World Fence News

32 • JUNE 2017 • WORLD FENCE NEWS P.V.C. PROFILES • SECTIONS • CAPS Lowest Prices • Highest Quality Easy Credit Terms Save more and learn to fabricate! We will teach you how! UVX Universal Vinyl Extruders, Inc. 631-643-1786 www.uvxextruders.com NEW CONVENIENT PICK UP POINT IN MARYLAND begin. For the most part, the produc- tion, office and shop staff was essen- tially the same. There were a few new salespeople and the father had retired, that was all. For months this persisted and the owners were growing more and more concerned. Later that same year one of the two brothers had attended one of my business management seminars at an AFA sponsored convention and af- terwards we got a chance to meet and talk. He told me briefly about his com- pany and what had been happening over the past few years and asked me if I could help. Within a few weeks I was able to visit and spend a few days with this honest, hard working but foundering company. It did not take long to realize their problem. As I mentioned, about two years earlier the father decided to retire and turn over control of the company to his two sons. The younger son had al- ways worked in production, oversee- ing the crews, shop and the gate op- erator service department, which had grown tremendously. The older son was acting as the sales manager and, while he was not doing a great job, he was getting by. Now that the father was retiring the older brother became both the president and the sales manager. It turns out that he liked the job as pres- ident a lot better than he liked the job of sales manager and consequently he rarely spent any time with the sales staff, about 30 or 45 minutes a week for the sales meetings. The new sales staff picked up on this lack of interest and enthusiasm and that was reflected in their perfor- mance. Bids were going out late and sometimes not at all. Estimates and job order forms were being filled out incorrectly or with missing informa- tion. Crews were constantly going to jobs ill prepared and the shop was building fences and gates and speci- fying gate operators that were not al- ways correct. The more mistakes that happened, the worse the attitudes of everyone in the company became. Everyone was blaming everyone else. The poor performance of the new sales staff even began to affect the performance of the older, veteran salespeople and everything began to fall apart. Even worse, everyone began to hate coming to work, where only a few years earlier everyone seemed to love his or her job – all because of the attitude of one of the owners towards his job as sales manager. What did we do? Well, the first suggestion I had for the two brothers was to pick jobs for themselves that they actually wanted to perform; oth- erwise they should hire someone to fill that position and get out of the way. I first cautioned them both that any company must first be function- ally organized and should only cre- ate positions necessary to the perfor- mance of the organization. President, vice-president of oper- ations and sales manager were all very necessary positions for a company of their size and needed to be filled by someone competent and qualified. But they must also be positions filled by someone who can lead, guide and motivate their employees and you cannot do that in one 45 minute meet- ing per week. The older brother decided to stay on as president and gave up his role as sales manager. One of the more expe- rienced sales staff that had been with the company for more than 15 years and happened to be a natural lead- er was promoted to sales manager. Then the entire sales staff was given a directive: "Improve your attitude." They were then told that their "3 P's" – Performance, Productivity and Pay – would increase as well. Most did improve their attitude and, as expected, their individual per- formance and the overall productivity of the sales department skyrocketed. The few that did not step up to the plate had to be let go, but the major- ity did great and in just a few short months the improvement was unbe- lievable. We even made a big sign and hung it in the sales department. The sign said: "YOU GOTTA BELIEVE How do you feel about your job? continued from page 30 continued on page 39 π WRAP IT RIGHT COMPLETE CATALOG 1-800-295-5510 SAME DAY SHIPPING

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