My first real job out of college was as a supervisor at the front desk of a business hotel just outside of Boston. It was not the most glamorous position but it did teach me the importance of open communication from department to department, as this particular hotel was quite chaotic.
When I “stepped up” into my first Jr. Inside Sales role I thought things would be different, but within a week I was struck by the lack of communication I had with the sales team. My cube was placed smack dab in the middle of the marketing department with 5 other Jr. Inside Sales reps that were lacking as much direction as I was. We were tasked with following up on web hits, attendees to webinars and any other cold lists of target companies that marketing felt fit the profile of company we should be calling on. Anything that needed to be communicated to sales from the inside sales reps usually went through our sales operations manager or through marketing. Since our salaries were funded through marketing budgets, and we were perceived as "telemarketers", we were only allowed communication with marketing. Another challenge was that the sales team didn't have time to do any hand holding since they were too busy traveling and attempting to close business.
It seemed so foreign to me to not be allowed to communicate directly with the outside sales reps. At the hotel we would simply call or walk down to the department we needed answers from. Even if it wasn't the most pleasant conversation, we eventually found some common ground which allowed the team to work more seamlessly from that point forward.
Over the next few months we were able to pull down meetings with some of the low hanging fruit, but we struggled mightily to navigate through the target accounts. Having no direct access to the outside sales team, we were not provided with the subtle tips and compelling statements that could have increased our chances of uncovering a pain. The marketing material was always very helpful to send when we actually got a prospect live, but if we didn't define the pain we usually never sent the appropriate collateral to get them interested.
After a few quarters of banging ours heads against the wall, we were eventually able to convince management that we needed full access to the outside reps. We aligned 1 inside reps with 3 reps in the field and had regular weekly check-ins to review questions and progress made on our target list. This helped to accomplish a few goals for us:
1) Allowed the inside reps a much better sense of how to navigate through an organization
2) What to actually say when you do get a prospect live
3) The best collateral to be sending out post conversation
4) Outside reps developed more confidence in the opportunities the inside team uncovered
5) Allowed us to be more forward thinking about how to attack the territory quarter after quarter
Running an inside team I've found that I have become relatively adept at playing the role of peacemaker. It could have much to do with trying to corral the wide range of colorful personalities that I worked with in the hotel industry. While I know marketing and sales may not always have the best relationship, they need to put their egos aside and recognize that we are all working together toward a collective goal. Let us put down those egos, find some common ground and make the company a boatload of money working as a unit.
How about in your organization - do your Inside and Outside Sales teams communicate well? Would be interested to hear how others have helped bring these teams together.
Over the last 5 years or so I’ve interviewed a wide range of candidates for our business development role here at AG. They all have a variety of backgrounds from 10+ years of inside sales experience on down to a recent college graduates anxious to get their feet wet in the sales world. What I’ve discovered is that nothing surprises me anymore.
Now I wouldn't consider myself to be the toughest person to interview for. I usually try to play the role of good cop and allow the other folks I work with make the candidate squirm with the extra tough questions. My goal is to get a true understanding of whether or not the person is interested in working on my team. And are they someone that I can see myself spending 40-50 hrs a week working with. I recognize that I can't expect every solid candidate I interview to be someone that I want to head out and grab a beer with, but at the very least will they add value to AG? Could they challenge me to be better at my job? My president made a good point recently ..."If I'm thinking at any point during an interview that I want to "help" this person, then I probably shouldn't hire them. We’re not offering charity here; we're trying to bring in people that will help to grow the business."
Usually I try to set the scene by being relatively laid back in an attempt to draw out the interviewee's personality. Our culture is extremely important so I want to bring in people that I know can add to our work-place and co-exist peacefully with others. After a little small talk like ... any trouble finding the office? where are you from? ..I'll start with my first softball question to get them comfortable... So what interested in you the Business Development Representative role here at AG? Well apparently that isn't the easiest question for some candidates. A couple of my favorite responses include.. "Well if you worked at my current company then you would probably be looking for a new job too" or another beauty "The summer was over and I figured it was time to look for a job. Your company just happened to be the first company to call me back." Both true stories.
C'mon people since this is a sales job you need do a better job on selling ME on why YOU want to work at my organization.
Here are 6 warning signs to look for when a candidate comes in to interview for your company. Yes they may seem like interviewing 101 to some of us...but I've been unpleasantly surprised.
