organization.  It should establish each person’s goals and objectives for the year–not only their quota, but other expectations we have of the person and their expected contribution to the organization.  It provides a framework for the behavioral standards of each person.  The performance plan is where managers need to address expectations of the job that may not, or should not, be covered in the compensation plan.  If we expect CRM systems to be kept up to date, we don’t want to compensate them on doing this, we want to set it as a performance objective in their performance plan.  If we want them to do certain developmental activities, these should be covered in the performance plan.

I think a performance plan is critical for everyone.  It sets overall goals and objectives for each person in the organization, it outlines areas of personal development, it establishes “MBO’s.”   In many organizations, the performance plan and subsequent review is the basis for establishing raises, promotions and other things.  Every organization should have a performance planning process, every person should have a performance plan.  Managers should periodically review performance against the plan as part of their normal coaching process.  The goal is to make sure people achieve their performance objectives, that they are continuing to develop and perform.

It’s important for the sales person and the manager to develop the performance plan jointly–it provides the framework for them to work together, making sure expectations are being met, for aligning priorities and objectives, for growth and development.  It provides a road map for both the sales person and manager to inspect throughout the year.  It provides the basis for a coaching plan for managers.

In managing performance, we need to leverage both the compensation plan and the performance plan.  Without both, managers aren’t leveraging the tools necessary to develop their people and drive the highest levels of performance.

Several days ago, I wrote a post, The Most Used — Useless Metric In Sales.  It’s generated quite a bit of discussion in the various sites where it appeared.  In the post, I attacked the weighted probabiliy — based on progress through the sales cycle (you know –Qualified is something like 25%, Discovery, 50%, Proposal 75%, and Closing 100%).  A series of discussions on sales forecasting started, so I thought I would toss more wood on the fire.

Accurate sales forecasts are critical—not just for sales, but for the entire organizattion.  Resources, funds, schedules, expectations are set, based on the forecast.  Forecast accuracy is usually one of the top 5 concerns virtually every CEO, CFO, or Sales Executive has when talking about the sales organization (surpassed only by making the numbers, productivity, etc.). 

Try as we might, the sales forecast will never be 100% accurate (unless we forecast after we get the order).  At best, the sales forecast can be thought of as an “informed guess.”  Some of you, justifiably, are thinking  –  Dave, you’ve really gone off the deep end on this one, you can’t be advocating that we “guess.”

Let me break “informed guess” down a little.  We want to focus the weighting in those words to the “informed” piece.  This means using real data and analytics to develop the forecast.  Most companies have rich historical data that can provide a baseline for forecasting.  Couple this with external data, market information, real time feedback from customers, demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and all sorts of other information, we can develop very rich models that provide greater insight into likely behaviors of customers — consumers and enterprises alike.  In the end, people make the forecast, so this data informs us.

On the “guess” side, the challenge is that everyone comes to the table with different assumptions, biases, expectations, and beliefs about the business.  On the “guess” side, we need to reduce variability in the “guess” element.  We do this doing a number of things.  First and foremost is a strong, well defined, and well executed sales process  (but you knew I’d get sales process into this).  If everyone is doing their own thing, executing the way they want, we have no ability to predict the outcome.  Second, we must have a common set of assumptions, rules, processes, and expectations by which we come up with our estimates.  If we come to the forecasting table with different assumptions regarding risk, timing, and so forth, it is impossible to develop a forecast that everyone buys into.  This variability of approach creates challenges to the accuracy and acceptance of the forecast.  Extend this over time, forecast to forecast to forecast, and we can have wide swings in approaches and accuracy or meaning.

So the forecast will always be an “informed guess.”  We increase the accuracy both by leveraging data and analytics to be better informed and putting in place strong processes and ground rules to reduce the variability of our guesses.  I can, and have, gone much deeper into this, but will stop here and pose the questions:  Does this ring true in your experience?  is the sales forecast an “informed guess?’  How do you increase sales forecast accuracy?

