hooah sales management
TRANSCRIPT
Hooah Sales
Management
“How I used the Leadership Lessons I learned in the
Army to Succeed in Sales”
By
Alan Sanger
1
Lieutenant Colonel, US Army Reserve, Retired
West Point Class of 1980
Why I got into sales
In 1992 when I left the U.S. Army I thought that
my 20 years of military service clearly qualified me for
a management position in any civilian company. Many
of my West Point classmates and friends in the army
had left military service to take well-paying middle
management jobs in civilian companies. I thought if
they could, surely I could too. We had all talked about
the demand in the civilian world for the work ethic that
most ex-military people had. Additionally, we felt that
we weren’t just leaders, we were goal focused
managers [mission oriented in military speak] and not
clock watchers.
It turned out to be much more difficult than I
anticipated it would be to find employment in the
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waning months of 1992. The U.S. economy was in a
mild recession, and as one executive recruiter told me,
“Alan, a significant percentage of mid-level managers
have lost their jobs in this recession, you’re competing
with them for a job, and they have an advantage over
you.”
In my ignorance I had thought that my background
was stronger than the average ex-officer seeking
civilian employment. My leadership experience wasn’t
limited to the time I had spent as a lieutenant, captain
or major in the army. I also had a strong leadership
background in high school prior to enlisting in the army.
I was elected to the offices of president of the Science
Club, president of the Junior Citizens for Coolidge (a
junior Chamber of Commerce organization), president
of my church’s youth group; squadron leader of the
local Junior Civil Air Patrol, president of the local
Explorers’ post, and vice-president of the Future
Business Leaders of America Parliamentary Procedure
Team.3
In those elected positions I learned a lot about how
to handle my peers, time management, and
responsibility. Frankly that’s why as a young enlisted
soldier I was not surprised when the army selected me
for promotion to sergeant after slightly less than two
years of active duty service in the airborne infantry.
Nor was I surprised when shortly later the army asked
me to go to West Point to earn an officer’s commission.
My belief was that hard work, combined with eagerly
seeking responsibility, should result in advancement to
leadership positions.
What advantage would civilian mid-level managers
have over me and my leadership qualifications I asked
the recruiter?
“They’ve got experience in civilian jobs making a
difference in the real world. You haven’t done
anything,” he told me. “You’re what we call well
educated, unskilled labor, with no experience.”
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“Oh,” I replied. “Then what can I do, what am I
qualified to do?”
“You need to seriously look at what everyone does
who doesn’t have any experience or real skills.”
“What’s that?”
“Sales. You need to go into sales. You don’t have
to know anything to be in sales.”
And that was how I was introduced to sales.
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Why I think sales managers should read this book
Despite what that recruiter told me I found out
several things when I finally entered the civilian work
force. First of all, I found out that skills were required to
succeed in sales. However, the problem with entry
level sales positions is that most companies have a
meat grinder approach to recruiting for sales. They
seem to feel that there isn’t any real way to determine
during interviewing who has a real chance at
succeeding at sales so they often hire any warm body.
And thirdly, there was a lot of confusion as to what was
needed to succeed as a selling organization. New “How
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To Sell” books roll off the presses seemingly every
month, but there are very few books on how to manage
a sales force to be truly effective.
As I watched sales managers and sales executives
come and go I saw that there actually is a good
predictor of success for sales management. Good
managers use good leadership. And, despite what that
recruiter told me so long ago, there isn’t any difference
in the leadership needed in a sales organization and
what I saw needed in an infantry rifle platoon. That is
the purpose of this book, to show how the leadership
lessons I and so many other officers and non-
commissioned officers learned in the army have a
direct application to everyday management situations
in civilian companies. Let’s take a quick look at those
experiences I had in the army, and then we’ll see how I
applied those lessons to challenges I faced in the “real
world.”
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I was 17 years old when I originally enlisted in the
army in 1973 as a private in the airborne infantry. The
army rapidly promoted me to sergeant in less than two
years. Shortly after my selection for promotion to
sergeant the army asked me to consider attending the
United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point,
New York. I was flattered, I didn’t have money for a top
tier university after the army, and the opportunity
would allow me to cut short my four year enlistment
obligation and start “college” a year earlier than I had
anticipated. I had to take advantage of the opportunity.
Accepting the Army’s invitation, I obtained Senator
Barry Goldwater’s endorsement and entered West Point
in 1976 as a member of the USMA class of 1980. After
graduation I attended and completed Infantry Officer’s
Basic Course (IOBC) and Ranger School in route to my
first assignment as a rifle platoon leader with B
Company of the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade,
101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell,
Kentucky.8
The normal army career progression for a new
infantry second lieutenant is to serve for eighteen
months as a rifle platoon leader, and then finish out his
three year tour in a second job such a company
executive officer or specialty platoon leader such as the
mortar platoon leader, scout platoon leader, motorpool
officer, assistant battalion S-3 (operations and
planning), assistant battalion S-2 (intelligence), or
assistant battalion S-4 (logistics). After about 24
months of army service the Second Lieutenant was
usually promoted to First Lieutenant. Upon completion
of his first tour the First Lieutenant would head off to
Fort Benning, GA, for the six month Infantry Officers
Advance Course (IOAC). Sometime before his next tour
of duty starts the First Lieutenant was usually promoted
to Captain and ready to take command of his first
company.
My experience was different. After only six
months as a rifle platoon leader my Battalion
Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Scotty McGurk told me 9
that I had achieved competency as a rifle platoon
leader and ordered me to take command of the
battalion’s anti-armor weapons platoon. In those days
in the 101st the anti-armor platoon was normally
commanded by an experienced first lieutenant; I was
still a very junior second lieutenant when ordered to
take command of the anti-armor platoon.
After assuming command of the platoon I found
that my responsibilities had doubled, instead of the
seven non-commissioned officers (NCO’s) and 25
enlisted soldiers I had commanded in the rifle platoon I
now had 79 NCO’s and enlisted, as well as 39 vehicles.
Six months later my platoon was broken up into three
separate platoons and reorganized into a new
company; which is a higher level organization than a
platoon. I was “elevated” to the position of company
executive officer of the newly formed Anti-Armor
Company. A captain was put in command of the new
company since companies in an infantry organization
are usually commanded by captains. I felt demoted, I 10
now had to assist a captain do what I successfully did
as a lieutenant.
Six months later, even though I was still a very
junior first lieutenant, I was hand-selected by the
Colonel commanding the 1st Brigade to serve as his
Brigade S-3 Air Officer. As the S-3 Air I was responsible
for the planning of all tactical and administrative
movements of the brigade and control of all air and rail
transportation assets utilized by the brigade. Normally
a very experienced junior captain or a senior captain is
selected to fill this role in a light infantry army brigade
that is as dependent upon rapid movement as a 101st
Air Assault Brigade is.
Nine months later I was approached by the new
commander of the 1st Battalion that I had originally
been assigned to. He wanted to know if I could help his
Headquarters Company achieve a passing score on its
Annual General Inspection (AGI). As an aggressive,
confident officer I gave him the only possible answer…
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of course I could. He told me that if I could achieve that
then he would arrange for me to take command of the
company.
I told him that while I would love to command a
company, I would rather command a rifle company, not
a rear echelon headquarters company (HHC). So we
negotiated an agreement. If I could deliver on my
confident boast to get the HHC to pass the AGI he
would give me command of of the next available rifle
company. That was a bargain I just could not refuse.
Not many officers get to command two companies, and
it was practically unheard of for a lieutenant to
command twice in an infantry brigade. I visions of
rapid promotion to General.
But first I had a significant challenge to face, huge
even for a supremely confident officer like myself.
Normally a rifle battalion’s HHC is commanded by a
senior captain who perhaps had successfully
commanded another company previously. I was still
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only a lieutenant, who may have commanded a couple
platoons but not yet a company. None the less, I
accepted the challenge and four months later my
battalion commander was pleased to see his HHC pass
the AGI for the first time in almost five years. And true
to his word, my battalion commander later gave me
command of a rifle company, B Company.
Since B Company was a light infantry rifle
company I had achieved every infantry lieutenant’s
dream, command of a rifle company. I was in heaven
and dove into the management of my new company.
We had some issues initially, but within three to four
months I’d weeded out the non-performers and trained
the NCO’s and officers to perform to what I felt were the
standards expected of a light infantry company in the
Army. Six months after I had taken command of the
company my battalion commander asked me to see
him in his office. When he offered me a cup of coffee I
knew I was in trouble, battalion commanders don’t
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routinely invite junior company commanders into their
office for chit chat.
My commander finally started a monologue about
how we in the army were all part of a team, and that he
as the battalion commander was both the captain and
coach of our team. He continued the monologue with a
reminder that we all had our roles to play on the team,
roles with parts that sometimes entailed personal
sacrifice for the good of the team. He said that it was
his responsibility to get the entire battalion to pass the
next field performance test (called the Army Testing
Program or ARTEP in military speak), and that he knew
that I also wanted the battalion to do well.
At this point I saw that I was the team member
who was going to sacrifice something for the team. I
just hadn’t figured out yet what it was that I was going
to sacrifice. My boss told me that he was impressed
with how well I had prepared my company for the
ARTEP, that he wished that all of his rifle companies
14
were as ready. And then he said that my company was
too “fat” with talent and that I needed to share that
talent with the other companies in the battalion.
Now I knew why he was schmoozing me, he was
going to take some of my NCO’s. So, thinking about
the changes in my company organization and training I
was probably going to have to make, I asked him what I
could do to help. He smiled, said that he knew he could
count on my support, and then he dropped a bomb I
hadn’t expected. My commander told me that he was
going to take two of my three lieutenant platoon
leaders, one of my three platoon sergeants and almost
a quarter of my NCO’s and reassign them to the other
rifle companies in the battalion. When he saw my
stunned expression he added that I was not going to go
into the ARTEP short-handed, that he was going to swap
out the people he was taking from me with
replacements from the companies he was sending my
people to.
