Does your company ever set people up to fail instead of just laying them off?
 

In catching up on work emails today, I saw our new monthly non-revenue quotas for 2009, which are probably unattainable for folks with small territories who live in big cities and totally unrealistic for folks who have huge territories in non-coastal cities.

In 2008 we had to have 35 database activities per week, eight of which had to be either in-person or telephone meetings with clients or prospects. Not too unreasonable at seven per day. And it was totally reasonable for folks like me who live in Phoenix and whose territory goes from Seattle to Austin. Obviously, I have to do most of my client contact via phone and email with occasional trips. And of course, my boss always complained about my very spartan expense reports when I did travel. I never expensed a personal meal or even personal mileage when driving to meet a friend or see a concert in a city I was visiting.

For 2009 we are expected to have 10 in-person meetings PER WEEK, phone meetings no longer count and we also have to call 10 clients or prospects per day. Of the 15-20 new clients I stole from competitors in 2008, I only met ONE of them in person. All others were done through multiple emails and phone calls, which no longer count.

It's bad enough that this stuff is more important to mgt. than actual revenue. But now we have all been warned that we'll be put on double secret probabtion if we fall short one month and could be terminated if our three month average is short. I seriously wonder if this is just a way to get folks fired for cause instead of laying them off. Surely, mgt. knows their folks in Minneapolis, El Paso, Phoenix, Albuquerque can't possibly line up six in-person meetings per week. Last time I rode my bike to CA and met with seven clients in four cities over a week, it took me almost a week of phone calls and emails to line them all up. Time to polish that resume.

My current employer? No.

One of my life lessons was a job I took in for a summer in college. It took me all summer to figure out that whoever took this job was going to fail at it and my failure was not my fault.

I took a job as a manager of a house painting crew one summer in college. I couldn't get ANY of the jobs done on time. Turns out that my salesguy (full-timer) had gone from the WORST salesperson in the company to the BEST salesperson in the company in the short span of three months (before I started). The amount of hours we had to finish a job was based on the dollar amount of a job. Guess what? He grossly underbid all of his jobs. When they did the calculation to figure out how much time I had to do the job, it also came up very short. Guess who got the blame for not completing the jobs on time?

As such, I have a keen sense for when people are trying to set me up for failure and refuse to put myself in such a situation. A practical example is when someone tries to establish "rules" for arguing on this BBS with me. I know that what they are really trying to do is to ensure they will win the argument by handicapping me.

As for your situation, if I was given a choice between spending more money and losing my job, I'd fudge the numbers. I have friends in sales positions and I've been a "prospect" for their expense reports more than once. Unethical? Yes. But so is rating people on money spent rather than the net revenue they produce.

As an aside, this is a constant argument I have with my management: if you rate people based on some metric, they will find a way to inflate that number. I see it all the time in my job. I've seen people who have 400 referrals that only spoke with 30 customers (making 400 referrals physically impossible). They figured out that they can "flip" the referral indicator on a screen multiple times to generate inflated numbers.

With a territory that large it seems you could quickly put together a doc that illustrates how impossible that is.

If you need to fly to make those meetings happen then when are you supposed to make phone calls?

Personally I'd hit that goal real hard and book the most expensive flights available.

Could it be that they are expecting revenues to shrink to an level where they are not a good indicator of employee performance?

Are they hoping to get more market share by increasing exposure?

It sounds like they are over-reacting, but I would not worry about this being a set up to fail. If they need to get rid of people, I am sure they would just lay them off ...

George

Yup, I have to fudge the numbers. I can't very well fake a trip to LA or Austin, since I'd have to show hotel and travel receipts for it. But I can easily enter emails as outbound phone calls in our database. Honestly, I find emails to be far more effective anyway, since a client or prospect has all my contact info and initial pitch to refer back to later on, which they'd never write down if I got them on the phone. Several of my competitive steals have been from emails I received in reply to my original email many months later. What are the odds of that happening if it were all done by phone? Can't fudge the revenue though. So if it ain't there, I have some splainin' to do.

GE took the metric thing to a new level. Rule #1 - If you had a bogey, you had to make it. Cooking the books was not allowed. But, if you had to cook the books to meet the bogey, rule #2 - Don't get caught. If you violated rule #1 or #2, you were out.