If you are curious, I’ve written a much more extensive white paper on this:  Moving Beyond The Crystal Ball:  Improving Sales Forecasting and Increasing Odds To Win.  If you’d like a free copy, send me an email at dabrock [at] excellenc [dot] com.  I’d be glad to send it to you.

Sales people are trained to be problem solvers — we ask questions, probe — once we find a problem we attack like a pit bull and don’t let go until we’ve wrestled the problem to the ground and gotten the order.

So what’s the problem with that?  Too often we leap to solutions before we understand what the “real problem” is.  It’s a real problem, I wrote about it in a post almost a year ago: “The Evolving Role Of The Sales Person–The Sales Person As Diagnostician”  It addresses the issue of sales people leaping to solutions and not solving the right problem.  Customers get frustrated with this approach, they complain, “they aren’t listening, they don’t understand my real issues.”

There’s another aspect of this problem — often, our customers leap to solutions.  Like sales people, business people are trained problem solvers–that’s what we learn in the university, and every aspect of our jobs reinforce that.  Customer are often certain they know their problems and tell the sales person, “this is what I need.”  And we tend to accept that and sell to that need.  The problem is they aren’t solving the right problem.

A friend of mine, Steve Bowles, had a great example of this.  He was meeting with the CEO of a small company, and the CEO said, “This is the issue I’m having with the sales organization and this is what I need you to do…”  And as CEO’s are prone to do, he said it with great authority and certainty.  Steve could have done what the CEO asked and gotten the order.  Instead, Steve did something else, he asked the question, “What do you think is causing this issue to happen with the sales organization?”  Steve resisted the temptation to take the leap with his customer, get the order, and provide the right solution to the wrong problem.  Instead, Steve decided to probe.  He wanted to understand if the CEO was describing the real problem or if there was an underlying issue.  He got to the underlying issues — it wasn’t pleasant, in fact to a large degree the CEO was creating the problem himself.  Steve politely pointed that out and suggested a different solution.  Oh by the way, Steve got the order.

Mediocre sales people let the customer dictate the solution, only responding the the needs the customer outlines and the solution they want.  That’s often why it’s difficult to differentiate.  The customer has determined the solution and everyone is fundamentally providing the same thing.

Great sales professionals–those that create real value for their customers and stand out are those that find and solve the right problems.  They take the time to probe and understand.  They care enough about doing the right thing for the customer that they challenge the customer’s preconceived notions about the problem and solution.  They get the customer to think differently, to see and solve the real problem.

It takes great knowledge of your customer’s business, it takes great knowledge of your solutions, it takes the patience and diligence to probe and understand.  Finally, it takes great courage to suggest to the customer that there might be a better way.

Too often, inertia, time pressures, the push to do a deal quickly, or simply our conditioning as problem solvers push us to leap to solutions.  We as sales people do this, our customers do this. 

Our greatest value add as sales professionals is to help our customers solve the right problems.  Are you taking the time to work with your customers to do this or are you leaping to solutions?

Dave Kurlan wrote an outstanding post:  Bench Strength – The Key To Replacing Salespeople.  He mentioned that managers must always be recruiting.  It’s such a simple concept, but I am constantly amazed at how few managers–at all levels do this.

Here’s how the cycle goes.  We have a bad performer in place, we worry about firing the person, because it leaves an open territory….too often we think coverage is more important than quality.  Maybe the manager might start looking casually for someone, but the normal day to day events slow the process down, consequently nothing is done for too long.

Or it may go like this:  One day, our star performer walks in and resigns.  We panic–she’s going to leave a huge gap in our organization.  We immediately look to back-fill the position.  In our haste to fill the position, we may reduce our standards recruiting the wrong person.  The death spiral accelerates…..

Recruiting high quality people–even in this candidate rich job market takes time.  In my world, B2B, finding top notch sales people takes at least 90 days, often longer.  Add to that the onboarding time and you have a cycle of as much as 18 months before a person gets fully productive.  Great managers significantly reduce that time by always having candidates to back fill jobs in their back pockets (and by having great on boarding programs—but I’ll write about that later.)