1) They trash their current or previous employer:
My first thought when people get into this is “ hmmm well golly, what will they say about me if they don’t agree with a decision I make?”
2) No research has been done on the company or the role they’re applying for:
If I’m going to spend a half hour of my time with you …then come PREPARED! I’ve fielded some interesting responses to my question asking them to explain to me what they understand that the job will entail. My favorite was “I’ll be selling office furniture here, right?” Nope sorry buddy…you might be confusing us with your last interview. Another true story.
3) They have little to no questions regarding the role they are applying for or on the company itself:
As with #2 above come prepared, surely there are a few things you would like to know about the role and the company.
4) They make their first or second question about the sales compensation plan or better yet vacation time:
I can respect that people are interested in what their compensation will look like, especially since they are applying for a sales job and all….but at least butter me up with questions about the job and AG Salesworks. And the vacation time question speaks for itself.
5) They never look you in eye:
At this point I’m thinking..”You got something to hide partner?” I understand they may be applying for a teleprospecting job that doesn’t require eye contact, but quite simply I’m not going to hire someone that I feel I can’t trust off the bat.
6) No follow-up email is sent after the interview thanking the company for their time:
Seems to me that this is common courtesy these days, if they want the job badly enough, they should go through the effort of typing up a simple thank you email.
From my experience as a hiring manager this has been a great way to identify a legitimate candidate from the rest of the field. It can at least be a better way of weeding out the folks that you are on the fence with. If they exhibit any of the warning signs above it may be time to remove them from the pool.
I was looking at my blogs over the last few months hoping for some inspiration for this week’s post and realized that I’ve been at this for just about a year. At least once a week I’ve “attempted” to come up with some original and compelling content to discuss, and I’m not gonna lie there certainly have been some weeks that I’ve struggled.
My first thought when I was tasked with writing my blog last year was- Isn’t this something that the Marketing team should be handling? I mean what value can a sales guy or sales ops guy add to the process? My second thought was, is it possible for me to come up with a unique topic to discuss after a few months of doing this? But as my VP of Marketing pointed out at the time - “You’d be surprised at the variety of topics you can come up with the experience you have gained helping to run this business for the past 5 years”
Well, I can honestly say that as much of a challenge as this has been on occasion, I cannot deny how valuable the process has been for me. What I’ve discovered is that blogging should not just be reserved for your marketing team. Our president, directors, sales team, sales ops, training team on down to our business development reps have all been included in the process.
What I’ve recognized, along with my fellow bloggers here at AG, is there is so much we can discuss when it comes to teleprospecting and cold calling. Hell, we talk about it in theory all day long with our management team and employees so why not use this as a collaboration tool for our organization along with all of the other sales teams out there trying to accomplish the same thing. Not only that but if you truly take the time to sit down to think of a topic, you can come up with unique content or at the very least take another spin on a topic you’ve already covered. By having to put these ideas on paper, this process has forced me to methodically think about what I do on a daily basis.
As I was looking back at all of the AG blogs over the past year, there were a few concepts discussed that are not always being put into action as regularly as I would like. This process, I’ve discovered, has also been a great way to self police myself and others I work with. Again, it’s great to talk about all of this in theory but if you are not putting it to practice then what’s the point? Practice what you preach baby!
Another fortunate benefit of this entire process is all of the great content I've been exposed to from other folks who understand what it takes to effectively cold call and to motivate inside sales teams. It has also provided me food for thought on the variety of ways I can manage my group. Here are a few blogs I would highly recommend reading - Paul Castain's Sales Playbook and Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen
If you, or your team are not active contributors to the blogosphere, consider giving it a try. At the very least it can get you thinking about best practices as it relates to your business and can expose you to other great content out there that could inspire you to become a better manager/employee/colleague/ Dance instructor…you name it.
I can say without hesitation that I enjoy what I do. Running an inside sales team my days can vary from training with my employees, collaborating with my clients, motivating the team…the list goes on. But with every job we enjoy, there are few things we are tasked with doing daily/weekly/monthly that we would prefer to pass off to someone else. In my case the task I detest the most would be without a doubt anything having to do with list generation. I would rather make cold calls every day of the week (including Saturdays and Sundays) than have to spend hours scrubbing contact information on my cold call lists or inbound leads.