Rule 2 was quite heavily exercised.

Don't Get Caught!

My company's 2009 mantra is "It's all about the revenue. No excuses." No, I'm not making this up. This is the email signature of one of our VP's. Pretty telling that they had to wait until 2009 to start making revenue the main concern, rather than the other BS metrics they love to analyze. What's even crazier is that we're all looking at hugely increased revenue quotas for 2009, which is not going to be a good year for anyone in the PR industry. 2008 wasn't great and these guys are expecting increases in 2009? Kidding me? Now I have to spend more time doing BS than the stuff that actually works. I think I have about three mos. before the axe falls, since that's how long I can skate on being below quota.

"Meaningless Metrics" nuff said.....

It's all used as justification to nail folks when they don't perform. Then the employee cannot sue because they did not perform and it's probably at-will employment.

That ain't gonna fly. Logic and reason have no place in this company. It's a top-down, Orwellian, Kool-Aid kind of place. Once the word is given, everyone repeats it like some religious cult chant. Once in a great while, we get some bosses at happy hour with a few drinks in them and can tell them the truth. But it doesn't change anything other than get some folks some extra slack when they don't meet the unreasonable expectations.

I was told by a co-worker in DC today that my boss has been saying really good things about me recently, though I had a terrible 2008, and my co-worker expects I'll be able to skate for a while without making quota, since they have no one else in my territory and don't want to bother hiring and training someone new. If I were to demonstrate how my emails have been far more effective in securing new business than in-person meetings, that would just piss off the person who decided that in-person meetings are to be the new metric for 2009. And I don't want to piss that guy off.

Oh, and see my thread a while back on performance reviews. In 2007 I was ranked #15 out of 75 sales folks and came in at 103% of goal. If more than half your sales folks are under 100% of goal, the goal is either silly or you're hiring the wrong folks. In my review I got a "meets expectation" for the revenue section. I protested that, by definition, I had exceeded expectations at 103% of goal. My boss said he agreed with me, but couldn't change it.

I know the type.

You should always lead mgt to reach the correct conclusion.

You go to your boss, ask for his help, you want to meet the new guidelines, lay out a plan for travel and time that is ridiculous/impossible and ask for his guidance in figuring it out.

By asking for his help you involve him in the problem and if he has half a brain he'll get in front of it. Phrase it as "how are we", not "how am I" going to meet these goals. It subtly reminds him that your failure is his failure. If he is smart he'll get in front of it.

Personally I'd get the resume out.

With any luck you'll get some leads before getting hauled on the carpet for not meeting goals. You'll be in a much better position.

Not quite the same, but similar. I worked at a retail auto parts store years ago. I pretty quickly worked my way up to managing a store. As a manager, you got a base salary, a monthly bonus based on controllable expenses, and a monthly sales bonus. When they gave me a store, the previous manager had let the inventory drop down to the point where an inventory only showed that we had about 70% of the part numbers in stock that were available. Monthly sales were $16k. My first month they gave me a goal of $18K, I hit 19k. Second month they gave me a goal of $20k, and I hit that one too. Third month they gave me a goal of $22k. I hit that one too. The following month they gave me a goal of something like $28k. I was no where near that. They left the goal there for a couple of months and then dropped it back down to something attainable for 2 months, then raised it back up. It quickly became obvious to me that the "monthly goals" were crap and were a way of controlling compensation. They'd let you get a few and then make sure you didn't get a few, rinse, repeat.

I also had a similar thing happen with monthly revenue goals when my current job was with the same boss at a different employer. We were bought out by our biggest competitor in 2006, so I work for them now, but still have the same boss. Anyway, back then we had monthly revenue goals and were paid 15% of revenue above that goal. Every year it went up significantly, which meant we had to bring in that much more revenue to make the same money we made the previous year. We almost never got a bump in base salary or commission cut. It always chapped my hide, but I did always manage to make it and always made more each year than the last. Though in my second year when I was making nowhere near what I was told I'd be making if I was any good, and my boss always told me I was good, I threatened to leave when I had a better offer. I got an on the spot 50% raise retroactive to the first of that month and with my quota set in stone for the next 18 mos. That was a good deal.

