Archives for February 2025

Over the past 20 years I have witnessed an ongoing decline in the basic premise of John Molloy’s 1975 Book, “Dress for Success.” And with that decline has come a commensurate decline in performance and overall business and personal success. Focusing on the business aspect alone, understanding that to earn respect from others the first, and most important thing one must do is respect and value themselves and the image they exhibit. From personal appearance to actions, to become a true leader, one must focus on all things together.

No matter how strong one’s overall leadership actions become, if those actions run contrary to the package from which those actions emanate, the results will be less than optimal. If you are a manager of others, and desiring to excel as a leader, the thing you must ask yourself everyday before you go to work, is the image you are delivering one that matches the results you are trying to achieve. Or is that image actually working against you? The impacts of the pandemic and resulting remote work trend has accelerated the decline in respect and related results. Sit in on a typical company “virtual” meeting and not only do you see people dressed unprofessionally, but you also witness disrespect for the person leading the discussion with cell phones, food, second monitor email, dogs and kids, and other distractions. How can one possibly expect top level goal attainment, for the business and each person involved, if that is the base environment?

So, when you engage in every new day, ask yourself, is the image you are delivering aligned with the goals you are trying to achieve for yourself, your family, your team, and your company?

Around 1988, I was promoted to National Sales Manager at Universal Gym Equipment Company, one of the largest fitness equipment companies in the world at the time. I was immediately the leader of a team of 35 territory sales representatives, nearly all of whom had been hired based upon athletic experience, not sales experience. Working as a product manager, in this organization, for many years prior to my new role, it had become apparent to me the selling organization lacked real selling acumen. Great people with good people skills, but in an industry where competition was increasing annually, their ability to generate sales by establishing a clear winning position for our products was missing.

To improve our ability to compete, using Tom Hopkins (How to Master the Art of Selling) as my mentor, I implemented sales skills training programs across the organization. My thinking was I could simply train our folks to become “better” sales people and that they would willingly absorb and employ the education. I was completely wrong regarding that assumption (major career lesson) and in the process of working on the training learned that many, if not most, of the team didn’t want to change and were not comfortable with the training. One of my team, in a role-playing session, simply froze up when it was his turn, got up from the table, walked out of the hotel, and flew home. Clearly, I was failing, but why? In nearly every case our sales team was not comfortable in real selling situations and did not have the desire or passion to improve. I tried incentive compensation plans, I even tried sending separate bonuses to their spouses every quarter they attained their goals as a way of engaging their families. After a year of trying many things, it was apparent that most of the team were simply not sales people, meaning they did not have the core personality traits that aligned with successful sales people.

With sales revenue slipping to new competition, I started replacing sales personnel, with the goal of hiring people with real sales experience and acumen. This was a difficult process for a new 30-year-old sales manager, to be exiting people much older with many more years of industry experience. As I started, I was able to improve performance in some cases but not in others because I was not able to truly understand the capability of a new hire until I hired them. As such, some hires went really well and some not well at all. This was certainly frustrating because of the time, expense, and lost sales potential.

I was lamenting to a sales consultant I had hired to help with the training saying I wish there was a way for me to better understand a candidates true wiring so I could better predict their ability to be successful in the role. My consultant then asked if I had heard of Caliper? “What’s Caliper,” I said, and he explained it was a company he had recently become aware of that had a personality profile test that could be used to better screen sales candidates. It could tell me whether each candidate possessed the core personality traits that would innately maximize their ability to be successful in a sales role.

I made a call to the company (no internet then) and made arrangements to test a few of my better sales folks to get a feel for the program. I ran the tests and worked with the folks at Caliper to have them explain the results and wow, what you could learn was truly amazing. From that moment forward I decided that I was not going to make any more hires without the Caliper Profile as part of the initial screening process. With this change, our new hires were a remarkably better fit. I believe I ended up replacing 30 of the original 35 people over three years and the quality and revenue generating capabilities of the sales team grew significantly. Unfortunately, so also did the amount of competition. We were, however, able to minimize the competitive impact in a way that would not have been possible without this change.

From that point on, in my team building life, I have used Caliper, now Talogy (www.talogy.com), for every position for which I have hired. I worked closely over the years with my Caliper representative, who I ended up calling Dr. Laura for the incredible teams she was able to help me develop. She helped me understand how to use the tool for every job role, whether it was a new hire or helping existing team members improve. Caliper and Laura helped me find people with the optimal traits for each role and also helped me find people that could work well together, as well as with me personally, generating stronger overall teams. The profile also helped each team member better understand the core traits of other members, minimizing conflict and maximizing collaboration. Success came from building high performing teams that optimally matched their respective roles, had a passionate drive to succeed, and played well together over time.

Also critical was understanding my own profile, my natural strengths and shortcomings, so that I could build teams that shored up my weaknesses while also having common traits that allowed us to win as a team and enjoy it in the process. I credit the many business successes of my life to the teams of people that truly did the work. The ability to succeed as a team came from having the experience, capability, drive and chemistry matched to the goals in front of us and I am forever grateful to each one of them.