ve-BINAR How Do You Control Your Fractional and Interim Sales Leader 2

Hi folks. Welcome to this Veminar series entitled how do you control your fractional and interim sales leader. Welcome. I'm Andrew Miller, one of the partners at the Vendux Group and I'm here today with Henning Svinham.

Yes, hello everybody. Thank you Andrew for having me. And I am also a partner here at Vendox. Started the business about three years ago and look forward to our conversation.

Great. So Henning, the topic for today is control. Control in the context of engaging a fractional and interim leader. So why is this a topic at all, Henning?

Well, that's a good question. But when discussing how hiring or addressing a skill gap with a founder or business owner, one word that I often hear is control. The power to influence, the power to direct people's or somebody's behavior. And it's the idea of that wholly owned employee that is fully committed all in, spends 80 hours, seven days a week. And this traditional thinking is driven by the fact that people think that can only be accomplished with a full time W2 hire.

Yeah. And so this is driven by the understanding that from a legal perspective, when you work with an independent contractor, you relinquish control over how, when and where they do their work. Though when is work about outcomes and result? Actually, I've rephrased the question. So when work is really about outcomes and results, isn't controlling the how, when and where just control for the sake of control?

Absolutely. That's definitely the right thinking and the right consideration. And any leader knows that they're well advised to avoid the impression that they're controlling just for the sake of control. Likewise, though, on the other side of the spectrum, there are definitely consequences that can be observed. When employees are without any control, they do stop working. Like the saying, when the cat's away, the mice will play. They start to procrastinate or lose motivation. Sure, there are always those highly motivated employees that work perfectly well without any external control. The problem is that they're not the entirety of your staff. And so once you neglect monitoring employees, by and large efficiency starts to diminish.

So what is a company leader or manager supposed to do? What are best regulations, best practices policies for monitoring employees activities?

Yeah, well, in this case, best practice starts with sharing and talking with the employees about the control, the very fact that they are being monitored. That's the starting point. Then you want to share the tools that you're using to accomplish this task. For example, that as a leader you are looking at a specific dashboard in your CRM or you are monitoring Some of their sales calls, then you want to share the key indicators for evaluating their performance. And they need to be precise and measurable. So it's not just saying, hey, I'm going to listen to your calls, but you say, I will be listening to two call recordings every day. And I do this because I want to make sure that our value proposition is communicated according to the script that we provide. And if I hear significant deviations, I will schedule time with you to go through the value proposition again. And that also covers the fourth and last best practice, the sharing of consequences that arise from supervision, the, the coaching, the consequences, for example regarding bonuses or other monetary or disciplinary sanctions. Those four are really simple. Share the very fact, the tools, the KPIs and the consequences.

Those are very specific. Isn't that micromanagement?

Not necessarily, because micromanagement is about excessive control. It involves asking for unhealthy, unnecessary levels of information and taking over operational transactional control. And that's not what I described. Now, when control happens, employees can react negative to things like excessive control or micromanagement, as you said, but also to asymmetry the fact that people are not all treated equal or plain managerial mistakes. But in all cases, people do not react negatively to the monitoring itself, only to its incorrect use. There are a number of studies that underscore that incorrect use of control negatively impacts performance. In fact, if employees perceive the boss only to be a controlling person, even the unconscious thought can have a negative effect on their performance. They will respond to a greater or lesser degree by letting their performance slip, by screwing up, by undermining, or by doing the exact opposite of what they're asked to do.

Yeah, yeah, those are great points. So back to the control of the how, the when, the where for the contractor. How does what we've been discussing so far make a contractor more or less performance driven?

I think it's really simple because if you assume that the environment is free of those control mistakes that I talked about and uses best practices like transparent KPIs, then that type of control has nothing to do with the timing or the location of work, the how, the when and the where. And that really puts employees and contractors on very equal footing. And then also consider the consequences of non performance. Contractors are in a volatile position as their engagement is easily terminated and their ability to win the next client is dependent on their reputation. So guess who has more incentive to achieve those results?

Yeah, for sure. So Henning, you've been working with fractional and intern sales leaders now for about three years. Is There something in their personality that would make them more or less likely to follow the pattern that you're outlining here.

Let me start by saying it's probably more than more like 20 or 25 years that I've worked with sales leaders because while Vendux is three years old, in my prior life I sold into sales and marketing organization. So I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of sales leaders. And so the question is, when you hire the skill set full time, a senior executive, 20 or 30 years of very relevant experience, is control really something that you're deeply concerned about? I would say no. You hire for their expertise, their experience, their seniority, the fact that they are a leader, a self starter, not someone that you have to handhold every step of the way. And when the same skill set joins you as a contractor and takes the role of a VP of Sales or CRO, would you really want to control them in every aspect of their work? I mean, don't you expect them to work equally independent, equally self motivated and come with the proper knowledge and skills? And then you look at the results, what you said earlier, its results driven performance. And then there is the aspect of tenure. So how long does a full time hired VP of Sales or CRO stick around? And the numbers are amazing. The average tenure across all businesses in the US is two and a half years, half of what it is for other functions like CEOs, COOs and CFOs. And in startups those two and a half years shrink to somewhere between 12 and 18 months. And that's basically the average length of an assignment. And there is maybe one more aspect. I often hear founders talk about the VP of Sales that they hire them to work them 24 7. They want them to always be available. And I was one of those. And it's been a few years back but now with hindsight and experience I would confirm that I worked those hours. But success wasn't necessarily result of working myself to death because it's about working smarter, not harder.

I completely relate in my own experience as well. Yes, this is terrific. Thanks very much Henning. Really appreciate you joining me clarifying this important question and it's been terrific. Thank you.

My pleasure, Andrew. Absolutely. One quick note, maybe for everyone who is listening to this and is still unconvinced, I say let's have a conversation. Reach out to me and I'll be happy to discuss how a fractional or interim leader can help you achieve your business goals.