Wow, impressive. Yeah, it seems as if most places are content to low-ball employee salary/compensation even for their best employees. Certainly goes a long way towards building loyalty, doesn't it?

Sadly, their response to you was basically an admission that they'd been screwing you for quite some time.

You should talk to my wife - about 20 years experience in retail management before she got out and into hotels.

Retail "management goals" are a complete joke. They love to compare everything to "LY" (or "last year") numbers, modified by some (often arbitrary) percentage - they do this for sales, shrink reduction, payroll, blah blah blah - all kinds of silly metrics. The dirty little secret is quite often (depends on the company, but it's the rule rather than the exception) - the manager has NO zip, zero, nada control over things that would allow him or her to make those numbers - they're essentially "along for the ride" on company policies decided by other people - advertising campaigns, PRICING, merchandise selection and quantity, store layout, marketing efforts, even payroll hours and rates. Therefore there's absolutely NO WAY the retail manager can control or even influence the numbers by which they're being evaluated. It's the biggest B.S. joke in the world. One of the reasons my wife got so sick of it.

When times are good and things just happen to come out okay and you hit your "LY" numbers, they give you a pat on the back and ask you why you didn't exceed them by more. When things are bad and things don't come out well in terms of the "LY" metrics, they often sack the manager to "send a message" or to "provide an example". Completely stupid and ineffective. All it does is encourage turnover and setting up more and more people for disappointment over time - and naturally destroys company morale.

Idiotic industry. I'm absolutely thrilled she finally saw the light (after her last layoff, which was completely ridiculous - new DM looking to "shake things up" even though her numbers were spectacular) and decided to say "forget it" and went into another field. Retail is a joke. Don't waste your time.

Yeah, my last two companies. Don't know what they were thinking when they hired me and they didn't have any work. First company was hoping to get a Government contract worth 5 billion dollars, but they needed staff with impressive credentials. They didn't get the contract and I along with about 75 other people were out in 6 months. Next company was trying to meet their goal of "Growing" the business, only problem was the office I was in wasn't in the Architectural business. I was farm out to other divisions of our company, but they didn't really have any work for someone like me because of my wage rate. It wasn't a surprise to me when they finally decide to cut their losses. Funny but another division called me and wanted me to work for them part time, but that was so they could get permits for projects in my area. I took a pass on that offer.

Almost everyone in my industry is an at-will employee, can get blown out w/ 10 minutes' notice, no explanation needed. Guys can get a call in the middle of a business trip, "all your meetings are cxl'd, take the first flight home, come in tomorrow and get your stuff, thank you very much".

Well, I took a $20k pay cut to start that job on the premise that there was much more opportunity there and I'd be back to what I was making in short order. Didn't happen that way. When I went to quit, I really did have a better offer in hand and was planning to give my notice that day. My mom said I really should try to get my boss to make a counter offer. I was sure they could never afford it. And I was stunned when they matched it on the spot. Unfortunately, things haven't turned out so well since we were acquired by our new owner. They probably couldn't offer me anything to make me want to stay at this company and I'm sure they wouldn't try to counter any offer if I had one and took it to my boss. Right now it's a steady paycheck and not a career.

Exactly that happened to my best friend. He was picking up his rental car on a business trip and got the call to return home immediately.

Last time I was laid off, I was actually going to give my notice that same day anyway, as I had a much better offer from Verizon. When the boss called me i his office that morning and laid me off, I said, "No problem. Can I leave now, or do I need to finish out the day?" He was pretty surprised. Talk about landing on your feet.

mine does. I am the meineke sales guy. Meinekes are the cheapest places to sell parts to, you could literally pay them to take your stuff and that isn't good enough... We all know it, but my job is to raise sales because in the 90's meineke shops did like 1 million in sales a year for us..now it is less than 50k....it is hard to sell mufflers when the market is no longer there or you don't have the applications they are in need of.

Yeah, I quickly saw the light, and got out.

They told everyone that they wanted every store to look the same so if you went into 5 different stores in 5 different cities, you'd be able to find the same parts in the same places.

