After being a manager for some 20 plus years in business I realized one thing...we don't know a damn thing about what our sales reps are doing. Everyone else in the organization seems to know if a rep is slacking, being lazy, or generally not working, but we have NO CLUE.
I was at a recent dinner following a meeting and everyone was having a great time when one of the sales reps starting talking about her former husband. She had a few too many cocktails and decided to describe certain parts of his anatomy when her regional manager cut her off.
"That's not appropriate. You need to stop."
The rep laughed, "You don't know what's appropriate. Half your reps are being inappropriate, but you're not paying attention! I'm outta here!" And she excused herself and went up to her room.
It was a weird end to a very good evening but I couldn't figure out what had transpired, so the next morning I found the regional manager and sat down with him at breakfast before the meeting started.
"What the heck happened with your rep last night. Too much to drink?"
"Not really. I talked to her this morning, and she explained that she feels like I'm harder on her than some of the other reps. She says that I'm always on her, but I told her I try to be consistent with how I treat everyone. And then she started to explain why she felt that way."
"What did she say?"
"She was upset because I have been very sympathetic towards ______ who has been ill during this meeting, and that it turned out _____ was just upstairs ordering room service and watching television. That rep isn't even sick. In addition, another rep was sick but it was really a hangover."
"My response was simple. How would I know that? I can't discipline them because I don't know what's going on. She knew because obviously the reps shared things with her, but I had know idea they were flaking on the meeting."
"So she was mad at you for playing favorites when you had no clue what the other reps were doing when they were supposedly sick?", I restated the obvious as a question.
"Exactly! How can I discipline someone, when I have know idea what they're doing and I can't prove it?"
"And everyone on your team knows these people were lying?"
"Apparently. And they all resent me for it!"
"That's tough."
"No shit."
It's difficult to manage people in the first place, but if you don't have a clue what they're doing it's even more difficult. So as a manager, how do you avoid this problem? You try to hire the right people to begin with, and hope they're being honest with both you and themselves. Otherwise, you end up with a group of sales reps who don't trust anyone, including you. And that in business terms is called, a "clusterf#$k".
Good luck and good selling.
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