I was coaching a panicked salesperson last week.  He was scared because he’s behind in his number and he’s about to be put on the dreaded “plan”.  To be ‘put on plan’ means that the salesperson is given an HR-enforceable mandate to produce X revenue by Y date or he/she will be let go.  It’s a lousy feeling.  It feels like failure.  It’s especially lousy because there’s an implication that, by succeeding, one can be reinstated as a sales rep in good standing and continue on.  But that’s not the way sales plans work.  Sales plans are, under almost all circumstances, invitations to find the door.  So my salesperson/coachee had a legitimate reason for being concerned.

In having a candid conversation with this salesperson about whether or not he could recover his deficit before being placed on plan, I was forced to field an uncomfortable challenge:  He said, “I bet you never failed in a sales role.”  No surprise that this was from someone who had only been selling for three years to someone who’d been selling for over twenty.  And, because I wanted to walk the talk on which my integrity as a sales coach is based, I said, “Yes, I have.”  And I proceeded to tell the story:

Now it’s true that I was never placed “on plan.”  My story was a little different and a lot more based upon gender discrimination than actual revenue numbers.  It was in the heady days just before the dotcom bust when salesforces were expanding rapidly with B and C team players promoted to fill the management gap; when aggressiveness was valued above salesmanship; and when “at will” employment made the software industry a bit like the Wild West. I had been selling for more than ten years.   I had just taken a job with a start up, handling the New York metro territory, and a new Vice President of Sales was brought in one month later.  As I learned shortly thereafter, he had his own ideas about how New York should be run and told my manager (who was out of Atlanta and would have been lost in seconds in the NYC subway) to ‘get rid of ’ me at the earliest opportunity.

I did successfully close some business (maybe a quarter of a million dollars) inside of four months.  And I built a pipeline.  I liked the technology very much and was excited about representing the company.  But I knew they were gunning for me, and when the axe fell, there was no point in contesting.  I had the small satisfaction of my B/C-team manager looking shamefaced as he canned me for no good reason.  I hope he’s learned his lesson in lack of integrity and has to live with it.  I have the satisfaction of not even remembering his name.

But here I am, years later, wondering what I learned from this experience that might have saved me if gender hadn’t been in an issue.  And I realize now that, as a major account executive who was good for about four transactions a year, I was probably in the wrong job in the first place.  Start up companies need run-rate transactions, monthly revenue, trends—not data points.  Start up companies need hunters who build short sales cycles and smaller seed deals—not strategic relationships and long term annuities.  They have investors who want to see fast results.  And while this is all highly theoretical, as I coached my hapless salesperson last week, I was reminded that we should know our sales skills well enough to know what we are good at and what kinds of sales roles we should avoid.

I’m fond of saying, how smart or how stupid one is is relative to one’s situation.  A person with great knowledge of New Jersey has no advantage in New Delhi and vice versa.  The same is true of territory salespeople, major/global accounts salespeople, and account managers.  If there are two good things that came out of getting canned, the first is that I learned I am not a territory salesperson. 

The second thing I learned from getting canned is not to fear it.  If you’ve got what it takes, you just need a situation that favors you in order to prove it.  The following year I closed several million dollars worth of business and earned over half a million dollars as a major account rep.   It was the start of a great sales run.  I was back to doing what I was good at.  Now that’s ‘failing forward.’

So overdue. So overdue.  I wanted to share an update on Hurricane Jackie and her teaching, my gyrotonics progress, and some thoughts on feeling genuinely appreciated.  (I think that’s probably a continuation of my Recognition blog from April 12th.

First, for your amusement, a Hurricane Jackie story:  Mom was teaching in the Palm Beach Public School System again.  She was subbing for a teacher who had a period of cafeteria supervision duty on her schedule for the day.  Towards the end of the period, another teacher approached her and indicated that there were rubber gloves up front that she should use to wipe down the tables.  Mom looked up (a fair assumption–she’s down to 4′ 10″ or so) at the teacher and said, “I’m sorry but I won’t be doing that.”  To this, the teacher responded, “I have a PhD and I’m doing it.”  Mom realized she was speaking to the head of the department.  But that didn’t keep her from suggesting that “Perhaps your PhD hasn’t taken you as far as you thought.”  And she promptly assigned two students to do the ‘honor’ of wiping down the tables.   You go claim your space, Jackie! 