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It was obvious to me that not only were my
replacements not going to be as ready for the ARTEP as
the people I was giving up but that they might never be
as good as the people I was being asked to trade.
Before that day I had had no concerns about passing
the ARTEP, and in fact I had been feeling very confident
about how well my company was going to do. Perhaps I
had even been a little cocky about how well I thought
we were going to do when I talked with the other
company commanders. Now, I had visions of dismal
failure.
I bitterly asked my commander, how was I going
to get my company to pass the ARTEP with so many
sub-standard supervisors, and was he doing this
because I was just a lieutenant and that he needed the
other commanders, all captains, to pass the ARTEP? My
boss then told me the most surprising thing I heard that
afternoon. He told me that he was giving me the ash
and trash because he believed that I could train them in
the little time available so that my company could pass 16
the ARTEP, and that in fact he expected me to suck it
up (more military macho speak) and do what it took to
get my company to pass the ARTEP. So I said the only
thing I could, “yes sir!” Three months of hard work
later my company not only passed the ARTEP, we
achieved the highest score of the nine rifle companies
in the brigade.
How did I manage to accomplish so much at such
a junior rank? What were the tricks I used to get so
much successful performance out the people I led [or
“managed” in civilian speak]? Or was it simply luck?
As you’ll see in this book I was the beneficiary of very
good advice and mentoring from outstanding officers
and sergeants who in fact can claim credit for the
success I was fortunate to have. The purpose of this
book is to teach you the simple truths of military
leadership that they shared with me and that I used to
succeed in leadership positions that very clearly are
also applicable to civilian management challenges. The
four case studies included in this book illustrate the 17
value of leadership principles and techniques to both
military and civilian leaders.
At this point you are probably wondering what is
“Hooah Sales Management?” Hooah, pronounced Who
–ah, is an army term used as an adjective, a question, a
response, and is a frame of mind. Hooah is used to
describe an object, person, or action that is the epitomy
of excellence under difficult conditions. For example, if
a private says that a sergeant is hooah, he is saying
that sergeant is a prime example of what you would
expect a sergeant to be like; fit, competent and
aggressive about getting the job done. After explaining
what his unit is expected to do in a military operation,
an officer asks his soldiers, “Hooah?” Here he is asking
if everyone understands and is ready to perform their
job to the highest standards. When the soldiers reply,
“hooah!” they are telling the officer that of course they
understand what is expected and that they are ready to
do what it takes to succeed.
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Hooah sales management is strong, positive
leadership a sales manager exerts to lead his sales
team to success. Leadership is what makes this
different from simple sales management. Too many
sales managers seem to think that sales management
begins with setting goals and ends with holding others
accountable for the sales results. If you want to be an
average sales manager, then go ahead and just
manage. If however, you want your sales team to lead
the pack, then you will need to lead, not manage.
Hooah!
Case Study 1: Only Two Things Matter
(What Do You Focus On?)
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As I squatted next to my platoon’s right flank
foxhole position I could barely make out a tall figure
walking toward me in the evening rain. He didn’t look
like Charlie Company’s commander, or any of the
lieutenants I knew in Charlie Company. When he got
close I jumped up, just barely remembered we were in
the field under tactical conditions and held back from
saluting as I gave him a hearty “Good evening, sir, how
can I help you?”
Lieutenant Colonel McGurk, my battalion
commander, gruffly grunted and then asked me to
show him my platoon’s positions and defensive plan. I
was amazed at his patience as I walked him around my
platoon area, showing him the dug-in defensive
positions for both my riflemen and the machine guns.
He was very interested in my explanation of why I had
chosen the positions for the M-60 machine guns, how
their fires covered the most likely avenues of approach,
and how their secondary fire zones covered the flanks
of the platoons to my left and right. He was quiet as I 20
explained the locations and procedures for my
Listening Posts out in front of my platoon, and of the
contingency plans and signals I had worked out with my
platoon. He looked at my men finishing and
camouflaging their fighting positions, burying land line
wires, cleaning weapons and equipment, and how the
sleeping and administrative areas I had designated for
the platoon were well behind protective cover and out
of sight of my fighting line of defense. He didn’t say
anything or correct me as I showed him the entire
defensive plan I had laboriously drawn in grease pencil
on my laminated terrain map.
When I thought I had shown him everything there
was to see I asked if there was anything else I could do
for him. He grunted, scowled, and then told me that in
every important endeavor in life I needed to figure out
what were the most important tasks for success in that
endeavor. He added that if I came up with more than
just a couple key tasks then I wasn’t using the brain the
army had hoped I had when it commissioned me. 21
Resources and time are limited he told me. That’s why
it was so important to prioritize the most important
things we have to do, and do those first he said. He
then asked me what were the two most important
things I needed to do as an infantry platoon leader. I
thought about it for a minute, thought about the ass
chewings I’d heard other lieutenants had received from
LTC McGurk, and wondered what might be wrong with
what I’d shown him. “It’s not a trick question,
lieutenant,” growled LTC McGurk.
So I told him that I thought that the mission came
first, that we had to accomplish the missions we were
given no matter the cost. “Spoken like a true West
Point graduate and airborne ranger,” he responded.
“What’s the second thing?”
Something in the tone of his voice made me think
he wasn’t looking for the typical macho hooah
declaration. So I hazarded a guess, “my men, I want to
accomplish the mission with the least loss of life.”
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“That’s right, lieutenant,” he said. “It does no one
any good to win the battle if you lose the war because
you’ve thrown away your most important resource –
your men. The Germans and the French showed at the
Battle of Verdun in World War I that if you don’t care
about the loss of life in battle you may so exhaust
yourself and your resources that you can’t win the war.
But, soldiers are more than just numbers or grease
symbols on a map lieutenant, they are people with
families and homes, and in battle they are the closest
family you’ll ever have. So don’t squander their lives
over foolishness, fear or pride.” Then he grunted,
turned and walked away into the rain to continue his
inspection of the battalion defensive line.
Years later I was a new sales representative for
Champion International in their Dallas, Texas, office.
The regional manager, Greg Bowen, was one of the
best civilian managers I have ever had to pleasure to
work for. Greg taught me some great sales lessons
that I’ve incorporated into my “rules of thumb” that I 23
still use today when I teach young sales people. One
particular day Greg was talking to me about the sales
process and reviewing with me what the corporate
trainers had taught me about sales when he asked me
what were the two most important things about sales to
always remember. When he said that there were only
two really important things to focus on I felt a sense of
déjà vu and thought back to that rainy evening
discussion with LTC McGurk.
I thought about all of the techniques, procedures,
product knowledge, time management skills, and sales
platitudes I’d been taught and had read about. After
some consideration I told him, “the customer is the
most important thing in sales.” He looked at me. I
continued, “and, always deliver at least what you
promise to the customer.”
Greg smiled and said, “yes it’s true that the
customer is very important, and yes you should always
be careful to not overpromise what you can deliver to
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the customer, but those aren’t the two things that
determine whether or not you survive in sales. The
most important thing in sales is how much did you sell,
and for us in the paper business that can be measured
either in tons or dollars. And the second is how much
money did we make on it, because at the end of the
day we have to make a profit.”
“And Alan, I’m going to let you in on the dirty little
secret of sales,” he added. Companies talk a lot about
the importance of everyone being team players, about
the importance of their policies that everyone has to
abide by, and about how they believe in holding
everyone to the same high standards. That’s hooey.
Good sales numbers cover up a lot of sins. If your sales
numbers puts you in the top 10% of the sales force its
hard to get into real trouble, you practically have to get
arrested for a felony crime to get into trouble (which is
a paraphrase for the colorful anecdote Greg actually
told me).
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“And that leads to the first major sin you can
commit as a sales person. Failing to at least match
your previous year’s sales will get you very
uncomfortable attention. Do it two years in a row and
you ought to plan on looking for another career path.”
As I thought about what Greg told me and looked
across the company I saw that he was right. Those
sales people who managed to produce the better
numbers were those who appeared to me to receive
“special” treatment. And those who had trouble
maintaining sales looked haunted till the day we were
told that they had left the company “to pursue other
career opportunities.”
A few years later I was transferred to Atlanta,
Georgia, by Champion International to work on its Kraft
Paper and Board sales team. The national team was
led by VP Bob Sexton, one of the strongest executive
level managers I have had the good fortune to work
under. Ken Quod, my direct boss, was the
Southeastern Regional Manager reporting to Bob 26
Sexton. Ken impressed me because of his knowledge
of the industry and his unparalled relationships with the
key players amongst the independent corrugators and
paper converters. At the same time I was conflicted
about Ken because I wasn’t sure if he was the big
brother I always wanted or if he was the father figure I
missed.
When I first reported in to the regional office in
Atlanta Ken and I talked about my responsibilities and
the nature of the kraft paper and board business. Ken
told me that the Southeastern Region traditionally
lagged behind the Midwestern Region in total tons
shipped, and consequently at the quarterly sales
meetings at the paper mill in Roanoke Rapids, North
Carolina, we always suffered a little embarrassment
when we had to post our tons shipped numbers in front
of the entire sales and mill production team. It was
embarrassing because even though the mill was
essentially located in the Southeastern Region the
Midwestern Region shipped significantly more tons.27
Karen Hoaglund was the manager for the
Midwestern Region. Her region’s sales dollars and tons
shipped numbers impressed me because of the
obstacles she had to overcome to achieve those
numbers. She had the farthest distance to ship and
very demanding customers. She also was one of those
rare people who were not only a genuine sales
superstar, but also a very good manager.