For those of us who can identify with this painful exercise, you know what it’s like after spending an extended period of time checking through thousands of “leads” for duplicates, incomplete contact information or existing customers. Eventually you feel as if your eyes are going to begin bleeding profusely and then fall out of your head. Meanwhile both marketing and sales are certainly willing to provide input on the list, how it should look, the profile contacts we should be targeting etc…but when push comes to shove nobody seems to want to get their hands dirty in taking the time to sift through the list or inbound leads that are worth following up on.
Understandably it’s one of those jobs that nobody wants to assume, but if you don’t who will?
I remember the first outside sales rep I was responsible for supporting back in the day. He was a great guy, but he never seemed to have an appreciation of all the work that went into finding a contact, getting them live and then converting them into an opportunity. Surprisingly enough, up until that point he had never made a cold call in his life so he had no real perspective on what it took. He would often dump a list of just company names on me and say… “Have at it!”with a wink and a thumbs up as if he was doing me a favor. Then he would cap it off by saying “Oh and by the way, I would scrub this list because there could be a few customers in there along with the a few other folks I may have proposals out to.”
Now I’m not expecting this guy to provide me a list of contacts with direct dials that pick up the phone and say “you have wonderful timing. I want to buy your product. Put me on the phone with your rep right away!” …but throw me a frikin’ bone here.
The more work you are willing to put in on the front-end will only benefit everyone in the long run. Better quality lists mean your inside sales reps are finding a larger quantity of leads AND they’re finding them at a faster pace. This larger volume of opportunities are converted to the outside team who now have a larger universe of deals they are working which means there is a higher likelihood they will close (assuming your sales team is adequate). Once the deal comes in everyone looks like a hero and the marketing team, inside sales team and the outside reps can all sit around a circle holding hands and sing Kum-Bay-Yah!
If you are dumping a list of marketing leads on the inside sales team that is filled with incomplete contact information, or is chock full of duplicates, then you are you putting them at an automatic disadvantage before they even pick up the phone. Have you taken into consideration how much that can negatively affect the progress of your campaigns or the growth of your pipeline?
Everyone should be prepared to get their hands dirty. We can use all the marketing platforms and fancy data fusion tools available to us out there to clean and de-dupe your leads, but ultimately you must face the facts that there still needs to be a degree of manual labor that should be required in order to get a truly clean list.
Point is, marketing and sales need to accept equal responsibility for providing the cleanest list possible. Sales reps should know their territory better than anyone and should be taking the time to scrub off the prospects they are already engaged with or they perceive are not necessary to pursue. Meanwhile marketing needs to come up with some kind process for doing their own pre-scrub of their inbound leads since 50% generally are junk. Hey I'm no genius, but I'm going to assume that the marketing lead from Jesse “The Body” Ventura at 123-456-7891 is probably not going to buy from you.
The success of every campaign I’ve been involved in running has always hinged on the quality of what you are calling into. I’ve said it before...guess what I’m going to say it again.. YOUR INSIDE SALES TEAM IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE LIST THEY HAVE TO CALL ON.
Working in the world of sales I have sympathy for my brethren slogging away in the trenches trying to pull down a deal. With all of the calls I receive each day, I feel obligated to at least hear the sales rep out before I determine if their offering is something I may or may not have interest in. The same goes for the email solicitations I receive. I’ll take a minute to read (or at least skim) through their pitch to feel out whether or not this could be something that would benefit AG.
By taking the time to absorb the various solicitations we receive on a daily basis we accomplish a couple of things:
1) The product/services they are offering COULD actually be of great benefit to our business
2) It allows us to analyze/ critique how other organizations approach their cold calls and messaging
Over the years we’ve recognized that our approach needs to continually evolve. We can’t allow ourselves to rest on our laurels. And while you can say this about most any business, this should be an absolute requirement if you cold call. One of the better ways we feel to execute on this is through collaboration with your team.
A perfect example occurred today when AG’s president shared an email solicitation he received from a vendor interested in partnering with our organization. He was drawn in by the simplicity of the subject-line which prompted him to open the email, but he felt the content needed a little tweaking after reading through it. He asked that everyone to share their individual input. We evaluated the positive and negatives, recognizing that there isn’t always an absolute right and wrong way to communicate with a prospect. As a team we pin-pointed some of things we felt worked well along with the things we felt could use a little adjusting.
