{"id":8007,"date":"2011-11-09T18:25:04","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T18:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=8007"},"modified":"2014-10-01T18:25:54","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T18:25:54","slug":"do-nice-sales-guys-really-finish-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=8007","title":{"rendered":"Do Nice Sales Guys Really Finish Last?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vitality Curve is the dynamic way to sort out A’s, B’s and C’s, the most important tool of staff development<\/em>.\u00a0 Rank the associates on the 20-70-10 grid and make the tough decisions! – Jack Welch<\/em><\/h4>\n

We all know the wisdom and management principles made famous by Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of GE.\u00a0 Particularly popular is his approach to stratifying a team of performers into A’s, B’s and C’s to help leaders make personnel decisions. The model works great for sales teams too, so why is it often so hard for sales leaders and managers to follow?<\/p>\n

Are your C players too nice to fire?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Let’s remind ourselves how the Vitality Curve work.\u00a0 Take a look below for quick refresher.<\/p>\n

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Any sales manager can easily rank their team using this formula.\u00a0 The only variable should be time on the job, meaning new Sales Reps need a reasonable amount of time to build their pipelines and start closing business.\u00a0 (Whether that’s one quarter or two years depends on the strength of your lead generation model and the average duration of your sales cycle.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Welch’s time tested definition of a C player (beyond being a bottom “ten percent’er”) is this:<\/p>\n