For my part, I’m delighted to tell you that after four gyrotonics sessions I’m actively reclaiming my space.  That’s a lovely Jenn Daly-gyrotonics expression for stretching my little limbs further.  And it’s way cool.  The first three sessions, while straddling the bench, I required foot blocks to enable my feet to reach the floor.  Suddenly in my fourth session, while Jenn was off automatically getting the blocks, I looked down and disbelievingly saw my feet firmly planted on the floor!  What had happened?  I sure as hell don’t know, but I like it! 

I’m no closer to figuring out a way to measure my progress in this exercise; and my back feels like hell immediately afterwards.  But then it feels great for a long time.  Maybe I should measure myself against the side of the doorframe to see if I grow?  We’ll see.  So all good progress made in gyrotonics!  Shame it can’t be had a little closer to home. 

Last, I’ve been traveling far more than I like.  And I whine endlessly about the counterproductive and counterintuitive online travel reservations system and I hate all airports, airplanes and flights.  It’s totally de-humanizing and vile.  (Anyone want to know how I really feel about air travel?)  Net net.  It, uh, sucks.  I think it will be a fine thing if tickets become more scarce and flights are cut back.  I might stand a chance of getting home on schedule.  Better yet, let somebody else travel while I work from home.  But I do so need to say that once I get to my destination, people in the sales force are genuinely happy to see me and work with me.  And they’re so appreciative of my time and efforts on their behalf.  And that makes me happy and makes my job rewarding.  I can’t wave a magic wand and make all prospects perfect prospects for my sales teams.  And I can’t undo some flaws of salesmanship or lack of experience when someone really needs the benefit of already having been there and done that.  But if a single idea comes out of a conversation or workshop or an opportunity review, they’re so visibly pleased that I feel truly grateful to do something I love and find rewarding.  My webinar attendance is up as well.  Why, I’m about to have a Sally Field moment….

A high-five to SIL Sharon on her spring gardening.  I understand its so attractive that her resident pink flamingoes are all a twitter and can’t decide quite where to park for the season.

And Dianne—packing is an accomplishment too!

I’ll look forward to hearing from you and learning what fabulous things you’ve all been achieving.  That can include the mundane–5 lbs down counts, and so does keeping your promise to do spring cleaning, to the sublime–vacationing without doing work on your blackberry–you go!  (You know who you are!)

Mwah!

Anyone who ever passed through the portals of a Psych 101 class is aware that learning progresses through four stages:  unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.  Of these, most treat the second one as painful, embarrassing, or just plain hard.  I don’t want to write about what it takes to move through the stages–that’s a Failing Forward conversation.  But I think that sometimes, conscious incompetence gets a bad rap.  Even those who have better sense than I not to embarrass themselves in public might want to rethink that stage and mine it for the joy  it can contain.

The Joys of Conscious Incompetence

On the assumption that people generally set out to learn new skills because they want to, they’re motivated to move through conscious incompetence to achieve the prize at the other end.  Unlike unconscious incompetence, wherein you don’t know what you don’t know, the consciously incompetent are conceptualizing goals and building visions.  For me, that’s a happy time–because everything is new.  And there aren’t a lot of new things every day in our lives.  And new doesn’t stay new–it gets old.  And new is, well, a gift of individual liberty, I suppose.  In other words, there’s joy in appreciated something brand new, because it doesn’t happen often.

The consciously incompetent are forming dreams and goals–exploring possibilities and stretching themselves.  They’re engaging in the self-growth that is the essence of mental and physical health; identifying challenges to overcome and making promises and action plans to face them.  They’re fulfilling a conceptualize-strategize-actualize loop that’s the essence of personal achievement.

The consciously incompetent are at the baseline for that growth.  The starting gate or the starting weight or the starting name-your-dimension that will enable them to measure progress and success going forward.  No starting point…no ability to measure success.  No ability to measure success, no real emotional validation.  And we live  for emotional validation.  We need to remember the way consciously incompetent feels in order to appreciate how good conscious competence feels.