Ken told me that he really wanted to beat Karen’s
numbers. He told me that with the heavy presence of
large paper company kraft mills in the southeast we
faced a lot of competition. But, he also said that he
believed that if we focused on value added products,
combined with our freight advantage over the
Midwestern Region, that we could achieve better
profitability then the Midwestern Region. For that
reason he was going to ask me to focus my efforts on
manufacturing converters using kraft paper to make
products other than merely bags (grocery store paper
bags, pet food bags, cement bags, etc), and not on 28
independent corrugators using kraft linerboard to make
corrugated for boxes.
“Profit Dollars, are going to be our strong point,”
he said. I had that sense of déjà vu as he continued to
tell me that really only two numbers count, tons
shipped and profit dollars. He said that so long as we
produced significant profit dollars that we could do
pretty much as we wished with no interference from
Bob. He said that if we made Bob happy with good
profit figures then he wouldn’t feel the need to directly
manage us, and we would have wide latitude on how
we wanted to manage our territory and business.
However, Ken said, if we fail to make money then Bob
was going to step in and that would be uncomfortable
for both of us.
So I embarked on my mission to sell tons at a good
profit. I traveled from Louisiana to Georgia, from
Virginia to Florida, on the road an average of three
weeks a month. At every customer and prospect I
29
called on I looked for opportunities to sell kraft paper as
something other than what a bag was made from.
Thanks to supportive mill engineers and the operations
personnel at the Roanoke Rapids mill, and to very
patience prospects and customers we were able to
develop new applications for our kraft paper that
resulted in excellent profits for the Southeastern
Region.
I still remember the pleasure in Ken’s eyes when
we presented our numbers at the quarterly mill
meeting showing that we generated more profit dollars
over the last quarter then the Midwestern Region did.
Karen’s team still shipped significantly more tons and
consequently billed more sales dollars, but we
managed to just beat her total profit dollars earned.
And, the accolades we received from Bob Sexton
reaffirmed to me that, yes, we had done the right thing
in planning where we were going to prioritize our
efforts.
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After Action Review
The Army conducts an “After Action Review” (AAR)
after completing every field exercise or operation
rehearsal. The objective of the AAR is to learn from the
mistakes made and to summarize the learning points.
We’ll use the AAR to summarize the key learning points
of each case study.
1. The tasks of almost every job can be distilled down
to just a few over-riding priorities to focus on.
2. How much did you sell is always at the top of the
list, because if you don’t sell anything you’re out
of business.
3. How much profit did you make is extremely
important also, because if you don’t make money
31
on what you sell then you’re soon out of business,
unless you’ve been very creative with your books.
4. All sales activities should support these two
priorities, nothing else will help your company
succeed. You can have the best marketing
department, great community relations, the
happiest employees, but none of that means
anything if you have to shut your doors because
you don’t make money. Everyone in the
organization should be very aware of the
company’s goals and performance in these two
areas, and their performance goals should be in
direct support of the company’s sales and profit
goals.
32
Case Study 2: International Sales
(How to Achieve Success Without Direct Control of
Operational Assets; i.e, Managing Indirectly)
After selling for eleven years as what is commonly
referred to as an “individual contributor” I finally
achieved one of the goals I had set for myself,
management of other sales people. What made it even
better is that I had international responsibilities and
travel. I had been working for International Paper (IP)
for three years as an industrial packaging sales
representative for their box manufacturing plant in
33
Morrristown in eastern Tennessee when an
International Product Manager position opened up on
IP’s corporate staff in Memphis, Tennessee. I applied
for the position, was accepted, and moved my family to
the home of Elvis Presley, Beale Street, the Blues,
Barbeque, and the University of Memphis Tigers.
I was excited about the position because I had
responsibility for the entire process; from product
development to sales and marketing of my product line.
My boss, a great guy named Chris Reilly, was the global
product manager and had the Profit and Loss (P&L)
responsibility for our business unit that had about $50
to $70 million in annual sales. He delegated to me
responsibility for our product lines outside of the United
States and Canada.
When he briefed me on the structure of the
business unit, how we did business, and what my
responsibilities were going to be he told me that he had
never failed to meet his business unit’s profit and sales
34
goals and that he expected me to be a quick learner of
the product line and the product development process,
and to energize the sales of our products in Asia, Latin
America, and North Africa and the Middle East. The
challenge I was going to face, he told me, would be how
to meet my objectives without having direct
management of the people in any of the functional
areas that designed, manufactured, and sold my
product line; product development, sales, marketing, or
customer service.
The Beverage Packaging Division of International
Paper had a long history of deep penetration in the
coated board beverage packaging industry and good
profit margins. The division procured the basic heavy
board from one of the company’s paper mills, coated it
and prepared it for shipment to its beverage packaging
converting plants in the United States, Europe, Latin
America, the Middle East, and Asia. My business unit,
SpoutPak, was part of the Beverage Packaging Division.
35
SpoutPak produced a product line of injected-
molded plastic “spouts” that were sold to International
Paper’s beverage packaging converting plants
worldwide, as well as outside customers. The spout
was a value-added add-on to the basic carton that
allowed the carton to be opened and then resealed like
a bottle with a cap. The SpoutPak business model was
unique within IP for several reasons.
SpoutPak did not “own” any manufacturing
facilities; to include none of the facilities used to
develop or manufacture the spouts of our product line.
Also, the majority of SpoutPak’s sales were actually
internal sales to IP facilities or business units. Yes, we
also sold directly to large outside users of spouts, but
our focus was primarily to generate sales in partnership
with the beverage packaging sales force.
The challenge was to convince the beverage
packaging sales force of the value of our product line,
and then to help them secure sales with their
36
customers and prospects. The product development
engineers we worked with were officially members of
Beverage Packaging, not SpoutPak. Even though we
were assessed a corporate load to pay for their time
and expenses they reported through a beverage
packaging chain of command and could be pulled or
redirected by the head of beverage packaging to
projects that were higher on his priority list.
The last major unique aspect I initially was leery of
was that we didn’t own our own manufacturing assets;
we outsourced all manufacturing. We technically
“owned” the injection molds, and sometimes also the
presses the molds were mounted on, but we didn’t own
or manage the plants the spouts were manufactured in.
Our influence over the manufacturing process in these
independent injection molding plants depended upon
the amount of business we were able to give to the
plants that made our spouts. We had contracts with
three major injection molding companies in the United
37
States, one in France, one in Venezuela, and one in
China.
My initial assessment was that I had two primary
problems when I assumed my new duties in Memphis.
The first was the need to complete the development of
a new spout product called the AP-20 that was
beginning to run past its forecasted market rollout, and
to make matters worse, it was beginning to run over its
forecasted budget. The second problem I had to
address was how to motivate the international sales
and marketing teams to market and sell the spout
product line, without having direct managerial control
over them. As you can tell, the first problem was a
straightforward product development issue, however
the second problem was clearly a significant leadership
challenge. Since the purpose of this book is to discuss
sales leadership we’ll leave the conversation of the
solution to the product development issue for another
venue.
38
The key elements in the problem I faced here are
that I had very specific dollar sales goals to hit, but no
sales force that reported directly or indirectly to me.
Nor could I hire a sales force or actually directly sell
myself. When I examined the issues surrounding the
motivation of the foreign sales teams to market and sell
the spout product line I quickly saw that the lackluster
international sales were due to the international teams
not understanding the value of the spout product
offering, not understanding the competitive landscape,
and their fear of tackling the competition head on.
There was no specific plan in place on how to market
and sell the product line. Fortunately, this was not the
first time I had been in an organization that didn’t know
how it was going to accomplish the goals that had been
set for it, and no resources to do it. Let’s go back to
that time when I was wearing army green and see what
lessons I learned that were applicable to this situation.
The sad truth of the matter is that I have taken
command of a number of army units that had no plan 39
on how it was going to achieve the missions it was
facing. I sometimes thought that army organizations
prided themselves entirely too much on their ability to
improvise solutions in the midst of chaos and confusion.
Fortunately in most cases we “commanders” had direct
command and control of the people we were driving
toward our mission goals. However, in one case I did
not have command or control over the organizations I
depended upon to achieve my assigned mission, and
that experience taught me how to get results when I
didn’t have direct control over the operational assets I
depended upon to achieve my objectives.
At one stage of my army career I was a foreign
area officer in charge of a team of ten soldiers in a
psychological operations (PSYOPS) battalion that
operated in Latin America. The job of a PSYOPS team is
normally to support army combat units in hostile areas
during wartime or in peace keeping actions. PYSOPS
helps the regular army combat units in a variety of
ways; it helps to inform and win over the indigenous 40
civilian population, and to misinform and de-motivate
the enemy military.
In 1989 President Bush decided that something
had to be done to stem the flood of narcotics flowing
into the United States. The president issued a directive
to all departments and agencies of the U.S. government
to cooperate and get engaged in combating narcotics
trafficking. Due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the reluctance of the Red Chinese to step up into the
role of Evil Empire the world situation was depressingly
devoid of challenges meriting a large (translate as well-
funded) standing army. With this new presidential
directive the U.S. Army saw an opportunity to have a
mission.
US Army PSYOPS also saw in this directive an
opportunity to not only justify and hopefully increase
their own budget, but to also get engaged in real-world
operations (and thus gain positive visibility in the
military command structure). My team was part of the
41
1st PSYOPS Battalion of the 1st Psychological Operations
Group (1st POG), based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
My battalion commander called me into his office,
explained the new presidential directive and then gave
me a mission.
He instructed me to get PSYOPS on the map in
South America; to get my unit engaged in supporting
the United State’s counter-narcotics operations
specifically in three countries. He told me that my
team’s budget would not be increased, that I would
have to find additional money from other agencies and
military units to fund the significantly greater
operational expenses this new mission would require.
