inluminent

Here are some management lessons for anyone that runs a sales organization. No names will be used. If you know who I used to work for, I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself in the comments (or your own posts) on other weblogs about this entry.

These are the reasons I left my last job:

1. They changed the entire sales organization structure and compensation plan in January 2006 to my short term detriment, but probably in the end it’ll work out well for the company. It’s a smart move, just wasn’t communicated well at all.
2. They changed my compensation plan on January 1, 2006 and didn’t explain the new plan until late January 2006.
3. The new plan took a good 25 percent of my last year’s pay out of my pocket, with no warning and no effort to compensate for the change.
4. My boss promised lots of things he had the responsibility to deliver but didn’t have the authority to promise. Needless to say, enough of the promises were broken or backed out of to leave a very bad taste in my mouth. If you’re a manager, don’t promise things you don’t already have approved. Don’t say “I’ll try to do X if we hit this goal.” That’s an implied promise.
5. My boss’s boss embellished facts (basically lied) to friends of mine and potential clients of ours… and then had the nerve to call it selling. I firmly believe in selling what you’ve got, not what you want to have. Don’t get me wrong… answer questions as positively as you can, but don’t outright lie.
6. I was given a new sales territory, but wasn’t given the two biggest accounts in my sales territory, even after I asked for them multiple times and made arguments as to why they should have been mine. That planted the seed that said “We don’t trust you to handle this business.”
7. I started to resent management, and wasn’t sure of my decision to work for this company based on the “new organization”. I had a hard time telling myself that “it would get better” when it clearly wasn’t.
8. This will sound silly, but, no one asked me how I was doing until it was too late (ie. three or four weeks after I decided to start looking for a new job).
9. My boss actually said these things in group meetings (or at least this is what I heard him say) “If you don’t like it, then you should find a new job” multiple times, and “The CEO is telling us ‘this is the message, if you don’t use the message, then we’ll fire you… if the message doesn’t work, we’ll change it.’” What was I supposed to do?

Oh, and one other thing I thought was really stupid:

10. The company published a “no-blogging” policy in sometime in early Q1. This “no-blogging” policy comes from a company that has had me telling clients that “transparency is the future of this business.” Ugh!

In the end, trust is a two way street, and I lost all trust in my current immediate manager and senior manager. I trusted them to take care of me, while I took care of them. When they showed that they didn’t trust me to take care of them, I started questioning their motives. Then I started seeing that they weren’t taking care of me. At least not fast enough for me, and while I never said point blank “fix this stuff, or I’m leaving” I did ask for help many times, and it usually fell on deaf ears, or so it seemed.

I told myself I’d give it 90 days in January. Guess what?

I was kicking ass under the new sales organization and structure as of the day I quit (number 4 in an organization of 15 or so, after starting at “tied for number 15″ in January). I’d given it 90 days and didn’t see any real progress other than my own.

I can be successful anywhere, and I will be at my next job.

The funny thing is that I’ve left behind a really good bunch of people that’ll be really successful as individuals, and I hope that the old saying “a rising tide raises all boats” isn’t the only thing that makes my old company successful… but I’m fearful it might be. I was the 7th person to leave the sales side of the company in 5 months. 7th out of 15 or 20… tell me that that tells you when you see someone lose one-third of their sales staff through attrition that quickly.

I know there are lots of resumes out on the street from that company. So if you’re looking for a good sales person, senior sales person, or VP-level sales person, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch with my former co-workers, as best I can based on my NDA/non-compete.

Long story short, I stopped drinking the company Koolaid, because I stopped trusting my superiors.

For those of you stuck in bad positions: Find a backup plan if you want to make things better… find that next job, then go to your management and see if you can get things “made better” for you, if you want to keep that current job. If you don’t want to stay, leave, and take that next job. If you’re a good employee, and are worth keeping, they’ll probably fight to keep you. But remember, especially if you’re a sales person, that you’re only worth “What you did for me lately” so that tact may backfire for you if you threaten to leave and don’t have a backup plan… you never know.