The PIP
Hands up if you’ve ever been put on a PIP – aka the Performance Improvement Plan where no Improvement is planned? Dontcha you just love a plan without a plan! “There’s a plan for everything else” ...you shout… a Strategic Account Plan… a Call Plan…hell…there’s even a Pre-Call Plan for the Call Plan “but why no plan for the PIP”…you ask. Well…that my friends, is because all the planning and plotting started Pre-PIP!
Nothing signals the death knell of a Sales Career…like the Performance Improvement Plan – the Grim Reaper of Sales Performance Tools – where no improvement is ever planned. The PIP as we Sales People affectionately like to call it, is wheeled out like the defibrillator; only it’s a feigned resuscitation attempt at salvaging a career, that you may or may not know yet (but will have a feeling), is about to be placed on life support, only with a better shot of you cheating death, than saving your job.
Often served up by some hapless Manager with a side of sympathy and poor eye contact (who’s usually part of the problem y’all) the PIP is one way to avoid any inconvenient truth about Management Performance – instead, ensuring that any blame falls squarely on YOU – the intended target. It’s funny…how in Corporate America, Management likes to say “There’s no “I” in Team”…”It’s WE”…”It takes a village…” “Company DNA”…rah…rah…rah…well that’s all fine and dandy…that is…until you’re placed on a PIP…and then “It’s all YOU ”…”WE” just got up and left your damn ass…to make way for a new ally “CYA”. As “WE” races for the exit door, “CYA” enters by another door…a hidden door…ready to quietly throw your ass under the bus…as you’re left asking yourself what the hell just happened!
When a Sales Person is “winning”, the self-congratulation and back-slapping goes all the way up the chain…in the spirit of ”It takes a village”…with everyone except the Sales Person’s dog jumping on the bandwagon to claim victory…and “kudos” for something they weren’t even part of it. Where’s the collective ownership or responsibility when someone is put on a PIP? That’s right…there isn’t any! Of course the goal of the PIP isn’t to drill down and figure out why someone isn’t performing, but instead, is a passive-aggressive means of beating a person to the punch, causing them to run for the door before being pushed.
The PIP is supposed to give a Sales Person the opportunity to shape up, or ship out, within a certain time-frame…hmm…hmm…when you and I both know, it’s the proverbial “heads up” that your ass is grass…and time to update the resume! I mean “Hello”…how’s 60 – 90 days…going to change the mind of a boss who’s in “CYA” mode with his mind already made up! Correct it’s not! The PIP is nothing more than Management ticking the HR box and creating a paper trail in the event of any litigation once your gone, and anyone who tells you anything different…well they’re lying. Any proffering of a plan, help or any type of coaching should’ve come “Pre-PIP”…when you no doubt informed Management…that you weren’t feeling supported…your billing sucked and your largest customer wasn’t happy with your service!
During my 20-year sales career, I’ve seen PIPS dished out like candy at Halloween, sometimes deservedly so…but other times not so… used as a convenient way of managing people out under the pretext of non-performance, when in truth, it could’ve been for a variety of reasons; an inept boss who didn’t like the employee, the company didn’t want to pay commission (or severance), or Management quite simply wanted fresh blood. Whatever, the reason, the PIP is a very effective way of putting the nail in the coffin of an employee’s career, while ensuring the very opposite of its purported intention, improvement, happens.