Organizations like GE and IBM have long been famous for the succession planning.  For every role–at least in the executive and senior management levels, they have identified candidates that can potentially fill the each job.  In every managerial or executive role I have held, I maintained a list of people that could back fill me (as well as succession plans for all the managers reporting to me).  With each of those people, I had a development plan in place—I wanted to prepare them to be able to step into the new role when and if the time came.  That development plan included not only coaching, but developmental experiences (e.g. special projects), training and other activities.  Every manager must have a succession plan in place–not only for managers, but for everyone in the organization—”who will I bring in if I need to replace a sales person?”

Managers must always be recruiting–even if they don’t have the headcount or a “req.”  By recruiting, I don’t mean a formal posting of a job or engaging a head hunter.  The manager should always be networking, looking for great talent.  At conferences, in meetings, maybe through tools like LinkedIn.  A manager should always have at least half a dozen people they would like to hire, if the occasion presents itself.  This doesn’t mean offering them a job, it just means getting to know them well, understanding what their strengths and weaknesses are, exploring their own aspirations, exploring how well they might fit into your organization.  When the time comes (it is never if), you will be able to pick up the phone and call one of these people.  Some may be happy in their current roles and not willing to move, but several may be interested in a new opportunity.  You get a great replacement, months sooner than you normally would.

Great managers have succession plans in place for every role in their organization.  Great managers are always recruiting.  If you lost one of your key people today, can you pick up the phone and call half a dozen potential replacements tomorrow?  If you can’t, you need to start recruiting.

It seems to be human nature to take shortcuts.  We want results immediately, we don’t want to invest the effort normally required to achieve a goal.  We somehow think that we are the exceptions to the rule–while others have to make an effort, somehow we are different and can avoid all the work and effort to achieve the result.  In truth, sometimes shortcuts work.  They probably work often enough, that we continue to pursue them.

Shortcuts increase risk, very often profoundly.  Every day we see examples from industries, organizations, and individuals–BP wanted to get a well in production faster.  The finance industry wanted to make money faster, an athlete wanted to build performance levels faster–get caught taking drugs.  We see it every day, taking pills for weight loss/fitness, falsifying resumes, and the list goes on.

I wish it weren’t so, but too often, I see sales people succumbing to shortcuts.  We do it in little ways–we don’t do the research to approach a new prospect, we “wing it” on a sales call, we stretch the truth in talking about the capabilities of our products, the list goes on.  It works often enough, that we keep looking for shortcuts.  Managers stop listening, coaching, developing, organizations stop training, investing in tools.  We implement new software systems, thinking the system itself will produce results, forgetting the system implementation must be built on great process.

 We get caught up in the inertia we’ve created and don’t step back to look at what’s happening.  Surveys stating that 50% or more of sales people failing to meet their goals, customers who no longer trust us or want to see us, customers who won’t do business with us because we have failed to deliver on our commitments or their expectations…..the list goes on.

We confuse shortcuts with efficiency and effectiveness.  They are very different—taking shortcuts is about not doing what you know to be the right steps or actions to achieve success.  Shortcuts are about skipping these, jumping forward, consciously or unconsciously increasing risk.  No organization or individual can sustain high performance by constantly taking shortcuts.

Efficiency and effectiveness are different.  We can’t be top performers — on a sustained basis, without focusing on  efficiency and effectiveness.  Efficiency is about doing things in the shortest time possible.  Effectiveness is about doing the right things at the right time with the right people in the right way.  High performance in any field requires continued focus on efficiency and effectiveness.  Sustaining high performance is difficult work.  It demands constant focus on what you are doing, you need to look at how to improve, you must constantly redefined efficiency and effectiveness.  It requires discipline–it’s so easy to succumb to taking shortcuts.  It demands strength of character, particularly when all around you seem to be taking shortcuts.

