Don’t evaluate alone. The second part is the internal customer survey in which direct reports provide feedback to a supervisor. Even if you don’t have any direct reports, you do have internal customers. A receptionist, for example, has no direct reports but everybody is her internal customer.
My direct reports give me feedback on my skills, habits, knowledge, but most importantly, attitude. So it’s a bottom-up kind of performance survey.
We use a software program so people are really doing it anonymously. Some people sign their names to them, but it’s really a way in which they can say whatever they want. They grade the customer on a scale of 1 to 10. If you’re going to grade them below a 6, you have to make a comment, a suggestion for improvement. Then that report becomes aggregated and then goes to the supervisor and the supervisor shares that with the employee.
Start with the right slate. We look for people who represent the same kind of values that the company has, and the two most important values the company has are integrity and our sense of accountability. In our business, we sell a bunch of promises on a piece of paper, so people need to have absolute trust that what you say is true.
When we recruit, we are looking for people who want to be held accountable, that it’s OK to take feedback. If a salesman comes into our office and says, ‘You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll just do my own thing, and I’ll give you the results at the end of the year,’ that doesn’t work for us.
If you tell them about it upfront and people say, ‘Well, no, I’m superstitious. I don’t like to talk about an account that I’m working on,’ that just doesn’t work for us.
You really get paid for doing the right things when no one’s watching. So I really have no idea what our salesmen are doing 95 percent of the time because they’re out doing their thing.
We want to know what they’re doing — particularly in sales, the front line out with the customers, which is very important in how we promote and protect our brand. Every appointment is documented and discussed at a Monday morning sales meeting, and we do track results. We know who they’re meeting with.
Nothing happens unless there’s some activity. And if we see people with lots of activity but very poor results, then we know that there’s a problem with either skills or knowledge.
How to reach: USI Midwest Cincinnati, (513) 852-6300 or cincinnati.usi.biz
