“Yes,” Roger nodded. “Grading my sales team into these six bands of effectiveness helps me see what to do next.”
“How so?” I prompted.
Personal Effectiveness
“The temptation is to keep all the people in the top half of the banding and terminate the people in the bottom half. But now I have more judgments to make, as a manager.”
“There’s more?” I pressed.
“Yes. I have one salesperson, in the top of the top half, that needs leadership training. In another year, I want to move that salesperson into a more complicated product line, with a longer sales cycle, working with a special sales team.”
“And?”
“And,” Roger stopped. “And I need to terminate five out of the seventeen people I have on my team.”
“How did you reach that conclusion?” I asked.
“Again, it wasn’t difficult. I have been making excuses for them, sent them to training, tried to motivate them, offered a bonus. Funny, paying people more money doesn’t make them more competent. Once I did the analysis, it became very clear. I made some very poor hiring decisions.”
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Barnes and Noble picked up Hiring Talent. Matching Amazon’s promotion pricing.