A Thank you Note to the Worst. Boss. EVER

This month Factor 8 turned 8 years old. I’d have missed it completely if I hadn’t gotten your LinkedIn Congratulations. Thanks you guys! So it’s on this auspicious occasion that I want to publicly acknowledge the complete tool that I used to call my boss. My friend, you drove me right into entrepreneurship.

Can you picture him or her? If you’ve been to one of my leadership seminars, you could actually picture MY boss (you BET I show his picture!), but how about YOUR worst boss? The worst jerk you ever reported to? Got his or her picture in your head? See how it makes you feel in the pit of your stomach? I actually still get a little involuntary sneer on my face when I do. Now answer this question:

How many of these guys or gals work for you today that you don’t know about?

Inside Sales Managers are some of the very worst offenders in the crappy-boss arena folks. We’ve taken young and inexperienced sales reps and promoted them. Then we gave them little to no training and let’s be honest, not a lot of great role models (we do have a pretty young profession). So this is it, I’m going on record to blatantly say:

Poor Sales Managers are THE NUMBER ONE REASON that you have high turnover on your inside sales team.

And believe me, they appear completely differently to you than they do to their team. Here are a few nuggets to consider:

• Who has the highest turnover and lowest? If you’re not tracking this, start!
• Who has the highest number of reps making quota (vs. just percentage of the team to quota that can be carried by one or two sellers)
• How are your managers doling out leads, inbounds or web inquiries? Is there an objective process in place?
• Do each of your managers have regular 1:1 meetings with every single person on their team?
• How soon do your managers reach out to your employees after they’re hired (hint: Before they start and day one are best practices)
• How often do your managers touch your customers (the good ones, not just the ones that are pissed).
• How much training have you given your managers?

Call to action 1: Folks, you need VIRTUAL SALES MANAGEMENT training – not just the good touchy-feely stuff from HR. Check out my LBTV posting on what training you need here.

Call to action 2: Consider re-appropriating your rep training budget for your managers (you’ll get more ROI from your rep training that way).

Call to action 3: If you have under five managers, check out the online training from AA-ISP. Sure online training isn’t as good as live, but this will take you a good way down the field.

MAN that’s a lot of calls to action. Hope this was helpful everyone! And boss man (you know who you are): You were really truly awful.. Thanks! 🙂