Additionally, I would have to obtain approval from not
only the U.S’s diplomatic teams in each country to
operate in those countries, but I would also need
approval from the governments of those countries prior
to any operations.
42
And there was an important restriction I had to
work with; since U.S. federal law prohibited the U.S.
Army from engaging in any military operations in
foreign countries without congressional approval, I had
to ensure that I and my team did not do the planning or
operational control of any psychological operations
conducted outside of a training environment in the
designated foreign countries. Not withstanding this
prohibition I still had to provide documented
measurable results of the work my team and I claimed
responsibility for.
Imagine how I felt. I was told to “go do
something.” I wasn’t going to get any money to do it
with. I couldn’t directly do anything myself, nor would I
have control over any operational assets. I had to tip
toe around federal law, and my military career
depended upon my providing concrete results. Whew!
Where to start?
43
I knew that I had a few things to accomplish first.
Just as with all military operations I needed to know
what the ground situation was; what the enemy and
friendly situation were. Without that I couldn’t develop
a plan of action. Understanding what the narcotics
trafficking situation was in my assigned area would
inform me what resources I would need. I needed to
know what U.S. agencies were operating in the area,
which ones wanted to operate in the area, and most
importantly which ones had money in their budgets
that I could tap into. And lastly, I needed to determine
how to get things done in my area without direct
control of operational assets.
Six months of door to door soliciting with U.S.
agencies resulted in a budget I knew was good enough
to get some operations off the ground. At the same
time my team had gathered a large amount of
information about the structure, operations, and impact
of narcotics trafficking in our area. The tricky stage
44
now was obtaining approval from the U.S. Ambassadors
to operate in their countries.
U.S. Ambassadors are the direct representatives of
the U.S. president in each country. As such, their
decisions are law for all U.S. civilian and military
personnel in their country of responsibility. I couldn’t
do anything without their express approval. You would
think that since I was there because the president had
ordered the military to get involved in counternarcotics
there wouldn’t be any problem with getting their
approval. But that wasn’t the case. Ambassadors are
political creatures and very sensitive to the potential
pitfalls of any American military sponsored activity in
their countries of responsibility. The Ambassadors
wanted assurances that I and my team would not be
doing any “black” psychological operations, nor any
“advising” of the host nation military and police in real-
world operations.
45
A “black” operation in military, or intelligence,
parlance is any operation where the United States does
not want any connection or tie between the operation
and the official United States government. An example
would be the seizures of suspected terrorists in the last
decade and their rendition to U.S. allies for questioning.
Allegedly, members, or assets, of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), or perhaps of other U.S.
military or civilian agencies, snatched off the streets of
foreign countries people suspected of having ties to Al
Queda and transported them to secret foreign prisons
where they were “aggressively interrogated.” The
snatch operations were supposedly conducted without
the prior knowledge or approval of the countries where
the people were snatched, and the United States
government officially denied that it had planned and
conducted the snatch operations. As you can see, a big
problem with black operations is that they often
become well-known and subsequently an
embarrassment for the government that sponsored
46
them. For that reason the ambassadors told me that if
they ever suspected that my team was going to
conduct a black operation they would suspend their
approval and throw me and my team out of the
country.
The prohibition against “advising” was based upon
a similar concern about the potential for political
scandal. As a result of the fallout from President
Reagan’s cowboy military operations in Central
America, Congress mandated that the U.S. military
inform them of all “advisory” military operations in
foreign countries. I assured the U.S. ambassadors of
the three countries I was going to operate in that I was
well aware of the prohibitions on black operations and
the restriction against advising the host nation military
on any real tactical or strategic operations. Further, I
informed the ambassadors that in addition to
respecting these restrictions I would provide their
offices with a copy of the after-action reports I would
prepare after every visit and project that involved their 47
country of responsibility. My effusive acceptance of the
restrictions and self-imposed reporting requirements so
neatly tied my own hands that the ambassadors felt
that I was going to be so completely ineffective as to be
harmless, and subsequently no threat to their
beauracratic tranquility. So they approved my requests
to operate in their countries.
The next step was to obtain the approval and
support of the appropriate agencies in the host nations
so that I could actually get something done. In every
U.S. embassy there is a Defense Attache Office that will
have assigned to it one or more officers of at least one
of the branches of the U.S. military. Armed with the
ambassadors’ approvals I approached the army
attaches in my targeted three countries and asked for
their help in getting in front of the heads of the military
of the host nations, who were for the most part army
generals. This was much easier accomplished than
getting appointments to see the U.S. ambassadors.
48
When the minister of defense of each of the
countries was informed that there was a U.S. Army
PSYOPS officer requesting permission to brief them on
the “force multiplier effects” of military psychological
operations they couldn’t say no. Not only were they
curious they suspected that there was an opportunity to
obtain support for their very real counter insurgency
battles. Despite a natural tendency to resent a
perceived U.S. heavy handedness in Latin American
politics and economic affairs most Latin American
senior government officials concede the success of U.S.
military doctrine and tactics. For that reason these
countries tend to loosely copy and mimic the U.S. Army
in both structure and operational methods. However,
they are also quick to point out the advantages the U.S.
military has had over its enemies in size, technology,
and logistics.
The Defense Ministers told our army attaches that
they wanted to see what our psychological operations
tactics and methods were. I told the ministers of 49
defense about the president’s directive to all U.S.
government agencies to take proactive measures to
combat narcotics trafficking, and I explained how
PSYOPS could support the efforts of their military and
police in combating narcotics trafficking. They all told
me that the flow of narcotics to the United States was a
U.S. domestic problem and two of the ministers told me
that they had more serious insurgency issues to deal
with. All of the ministers told me that they were poor
countries with limited resources and did not have the
funds to establish new military units. In sales this initial
phase of conversation with a prospect is called the
discovery phase, and I had just learned what the pain
points of my prospects were, and had heard their initial
objections.
Despite the storied turbulence on the streets of
our country in the sixties and early seventies we in U.S.
have never had to deal with armed insurgencies of the
scale that many Latin American countries dealt with in
the sixties through to today. Most Americans make the 50
assumption that the only reason there were
insurgencies in Latin America is because the people
there were oppressed by military dictatorships and
forced to take up arms in a fight for freedom and
political representation. That assumption makes for a
good story or movie, but the actuality is more
complicated.
For example, Colombia has had military
dictatorships in the past, but the truth of the matter is
that it also has one of the oldest democracies in Latin
America. The reason violent, leftist guerrilla groups
fight the Colombian army is because they have
consistently failed to win sufficient votes in fair
elections to have the level of political representation
they feel entitled to. So the aim of Latin American
guerrillas is to use violence to negotiate their way to
victory with exhausted democratically elected
governments.
51
Two of the countries I was trying to develop
operations in had old, long term insurgencies that were
a constant challenge to the military and financial
resources of their ministers of defense. The defense
ministers of those countries met with me to see if there
was the possibility I would be able to provide them with
assistance that could be used to support their counter-
insurgency wars.
You can imagine their disappointment when I told
them that I and the U.S. Army could not directly support
their counter-insurgency operations. I explained the
restrictions placed on me by U.S. law and the U.S.
ambassadors. I also made it very clear that I had a
limited budget; that Uncle Sam had not given me a
blank check to go along with his wide-sweeping mission
objective. And then I hooked them. I told them that if
they worked with me to develop their own military
PYSOPS resources, and allowed me to train them on
how to use it to combat narcotics trafficking, that they
would then have the PYSOPS capability to take on any 52
mission they deemed appropriate, with an emphasis on
“any mission.” I explained how not only are PYSOPS
organizations inexpensive to set up and operate, but
what I meant by the force multiplier effect they could
get from their investment in the program. And, I told
them that if they approved this project that I would also
personally train their staff officers on how to
incorporate PSYOPS into their military operational
planning. That closed the deal. I received carte
blanche approval to go anywhere in the countries that I
wanted, to work with any military units, and to work
with their national command staff to develop and train
a unit of PYSOPS specialists.
My official role in this effort now was that of team
leader of a team of American army psychological
operations trainers. Obviously, I had responsibility for
training the higher level planners along with
coordinating and designing the nascent PSYOPS cells
that the host nations developed. I had no command
over any foreign PSYOPS units, and gave no orders or 53
direction in any of the training exercises, but I had
influence over outcomes. My role with the national
level staffs was more in line with that of a consultant.
The tension I faced daily was with local military
officers who didn’t fully understand the capabilities and
limitations of PYSOPS, and who wanted to rapidly build
their own PYSOPS units so that they could deploy them
against the guerillas that were terrorizing their
countries. So I used personality and persuasive
argument to guide my hosts to make on their own the
decisions I needed made to support my own mission
objectives. In the end, we were mutually successful
and I left Latin America knowing that I had not only
served my country well, but that I had also made a
positive impact on the professionalism and military
capabilities of several countries.
Just as in Latin America, my challenge with the
international sales teams in IP’s beverage packaging
division was how to motivate organizations to want
54
work with me and accept direction they weren’t
obligated to accept. The solution was the same; find
the pain points and then use personality and logical
persuasion to illustrate the potential value of my
contribution to their teams. I began by researching the
history of spout sales internationally and seeking a
linkage between spout sales and profitability. Working
with the beverage packaging R&D group I also soon
developed a very good understanding of the spout
technology to use as sales points.
The result of my research was that spouts provide
three benefits to the beverage packaging sales teams.
The first is that spouts allow a traditional carton
beverage filler to compete with bottles, pouches, and
other carton fillers using spouts. The second is that the
profit margins on the sale of spouts for beverage
packaging sales teams are generally good. And lastly,
when a beverage producer adds spouts to their carton
filling operation the beverage packaging sales teams
55
tends to lock in their sales with that beverage producer
for the long term.
