When It's Time

On Friday, May 16th, the New York Knicks were the talk of the town.

In the 2nd round of the NBA Playoffs, they had just beaten the returning NBA Champion Boston Celtics. In doing so, they punched their ticket to their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years. They didn’t just beat the Celtics - it was a beat-down. At that moment, it felt like a coronation of a new era. It was a no-brainer with a healthy lineup, they would knock out the Indiana Pacers - the team that beat them in the 2nd round last year - to advance to their first NBA Finals appearance since 1999.

On May 31st, the story unfolded with a change in script. As the clock struck midnight, the Cinderella story turned out to be miscast. It was the Pacers with their comeback theatrics - not the Knicks - who were headed to the Finals.

Three days later, on June 3rd, Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau was let go. In a terse team statement, President Leon Rose thanked Tibs for his passion and service and cited it was a difficult decision for the organization in pursuit of the singular goal of winning a championship.

In short, despite the consistent progress and advancement, the leadership felt he wasn’t the coach to bring the team to the promised land.

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Having to let someone go has been my least favorite experience as a leader in business. It made me sick to my stomach every time I had to do it. 

It was also probably the hardest switch coming from education. As a teacher, you don’t fire your students. It’s your professional mission never to give up on someone. As a wrestling coach, I also didn’t cut kids; if they made the commitment to be there, it was my responsibility to help them get the most out of the experience.  

That said, in leading an SDR Team - or any team in business - it is fundamentally a different universe. 

When someone is being compensated for their work, there is an expectation that they perform at a certain level. While it is always a brutal process to cut ties with someone you have gotten to know well and with whom you have built a professional and personal relationship, there comes a time that despite the difficulty of the moment, it is absolutely the right decision. So how do you know when it is time to make this brutal decision?

Here are four different scenarios where as a leader, you know it’s the right time.

SCENARIO ONE: A Breach of Ethics

This is the easiest scenario where it becomes apparent that someone is no longer a fit for your team. In fact, there is very little difficulty in making this decision at all.

Of all your company assets, I would argue that your company’s brand is the most valuable. It is the hardest to measure because of its complexity. Your brand is the confluence of a company identity and mission, sales conversations, customer interactions, product or service experience, marketing messaging, and more. All of these touchpoints together create the brand.

When a person acts in ways that are counter to company values, it threatens the brand. A single unethical action has the potential to do irreparable damage to the company in the present as well as the foreseeable future. 

In the hiring process, I think it is critically important not only to share company values, but to screen for character traits that are aligned with what you believe in. Candidates might be highly capable, but if they are not in alignment with who you are, you introduce major risk. 

During onboarding, it is crucial not to just share the company values, but to take two more steps. First, demonstrate company values in action. Model the values through aligned actions.

Just as importantly, it is crucial to make it very clear what behaviors are unacceptable. You may like to think you shouldn’t have to do that as a company. While I may agree with that sentiment, I see calling out the zero tolerance actions and repercussions as an opportunity to reinforce what you stand for.   

Specifically thinking about a sales development team, I place lying to prospects in the ethical breach category. 

The desire to perform creates a temptation for stretching the truth - or outright falsehood - that can truly hurt your company. Rather than allowing your team to go down a slippery slope that leads to dangerous places, in my experience, it is better to set firm expectations up front, eliminating any ambiguity.

Early on in my tenure, I realized since I hadn’t been clear enough with expectations, it was my shortcoming that opened the door to “the grey zone.” As a result, I couldn’t have a one-strike policy since I hadn’t done my job properly.

Do yourself the service of making an ethical breach an easy decision by making your ethical expectations crystal clear up front.

SCENARIO TWO: Lack of Effort

Call me a hard-ass, but I see no place on a team for someone with a consistent lack of effort.

After big pushes or long stretches without a break, we all suffer from burnout. I’m not talking about that. What I’m talking about is someone whose operating procedure is to do the minimum or play games to appear they are working hard as opposed to striving for excellence.

For a sales development representative, effort over time is the name of the game. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for effort. 

Sometimes there are exciting organic learning opportunities such as going to a tradeshow, an authentic experience such as an on-site, or some other personal growth opportunity. 

But on most days, it is showing up and attacking the job with vigor, grinding through the repetition of outreach.

So how can you measure effort? There are a couple of ways I assess effort that vary depending on the tenure of the team member. 

After onboarding and the scale-up period to follow, assuming you and your leadership team did a great job of training, activity can initially be a proxy for effort. Hitting full ramp performance numbers is not happening on day one of making calls. As a result, activity can be a great proxy early in the process.

That said, there is a time period where activity is no longer a leading indicator of effort. In fact, surface focus on activity can almost mask a lack of effort. 

For example, if there is a call quota, someone who consistently meets the quota may not be giving a great effort. One cue is call durations. If they make a bunch of two and three second calls to hit the number in their last hour of calls, this is a signal someone is going through the motions.

