Strategies to Prevent Your Team Slacking and Maximise Their Efficiency

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another podcast. Now, I hope you've been really enjoying and finding the podcast really, really valuable. I've had some amazing feedback and lots and lots of new reviews. So listen, one more thing. If you haven't put a review on one of my podcasts and you find them valuable, I'd really appreciate if you can hit the download or give us a review. I'd love that, right? Give some feedback on there. So today I want to talk about something that we experienced in our business very recently in the last couple of weeks now. Hiring, hiring staff.

[00:00:28] So many people in business have a problem with finding the right staff. So we had a situation in our business where we recruited someone paying a good base pay and really good commissions. Now, this person earned some very good money the previous month. In the first month, she hit the record of what we expected her to hit, the top end. So she did that. So amazing.

[00:00:51] So fast forward. You know, she was her roles as a setter, connecting with people, you know, nurturing people and making contact with people. And what was happening is we set her some KPIs, a certain number of calls that she was supposed to make as a part of her role.

[00:01:12] Now, the calls that we set her, the targets that we set weren't high. They were kind of industry average for what we do for that position. And what we found out later, okay, this is due diligence on our part. Okay, so we got a bit, wasn't really focusing on that certain area. You know, she had a great attitude, really good at what she did. But here's the thing. We were so focused, me and my team on other areas of the business, that we weren't really like kind of monitoring her activities.

[00:01:43] All right, now, she began complaining that I can't do you, you know, you laid out, you want me to do X, Y and Z, but I can't do this much. And a lot of complaining. And we were outsourcing a team to like train some of these people. And, you know, gave them some feedback, come back to us, you know what, it's totally, you know, doable, they should be doing this, don't know why they're not doing this. And anyway, this person was very resistant, wasn't very open minded. At the beginning, when she won the job, she got the job the first month, great, amazing attitude.

[00:02:10] Then I noticed, like, on the calls, she'd have a kind of an off attitude. Like she wasn't like, she wasn't the same person that she was on month one. Something changed. Maybe she got complacent. Maybe she's on the best behavior, just because it's the first month didn't want to get fired. Now, we had some very strict KPIs in place that she had to meet criteria. And so one month had gone, we paid her, earned some amazing commission.

[00:02:39] Second month, what the fuck's going on with her productivity? You know, she's not making this amount of calls. You know, so many leads that were like untouched. There were so many people that she hadn't contacted that were allocated to her. And then she began complaining, you know, I can't do this. It's unreasonable expectations that you put, you know, this isn't like, this isn't right, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. And even on one of the calls, you know, I can't remember what was said.

[00:03:06] And I just got this dead look from a very quiet look. I'm like, are you still there? Have you frozen? She goes, I'm still here. I'm like, all right. First of your attitude stinks, I'm thinking. But anyway, so what happened is I began diving into some of her numbers. Like we use some apps that we have so we can look at, you know, when someone's making a call, how long the call was, what time the first call was made. You know, we get notifications. And what was happening is like her start time was like 8 a.m.

[00:03:37] And some days she wasn't making her first call like sort of like three, four, even three and a half, four hours into a shift. And this was like, obviously now I've like looked at something or found something out. It's like, hang on a minute. There's a pattern. So start looking going back a week, two weeks. And she was actually working half the time that she's meant to work. So that was like mismanagement on our part.

[00:04:04] You know, we should have like had the finger on the pulse. But I'm like, well, this isn't right. So we started to look. It's all right. No wonder you can't make the calls that you're supposed to make. And even the calls, you know, one time she said she made about 120 or 30 calls. And in fact, on the app that we use, you know, for how we make our call software, it actually showed that she'd done. I can't remember what it was about 50 calls or 60 calls.

[00:04:33] And every day at the end of the day, she'd give us an end of day report where it's got her activity. Well, it's meant to have her accurate activity, but she just made up some numbers. And on one day I'm looking at the call stats. She's made 11 calls. I'm like, what the actual fuck? 11 calls in a day and we're paying you as good base. So he pulled her up on it. I'm like, this isn't right. And you know what? We're going to fire her. But she resigned herself just before we fired her.

[00:05:02] And there's good in everything, okay? Now, I know that from this scenario, the situation that we had, we've learned a lesson. You know, like you've got to be on top of performance, right? You've got to be on top of your staff, your team's performance. They've got to be producing. Look, they're there to earn you money. We're not running a charity. We're running a business. So we've got to set expectations from these people, from the staff of what you expect from them. The minimum what you expect from them.

[00:05:31] And listen, we've got to make sure that we keep on track of these things. Now, one of the other things was time. How much time this person was having off. And listen, I'm fair. I'm a nice dude. Yeah, I'm fair. But don't take the piss, right? So now I've learned. Now, anybody knew that we recruit for that position? There's a couple of positions going. We're going to make sure that we are on track and on top of their activities on a daily basis, just monitoring what they're doing.

