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Don't Scare the Chickens

Submitted by mstankus1
on Wed, 08/03/2011 - 22:02

When his executive team wanted to make drastic changes to the sales organization, a wise old CEO replied, "Don't scare the chickens. If you scare the chickens, they stop laying eggs."

Translation - Be careful not to distract the sales team. If you do, they might stop selling.

This particular sales team was having a banner year in a difficult market. What the CEO artfully communicated was not to mess with momentum. He was a guy who understood the psyche of front line sales people and how easily they can be distracted or de-motivated.

Every day sales executives are faced with circumstances that

How to Deal With a "Tiger"

Submitted by mstankus1
on Wed, 08/03/2011 - 22:00

The day after the Tiger Woods story broke, I posted the  following question on LinkedIn:

What would you do ifyour top sales person pulled a “Tiger Woods”? Assume the person is married but not fooling around with people from the office…

I was curious to see how managers would deal with this situation. The question was posted before the full extent of Tiger’s exploits was made public.

The question generated hundreds of responses. People fell into three camps:

Fire immediately (20% of responders)

Try to help (20% of responders)

None of my business (60% of responders)

The majority of