High performers look at performance over time, they want to sustain and improve performance.  High performers don’t confuse shortcuts with efficiency and effectiveness.

What’s the foundation to your performance?  Are you taking shortcuts–constantly skipping the things you know you should be doing, but increasing risk of failure–for yourself, your company, your customer, the world?  Or are you focusing on constantly improving performance through improving effectiveness and efficiency?  There is a profound difference.

I know, I know, we use way too many sports metaphors to talk about selling.  But we really can learn a lot by watching high performing athletes in some of the most important sports events.This past weekend was packed with some of my favorite sports, the finals at Wimbledon, the World Cup, the start of the Tour de France, and toss in a few nice golf tournaments.  Watching them provoked some thoughts:

You can’t be successful without the support of your team:  Sales is a team sport–even if you sell by yourself.  the days of the “lone wolf” are gone (I’m not sure they ever existed).  Even if you look at the supposedly “individual sports.” like the singles finals at Wimbledon this weekend, none of those top performers could have gotten to the finals without the support of their team–trainers, coaches, practice partners, managers, and so forth.  It’s also interesting, the first thing these top athletes do is to thank their team (watch the interviews of Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal)!  They know their success is due to the support from their team.   Too often, I see sales people forgetting this.  They think their success is based on what they have done and ignore the team members.  Make sure you thank your team!

Top performers are respectful of their competitors:  Top athletes don’t underestimate their competition.  They study them, they watch them, they respect their capabilities and skills.  Regardless of how the competitor may be ranked, top athletes know their competitor earned the right to be there – they beat all other competitors.  Top athletes don’t denigrate their opponents, but focus on outPerforming them.  Great competitors raise the level of play and performance of everyone.  Sales people need to think about this as well.  Customers have chosen the alternatives they want to consider.  To be shortlisted by the customer means that each competitor is a serious contender for the business.  Don’t underestimate them, don’t discount them, leverage them to raise your own level of “play.”

Top performers don’t get to Wimbledon, the Tour de France, or the World Cup by accident:  All have a plan, strategies, they train, and compete.  Take the guys in the Tour de France.  They train constantly, riding thousands of miles a year in practice sessions.  They train for specific conditions they anticipate they will encounter—for example, yesterday’s difficult 3rd day on the cobblestones.  Lance Armstrong trained for days on the course, long before the race.  He knew the cobblestones could make the difference between winning and losing.  Alberto Contador hired a coach to help him master cobblestones.  Each day on the tour, the team gets together to review the plan, to evaluate alternative strategies, to discuss contingencies.  How do we deal with a break-away?  How do we position our sprinters at the finish line?  How do we pick up extra points along the way?  How will we keep our GC contender at the front of the peloton?  High performing sales people are the same.  They are constantly planning and developing strategies.  They look at their territories and accounts, developing plans to expand their business.  They think about each deal, looking at potential obstacles or problems, looking at areas where they can get advantage.  They study their customers and industries.  They constantly train and improve.  Finally, they are always out there competing, learning from their wins and losses.

Top performers have a plan–but adapt that plan to conditions:  The Tour Prologue presented an interesting challenge– a short, very fast course.  Everyone knew how they would ride it, how they would approach each turn, where they needed to slow down to stay on course.  Then on race day–rain, the course was wet and slippery, plans had to be adjusted.  Great sellers do the same, they have a plan and strategy, but as things play out they adjust their plan, responding to the customer’s needs.  While they shift and adjust the plan, the goal always remains the same–winning.

Great tools help, but ultimately it’s about your own personal performance.  Professional golfers have custom clubs–tuned to optimize their performance.  Each bike in the Tour uses the latest, best technology, costing over $10 K each.  At Wimbledon, players were using special strings, strung at very specific tensions to achieve better ball control.  They all use the best “tools” available to them because they help them perform better and more efficiently.  At the same time, to quote Lance, “It’s not the bike…”  Top sales people are the same.  They leverage sales tools to help them be more effective and productive.  Top performers know how to get advantage from their CRM systems, they know how to leverage social media.  In the end, however, they realize that while the tools are helpful, ultimately, it’s their own personal performance that causes them to win or lose.  (Notice also that top athletes don’t blame their equipment for their bad performance.)