Armed with this information I contacted the
general managers of IP’s international beverage
divisions. I told them that I would like to work with
them to achieve two things; increase their sales and
increase their profits. Additionally, I told them that I
was a free resource for them, that I could provide them
with assistance to develop their sales and marketing
plans for spouts, and that my assistance in that area
could help strengthen their sales and marketing
expertise. What manager with P&L responsibility
wouldn’t want that? Approval quickly came from the
three regional managers. Just as in my Latin American
PYSOPS project, I found that when I presented myself as
an adjunct “free” member of their team, that my sole
priority was their success, I earned appreciation for my
efforts instead of the resentment I probably would have
garnered as an intervening self-aggradizing corporate
56
staff member making demands on their time and
resources.
I volunteered to demonstrate and teach how to
conduct street consumer surveys. I taught the sales
teams how to understand and present the difference
between a feature and a benefit to a prospective
customer. I taught the teams how to compare and
contrast competitive offerings. I also showed them the
importance of knowing how to calculate and present
spout ROI’s to prospective customers. And lastly, I tried
to show how easy it was to have enthusiasm for sales
and why that is so important to a sales team. In every
teaching moment I focused on conversing with the
sales teams about what we needed to do and why we
needed to do it. I avoided directing them, talking down
to them, or acting as if I had all the answers. My belief
was that I needed to get them engaged if I were to
succeed, so I focused on soliciting their thoughts and
input.
57
The result? Ten percent increase in the sale of
spouts internationally in my first year as an
international product manager, and a twenty-five
percent increase in sales in my second year in the job.
The added benefit? When I called or visited the foreign
sales teams I was received with enthusiasm and
acceptance. I had no direct control over these sales
teams, but I could count on their support for any
initiative I developed. Clearly, it isn’t always necessary
to have direct control over your sales assets.
After Action Review
1. When you do not have direct control of the people
who will be doing the actual work in support of
your goals you have to demonstrate your value to
them in order to win their support and
cooperation.
2. Your value should be based on their needs, not
your desires.
58
3. Be a resource to your indirect team members, not
a liability.
4. Your enthusiastic, positive engagement with your
indirect team members will propel you to a
successful relationship with the indirect team
members.
5. Ensure that your appreciation of their efforts is
well known to the indirect team members.
Case Study 3: Multi-State Franchise Sales
(The Importance of Delegation in Large Organizations)
The Beverage Packaging division was very
profitable, but that wasn’t enough for International
Paper’s top management. IP made the decision to sell
the division. It soon became clear that the division
59
would not be bought by a competitor, but rather by an
investment group, Carter-Holt-Harvey out of New
Zealand. Several friends of mine in other companies
had had the pleasure of experiencing a buyout by an
investment group. Their experience convinced me to
consider seeking other employment options.
While perusing the tens of thousands of
management positions available on Monster.Com I
wound up responding to an ad for a business unit
manager position with Snap-On Tools. Snap-On Tools is
a Fortune 1000 company that prides itself on being the
premier manufacturer and distributor of hand tools in
the United States. Snap-On was seeking a Business
Unit Manager (affectionately referred to as a BUM by
the franchisees) to manage 44 franchise routes in the
Memphis Business Unit; a territory that stretched
southeast from just east of Little Rock, Arkansas, to
Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Snap-On eventually decided that
my knowledge and experience with sales and
management outweighed my grotesque ignorance of 60
hand tools and so they offered me the Memphis BUM
position.
I was excited about the challenge of the new
position. It was an opportunity to learn a new industry
and to directly manage a large multi-state sales force.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the poor sales
performance of the team I had just taken responsibility
for. The Memphis Business Unit was at only 56% of
sales plan half-way through the calendar year. Well, I
thought to myself, I had wanted a challenge and I now
had one. When I accepted the position my new boss
made it clear to me that Snap-On had an aggressive
“Git-Er Done” management culture that would not
tolerate lackluster results.
As I took stock of what I had to work with I noted
that I had franchisees in only 40 of the 44 routes, which
probably accounted for part of the sales
underperformance. Also, over half of the franchisees
were behind their sales of the previous year. About
61
one-tenth of the franchisees were on credit hold with
Snap-On corporate and couldn’t buy much in the way of
new inventory. To make matters more difficult I was
responsible for collecting the long-term debt payments
due from customers in the four open franchise
territories.
The structure of my business unit team included
myself (the business unit manager), a sales manager, a
franchise trainer, an unfilled administrative position,
and one temp employee. My responsibilities included
P&L for my business unit; recruiting, vetting, and
training new franchisees; managing the sale of Snap-On
products to the franchisees; helping the franchisees
with their marketing, sales, and business plans; taking
corrective action when needed with underperforming
franchisees; collecting the credit payments in open
territories; and assisting and facilitating repossessions
of tools and equipment when required.
62
After my first meeting with my business team and
franchisees I saw that I had a dispirited group that
distrusted Snap-On management and was only
interested in selling just enough to get by on. How was
I going to motivate this disgruntled group to want to
sell and turnaround their sales performance? And, it
quickly became apparent that I didn’t have enough
people on my business team’s staff to get all the
necessary work done. We three each worked 80 hours
a week just to keep our heads above water.
I also found out that the macho culture of Snap-On
not only encouraged extreme working conditions, it also
dismissed efforts to resolve the inefficient structure as
evidence of weak managerial character. So what was
an overworked, harried, and stressed business manager
to do to turn this situation around? How could I single-
handedly fix all of the issues and problems I saw
confronting the Memphis Business Unit?
63
The challenge I faced at Snap-On reminded me of
the issues I faced when I was asked to get that HHC in
the 101st Airborne division ready to pass the AGI. The
headquarters company had not passed an Annual
General Inspection in almost five years. The front line
supervising NCO’s were dispirited from the pressure on
them to get the company to pass the AGI and all the
troops felt that they were the butt of jokes in the
battalion for failing to pass the inspection year after
year.
So what is an AGI you ask? Back in the “olde
army” days the army had an inspection program that
annually validated the readiness of the equipment and
training in each maneuver element. This equipment
and training readiness was evaluated by what was
called the Annual General Inspection (AGI). The
inspection was conducted by a team of officers and
senior NCO’s from division headquarters. The AGI team
would descend upon your company early one morning,
usually on a Monday or Tuesday, and then proceed to 64
inspect every nook and cranny in your company for the
next three or four days.
The areas inspected included training and
administration records; supply records and property
accountability; vehicle readiness and maintenance;
weapons readiness and maintenance; Nuclear-
Biological-Chemical equipment and training;
communications equipment maintenance; and barracks
and mess hall condition. One of the key aspects they
checked was whether your records matched the ground
reality; for example, if your training records showed
that your company average Physical Fitness Test score
was 250 they would select 10 to 20 members of your
company at random and give them a physical fitness
test to see if their average score matched up with your
records. Or for example, they would inspect at random
a truck in the motorpool. If the truck needed parts, or
was due for a repair or service they expected to see
that already annotated in the records for that truck.
65
As you might imagine, there is a lot of work to
make sure that your records match your actual
readiness. Even more important was the pressure to
make sure that your readiness level was at the 90
percentile level or better, otherwise your unit wasn’t
considered ready for combat. Commanders who could
not get their units to score a 90 percentile in the AGI
generally did not earn a very good evaluation report
from their bosses, and more importantly the boss of
their boss.
In the army you receive a performance evaluation
at the end of each 12 months in your job, or at the end
of your command of a unit. Your direct boss is referred
to as your rater in that evaluation and he prepares 75%
of the written evaluation report. The boss of your boss
is what is referred to as your “senior rater,” and he
annotates on your report if your job performance
compared with your peers placed you above the pack of
your peers, in the middle of the pack of your peers, or
below the pack of your peers. That section is the single 66
most important factor in whether you are promoted and
given other opportunities to command at higher levels
in the army. AGI results often impacted on what rating
your senior rater gave you in his section of your annual
evaluation report.
Even though I was a very confident and cocky first
lieutenant I knew that this AGI was a big challenge I
really didn’t know how to approach. So I swallowed my
pride and went to look up the best company
commander I knew, Captain John Helen. John was a laid
back captain who had a strong reputation as a very
successful company commander. John was in his
second or third company command, which was a rare
accomplishment in those days with so many captains
clamoring for company command. We all knew that as
soon as he was promoted to the rank of Major that he
was destined to be put in one of the premier positions
on staff like the S-3, Operations Officer, position.
67
John welcomed me into his office with his
congratulations for my award of the HHC command and
said that I ought to feel pretty good about commanding
as a lieutenant. I thanked him for his compliments and
then told him about my problem. He smiled at me as I
then admitted my ignorance as to how to turn things
around in the HHC.
“How,” I asked him, “do I get this disorganized
mess of 172 officers, NCO’s and enlistedmen into good
enough shape to pass the AGI?” “And,” I asked him,
“why don’t you have this Tar Baby? You’re the best
company commander in this battalion, you ought to
have this command.”
John laughed at me and told me that because he
had passed an AGI before with a Headquarters
Company the Battalion Commander had asked him first
to take command of our HHC. But, John turned the
Battalion Commander down, telling him that he wanted
to be on record as passing an AGI with an infantry
68
company. He told the Battalion Commander that he
ought to give me the challenge of getting the HHC to
pass the AGI because of how well I had done during the
last AGI as an executive officer with the anti-armor
company.
“So that’s how I got into this situation,” I said to
John. “Ok, wise guy, how do I pass this thing?” John
said it was very simple. He told me to first find the best
qualified people for each of the commodity areas. A
commodity area is simply an area of responsibility; for
example, the arms room where all of the weapons were
stored had an “armorer” responsible for the records
and maintenance of the weapons in the arms room.
