“You need to terminate five out of seventeen on your sales team?” I asked.

Roger took a deep breath. “Yes. And it doesn’t make them bad people. If anything, it makes me a bad manager. Intuitively, I knew they were not the right people for the role, but I allowed my judgment to become clouded, made up my own excuses for them.”

“How soon will you be making this change?”

“First, I have to find some people to cover the territory. No. I need to find some people capable of creating the kinds of relationships that generate sales.”

“What’s the biggest lesson from all this?” I prompted.

“I need to constantly be recruiting. I did not make the moves I knew I should have made, because I didn’t have a back-up to go to. Because I did not create the bench strength in my own candidate pool.”

“Yes,” Roger nodded. “Grading my sales team into these six bands of effectiveness helps me see what to do next.”

“How so?” I prompted.

“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 sales person, 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.”

“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 their poor performance, sent them to training, tried to motivate them, offered a bonus. Once I did the analysis, it became very clear.”

“Okay,” Roger continued. “I have seventeen salespeople and I charted each one. First, I made a judgment, based on my expectations in the role, and taking into account all the factors I know they are up against in the market, observing their behavior, watching their habits, getting feedback from the people they encounter. The judgment was simple. I judged whether they were as effective as someone in the top half of the role or the bottom half, and then in that half, whether they were in the top, middle or bottom.”

“I see you drew a picture,” I nodded. “Horizontal lines across the page, representing the six bands of effectiveness, and then a small circle for each of your salespeople.”

“Visually, it makes it easy to see the difference in effectiveness,” Roger explained. “And yet, there is enough detail to cover the nuances. Six grades of effectiveness is enough to let me see my sales team as a whole, where I have strength and where I have weakness.”

“As a manager, does this analysis give you insights on what moves to make?”

“How do you tell?” Roger asked. “When we had to make decisions to lay people off, gosh, eighteen months ago, we thought we were choosing to keep our best people. Maybe, it’s just harder now. But some of the people we kept are not making the grade.”

“How do you explain their underperformance?” I pressed.

“Bottom line, I think they were successful, before, because things were easy. We made sales because people called us. No one had to knock on doors, ask for appointments, do needs analysis. My salespeople are clamoring for more leads, but they squander the leads we give them.”

“So, when you look at your team, how do you rate their effectiveness?”

“You mean, on a scale from 1-10, or A-B-C?”

“Think about it this way. Given what you expect in their role, are they operating as well as someone in the top half of the role or the bottom half of the role?”

“Well, each person is different,” Roger replied.

“Good. So, you can make that judgment for each of your salespeople?”

“Yes, absolutely. When you put it like that, it’s easy to see.”

“And then, in that half, are they as effective as someone in the top, middle or bottom of that half?”

“Again,” Roger was thinking. “I could do that for each salesperson.”

“So, you could make a judgment, as a manager, for the top half or bottom half, and then in that half, the top, middle or bottom. That creates six bands of effectiveness related to your salespeople.”