They sent everyone a plan-o-gram with the layout. They told everyone not to vary from the plan-o-gram. My shelving was 4" too short, and needed to be replaced. I never got the new shelving and the Dist Mgr knew it. I got a slap on the hand for not getting the work done. When I responded that I'd never gotten the correct shelving they swept that under the carpet (since that had been their responsibility). At one point, I even heard another DM talk about how in the "old days" they'd have hung stuff from the ceiling to get it in the store if they had to (obviously, not to their "all stores the same plan-o-gram).

The managers' schedule was a minimum of 55hrs/week, but I had been told by the DM that 55 really wasn't enough, it would take at least 60-65 hours a week to get the job done. All for 21k + bonuses (about $25-26k/year) back in the early 90's.

Yeah, it was a learning experience. I feel sorry for folks in retail these days.

The boss just handed me a new account in Austin, which looks to have some real opportunity. Of course, justifying a trip to meet with them in person will take a good week or so of planning and lining up other meetings there. I emailed him about this and got a pretty stern response and am supposed to call him in a few minutes to discuss. Turns out all these metrics mean nothing as long as your revenue is at goal. If it's below, you have to have all the other metrics met to show you're making an effort. Unfortunately, I think meeting all these other metrics seriously undermines my efforts to bring in more revenue. This will be a fun phone call and might start the clock ticking on my time left at this job, if it isn't already ticking.

My friends who worked in retail management all have similar stories, without exception. It doesn't matter the kind of store: electronics, clothing, department stores, or hardware. It is corporate's genius when they succeed and the store manager's fault when they fail. Without exception, all of my friends in retail management have gone back to college and moved on to another industry.

It seems to me, there is a huge opportunity in retail. If a company could come up with a model that wasn't so draconian and actually rewarded stores when they figured out how to succeed (as opposed to punishing them for not following the corporate plan, punishing them for not making goals, punishing them for making goals with unrealistic goals next time...), they'd probably have a thriving business. Part of the reason why retail is so bad is because talented people do not want to work in that industry. The rules and procedures most companies have guarantee massive turnover. They drive the good people out, while the idiots just move from store to store, job to job. There is not consistency from year to year because a single store rarely has any of the same people from year to year.

Just got off the phone with the boss and feel a lot better now, though I know his enthusiasm for me can change with the weather. His emails feel like flames and arrows and then he's the good cop once on the phone, all encouraging and cool. So it looks like these in-person meetings numbers are only measured every few mos., not every week. And if I'm at 100% of goal, they don't matter anymore. Bottom line is I need to get to 100% goal quickly before I have a severe deficit of meetings to make up for. And since last year was so bad, my goal is much lower this year. Better yet, we get commissions now on anything above 70% of goal and extra on anyting above 100%. So it's not as bad as I thought.

Glad to hear that you aren't getting completely reamed.

I just read the opening post, as I am pressed for time. But this is the sort of reason my career is labor relations. In my humble opinion, a company's human resources stands as their most important asset. Distribution systems, technologies, all that stuff is built by your people.

Incentive systems tend to be among the most laughable of all company policies and communications. They almost invariably cause bad behavior and poor performance. There are ways to get superior performance from your people, but Rick is not describing one. Sadly, this company is probably attempting to create a hierarchy of staff in terms of some measures the company has dreamed up. What will happen here is that the company will lose the folks who think for themselves and know how to measure real success. The remaining staff will be the ones who are effective at playing to the stated criteria. These people tend to not give a $h!t about actual success.

The best thing I can say about companies like this.....is that they are convenient competitors. I like working with companies who are competing with companies run by bean-counters. It is my professional position that the real game is attracting and retaining the right people, and then motivating them in an atmosphere of safety and creativity.

I have to reluctantly agree with most of Supe's last post. HR at my company is mostly trainers. But since we're not hiring anyone now, they look for new ways to appear to be busy by creating all kinds of webinars for us to attend. One series of which is called "Money Making Mondays". I call them "Time Crushing Mondays". Now we have performance reviews coming up, so, of course, we have to have an hour-long webinar on that and I'm sure there will be a follow-up once the reviews are all done. And today we have one on the 2009 comp. plan, which only lasts 45 min. Every year we get a new comp. plan and they always say how great it will be and how lucrative it is for everyone. Yet, somehow we don't seem to be making more money. It's pretty frustrating, but that's the price I pay for not starting my own business and staying working for the man.