[00:06:01] You know, how much time they have off, their attitude. So different areas now. I know I've been running like many businesses for many, many years, lots of staff in different businesses. But now I know where we need to strengthen up and really knuckle down on expectations. Okay. And it's time off.

[00:06:22] Listen, if you've got a staff right now that are not performing, that have been with you for a little time, some while, maybe a few years, and they're not very productive. They're too laid back. Maybe you're too laid back with them. And I did a podcast similar to this problem, like not so long ago about, you know, working with the right people, especially when they become friends. So do you have someone in your organization right now that's not really performing well? In fact, do you even know how well your team is performing?

[00:06:51] Do you even have KPIs set? Do you have like certain requirements that they've got to do on a daily basis to keep their job? I was speaking to a friend of mine who's in this space. And he said, listen, if our team don't hit targets, okay, two months, for two months consistently, they're out. I'm like, wow, that's good. I like that. So now you've got to keep your team on their toes. If they want their job, they've got to earn their keep. We're not just going to pay money out to someone that's not performing.

[00:07:19] Now, I want you to really look in your business right now. Look at your team. Who's really not putting the work in? Look at their attitude. Firstly, look at their attitude. Give them a score from one to ten in their attitude. Maybe you're listening into this podcast with one in your team right now. And your team member's thinking, yeah, go on, do one on me. Come on, I dare you. You know, it's going to be all good. Now, you've got the other one that's sitting on the left-hand side, okay? And he or she maybe think, fuck, I hope she doesn't do this. Or I hope he doesn't do this. I hope they don't do this. Take this guy's advice.

[00:07:49] Give them a score out of their attitude. You don't need to have a conversation with them. But write their name down. If it's Emily, write down Emily's name. Write down attitude from one to ten. And where's Emily's attitude? One being the lowest, ten being the highest. Look at her work ethic. Does she come in on time? Is she productive? Give that score one to ten. Number three. Are they making excuses of why they can't do something? Is there always an alibi?

[00:08:18] Always a reason why something can't be done or they couldn't get something done? Give them a mark. Do they turn up? How much time are they having off? Write that down. One to ten. Look at some other areas. Their presentation. How was their customer care? Are they, you know, look at the areas of those people and say, all right, listen, pull them up. Say, listen, we're going to make some changes in the organization. This is what I've uncovered. And this is where I'd like you to work on.

[00:08:46] If they don't like it, seriously, screw them. I mean that in a nice way, right? Look, at the end of the day, a lot of business owners, I see this time in, time out. They have staff. They're complaining about it. Well, get rid of them. If you can't work with them, if you can't improve them, if you can't develop them, it's time to find someone else to replace that person. Oh, but he's been with me a long time. We started a business together. She was there from day one. He was there from day one. And I can't do that. We're really friend.

[00:09:15] Listen, okay, get over it. Get over it. Hire and fire. This is one thing that I've learned from like some amazing people. Hire and fire, hire and fire. Don't be afraid to hire. Don't be afraid to fire. Okay? Don't be afraid to hire. Don't be afraid to fire. Now, each individual staff member that you have, what is their role in terms of bringing you in new revenue or servicing clients that you already have? Because listen, your staff should be paying their own wages.

[00:09:45] They should be delivering you like that money, what you're paying them. They should be bringing you twice, if not 10 times more, a return on investment. Because I don't want to have a member of staff where the staff is just costing me, where it's a salesperson. I don't want to have a salesperson that's not selling. So if you've been recently recruited by me, in fact, what I'm going to do every single recruit that we recruit from now on, I'm going to make sure that we send them this podcast.

[00:10:13] So listen, if you're on my team right now, you need to perform. I'm going to be monitoring you in all these areas that I've spoken about. And listen, if you ain't working out, end of relationship. So this is a great podcast. You know, I've kind of killed two birds in one stone. So I'm giving you some education here. I'm giving you some value, hopefully. And also, I'm telling anybody that's going to be on my team that do not come with a bad attitude. Have a good attitude. Have a I can do attitude.

[00:10:42] In fact, I might even send this podcast to people who are applying to work with my organization. That's a good thing. So I might do that. And maybe you want to give this podcast to someone that you're about to hire, or maybe someone that you're about to fire, or someone that's in your team right now. Now, so listen, if you're an employee right now, and you're listening to this, right? Your boss has given you this podcast, and you want to keep your job, you want to become valuable in the marketplace, polish up on these areas, okay?

