The Sales Journal

The Things We Mistake for Performance — 01/12

The Performance Problem

Subject: The performance problem

Preview: Five years ago, I was looking for answers in the wrong place.

About five years ago, I was managing an SDR who was completing more than 200 sales activities a day.

Calls, emails, follow-ups. There was certainly no shortage of effort.

But they weren't booking meetings.

And I was their manager.

So naturally, I started looking at what they could do differently.

We looked at the calls, the messaging, the emails and the conversations. We tried to understand what wasn't working and where they could improve.

I thought I was doing my job.

Someone on my team wasn't getting results, and I was trying to help them get better.

What I find interesting, looking back, is that I already believed in the principle that would eventually help me see what I was missing.

I've been drawn to Stoicism for years, particularly the idea of controlling what you can control.

I'm not always particularly good at practising it.

Sometimes I spend far too long thinking about what someone else needs to do, or wishing a situation were different, before remembering to ask what I can actually influence.

This was one of those occasions.

I'd spent so much time thinking about what the SDR could change that I hadn't properly considered what I could change.

And when we eventually looked at the accounts they were prospecting, the problem became clearer.

Too many of the companies simply weren't a good fit for what we sold.

We were asking someone to create opportunities with businesses that were unlikely to become customers.

They could make more calls, write better emails and improve their conversations.

But none of those things would make the companies a better fit.

So we narrowed their focus to 100 accounts that genuinely matched our ideal customer profile.

The conversations became more relevant. The outreach had a clearer purpose. And the pipeline started improving.

It's tempting to remember that as a lesson about targeting.

But that's not what has stayed with me.

What stays with me is how long I spent examining the SDR's performance before questioning the conditions in which I was asking them to perform.

And I've thought about that quite a lot since.

Because I think something interesting happens when we make decisions as leaders.

At first, they're decisions.

We discuss them, weigh up the options, make assumptions and choose a direction.

But then people begin working within them.

And gradually, those decisions stop feeling like decisions.

They become the way things are.

The territory is the territory. The target is the target. The process is the process.

We stop asking whether they're right and start asking how well people are working within them.

I've seen this happen with managers who spend hours coaching salespeople to improve their discovery without questioning whether the opportunities being created were worth pursuing in the first place.

The coaching can be thoughtful. The feedback can be accurate. The salesperson might genuinely improve.

And still, the results might barely change.

Not because the coaching was poor, but because it was addressing a different problem.

I find that uncomfortable.

Because it's entirely possible to be working hard as a manager, genuinely trying to help someone, and still be making their situation worse by misunderstanding it.

And the numbers don't necessarily help us.

A salesperson who lacks the skills to create pipeline might book very few meetings.

A capable salesperson working the wrong accounts might book very few meetings too.

On a dashboard, they can look almost identical.

But imagine how differently you'd treat those two people.

One might need coaching, clearer expectations or a difficult conversation about their performance.

The other might need you to change something.

Of course, sometimes the person really does need to improve. I've managed enough salespeople to know that.

But I think there's a particular danger when the person making the judgement is also the person who helped create the conditions being judged.

We know why we made our decisions.

We remember the reasoning, the intentions and the information we had at the time.

And perhaps that makes it easier to question someone else's execution than our own assumptions.

I don't think there's a way to avoid this completely.

I'm certainly not immune to it.

Even now, with years more experience, I sometimes have to catch myself looking outward before remembering to look at what sits within my own control.

I still think about that SDR.

More than 200 activities a day.

No meetings.

And I wonder what might have happened if we'd never questioned the accounts.

Another week of calls. Another coaching session. Another conversation about their performance.

Perhaps, eventually, a conversation about their future.

All while the accounts stayed exactly the same.

Chris

Chris Ritson

P.S. The Sales Journal is my weekly letter about the realities of building and leading sales teams.

You're reading edition 1 of 12 in The Things We Mistake for Performance.

If someone came to mind while reading this, feel free to forward it.

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