John recommended that I inspect each commodity
area, making an assessment of not only of whether the
area was prepared for the AGI, but also of the capability
of the commodity area manager to get that area ready
to pass the AGI. He told me that I didn’t have enough
time to either train the commodity managers who
69
weren’t prepared, nor could I personally do all the work
for all the unprepared commodity areas so I would need
people who were truly experts in their areas. John told
me that I would need to replace the unprepared
managers with people who had the skills to prepare the
commodity areas for the inspection. John added that
he believed that the battalion commander would
probably support my request for replacements of some
of the people running the commodity areas in my
company. After all, he told me, the battalion
commander stood as much to lose with HHC failing the
AGI as I did.
The third step was to make sure that the
commodity managers were told that they were going to
be held accountable for the results of the AGI
inspection of their areas. Bad results would have bad
consequences, good results would have good
consequences. John told me that I needed to make
sure that the commodity managers had all of the
resources they said they needed to get their jobs done. 70
And, John said, it was very important for me to
understand that I needed to have faith in the managers
and to let the commodity managers do their jobs
without interference, they had to have ownership of
their areas and performance expectations. And lastly,
John told me to make sure I rewarded the commodity
managers if they did well in the AGI.
I liked most of what John told me, with the
exception of the letting go of direct management and
allowing the commodity managers free rein to do their
jobs. I felt that one of the reasons I had done so well in
my previous army jobs was that I personally inspected
everything, and got very involved in every detail and
aspect of the operations I managed. John warned me
that it was normal for infantry officers to obsess over
every detail and to want to have a direct hand in
everything, but he told me that if I handled the AGI
preparation like that I was doomed to fail the AGI like
the previous hardworking HHC commanders had. Micro
managing simply doesn’t work with larger complex 71
organizations he told me. Pick good men and have
faith in them and I would be pleased with the results he
said.
It was hard to let go, but I saw that he was right. I
didn’t know enough to personally check every detail of
every commodity area, and I simply didn’t have enough
time in the day to micro-manage the preparation. So I
followed John’s advice. After my initial assessment of
the commodity areas I decided that I had to replace two
of six commodity area managers. Then I asked all of the
commodity managers what they needed to pass the
AGI and called in almost every favor owed to me on
Fort Campbell to get them what they needed.
As I nervously sat back to watch the commodity
area managers prepare for the AGI I had to constantly
fight off the urge to jump in and do it myself. Other
company commanders in the battalion came up to me
and asked me how I could be so relaxed with the AGI
coming up, and how was it that I wasn’t working 16 to
72
20 hours a day to get the headquarters company ready
for the inspection. I didn’t tell them the advice John
had given me. I guess I looked too laid back because
even the Battalion Executive Officer, the number two
person in the chain of command in the battalion, asked
me if I knew what I was doing, did I need any help, and
was I really going to be able to pass the AGI? Before I
knew it three months had passed and we had the
Division’s AGI team in my company area going through
every commodity area like storm troopers through
Poland. We passed with a Combat Ready rating.
I learned some good lessons. You can either have
good people working for you, or you can kill yourself
trying to do everyone’s jobs for them. Make sure that
your managers have clearly defined objectives, the
resources they feel they need to do their jobs, and that
they understand that accountability includes not only
negative, but also positive consequences. And, if you
want good people you have to pay them what they are
73
worth and make sure that they know they are
appreciated.
So how did I apply these lessons to my situation
with Snap-On? The problem facing me was that the
non-sales activities and tasks required so much time
that there was no way to get everything done in a
normal 40 hour week. I’ve never shirked from hard
work so I rolled up my sleeves and jumped in to try to
get things caught up so that I could later sit down and
develop a sales plan. My routine week soon
encompassed 80 hours of relentless effort to simply get
by. I felt I had no time to plan or figure out when I was
going to get a chance to change my socks much less
time to plan a way to turn the team around. My first
couple months rapidly passed by and I had the sudden
realization that I was in trouble; I’d improved the unit’s
sales to almost 70% of plan but I was still in 5 th place
out of the 5 business units.
74
I needed to do something different. I determined
that first of all I needed to use the wisdom of LTC
McGurk and Greg Bowen to figure out what the critical
elements of success in my new position were. That was
easy. Snap-On BUM’s were not rewarded for the sales
of tools and equipment by their franchise dealers.
BUM’s were rewarded for Snap-On’s sale of material to
the franchisees. Obviously, the better the dealers were
at selling their stock, the greater the replenishment
stock orders to Snap-On would be. The key was that
the dealers had to buy new inventory from Snap-On for
me to benefit. If their sales were lackluster, or if they
were on credit hold with Snap-On corporate so they
couldn’t buy replenishment material, the sales to the
franchisees would be poor. The sales metric I was
measured by also included the initial stock and new
truck used to set up any new franchise dealers in my
business unit territory.
Ah ha! I thought to myself. All I have to do is get
the dealers to buy more material and set up more 75
dealers. But how was I going to do that and get
everything else done that a BUM has to do? I looked
around the region and what I saw dismayed me. The
southeastern region had four other BUM’s and two
regional managers. Surely, I thought to myself, if there
was an efficient way to do this one of these old pro’s
would have figured it out and would be able to tell me.
But, of the six old hands in the region five had heart
problems and other health issues from extreme
overwork. If they were physically suffering like that
obviously there wasn’t an easy simple way. After
talking with some of the other BUM’s I learned that the
prevailing wisdom was that there was no way other
than bone crushing work to get everything done.
Great. How am I going to get all of this done I
thought to myself as I sat in my home office late one
night. And then it occurred to me that not only could I
not do this by myself, but that I shouldn’t even try to do
it by myself. I needed to do what I did when I was that
new HHC commander facing an AGI. As I looked at the 76
challenge in front of me I realized that what I needed to
do was to re-organize my staff so that the key members
were doing those activities that resulted in sales to the
dealers, instead of everyone jumping in and trying to
make sure that every activity and task was done. That
meant that I needed to make sure that I was fully
staffed, that my staff had what they needed to do their
jobs, that they understood what I expected and were
focused on their individual objectives, and that they
were rewarded for good performance.
The first item to do in my plan was to complete my
staff. I was short one person for my staff; the
administrative assistant who would handle the lion’s
share of the administrative paperwork and assist in the
collections. I needed to get that position filled so that
the work load was lessened on my sales manager, my
sales trainer, and I. And, I asked myself, even though I
had a so-called set budget for temporary help to assist
in collections and other administrative tasks why was I
limited to just that amount? I pushed the Snap-On 77
bureaucracy to fill the administrative position. In the
interim I also pleaded with the southeastern regional
manager for a larger budget for temps. I don’t know if
he felt guilty for putting me in charge of a business unit
in such trouble or responsible for hiring me in the first
place, or for some other reason, but he raised my
budget for temporary help. With that larger budget I
was able to hire two to three temps at a time to help
me take care of my most ravenous time consumers –
collections and repossessions. That done I was now
faced with leisurely 60 hour work weeks in which to get
my sales up.
I was fortunate in that my sales manager, Terrell,
was a true sales thoroughbred. Until I managed to get
additional temp help Terrell was heavily involved in
trying to make sure that we were up to date on our
collections, repossessions, and sales training. I directed
Terrell to focus on just sales. He was worried about
how the business unit was going to get everything
done, but I told him that the business unit wasn’t his 78
concern, that all I wanted him to do was focus on selling
to the dealers and helping them improve their sales.
I similarly refocused the efforts of my sales trainer,
Ryan. I needed to get my open routes filled with
trained franchisees. I told Ryan to help me with finding,
vetting, and training new franchisees. I told him those
activities were the only things I wanted him to do.
Now that I had everyone focused on their
“commodity areas” I was free to develop a plan to help
my francisees with credit problems get their credit fixed
so that they could replenish their inventories. I traveled
across my region making assessments of the franchise
territories and working with my franchisees to improve
their sales plans if they needed the help. And lastly, I
worked with the franchisees that were on credit hold to
either get their payable debts reduced or to get their
credit limits raised with Snap-On so that they could buy
more product to put in their inventories.
79
It was amazing. We moved from 5th place out of
five business units to 2nd place; improving our sales
performance from a meager 56% of sales plan to over
100% of sales plan. Not bad for a guy who couldn’t tell
the difference between a crescent wrench and a
monkey wrench.
Let’s be clear about this. “I” didn’t sell anything. I
didn’t know enough about the Snap-On product line to
sell anything. But Terrell sure did. All I needed to do
was create the conditions where he could sell, and our
“customers” the franchisees could buy and see the
value in our products. I created those conditions by
organizing our work so that everyone had roles and
objectives appropriate for their positions and
capabilities. The lesson John taught me so many years
ago paid me additional dividends this time; I received a
very nice five-figure bonus for six months of work in the
BUM position.
80
After Action Review
81
1. It is imperative that you know what the critical
tasks are that you need to accomplish to achieve
your business goals.
2. Large organizations cannot be micro-managed for
a sustained period of time, excessive management
always leads to mediocrity or exhaustion.
3. You need to make an objective assessment of your
subordinate managers to determine if they have
the skills to achieve your expectations.
4. It is imperative that you align your managers with
the tasks and responsibilities appropriate for their
skill set, and the objectives of your organization.
5. Be transparent with your managers regarding the
goals of the business unit, and your expectations
of performance for both the entire unit and them
individually.
6. Be aggressive in sourcing the resources your
managers need to perform their duties.
7. Hold your managers accountable.
8. Praise good results.
82
9. Reward.
83
Case Study 4: Conflict With Senior Management
(What Do You Owe Your Bosses?)