On game-day, there are no do-overs, no-excuses:   As Tibor Shanto poses in his post, Sudden Death Sales, everything sale is like “sudden death,”  not in the literal sense, but when is ready to make their decision, you have to have played your best game.  You have to have left everything on the tennis court, football (soccer) field, or on the course.  For the deal, there is no second chance, you win or lose.  The best sales people are the same, in every sale, they are fully present, they compete to win, knowing there aren’t second chances, mulligans, or do-overs.  They realize, if they lose this opportunity, it may be some time before they have the opportunity to sell to this customer  again.

You have to bring your “A” game–each and every time you compete.  Competition is tough, customers are busy.  If you don’t bring your “A” game to each sales situation, you will have no chance of winning.  Competitors who should not win, can beat you if they are executing better than you.  For example, on his way to the finals at Wimbledon, Tomas Berdych, beat players ranked much higher than him.  He just executed better than each person that he defeated.  In selling we don’t have to have the best alternative, we just have to compete more strongly, work with the customer to demonstrate our offering is the best for the decision they are making.

Sometimes things aren’t fair:  The World Cup has been plagued with accusations of “bad calls.”  TV replays have shown some of them have, in fact been bad calls.  In spite of that, the final score is the final score.  Great athletes and teams don’t let a bad call distract them.  They put it behind them, adjust their game plans, and continue to compete as strongly as possible.  Sales is like that as well, sometimes things aren’t “fair.”  The customer may have “unfair expectations,”  we may not have exactly the product or support we need.  In spite of that, great professionals adjust their strategies and compete as best possible.

Luck helps, bad luck hurts, the game goes on:  There is always an element of luck in any competition (this will not be a discussion of making your luck).  Yesterday, despite all his training and preparation, Lance had a bad day, he had a flat.  It moved him back in the GC contention from one of the leaders to 18th with a seemingly insurmountable time difference to make up.  It was bad luck, I’m sure he and the RadioShack team are adjusting their strategies, finding ways to make up the time, examining possibilities of winning.  The same is true of sales, sometimes we are lucky, for reasons we can’t explain, things go our way.  Other times, it’s just the opposite.  Despite good or bad luck, top performers put it behind them, adjust their strategies, and move on.

Top athletes don’t blame others:  When they lose, the best players don’t blame others. Roger Federer–expected to be in the Wimbledon finals was beaten.  He had no excuses, while he was higher ranked than his opponent, on the day of the match, the opponent outplayed him.  Great sales people don’t blame others, they know that ultimately, they are accountable.  It is their responsibility to put the strongest plans in place.  It is their responsibility to manage their team to present the best solution.  If they lose, they don’t make excuses, they don’t blame others.

Finally, top athletes ALWAYS thank their customers:  Win or lose, top athletes thank the fans–after all they are paying the bills.  Win or lose, top sales people always thank their customers.  They thank them for the business.  They thank them for being given the opportunity to compete.

Choose your favorite sport, study the top performers in the sport.  Adapt what they do to to your own job and practice of selling.  Your performance will improve, you’ll be on the path to being a top performer.

I’ve fallen into a trap, it seems my preferred mode of communication is becoming digital–that is, I email, tweet, text.  It’s so fast, convenient.  To tell you the truth, often it’s the most effective.  A lot of our communication is “asynchronous,” or one way.  Often, we just want to let someone know something or give a reminder.  We really don’t need to engage a person in a discussion.  It’s fast, it’s easy, I don’t have to worry about phone tag or voice mail.  In my busy world, I’ve come to rely on these tools as my preferred mode of communication.