[00:11:10] Because you are being paid to do a job, okay? You are being paid to do a job. So do more than what you're paid for. Then you'll get paid for more than what you're doing, okay? So really up your standards. Now, employers, bosses, up your expectations from your employees. Go look at all of these people that are not really performing. And if they're not performing, you can't afford to have them in your organization. You cannot afford to have them on your payroll. Hire good people. Good businesses have good people.

[00:11:40] Now, think about like someone that you truly admire. Look at how they run their business, okay? And the other thing is don't be afraid to pay good money. Don't be afraid. And also, don't be afraid to set incentives. You know, what are you giving your staff incentives for? I have an incentive scheme for my staff. So I want you to really like focus on these areas. If you have staff right now, which I'm sure you do, how well are they really performing? Have an audit. Have a staff audit.

[00:12:11] You should have this like every quarter, every three months. Do this for your staff. Do an audit, a staff audit, so you can monitor their performance. And maybe have a separate notebook or a spreadsheet and look at the certain areas that you're monitoring them and look at are they improving? What are they doing? How much revenue has that person brought you in each month? That's another thing. Every single month, look at, give them targets. Like, look, this is what I expect from you. Now, the role they have may not be in sales. So sometimes it may be a bit more difficult to, in order to track this, right?

[00:12:41] But look at metrics that you can track for that person. Look at how many treatments they're doing. Look at how many appointments they're booking. Look at how much new sales they're bringing in. Look at their productivity. Look at the areas. Like, are they doing the job that you're paying them to do? If they're not, if you can't work it out, it's time to fire. And there's plenty of good people out there. Okay, we have this, we, when I say we, in general, people have a belief that you can't get good staff. You just can't get the staff these days. How many times have you had that?

[00:13:11] And here's the thing. There's so many good people out there. Someone in a role, say, hey, listen, these are the rules of the house. This is my expectations of you. And this is what I want you to do. Do you feel you can deliver? Yes, I can deliver. Are you committed to delivering? Yes, I'm committed. Okay, every month we're going to sit down. We're going to have a, we're going to have a one-to-one, 15 minute one-to-one. Are you open to feedback?

[00:13:39] And are you open to improving when you, when, when, when I suggest a certain area that's not working? Yes. I mean, okay, cool. Lay down some house rules. So when you do have to have that conversation with your team, with your staff member, excuse me, it's not an awkward conversation. Okay. This is a conversation that you should not be afraid of having as a business owner. Remember, you are paying the payroll. You are the boss. So act like the boss. Don't get walked all over by your staff. And I've seen this happen too.

[00:14:08] People being dictated to by their staff. They just want to listen. They get their backup. Okay. If they get their backup, they're out. So I'm going to get really like, listen, I want to help people, my staff. I want them to earn good money. I want them to be fulfilled. Now, if they don't want to earn good money and they're not willing to put the work into earn the good money, I don't want them in my business. I can't have people that are underperforming that are not bringing value into my business and serving my clients, helping.

[00:14:37] So I'm really firm on that. So we've got to, we've got to, listen, we can all get friendly with people at work, but listen, there's a fine line that divides your role as an employer and their role as an employee. Don't get the two mixed up. Don't get too, you know, I'm not telling you not to be friendly in the workplace, but understand that there's two roles that you have. Yes, you can be friends without saying time and you wear the boss hat, you wear the boss hat. Okay. So really knuckle down on that. So I hope this has been valuable for you.

[00:15:05] Maybe you're experiencing situations like this in your, in your business right now. Listen, maybe when it comes to recruiting, maybe you want to save this podcast somewhere, download it and you can go back and oh, that, what was it that Mindy said? When you should hire someone, what you should do. Listen, save this podcast. And before you, before you even employ someone, say, listen, I want you to listen to this podcast. This is how we're rolling. Okay. If you've got current staff right now, say, hey, listen, let's just put this new podcast on. I've been recommended it. And all of a sudden, oh, it's about stuff. Oh shit. You might not even want to tell them what it's about first. Say, oh, let's listen to this podcast.

[00:15:35] Heard it's got, you know, just start listening to a couple of podcasts and drop this one in. Get, listen to this in the market, into your, in your workplace. These podcasts, some of them that, that you can communicate to your staff, right? So, you know what? Yeah, let's do it. All right. So anyway, listen, I hope this was really, really valuable for you. So if there are any other topics that you'd like me to cover, please do let me know. And also, um, yeah, so, um, yeah. What was I going to say? I can't remember what I was going to say. So yeah, listen, amazing, amazing, amazing. So listen, I want to wish you all the best. Let's get, let's get your team performing.

[00:16:04] Let's get more done. Less time. Let's compress time and let's go beast mode, right? So go all out or go back to fucking bed. See you soon. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Mindy Paul show. If you'd like to keep the conversation going, be sure to check out the show notes where you can find helpful links to learn how to reach your personal and professional success. Thank you again until next time.