When sacking the star makes good business sense
 In many of the sales teams that I have studied and worked with there are the stars. Usually just one or two people, they seem to have an ability to close sales and hit targets time after time, no matter how difficult things seem to be. Often they're looked up to and cared for, motivated and rewarded, even to the point that the way the entire sales team is managed is geared towards keeping just one or two people happy.
I caused uproar when I suggested to a client they should sack their top performing salesman ought. I was summoned into the Sales Director's office and ordered to explain myself. I was, after all, a consultant who was supposed to be helping them improve sales, not lose them.
What I set out was a profile of their culture that had, over the past couple of years, been slowly gearing itself towards making this star a success at the expense of the team as a whole. The team were handing what they saw as "difficult sales" off to him to close. Each time one of these was passed on it added to a perception that he was some sort of master "closer", which meant more sales were sent his way. Management had reinforced this view of him, joking about his abilities at team meetings and giving him bonuses and benefits denied to other team members.
They had created a feedback loop that meant each success made him more successful, and each success chipped away a little at the rest of the team. The legend was out of control and slowly pulling the rest of the sales team down.
Evidence, demanded the Sales Director. I had to have evidence.
And I did. I had looked at who originated the sales, and noted a relatively even spread amongst the team, with one notable exception. The "star" had not identified a single new client in the past year.
Clearly, observed the Sales Director, this was because he was busy closing all those difficult deals.
Which is when I turned to the second piece of evidence. Each year staff were required to take a two week holiday. When the "star" was on holiday the number of sales dipped a little, but only enough to account for being a man down. Sales made by the rest of the team went up and compensated as they closed their own deals.
Ah, said the Sales Director, then the sales people must be lazy.
Maybe, I argued and pulled out the third piece of evidence, the results of a confidential staff survey. If they were lazy it was because the system was geared around one man. The sales manager and the "star" both expected everything to be funnelled into one place because of the great skill of one man. Everyone else saw their self-confidence being knocked and a profound sense of frustration came through the comments.
The Sales Director started to come round to my way of thinking, but wasn't willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. Instead, as an experiment, he assigned the "star" to a product development project, taking him out of the sales team for at least six weeks. The sales team were retrained and new personal targets were set, effectively requiring the team to hit the same numbers at they were making when they were one man up. Some sales refresher training was provided, the Director took a more direct and active interest in the running of the team and they went on their way.
It would be a lie to say all went well from the off. The team had to reform and reestablish themselves, which took a couple of week. They needed their self-confidence to build back up and it could easily have gone horribly wrong if the Director hadn't been willing to ease the team into their new role rather than force it down their throats. Targets were missed, then nearly reached and after a month they were back to where they were.
At which point they started to outperform themselves.
When it was time for the "star" to rejoin a new friction had to be dealt with. Used to having business handed to him he had to go out and get it, which it turned out he wasn't very good at. When someone had lined up a deal for him to close he was bold and confident. When he had to do it himself he was timid and uncertain. I was sure that something could be done with him, but the Director took the decision to "help him make the right career move" and he was soon gone.
The lesson here, I believe, is not to be complacent and take a step back to look at the bigger picture. Examining what really sat behind a star salesman's performance revealed a broken team, a culture designed to make one man a success and no one really aware of what was going on because they looked at a single figure - sales performance - without understanding how that figure arose. If you do the same with your sales teams you may find something similar.
Previously on this blog...
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Setting up shop in a new country: beyond the website
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Why call centre staff deserve your respect
If call centre staff set the first impression for your business, why do we treat them so badly?
Becoming a Specialist? A hard decision to make ...
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Losing a member of staff to another company is not necessarily a bad thing
The quest for quality in Agile Software Development
Why quality assurance remains a central part of project management, regardless of the use of Agile methods
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