Stop Going the Extra Mile
Rebecca took another sip of wine and looked out over Hong Kong harbor from the deck of the bar where we’d been talking for two hours following the sales management training just completed. We’d shared a very creative and promising three days together, but the enthusiasm with which she’d ended her training was slipping away.
‘There’s so much I want to do with my team,” she said, “and what you’ve given us can really work. But…’, and here she paused, ‘Our sales are down, and I’m about to put my team through hell. We won’t make it if we don’t go flat out.’
You know the temptation. Sales have slipped, and you’re off the pace required to hit your targets. There’s only one answer: work harder - more sales calls, more presentations, more activity poured into the top of the funnel so that more sales will drop out the bottom.
You know you’ve got to push your people. You appeal to team spirit, you point out the heroes who are over-achieving, you offer incentives for over-time, and you lead from the front by canceling your annual leave and spending evenings and most weekends at the office.
You get the 24/7 mentality really ginning. People are working late every night, even on the weekends. They postpone family vacations. You get the sense, ‘we’re going to make it.’ That keeps you and the team going.
Then it’s over. Whether you hit the target or not, it’s payback time. After the full court press to finish the quarter and get the numbers, the hangover hits. Your people are exhausted. They go ‘off radar,’ and you’re left hoping they’re out there making sales calls. Personal days and sick leave are mounting up.
Sales start slipping again, and you know where this is heading. Another round of self-sacrifice is just around the corner.
Working harder is seductive. It feels good when you step in that all-hands-on-deck state of mind. At first, it’s a rush to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your teammates and go for the gold. However, it’s just a matter of time until ‘feeling good’ gives way to ‘feeling used.’ You wind up with worn out, unhappy soldiers, behind whom are supportive families who withhold their disappointment for a while, but who eventually let the hero know that enough is enough.
Let’s be honest. There are companies who make a virtue of operating this way. They cultivate a Spartan culture in which self-sacrifice is nurtured and rewarded. High turnover of the sales force is accepted as a given - 300% per annum is not unusual - and the subject of work-life balance is addressed with gallows humor and extra drinks after work.
If you’d like to master a different kind of sales career - one that genuinely honors family and fortune - you’re going to need to lead your team to a wiser, more disciplined way of working than they are now utilizing.
Warning: this will not be a quick fix. Your team is living inside a system that is bigger than itself. The ‘we all work extra hard several times a year’ mentality is embedded in your company’s policies, procedures, and systems. Finding another way of operating within this larger system will take all your intelligence and cleverness, but why not go for it? You’ve got to do something when you get up in the morning! Why not do something valuable?
Take it a step at a time. Get your team together, privately and off-site, with time to talk, accompanied with some good food and drink. Tell them that this isn’t a party but a short retreat from business as usual that can lead to an advance in performance.
Introduce the subject of the regular periods of significant overworking that everyone has experienced. Offer your opinion that this isn’t wise or healthy - not for them and not for the company. Ask if they agree and if they are interested in making a change.
If they indeed want to do something different, the next step is to make a long list of everything in company life that makes it easy for them to keep exhausting themselves several times each year. List everything: compensation, target-setting, HR policies, peer-pressure...everything.
Now tell them that since they cannot control any of these things, they must let go of hoping that any of it will change! If it does, that’s icing on the cake, but you’re inviting them to change what they can change.
If they are still interested in changing things, ask each person to pick three things that they can do differently now so that the next period of overwork won’t have to be so demanding.
Within one week, have one-to-one meetings with each person to clarify what they’re going to do differently. Then, meet with them regularly to lend your support to them doing those three things.
You'll be very pleasantly surprised at what happens.