After Snap-OnTools I found myself working as a
Regional Sales Manager for Wurzburg in Memphis,
Tennessee. Wurzburg was a 100 year-old family owned
company that sold about $150 million dollars a year in
packaging materials and equipment to manufacturers,
printers, and other companies through eleven
distribution centers in eight states in the southeast. I
was one of five regional sales managers. My region
was very similar to the region I managed at Snap-On
Tools; I had the entire state of Arkansas, the western
fifth of Tennessee, the northern third of Mississippi, and
for a while the southern half of Louisiana. Depending
upon the sales team organization of the moment I
managed from eight to 14 full commission sales
representatives who collectively sold up to $42 million
annually.
84
One of responsibilities I felt regional sales
managers should have at Wurzburg was to make a
business case presentation to the company executive
committee when a large sales opportunity developed
that would have a significant impact on the company’s
bottom line profitability. What this meant in practice
was that if for example one of my sales people came to
me with an opportunity to sell a large portfolio of
products and services to a prospect, or current
customer, I would review the opportunity to see if it
would require our company to hire more support
personnel or spend capital on equipment or other
resources. If the answer was yes, I would develop a
business plan to see what the expected total cost of the
proposal would be, the additional capital and personnel
requirements, and the final expected ROI for our
company.
The expected sales on an opportunity of this size
at Wurzburg could range from a few hundred thousand
dollars up to 20 million dollars, with a rough net ROS 85
after commissions of between five and twenty percent.
In my brief to the executive committee of the business
opportunity I would conclude with my assessment of
whether or not the opportunity was “good business” for
the company and if I felt the company should move
forward with pursuing the opportunity.
For me, good business was an opportunity that
provided a return greater than what the company could
earn if it invested an equivalent amount of money in
investment grade corporate bonds, was within the
scope of my company’s capability to execute with a
reasonable amount of administrative effort, and would
pose no risk to the company’s economic survivability.
An example of bad business would be a six month
verbal agreement with a customer that asked my
company to open a new distribution center and hiring
people to run it while netting only a single-digit profit
return. The risk of not retaining the business over the
long term due to having just a verbal agreement
renders the single digit net return as too low for the risk 86
of holding a large inventory of raw goods, or for
covering the costs of shutting down the distribution
center and discharging the personnel if the opportunity
were to be lost after the initial six month period.
I thought that I and the senior management of my
company were in agreement as to what constituted
good business until one of my reps brought me a large
complex opportunity representing seven-figures worth
of annual packaging materials spend for a well-known
telecommunications company. In addition to packaging
materials, this opportunity included the requirement to
service two manufacturing and packing operations in
two non-contiguous states; the purchase of equipment
for the customer’s exclusive use and the operation of
the equipment with our own personnel on their site;
and to charge the customer solely a piece rate per
complete packaging unit that had to be inclusive of all
costs and fees and fixed for twelve months. The
customer was willing to sign a contract, but would not
87
accept additional line charges, and insisted on 60 day
terms.
I was informed by the CEO of Wurzburg that this
opportunity was my top priority to work on as he
assembled an internal team of buyers, accountants,
product specialists, senior management, and myself to
develop a proposal that would successfully address the
opportunity. And so I did. After working with the other
members of the team to identify all of the possible
options, and their attendant potential costs, I prepared
a feasibility brief for the company executive team. In
the brief I showed them the options we could make
available to the customer, their costs, the impact of the
various options on our organization, and ended with my
assessment of the opportunity. Since my attorney’s
don’t truly need the additional income I’ll spare you the
specific details of this opportunity and proposal.
Based upon my expectation of a very low ROI I
was concerned that if we experienced any
88
unanticipated increase in raw material costs we would
actually lose money in this opportunity. The reason
was that our price to the customer was fixed for twelve
months and any increase in raw material costs of a
typically announced amount would translate into
significant actual financial loss for this project. For that
reason I informed the executive committee that I could
not recommend moving forward on the opportunity,
that I characterized it as “bad business.”
The CEO did not accept my recommendation and
asked me to reassess my calculations and get back
with him on my revised estimate. It was clear to me
that his idea of a revised estimate included my
recommendation that we move forward with the
opportunity; it was painfully obvious to me that this was
very important to him. What to do?
I know that this is going to come as a shock to
some of you’all who haven’t served in the military, but
some military commanders manage their commands
89
(“business unit” would be a fair civilian translation) as if
the people subordinate to them were their personal
property rather than regard their subordinates as
soldiers also serving their country. The first time a
colonel asked me if I was loyal I thought he was some
kind of weird ultra-militaristic closet fascist, though I
have to admit I said, “of course, sir.” Silly me.
A few days later I mentioned the exchange to First
Sergeant England, my primary assistant and advisor at
the Headquarters and Headquarters Company I
commanded. First Sergeant England was a no
nonsense incredibly organized and efficient Non-
Commissioned Officer. First Sergeant England made
my job so easy I often felt a little embarrassed when
senior officers told me what a great job I was doing as
the headquarters company commander. Anyway, First
Sergeant England laughed when I told him that I
thought the colonel was a fascist throwback. He told
me that the colonel might be a fascist, but what I’d
90
missed was that the colonel was asking me if I was
personally loyal to him.
“Why would he ask me that, and what’s the point
of that kind of question?” I asked the first sergeant.
The point, he told me, was that commanders
wanted people on their teams who would place a higher
priority on following the commander’s orders than
strictly on adhering to the army regulations, or to the
orders of the commanders above them in the chain of
command.
“But what about our oaths as officers to uphold
the constitution and the orders of the president and etc,
etc.?”
“Nobody is going to ask you to join a military
coup,” he told me. Commanders simply want to be
sure that you’re going to support them and not go
running to their bosses with anything that might
embarrass them, or worse get them relieved of
command; which means “fired” when translated into 91
civilian speak. First Sergeant England added that
commanders sometimes feel the need to run their units
differently from established practice, and that they
need to know that their subordinates weren’t going to
sabotage their efforts.
“Ok, I understand all that,” I told him, “it’s kind of
a CYA understanding.”
“Yep, it kinda is,” he said. “Though it’s more like
CTA, Cover Their Ass.”
“So what happens if I get caught doing something
my commander told me to do that I knew wasn’t what
was permitted within the regulations? Who burns for it?
Since I was just following orders, I don’t do I?”
“Of course you do. You’ll say it was your idea.
That’s what being loyal is.”
“What!?” “You mean to tell me that when a
commander tells me to do something that both he and I
92
know isn’t kosher he expects me to happily take the fall
for it if I get caught?”
“Yep, that’s what loyalty is.”
“The hell with that! I don’t mind going out on a
limb to help get the job done, but why am I going to
sacrifice my career for the poor judgement of a superior
officer.”
“That’s the way the game is played,” my first
sergeant told me. “If you don’t take the risks you don’t
get rated high enough to get promoted to senior ranks.
Once you get to the rank of colonel you’ll be asking
your subordinates for their loyalty too. You will have to
ask soldiers to die for you in combat, asking your
subordinates to put their careers on the line for you
shouldn’t be as hard.”
Well, that thought left me with a lot to think about
regarding what loyalty was, to whom it was due, what I
had the right to ask of others, and what others had the
right to ask of me.93
This digression on loyalty is important because it
helps to paint the background on the dilemma I faced a
year later as a junior rifle company commander.
Remember the promise made to me by the Battalion
Commander if I could get his headquarters company to
pass the AGI? Thanks to getting the company to pass
the AGI I was rewarded with my dearest wish as an
infantry officer – command of an infantry company.
Shortly after I took over the company I ran into a
problem with furniture. Seems during weekends some
of the furniture in my troops’ barracks got careless and
went flying off second and third story balconies.
Unfortunately the furniture wasn’t airborne qualified
and didn’t survive the impact with the ground.
The normal army procedure in cases like this is to
initiate a “report of survey” investigation to determine
financial responsibility. The problem I faced was that
while it was fairly easy to determine who was signed for
the property I couldn’t find any witnesses to tell me
94
who was giving airborne training to the furniture. I saw
three options facing me. One, I could simply take pay
from the soldiers who were signed for the property,
even though in several instances they weren’t even in
the barracks when the furniture was destroyed.
The second option would be to charge everyone in
the company an equal share of the cost of replacing the
furniture. I felt justified in the second option because I
was convinced that a lot of men in the company
probably knew who was throwing the furniture off the
balconies, and they would not be inclined to pay for the
entertainment of those destructive miscreants.
The third option was a little risky; if I couldn’t
determine with certainty who the responsible person
was I could technically write off the damaged furniture.
I thought this option might send the wrong message to
the misbehaving soldiers, but I also thought it might
win over the soldiers who were just spectators to the
vandalism. Unfortunately I chose option three. I say
95
unfortunately because this choice taught me something
I didn’t want to know about infantry soldiers.
I called a company formation and told the soldiers
that the destruction of the furniture was unacceptable.
However, I told them, since I was unable to specifically
identify the responsible parties I was not going to
charge the entire company as I was inclined to do.
“You’all are in the army, not day camp,” I told
them. “You are adults, and I will treat you like adults,
so long as you conduct yourselves like adults.” I asked
them to care for the furniture like they would the
furniture in their own homes. And, I told them that
protecting the people who were destroying the furniture
was misplaced loyalty. “In combat would you allow
someone to sleep while on perimeter security?” “No,” I
told them, “because they would be risking all of our
lives, so why are you going to let someone destroy the
nice things that make your home here in the barracks?”
96
I went back to my office feeling pretty good about my
Pattonesque speech.
Another reckless sofa flew the skies of the
battalion area that next weekend. And again, no one
saw or knew who the responsible soldiers were. Ok,
time for option two. I prepared my report of survey,
called a company formation, and had my first sergeant
collect five dollars from every soldier.