The beauty of an exercise like this is you are encouraging individuality and creativity with your inside sales team AND their ideas are being exposed to both their team members and management.
If you’ve conditioned yourself to just delete an unsolicited email you receive or cut the sales rep off while their halfway through their pitch - then you might be missing out. For those of you in the sales/marketing game, I suggest appeasing the karma gods by giving a minute of your time to the teleprospectors reaching out to you daily. Not that I have any intention of sounding like my mother but… how would you like it if someone did that to you? In the one minute you are allowing to listen/read the solicitation, you are also educating yourself on how others are getting in front of their prospective customers. As we all know-your message needs to evolve. Hey, some approaches may not work for you, but at the very least it gets you and your team continually thinking of how your messaging should be positioned.
Everyone believes it can be tougher to get people live during the summer months, especially around the holidays. We are in the mindset that most of the executives we are looking to speak with are off at the spa or riding around on their jet-skis…but I would argue that times have changed, and this may be the best time to reach them. With tougher economic times, people are trimming down their vacation time, additionally; they may be using this quieter time to catch up on those miscellaneous projects.
The problem is we allow ourselves to assume they are not going to pick up their phone and as a result our productivity suffers. We can't allow ourselves to lean on this as an excuse, as this may actually be the ideal time to track down that busy executive. Therefore, this time of year we should all have our action plan in place to make sure we take advantage of this opportunity.
Here are some suggestions to keep in mind during the summer vacation months:
1. Remove The Negative Mind-Set!
If you assume you're not going to get someone live, you most likely won't. It's not like they're taking the next 2 months off (unless you're calling Western Europe). Check with their admin to make sure they are in the office. Until you are specifically told they are out of town, then keep knocking on that door.
2. Be Smart With Your Activity
Never leave message or send an email to someone on vacation - It's simply a waste of time. Any cold call or cold email will be put to the bottom of the list of priorities if they are coming back to a pile of other messages and emails. If you must reach to them then I would suggest sending just an email with a simple subject line like "Quick Phone Call" and then ask when they would have 5 minutes free to speak with they are back in the office.
3. Find Alternate Contacts
This may seem to be an obvious statement since we should be doing it at all times while we prospect, but it is even more important in this case because your prospects are that much more difficult to reach. Also, by gathering information as you navigate through the organization, you will have a much healthier discussion with your target contact when you get them live. At that point you will have a solid understanding of what competing technology/service they have in place along with any pains they may be experiencing which will allow you to know where to steer the conversation. Plus you could stumble on another contact would could be involved in the decision as well.
4. Leverage Out of Office Replies
Most of the typical out office kick backs will give you other individuals within the organization to contact in their absence or in case of emergency...now you have your alternate contact to reach out to.
Making your cold calls any time of year requires a methodical approach. Now that summer is upon us don't let yourself deviate too much from the game plan. Keep your head down and task yourself and the team with putting a little creativity into their dials incorporating some of the tips above. At the very least it can help to keep things fresh.
Over the years at AG we’ve continually analyzed the special combination of skills that separate our top inside sales reps from the herd. While it can vary wildly, there is probably one trait that we most commonly see across the board. Some are more conversational, some more to the point and others a blend of the two. But the one thing they often have in common is an innate understanding of how to navigate their way into and through an organization - a.k.a being “resourceful”.
As important as this trait is, we do find that it can be difficult to teach this skill. It’s one of those things, either you got it…or you need to consistently work on it. During our training process, there are a variety of things we do to train our people up on being more resourceful. The goal with our newer folks is to provide some simple but effective techniques to accomplish their goal of tracking down decision makers and passing quality leads.
A common statement that I would typically hear during my years on the phone was “when in doubt- just pick up the phone and find out.” While I buy into the whole idea of being fearless when making your dials, I also believe in putting yourself in the best position as possible before you even pick up the phone. What I feel should always be on our mind is “what can I do to make sure I DON’T look like a teleprospector” when we cold call into a new company.
During their first weeks on the phones our teleprospectors typically get caught up in the first line of defense as they make their initial calls into an organization. Below are a few examples we share in our trainings on being more resourceful and avoid that from happening.