But then, there are the times we use these forms of communication as a form of avoidance.  The other day, was one of those times.  I needed to have a difficult conversation with a colleague.  He had emailed a call report (Yes, I do look at call reports), it was for a complex deal we were working on with a large client in the Far East.  I was particularly worried about this situation, since both language and cultural difference made miscommunication with the customer something we were really worried about.

The email concerned my, my colleague had abandoned our strategy, for no obvious reasons, and was headed down a path that was completely different than the path that we had agreed on — and been working so hard to pursue.  As I read the email, my temper started to boil over, I was really angry at the shift and what he had done.  I immediately hit reply, and dashed off an angry response, escalating things to Defcon 5.

My finger hovered over “Send,”  I was about to send this missile, escalating things.  For some reason I stopped.  Instead, I picked up the phone, steeling myself for a difficult conversation.  I dialled his number, he answered, I replied, “Hi Marc, I just got your email about ……, I’m really concerned about the situation…..”

We had a long conversation, at times it was a little difficult, in the end it was a great conversation.  We had some disagreements, but at the same time we each had a deeper understanding of each other’s views and our course forward.  It was a tough conversation, it was confrontive and uncomfortable.  It was inconvenient–we were separated by 9 time zone’s, so the hour was not convenient for either of us.  However difficult and inconvenient, we both ended up in a better place.   After the call, I looked at the email, still on my desktop–had I sent it, I probably would have taken a difficult situation and made it even worse.  However difficult, picking up the phone and having a conversation enabled us to address issues and have a clearer understanding that we could not have achieved through an email battle.

Recently, I’ve been an observer to another similar, but very public battle  (Why “Reply All” was ever invented astounds me).  These two individuals clearly had a disagreement, but rather than solving it, they decided to lob missiles at each other and an audience of about 15 other people.  It started over a relatively simple misunderstanding, but rather than pick up the phone and talking through things, they chose to fire at each other through the “safety” of “Reply All.”  In three or four exchanges, the situation escalated, each person became stuck in their positions.  It finally stopped, the problem wasn’t solved, it was only made worse.  Both parties are not speaking—it’s impacting the whole group, we are having difficulty moving forward.  I’m not certain the damage can ever be repaired.  I called each person to understand what had happened.  “Why didn’t you pick up the phone and call the other person,”  I asked.  “It didn’t even occur to me,”  was the response—from both parties.

We talk so much about having conversations.  We talk about engaging our customers, our employees, our stakeholders.  Conversations imply a dialogue.  Conversations include emotions and context.   Conversations involve listening and, potentially, changing our points of view.  However convenient and instantaneous email, twitter, instant messaging and texting may be, they are monologues.  No amount of happy faces can add the necessary depth and context to a phone or face to face discussion.

As I reflect on so much of what I see going on today, we are losing the conversation–to some extent, it seems we are avoiding the conversation.  We have great tools that enable us to quickly and conveniently express our thoughts.  We can email, tweet, text.  In many cases this is appropriate.  But if we really want a conversation, pick up the phone.

For the past several weeks, there has been an interesting saga going on in the blog world.  A gentleman named Michael J. Roman has created a great stir. 

It would be fantastic if it were about provocative ideas and interesting points of view—in fact it is, the problem is they aren’t his ideas or his points of view, though he presents them as his.  See the controversy he has created is about his lack of respect for other people’s hard work, his disdain for copyright law, and ultimately his disdain of his audience.

Michael plagiarizes the best ideas and blogs from numerous well respected bloggers.  He goes further by putting his own copyright on the materials declaring them as his own original works.  He stands proudly behind a cloak of “integrity.”  When he was caught by my friend, Jonathan Farrington, he immediately offered his sincere apology, laying the blame on an over zealous “creative director.”  In his apology to Jonathan, he states, “Any unethical behavior under my leadership will NOT be tolerated and I appreciate you (and others) bringing this to my attention.”  He goes on to say he will terminate the offending employee.  He concludes his letter:   “Again, you have my most sincere apologies for this unacceptable act on my employee’s part, which in turn, is a direct reflection on me.”