My trouble began the following day when I was
called to Brigade headquarters to see the Brigade
commander. The colonel told me that he couldn’t
accept my report of survey because it did not name any
specific responsible individual. I told him that I couldn’t
get the names out of the soldiers. “So then how did
you get the money to pay for the furniture? he asked.
When I told him that I’d collected it from the entire
company he looked at me like I’d just stepped out of a
flying saucer and asked for Elvis. “You can’t do that,”
97
he told me that I would have to return the money to the
soldiers.
“Ok,” I told him, “then that means I have to write
the loss off.”
“No,” he said. He told me that if I didn’t have the
leadership to get the names of the actual responsible
soldiers then I would have to pay the amount due on
the survey myself. He wasn’t going to allow a report of
survey to go forward to division command that was a
simple write off. He told me that write-offs were
regarded as a lack of leadership by the division
commander and so he couldn’t sign my write-off as the
approving authority. He suggested that I simply charge
the soldiers who were signed for the furniture. When I
told him that they weren’t in the barracks when the
events happened, they were on pass and out of town,
he told me that they were still responsible for the
furniture.
98
I went back to my office, had a few cups of coffee,
talked with my first sergeant, and then developed a
plan on how to deal with the furniture issue. I wrote a
check for the damaged furniture and made a call to the
warehouse manager who supervised the issue of
furniture to our barracks. The next morning when my
soldiers walked out of their barracks for physical fitness
training they saw five large trucks parked in the
company area.
I announced to my soldiers that since they so
obviously didn’t care about what happened to the
furniture the army had lent to them for their comfort
and enjoyment during their off time, then they didn’t
need it. I ordered the troops to bring out of the
barracks all furniture, with the exception of a bed, foot
locker, wall locker, desk and chair for each of them.
Additionally, I ordered all rugs, plants, posters and
other bric-a-brac taken out of the barracks and locked
up in the supply room storage area for each platoon.
99
I told my surprised soldiers that if they wanted a
basic training style environment then that’s what they
would have. I also warned them that if anything
happened to the remaining furniture in the barracks
that I would have everything except for air mattresses
and personal foot lockers taken out of the barracks.
“This is your last warning on this,” I told them. “Just
one piece of furniture over the balcony, and I’ll pull
everything out except for your personal trunks, and if
that doesn’t work you’ll sleep in tents outside. The
decision on how you’re going to live and be treated is
up to you.” I was not surprised when no more furniture
when flying off balconies.
I thought that this issue was over until a few
months later after an inspection of my company area
and barracks by the brigade commander. The Colonel
motioned that he wanted to talk with me privately. He
told me that everything looked very clean and well
maintained, however it was too Spartan.
100
“Yes,” I replied, “but it is a professional
environment and we don’t have any trouble with
damaged furniture.”
“Hmm,” he said, “I talked with the troops and they
want their furniture, put it back.”
“Have you changed your policy on the report of
survey’s,” I asked?
“No, it’s the same,” he answered.
“So if the furniture goes flying again, and these
same troops won’t tell me who is responsible I have to
pay for the furniture?”
“Yes, but why don’t you just post guards on each
floor?”
“So it’s ok to punish all the troops by creating
additional guard duty, but it isn’t ok to make them all
share the cost of damaged furniture?”
“Put the furniture in, it makes me look bad.”
101
“Ok, then I’ll have the hand receipt sent to your
office tomorrow for your signature.”
“What hand receipt?”
“For the furniture, I’m not signing for it.”
“Well, I’m not signing for it, I’m your brigade
commander and I’m telling you to put it back in the
barracks and sign for it.”
“Sir, put that in writing and I’ll be happy to
comply,” I finally told him.
I got the look. And then the question. “Are you
loyal, Lieutenant Sanger?”
“Yes sir,” I replied. “To my country, the
constitution, the president, and to the army,” I
asserted. “I will follow every order you give me, but I
don’t think we have a solution yet to the problem of
holding people responsible for destroying furniture, and
I’m not paying for any more furniture they toss off of
the balconies.”
102
The Colonel glared and me and said, “you know
what I want done, do it.” He spun around and walked
off.
There are politically smart lieutenants, and then
there stubborn lieutenants who think that they know
everything. I wish that I could say that I was smart. I
didn’t bring the furniture back. Yes, I was right about
the army regulations, the Colonel couldn’t order me to
return the furniture to the barracks. And yes, I wasn’t
required by army policy to give the soldiers the
furniture. And yes, my decision on the furniture
impressed my soldiers so much that I had very few
discipline problems with them during the rest of my
command. But I paid a high price for my arrogance.
Four months after our heated discussion about
furniture when I received my end of command
evaluation from my senior rater, the Colonel, I saw that
he placed me in “the middle of the pack” for my overall
rating. He couldn’t put me in the bottom because he
103
probably suspected that I’d go to the division
commander to appeal the evaluation. Since my
company’s statistical performance placed it at the top
of, or in the top three, of the fifteen companies in the
brigade in every evaluated category it would have been
difficult for him to explain to the division commander
how he justified putting me in the bottom. He knew he
would be able to say to the division commander that
there were “intangibles” that led him to place me in the
middle of the pack and the division commander would
have had to accept that as the Colonel’s command
perogative.
That middle of the pack evaluation as an infantry
company commander killed my chances of ever
commanding an infantry battalion. Sadly enough, at
the time I was actually surprised by the sub-par
performance evaluation. Not only had my company
done very well, but it was my second company
command while still only in the rank of lieutenant.
104
My ego had actually convinced me that the colonel
would write an evaluation report that simply recognized
the superior performance of my company; after all he
had personally benefited from my company’s
performance in the evaluation he received from the
division commander. But then I was naïve about what
was important to commanders, and bosses, and my
personal importance to the organization. It took years
before I was able to admit to myself that there would
not have been much difference between having all my
soldiers equally contribute money toward paying for the
damaged furniture as I wanted to do, and having all the
soldiers do guard duty to protect the furniture as the
Colonel suggested.
I learned two lessons from this experience.
Infantry soldiers sometimes require a very tight rein;
and when a boss asks you to do something his way you
ought to try to see the situation through his eyes and
support him if at all possible. So in light of the
consequences I suffered from my hubris as a company 105
commander what do you think I did when I was asked
by my CEO at Wurzburg to reassess my
recommendation on the business proposal?
I didn’t change my recommendation. I felt that I
owed my boss, the CEO, my support, but I also owed
him my honest opinion. I have always thought that part
of my obligation to my boss is to help them to succeed,
and I felt in this instance that I wouldn’t be doing that if
I stood by and allowed him to think that this potentially
disastrous course of action had an acceptable level of
risk. And lastly, I was convinced that I would not be
living up to my responsibilities to the ownership of the
company if I compromised my professional opinion on a
proposal that could have very serious financial
implications for the company. So yes, I wanted to
support my boss in this instance, but my professional
obligations to the company overrode my sense of
loyalty to my boss.
106
After Action Review
1. Regardless of the personal pain it may cause, a
manager always owes his or her boss complete
honesty. That doesn’t mean that you can take this
opportunity to be less than diplomatic, it means
that it is your responsibility to ensure that your
boss has all of the correct facts needed to make
their decisions.
2. Your boss has every right to lead the way he or
she feels is needed for your organization to
succeed, but they don’t have the right to ask you
to CTA. Accountability applies to them too.
3. Your first loyalty in business is to your
stockholders if the company is publically owned,
otherwise it should be to the owners if it is a
privately held company.
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Rules of Thumb
It really isn’t possible to put into one book everything
I’ve learned in forty years about leadership and
management. The following are some brief rules of
thumb that I use to guide my actions as a sales
manager. In a sense you can say that if you follow the
golden rule you should succeed as a sales manager, but
that is really only half of the equation. The other half is
to provide a comprehensive vision and positive
motivation to those looking up to you for managerial
leadership. It’s not easy, but then if it were then we
would all be successful managers.
1. Treat subordinates with respect. You’ll then never
be embarrassed at how you’ve behaved, not to
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mention how much easier it is to get people to
respond to your guidance.
2. Have a positive attitude, negative motivation only
works for a very short time. We’re not talking
about raining smaltzy platitudes down on
everyone, what’s important is that everyone needs
to know that you have faith in the future of your
organization, in the capabilities of your team and
that you are happy to be working there with them.
3. Make sure your team’s goals are clearly
understood by everyone on the team. Ask them
what the team’s goals are, you might be surprised
at what they know or don’t know. The key here is
that you have to have a well-thought out, written
plan with specific action steps. This will take some
time to prepare, but it is a very important
investment of time you will need to make.
4. Make sure that the standards for achievement are
clearly understood. This means you need to have
measurable metrics. The metrics you use will be
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determined by your analysis of the key factors for
success in your specific industry.
5. There can’t be any “golden boys or girls” who are
favored simply because of who they are.
Everyone’s performance should be objectively
measured against the same metrics.
6. Give regular feedback to your salespeople. I use a
simple individualized “scorecard” that I email to
my salespeople every week. The scorecard serves
as a written acknowledgment of their current
results, strengths and weaknesses, and also
serves as a good talking agenda for weekly
reviews with the sales people.
7. Make sure any resources truly needed by your
team are made available to them.
8. Spend time on the street with your team. You’ll
know them, your customers, and the competitive
environment better.
9. Don’t micro-manage your team. Train your team,
support them, hold them accountable, but do not
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micro-manage – that path inevitably leads to
mediocre performance.
10. Hold everyone, including yourself,
accountable for results.
11. You will occasionally have to say “no.” Either
to your upper management, or to your
subordinates. You must have courage and say it
when the time comes. Leaders say no, managers
are tempted to waffle. Ensure that when you do
say no that you have a good rationale why, that it
isn’t simply from petulance.
12. Reward, reward, reward.
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You want victory? Use Leadership!
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