Rick, you need to start your own busniess. Take your customers with you!

It sounds like you're hearing a clear message from your employer. It's a common message that sounds like "We don't know what we're doing but you can be sure we will continue to frustrate and confuse you, and create complete disconnect between performance and reward." Which might as well also say "We will be setting up similar disappointments with our customers and this will create an ongoing need for a small but focused competitor who will form relationships with those customers and serve their needs."

Setting up travel can be a PITA, but it usually pays off 10x in the long run.

I have a large territory too and it's touch sometimes to coordinate. Try to make a region/state a regular trip. First week of the month go south, 2nd go west... Keep it regular and plan to work from the hotel for 1 full day.

Oh, Costco Amex is great for travel. :)

Seriously, that is sooooo typical management. Explaining the real world facts to them makes you a non-team player. Punishing them by following the new rules to the letter is the best way to highlight their stupidity.

A while ago I would have said that if you are talented you could get away with ignoring the stupid new rules and quotas because they need you. These days management seems more prone to fear those with talent because it illustrates how worthless and/or expendable they are. Quotas are a great way to weed out talent because those who are very good at what they do operate at a higher saturation than a slacker, making it very difficult to make new, higher quotas. The slacker simply needs to up his game to see results. The management loves it because a "non-threat" has increased his game by a required percentage making the manager look like a "motivator".

And no, we do not do that in my company. That's why I am in business for myself -to get away from that crap.

Last year my target for H1 was $6M. This year its just over $10M. I found an article stating that sales in the industry I work is set to shrink by 8.7%. Anyone want to know where the author got that figure?

The company I work for of course.

I just got my numbers for the first 2 weeks of the year and an currently at 50% of plan. If I were to take my last years quota subract the 8.7% I would be right around target.

What do you sell? honestly 10 in person meetings a week is not a whole lot.

It's a whole lot when 99.9% of your territory is an airplane ride away from where you live. For the folks who live in LA, NYC, DC or Chicago, no 10 meetings a week is not a whole lot. But the company wants folks to work remotely in large territories and they also complain a ton about expenses. Furthermore, I've demonstrated by stealing business from competitors that phone and email work just fine when dealing with small-midsize clients far from where I live. Now, if the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which just got handed to me as a client, calls and says they want to see me tomorrow, then I'd be on the next plane to SEATAC. But I don't have many clients with their kind of budget.

We sell a newswire service and broadcast services. I always find it kind of ironic for a company that specializes in webinars and high-tech mass communications services to demand in-person meetings when we're telling those clients our services make them no longer have to travel to far away meetings.

Trying to argue about the new rules with my boss or his bosses is a non-starter. I'm not even close to #1 in the company (anymore) and you're only as good as your last month, which was all vacation for me;). However, my boss did say today that the rules don't matter for those who are at 100% of goal each month. He doesn't care if I have zero meetings and zero new clients, as long as I find a way to book about $150k a month in revenue. Looks like I'll be arranging travel soon to some places in the SW US and can hopefully meet up with some Pelican folks for happy hours and dinners.

Enter the silver lining. :)

That makes sense...your sales cycle and process is fairly long and would require longer, more in-depth meetings...

Dude, got any customers in Reno ??
BTW, whenever I have worked for a company that micro-managed me, I found a new job. Sales guys should be graded on performance not paperwork..

Rick,

1) My sympathy. I have been there. The absolute stupidity of some businesses is remarkable.
2) Play their game. You know what you need to do to make your numbers and also what you need to do to look good. Do both. The hell with ethics. When a company sets you up to fail you unfortunately have to take care of #1. Yourself.
3) I FIRMLY believe that you get what you pay for. Example: if they pay for your position to generate expenses, they will get expenses. If they had a moment of wisdom and paid for profitable business, they would see more of that.
4) Good luck. The economy is poor. Gut it out as best you can. In my personal situation, even though I was a super star salesman, I got canned. 7 years later, I am making more, love my job, and anticipate increasing income by another 2x.

Larry

I always think of Glengarry Glenross when I hear these kinds of stories. It must be absolute hell working sales in an organization such as this. I can't believe this sort of job could ever really make anyone happy.

Or can it? Am I missing something?

Might this be an opportunity to start working on something more satisfying long-term?