Last week I took my first gyrotonics training at a beautiful East 23rd Street Studio called Kinespirit.  Watching the grace, flexibility, and frankly beautiful little body (5 feet tall, a role model I can work with!) of the studio owner as she put me through my paces was humbling.  I had no basis for assessing whether or not I was doing well or if she thought I was an untrainable lox.  But she could see that I was motivated; and with my usual energy, I’m going to rise to the challenge.  On the way out, she offered me a home video of exercises if I wanted to explore.  I thanked her and declined, explaining that I want to enjoy the newness of this workout and concentrate on my progress with instructor feedback.  I can barely repeat/reinforce the exercises we did in my first training.  It’s going to take a few more times before the basics are established (conscious competence) and I can layer new exercises.  But that’s okay.  (My very first weight training workout in ‘93 ended with me dry-heaving in the women’s locker room. Now that’s conscious incompetence.)  I still haven’t decided what goals I want to create for this new exercise medium.  So I need to establish those and baseline them before I move forward to actualize them.  I’m in the first blush of this new hobby/challenge/toy and I want to make that joy last as long as possible.

Next time you set out to do something, whether it’s a golf swing or a marathon, think about slowing down, rather than rushing through conscious incompetence.  Any skill you haven’t learned yet, you can take your time to learn right.  But if you savor the time when it is all new, you’ll have so much to look back upon with pride.

 Got stories? I’d love to hear them!

 The idea for this blog came while watching Dancing with the Stars on Canadian TV this past week.  I don’t know how many of the show’s fans are celebrity-obsessed reality show junkies.  I watch for the professional ballroom dancers.  And, as the ranks of “Stars” qualified to appear on the show thin to the likes of almost-stars, and kinda-stars, and ‘let’s rationalize how much dancing experience this person has’ stars, I’ve been gratified to see the professional ballroom dancers emerging as stars in their own right.

Cheryl and Maksim have opened dance studios, Julianne has recorded a song and video, and others have risen from unnamed extra status in movie dance scenes to credited celebrities by virtue of their achievements.  (Note contrast to most other celebrities and their relative lack of talents and work ethics.) I’m sure we’ll see more of these dancers as they continue to exand their careers, courtesy of their yeomanlike (and fabulous) work in making a bunch of celebrity bozos look good.

In other words, it’s good to see them get the recognition they deserve.  They feel good.  We feel good watching it.  (And, as a bonus, the world realizes that ballroom dancing is wonderful.)  In another Canadian TV segment (Isn’t being stuck in a hotel room wonderful?) I watched Ricky Gervais bemoan the public’s preference for reality game-show winners over accomplished individuals, thus corroborating my own personal disgust with celebrating the famous for being famous.

We all need recognition in order to feel the satisfaction of our achievements, large and small.  Internal recognition will only satisfy us for so long.  It’s natural for anyone to want external recognition of their efforts.  Different people and egos require different types and amounts of recognition.  Not all achievers crave being in front of the curtain.  It doesn’t make their achievements any less special to know that they labor behind the scenes.

Sometimes recognition is in a paycheck; sometimes it’s in a public forum.  Sometimes, it’s a heart-felt “thank you.”  The right recognition for a job well-done is essential, not only for continued achievement, but especially for the satisfaction we perceive in our work, in our relationships and in our own endeavors.

Here’s the challenge, of course:  People are not mind-readers.  Not everyone who is grateful for someone’s efforts remembers to say thank you.  It is not bad form, therefore, if you are legitimately contributing to success, to ask for recognition if that’s what will bring you satisfaction.  When the currency of reward was commissions, I measured my recognition in my W-2.  When the currency of reward became a marketing award, I asked to be considered.  When the currency of reward is a sincere thank-you from one of my coaching clients, I ask for a referral or to put in a good word where it can do me some future good.

In other words, there is a big difference between asking for the recognition you deserve and being a celebrity self-promoter.  When you are deserving of recognition, it’s usually very easy for those giving you consideration to accommodate your needs.  And if you find yourself in a place where your work is thankless–wherein recognition will never be forthcoming in any form no matter what you do–it’s time to do something else.  You owe that much to yourself.