“Straight Talk” is the Only Way to Change Your Business.

Get ready to be uncomfortable.

I wasn’t planning a performance review. Yet I had to be straight with Dan.

I sat down with my VP of Sales to review his business performance.

He had 150 reps and Dan was tracking monthly performance. He was sending the scoreboard to me also.

I see something. The same people are at the bottom of the list every month.

Dan had been in his role for 6 years and I was new.

Feeling that he might be sensitive to my questions, I asked him to explain to me the rankings for the current month.

Questions are the answers.

“Well Mike, the report shows individual sales performance to goal ranked #1 to #150.

I asked if Dan saw any trends in the month-to-month ranking. He said, “Not that I can see.”

“Dan, how do you use this report?”

“I send it to my Field Managers, and we use it to track performance so that at the end of the year we can give out awards, like Sales Rep of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Top Growth Rate of the Year, and things like that.”