Have a contact name at the ready when you make your first call:
You never want to go blindly into an organization without having any direction. If you don’t have a name you are essentially announcing that this is a sales call. So let’s say for example you get an assistant on the line and ask “I was hoping you point me to the person who oversees your lead generation effort for XYZ Company”. If you ask me that’s basically flying the cold caller flag as high as can be. From my experience all you end up with get up getting is..”feel free to mail your information to our address” or another favorite “I’ll forward you to procurement’s voicemail”. Don’t get me wrong, there are going to be situations where you will have to resort to outright asking this question, but the only time I suggest using it is when all other avenues have failed.
Use Humor:
Commonly we hear- “That person is no longer employed here!”A good response might be “So that’s why I haven’t been able to get in touch with him/her!” Corny I know, but at the very least it loosens up the gate keeper who may be willing to forward you on to that person’s replacement.
Utilize all on-line resources:
Linked-in/ Jigsaw/Google/ The company website- all excellent resources to find contact information and to learn more about the organization you’re prospecting into. The goal is to sound as knowledgeable as possible as you’re calling in. Do the research necessary before-hand and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll be speaking a decision maker.
Let's face it, in the cold calling game you most likely have a strike against you with most gatekeepers. Using a couple of the tips above have given my team some traction in penetrating an organization further. Give it a try and see if it works for you.
Good luck and happy teleprospecting!
Employee retention seemed to be a taboo subject when I worked at my old sales gigs. It was almost as if they hoped by not discussing it, the problem would go away. The unfortunate thing is they seemed to be conditioned to accept that attrition was inevitable with a team of people making cold calls all day. It wasn't uncommon to see about 50% of the new hires we brought in exit the organization after 6 months. Why? You've taken the time to interview, hire and train a rep and once they're at altitude they leave. We shouldn't be OK with that.
I've said it many times that making cold calls is certainly not glamorous, but it doesn't mean we can't get the most out of our Inside Sales Rep by continually challenging them. Why do we allow ourselves to get in the mind-set that if you get more than 1 year out of an Inside Sales Rep it's all gravy after that?
Don't get me wrong, most of the companies I worked for did everything they could to retain their staff. There were plenty of summer outings, winter balls, bowling parties, family picnics, ice cream socials... even the opportunity to make some very nice bonuses. At the end of the day though almost everyone still seemed relatively miserable.
While I didn't have the opportunity to do an exit interview with each and every person that left the organization, the general consensus from my colleagues was there was not enough focus on the culture and making the reps feel as if their opinion mattered.
We've been pretty fortunate that AG has seen a much higher retention rate than my previous employers. While I have my own thoughts as to why we've managed to retain our people I was curious to get my teams thoughts as well. I asked a couple of tenured top producers on my team this question:
"If you strip away the fancy outings, casual Fridays everyday, incentive programs and all other miscellaneous things we do here at AG, what REALLY motivates you want to be part of this organization?"
Outside of the obvious response of "money", it came down to 3 pretty basic things:
1) "We receive personalized feedback from our boss"
Be as real as you can be. Nobody, whether they're in sales or not, can stand hearing the canned managerial response which seem to be memorized from the employee handbook. Even if you can't give someone the answer they are looking for, at least give them an honest reason behind why a decision has been made (unless obviously your sharing proprietary info which could get you canned..then just tell them that)
2) "AG actually listens to my suggestions"
There is nothing worse than feeling you've come up with a good idea and it has been all but ignored by the management team. Make them feel as if they are part of the organization and put their suggestions to action if they make sense. This should help to keep the right people on your team engaged.
3) "AG sets challenging but realistic goals"
Pretty simple one here. Nothing de-motivates more than a goal that seems unattainable. You want your team to feel they are stretching each month to hit their number, but not to the point where they feel completely blown out after the month/quarter is through. Pay attention to the goals you are setting. Adding 20% more to a high performer's goal every month is probably not the answer. Eventually you'll most likely lose your best people if you approach it that way.
While there is not an exact science to retaining your people, it's always interesting to get their insight on the small things that make the difference for them. Don't get me wrong, I love ice cream socials but at that the end of the day that isn't what motivates your superstar Inside Sales Rep to come to work.
At times teleprospectors have to face the harsh reality that we will not always be appreciated by those we call throughout the day. I would say that some would view what we do as a slight step above getting a call from a bill collector. As a result we've conditioned ourselves to expect the unexpected. Our experience on the phone can range wildly from a hang-up as we are half-way the first sentence of our introduction, to someone saying we had great timing and they appreciate the call since they are actively evaluating a solution.