For a remote team, another cue is responsiveness. If I call someone or leave a message to someone unannounced on Teams or Slack, do they pick up the call or respond immediately? Or do they consistently miss calls or message me back 15 minutes later - or longer? I certainly don’t expect someone to be there every time I call or message them, but if it is a consistent theme that they are rarely or never there, then clearly the work is not a priority.

I think self-reflection exercises are another great tool to assess effort. I like challenging my team on a weekly basis to spend a few minutes documenting what they learned, their highlights, their areas of struggle, and plan for improvement in written form. 

Again - if it is early in someone’s tenure, I don’t expect them to shoot the moon in demos booked. But If I don’t see a great deal of thought and care into their self-reflections and  improvement plan, this is the easiest signal that someone isn’t working hard enough to “figure it out.” 

One or more of these patterns over an extended period are a clear cue the effort isn’t there -   which may mean it’s time.

SCENARIO THREE: Lack of Curiosity

This is where it gets more difficult - but increasingly important to assess additional factors around the trajectory of someone on your team.

When you have a team of honest, hard-working people, you have a great foundation. But unfortunately, it is not always a guarantee of success. One of the most important elements for consistent growth is the discipline and capacity to ask questions about your own performance. 

When you’re on a hot streak, exploring the questions, “Why am I hot? What specifically am I doing differently relative to last week/last month that is impacting my performance in a positive way?” are essential to drive consistent breakthroughs.

The same is true for someone on a cold streak to ask these questions. “Why am I cold? What am I doing - or not doing - that is impacting my performance?” are crucial drivers to back on track.

When someone stops asking these questions - or even worse - never began to ask these questions in the first place - it is a red flag.

Why? Sometimes a team member can get out to a hot start and be that “rookie sensation” with a great month. There is a great deal of excitement around their performance. Inevitably, sales people will have their version of a “sophomore slump.” There are natural ebbs and flows to performance, so it is common for someone to hit a performance plateau, or start to dip.

This is the stage where curiosity is a major factor for success. Without curiosity, a team member is doomed to a cycle of inconsistency. They feel as though they are a “hero” when they perform well, and they consider themselves a “zero” when they are cold. 

While a great SDR Leader can help be a partner in this self-exploration and discovery process, it’s not a one-way street. As an organization, it is your duty to put your team in a position to succeed with the right training, the right tools, and the right support. 

That said, it is not a one-way street. If a team member is underperforming, there needs to be an innate capacity and strong desire to know “why” in order to get back on track. If there isn’t, unfortunately, as a leader, you are prolonging the inevitable of what needs to happen.

SCENARIO FOUR: Lack of Adaptability

This is the second-half of the curiosity equation.

The prerequisite to solving a performance problem is understanding why. Once you know the “why,” however, the path to success runs through behavior change.

We are all creatures of habit. We do things a certain way, for better or worse, often with little awareness. For an SDR, habits are vital. Winning habits such as organizing your day, managing your CRM, tracking progress, proper “warm-ups” and letting go of hangups and calls with friction are staples for high performance. 

When necessary tweaks are identified, the accompanying habit change must pair with that recognition. Otherwise, without the behavior change, the self-aware team member is destined to be no more successful than the one who lacked curiosity.

This is also vital following promotions. While there are many crossover habits and practices that make an SDR a successful AE, it is not the same game. A new AE must quickly learn the similarities and differences - and apply the behaviors that follow suit - if they plan to achieve high performance in the next role. If they don’t adapt, then sadly, they will be the architect of their own exit.

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I’m not a basketball guy, and I certainly don’t have a peek behind the curtain to be privy to why the Knicks’ brass went this direction. After 25 years of underperformance, I thought that the momentum Coach Thibodeau and the team built the last few years had them on track to be a championship team. 

In thinking about Tibs, I wonder if the lack of adaptability was the perspective that fueled the Knicks’ behind-closed-doors thinking to relieve him of his coaching duties. 

Coach Thibodeau was a big proponent of leaning heavily on his starting five. This strategy was successful most of the regular season.

However, when it came to playing a hot Pacers team that pushed the pace and had a deeper bench, perhaps that failure to adapt exposed the Knicks in the most lethal way. It opened the door to allow Indiana to mount their epic Game 1 comeback win as well as enabling them to accelerate and close out the second half of other wins in the series.

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As I said, I don’t pretend to know the Knicks’ rationale, and I will never know. 

What I do know is this: hiring the right people is the single most important thing you can do to accelerate high performance. If there is any factor that approaches the importance of hiring, it is providing an incredible foundation by delivering a top-flight onboarding followed by elite ongoing coaching. This is the ultimate 1-2 punch to put your people and your company in position for success.

That said, it’s always a two-way street. Even if your hiring process is dialed in and your onboarding and training is outstanding, you won’t bat 100%. 

Make the commitment to do your part. If you don’t and your team underperforms, instead of passing the buck, look in the mirror and own the underperformance as your own shortcoming. 

If you have fulfilled your end of the bargain, however, here’s the tough news: the process of letting someone go will be just as painful on a personal level. 

But when it comes time to put your head on the pillow at night, at least you’ll be able to take solace in knowing the truth: it was the right decision to make.

#leadership