Meeting With Tracey
“Part of my compensation every week is based on profitability of team sales, which means my team’s sales revenue minus the cost of my team’s compensation and other costs. You know what else gets counted in the costs of all of the sales teams? The cost of Melissa’s team because they do nothing to make sales. Why do I get punished because of how many people Melissa has? All of us are wondering what that team does because we are paying for them out of our own pockets.”
“Because I am paying them, I am their customer. As the operations team, they should be asking me how they can help and what else they can do to make it easier on us. It would be nice if we at least received proactive and customer-focused support because that is what we are apparently paying for. They should be asking me ‘how can I serve you better?’”
“Look, I’m here because of Neil. His vision and the way he makes our mission so compelling is inspiring. But he also needs to start to deal with Melissa, who is running out of control. It feels like we work for her and not Neil. She knows how much money I make and she controls whether I get paid or not. She is the final decision maker on almost every order and payment that goes out.”
“Clearly, Renee is not going about it in the right way, but she’s just saying what the rest of us are all thinking.”
Meeting With Renee
“Freda, I’ll be honest because that’s the only way I know how to approach this. I have a huge territory to deal with and I am under a massive workload. Our entire northeast division hangs on the success of my team, which is clear to anyone who is looking at our numbers. I have loyal and demanding customers, and we put in more orders than any team in this company. I’m incredibly busy.”
“That’s why I need the partnership of our operations team. We don’t need police or judges or audits, we need them on our side. I need their advice on how to move orders through the system in a way that meets whatever their requirements are. The rules change every day and it’s hard for all of us to follow. I’m constantly on the road, usually online in a hotel room at midnight trying to sort through Melissa’s confusing e-mails. She’ll send an audit report to Neil showing how my team is out of compliance with some random rule that she made up last month. He’ll send me an angry note demanding to know what is going on, and then I’m stuck trying to examine 500 lines on a spreadsheet to figure out which of my sales reps isn’t going to get paid and defend my team. It just feels like they are intentionally putting barriers in my way, with an overarching suspicion that I am trying to cheat.”
“What’s more frustrating is that our internal information technology systems are not accurate at all. On Melissa’s report of current open orders, more than 25% of them have already been filled, but for some reason the system doesn’t show that correctly. She asks me for details about sales reps that quit a year ago. Why is everything on my shoulders to resolve?”
“I know that I’ve been inconsiderate and I have said some inappropriate things. I also know that Neil is complaining about me to Avery, so I am watching my back and trying to lay low. I bet Neil can’t stand it that Avery will back me up. Avery knows that if I walk away, our customers will, too. Avery has told me that I’m in line for Neil’s job, and Neil knows it, so I’m sure that’s why he wants to make me look bad.”
“Also, Melissa hates that I make more money than she does. Someone on my team told me that he overheard Melissa say to Neil that she wanted to find a way to reduce our sales commission expenses, especially for directors, and I know that I’m the highest paid director because my territory is so big and I exceed my annual quotas.”
“I now spend every weekend working on her requests and I’ve started setting up my own internal team to keep track of our own data because hers is so questionable. I’m not sure I can continue working at this pace of 7 days a week. The bottom line is that something needs to change. I just can’t work with her.”
Meeting With Leo
“I have the most states to cover, but the smallest team and lowest number of customers, so I really don’t have that much of an issue with Melissa or her team. We did have one issue about three months ago where my team was complaining that they did not understand the new rule about needing to prove customer order acceptance with a copy of an e-mail uploaded into the system. We invited a person on Melissa’s team to our next staff meeting, and she walked us through the reason for the new rule. We asked questions to clarify, and my team was satisfied.
“I have learned how to play the political part of the game to make sure that Melissa likes us. I think there is a conflict of interest on Melissa’s team. The same people that are supposed to help us move orders through the system are also the people who audit against those requirements and deny our paychecks. They make the rules and then judge against the rules. There are no checks and balances on whether the rules make sense or whether they are interpreted correctly, so anything that her team decrees is the law. If you complain about unnecessary rules, you get slapped with another audit on you.”
Meeting With Melissa
“It was about a year ago when the first rumblings started of ‘I hate Melissa.’ Now it’s a daily occurrence. I’m sure they are all complaining about how unhelpful I am, but in some respects, I don’t really care. When I first took this job, we had lawsuits going on because of our failure to have accurate compensation practices. That’s also when the internal audit department started investigating us. People were getting paid inappropriately when they never made any sales at all. Salespeople were putting through discounts that were costing the company millions of dollars. We were shipping products to customers that never ordered them, paying the salesperson’s commission, and then paying for return shipments and apologizing to customers. That’s why we now require purchase order numbers so no one can game the system. I’m not going to go so far as to say that there was illegal activity happening, but that’s only because I can’t prove it. By law, we must have a customer signature on every sales order. That’s not a personal attack I’m making on them.”
“What they really hate is the fact that they can’t get away with anything anymore. We now have controls and processes in place to make sure that I can confidently stand behind every order that goes through and every sales commission that gets paid. They may hate it, but that’s what’s best for the company. It’s like dealing with a child that doesn’t want to do his homework or take her medicine. Someone has to be the adult around here, and that’s me. I’m the bad guy, and that’s fine, I can take it. What they really want is to boss me around like they did Savanna, and for me to be their administrative help, cleaning up their errors behind them, wiping up their messes. Sorry, I’m not going to do that. Maybe if they experience the pain of going back and doing it again correctly, they will pay more attention and do it right next time.”
“They think that somehow I have Neil’s ear and his attention more than they do. That’s not true. I have had knock-down, drag-out arguments with Neil, but he’s the boss and he makes the final call. Every single rule and process in place today is with Neil’s support and approval. He delegates implementation of those rules to my team and expects everyone to comply. When the compliance reports show any discrepancy, I’m the one answering to Neil as to why I let someone get away with an order that has a compliance problem. There is pressure on me, too.”
“What we can all agree on is that our systems are very poor. The day I started, I put together a quality team to clean up the incorrect data in our database and get it right. Unfortunately, that requires the time and help of the other directors. I don’t know everyone in this entire organization or the history of every sale that they made. In the past year, we have cleaned up 11 of the top 20 most common reports that we publish. Things are