I wish I could say that we run into the latter situation regularly, but unfortunately that is not the case. And while it's not a regular occurrence that we get hung up on immediately, the most common response, hands down, that we hear from prospects after our initial pitch is:
"Nope we're not interested. We are all-set in that area but thanks for calling"..and then a dial tone.
Honestly, from our perspective they may as well have hung-up on us right away since we got absolutely nothing out of the call. We understand that not all everyone wants to hear from us but that response gives us no indication why they are not interested.
The question is does your inside team find a response like that acceptable? Do they just mark that account as "not interested" and just move on?
It's unfortunate but from what I've seen many inside reps DO find that acceptable. Why? You've gotten nothing of value out of this prospect to indicate why they view your service offering as something they would not need.
Are they not interested because they recently implemented a competitor? They don't have the budget dollars? They have a homegrown solution? These are the questions you should have answered before you let the prospect off the hook.
So where do we take it from here? I've got a simple answer: Call someone else at the company! Even if you've gotten a C-Level or VP-Level person live and they give you the canned statement above, that is still not good enough. My suggestion would be to call the Director or Manager working below them. With each company you are prospecting into pull in a minimum of at least 3 different contacts at different levels within the organization. Eventually you are bound to hit someone who is willing to share some basic information with you. You may not be looking for a detailed rundown of their IT infrastructure, but just a tid-bit of information to justify why we should just move on.
A positive by-product of calling into multiple contacts, outside of getting a legitimate reason behind a no interest, is you may uncover an active project after all. I can't tell you how many times we've been blown off by a VP only to find someone working in their group that actually does have an active initiative. Let's face it, most high level execs probably tune out during your pitch or you could have just caught them on a bad day where they'll say no to everything. You owe it to yourself to dig around a bit more in these organizations...you might be surprised at what you uncover.
In my early years as an inside sales rep I would not necessarily have described myself as a particularly aggressive sales guy, but my boss didn't need to know that. Every couple of weeks she would sit down with me to listen in on dials, and of course I was on my best behavior. Everything she instructed me to do I did with no questions asked. Though I did get a certain amount of value out of our sessions, I usually felt I was not able to put my own spin on things during my prospecting. I felt the suggestions that I was receiving were more like step-by-step instruction of exactly what to say when you get someone live on the phones. Bottom-line for me was that I felt my input was not valued and I was essentially expected to "follow the script".
Over the next 3 or 4 days I would do as I was told, but eventually I gravitated back into the same habits that worked for me without incorporating the "suggestions" I received from my manager. Luckily for me I was reasonably successful quarter after quarter and a result my approach didn't come under much scrutiny.
The question is: Could I have been more successful?
I often listen in on calls with my business development reps to keep my finger on the pulse of what we're hearing day-to-day from our prospects. As we start each session I make it clear that I am not here to necessarily critique them, but would prefer that they viewed me my role as more of consultant, providing them suggestions on how they can be even more effective at the job. Though it truly is not my intention to critique my team, I want to get an honest sense of how their approach is resonating. Don't give me what you THINK I want to hear, give me what you are REALLY saying to people when I'm not listening in on your calls. The obvious goal for me is to disarm them enough to truly uncover the things that could be preventing them from finding more potential business opportunities.
In hindsight my boss brought many suggestions to the table that may have taken my performance to another level, but I felt I had no ownership over them so I rarely put them to practice. Meanwhile she assumed that my consistently strong quarters had much to do with her stellar instruction from the company teleprospecting handbook and as a result she spent a much larger percentage of her time with the low performers on the team.
What I've learned is that everyone has their own unique style on the phones. This unique style has to be encouraged (within reason of course) rather than discouraged. Take the time to sit with your teleprospectors and have a healthy discussion around ways to best meld their approach into your company's perceived best approach to making dials. You'll be surprised at the increased performance as a result... and not just from the low performers. You'll now have a group of A players who are performing at an even higher level because their ideas are not only valued, but are encouraged to be put into action.
How much time are you spending with your A & B players now? Do you train your A players any differently than your low performers? Do feel your employee's are provided the opportunity to put their 2 cents in?