Just a few days after that apology, he’s back to his old tricks, copying and plagiarizing content from great bloggers.  As many of my friends protest this, apparently Michael has once again taken his blog down.  But we know people like Michael, he will re-appear doing the same thing, perhaps under a different persona.

Michael, however, provides us a great case study.  He declares his core values as Passion, Balance, Integrity, and Expertise.  Declaring these values doesn’t make them so!  Demonstrating these values every day in every interaction is what counts!  It’s how we understand the real measure of a person.  It’s how we establish trust and how we build our reputation.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of Michael J. Roman’s out there.  Their behavior seeks to drag everyone to the lowest levels.  Their behavior drags down the standards and reputations of their companies.  In Michael’s case, it is Modis IT Staffing–knowing Michael represents them would cause me to be concerned about doing business with them.  Do they have the same “high” standards as Michael?  Do they have the same ethics?  I’m sure they don’t sink to the depths that Michael does, but it causes people to doubt them.

Ultimately, our reputations are not judged by what we declare–regardless of how loudly we declare them, our reputations are developed by how we live and demonstrate what we stand for.  If we have high personal standards, we surround ourselves with others that live by high personal standards and shun the bottom feeders like Michael J. Roman.

A number of my fellow bloggers have written outstanding posts about this situation.  I encourage you to read them, I’ve put the links for several below, I know I’m missing a number, my apologies:

Skip Anderson:  The Continuing Saga of Michael J. Roman and “His” Blog  and The Scourge of the Blogosphere: Plagiarism and Michael J. Roman.

Jonathan Farrington:  Michael J. Roman; Plagiarism; the Apology; Final Thoughts

Jill Konrath: “There Are No Shortcuts to Success”

Wendy Weiss: “Stop Thief!”

Dave Kurlan: “Jiffy Lube Magic, Sales Adaptability and Plagiarism”

Kelley Robertson: “When Imitation Is NOT the Best Form of Flattery”

Skip Anderson: “The Scourge of the Blogosphere: Plagiarism and Michael J. Roman”

Tibor Shanto: “Please Don’t Steal This Post!”

Leanne Hoagland-Smith: “Is Plagiarism Worth It in Blogging, Article Marketing Social Media Universe?”

Ken Thoreson: “When Plagiarism Is NOT Flattering”

Niall Devitt: “When Plagiarism Is Not Flattering”

Nancy Bleeke: “Being Yourself in a Transparent World”

(Thanks to Skip and Jonathan for links/pictures/etc.)

Today, I am a keynote speaker as part of Microsoft’s  and Focus.com’s Dynamic Business Week Series.  My session is at 10:00 am PDT, join me if you can.

The job of the sales manager is very difficult.  It requires constant juggling of priorities and management of contradictions.  The presentation focuses on 1o areas a manager must pay attention to to achieve the highest levels of performance:

1. Customers are changing the way they buy, are you changing the way you sell?
2. Is your sales process current, are you using it?
3. Are you creating value in your customer’s buying process?
4. Do your people use the selling process as a personal productivity tool?
5. CRM is for your sales people, not for you…but once they are using it, you get tremendous insight.
6. Metrics count, personal and organizational.
7. Coaching is critical, every day!
8. Protect your people from the organization.
9. Beware of the sales manager “Superman Syndrome.”
10. Your job is to get things done through your people.
11. As a bonus:  Keep your balance, you have to constantly juggle customers, coaching and people development, business strategy, business management, performance management, processes, tools, training, navigating the organization.  It’s easy to lose your way.

If you would like a free annotated copy of the full presentation just click on the link:  High Performance Sales, 10 Things Managers Must Worry About.

Sales management is a tough job, but it’s very rewarding when everything comes together and you see your team performing at the highest levels possible.  You become unbeatable!