My tech guy is a lovely young man – a college student working his way through school by working with me. Truly, he’s lovely. Absolutely honest, conscientious, does what he says he’s going to do a high percentage of the time, works around the clock with me for those times that the extra mile is necessary, goes the extra mile very often and completes tasks in a very short time. We now speak the same language, he understands my models and thinking (not an easy feat), and values/respects my work. He even understands my Asperger issues and can compensate when that happens to me.

We’ve worked together for just over 3 years, and there are times we have a lot of fun together. I’ve given him bonuses and birthday presents, and have loaned him money. I trust him, and there are times I would like us to be working together forever.

But then there are his errors. He doesn’t mean to make them – he just either assumes answers without asking, or forgets what we’d agreed on, or doesn’t thoroughly check his work and leaves behind errors that I find when I’m with clients, or when I hand out business cards with the wrong data on them, or he forgets to bring the books to events. He doesn’t mean to do any of them. But his errors cost me money, business/reputation, and time. At this point, when he makes one of his errors, I am on a hair trigger response and I get mad. For quite a while I was patient, and worked him through choices, or took him to lunch to show him other ways to think things through. I taught him what he needed to know and how he needed to do things. Truly, I was patient for a long time. But the errors persist. They are sometimes different, but always involve the same sort of problem, mostly around him not checking things after hastily completing something.  And my talks with him, my Facilitative Questions, my pleas and badgering, don’t help. And the mistakes are frequent – one month, it was daily.

I’ve gotten wiley: now I keep a daily list of his errors, and I’m starting to charge him $5/error which I’m going to subtract from his pay. And I tell him each time something goes onto the list. To be fair, when he makes errors, he uses his own time to fix them, and often does a bunch of extra non-paid work to make up the time he’s cost us. But of course, that doesn’t make up the client relationships, or my expended time. And it doesn’t make up for my upset, my having to red0, make good, pay for errors, make nice to clients I’ve just looked foolish with (Telling them my tech guy got it wrong doesn’t cut it, does it?). And I have to check and recheck some of his work. Exhausting. In frustration, and thoughts of Behavior Mod, I just docked his pay nominally ($50), because I got a stomach ache thinking of paying him his full amount after a particularly error-filled, and costly, month.

Am I being fair? No idea. Am I being harsh? No idea. I love the guy. Truly I do. He’s fun to work with, and when the two of us get on a roll and are collaborating, we’re the best team in town. I get a creative thought and he puts it into technology for me. Together, we rule at those times. But new sorts of links to bring new business to my sites? “Oh. I’ve known about them for a while. I just didn’t know how to implement them better than what you told me.” Or, broken links on a new site? “I thought I tested everything. I guess I didn’t. Sorry.” Or a misuse of Google Adwords that cost me? “Oh. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do [and didn't ask, find out, or tell me...]”

I don’t know the difference anymore between what I’m supposed to expect, what he’s supposed to do/know on his own, and what to just do myself. I realize he’s a college kid and I’m his first ‘real world’ experience. But it takes me so much time to pick up his pieces and check his work that I get annoyed – more so when it costs me real money rather than just time. Maybe I should just expect this unless I want to hire a highly paid ‘professional?

I suspect I’m just expecting too much from a kid. I know I’m teaching him ‘tons’ as he says. Maybe I’m just his teacher and I should be happy getting what I can that’s good, and disregard the rest and just pay the for his errors as the result of hiring a college kid? I’ve almost fired him, but he just shows up and keeps working – always on time, always puts in the hours necessary no matter day/night/weekends. And every once in a while, he has a really good, creative idea. He really, really means well. See my conundrum??

How are you all handling these sorts of ambiguous relationships? If you tell me it’s me, I’ll expect less. Or if you have some ideas, I’d love them. My greatest wish is that we’d continue working well together, with far fewer errors, and without having to check everything because I know the odds are good that it will be ok. Is this too much to ask??

sd

For those of you wishing to learn Buying Facilitation® with me, I’ve just scheduled a public training [pdf] for May 19-21. I occasionally put these up on the site for those folks wanting to learn the whole model, with me teaching it. Unfortunately, I don’t actively solicit attendees, as there are only spots for a maximum of 18. If you have interest, and want to know more, either look on my other site www.newsalesparadigm.com under ‘events’ or call me at 512-457-0246.

A Difficult Employee Relationship is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Indeed, I need to discover how I will choose my vendors.  What criteria will I use? And who on my team needs to make which decisions with me? I must figure these things out before data gathering – 0r sharing – is relevant.

I teach this stuff – and I don’t realize how vital it is until I am the buyer and feel what it feels like to be treated like I’m sitting here waiting for them to show up and open myself up to these strangers as if I knew and trusted them.

I had a chat with a friend today and we discussed how buyers are seeking data to make decisions with. So companies are making as much data as possible available on the net. But what, exactly, does that give the sellers? They are in the same position they were in when they did a lot of presentations, or wrote a lot of proposals: telling prospects they are terrific, that they have terrific data, and that they ask terrific questions.

Does this help the buyer buy? Well, yes and no. It helps the buyer buy only when they need that specific data set to move forward, or to offer their team mates as proof of concept, or when they are just beginning to gather data to see if a change or possible new solutions would offer them something. But what percentage of these people are buyers? No idea. When will they buy? Well, we know they can only buy when there is internal buy-in for change, regardless of how terrific a vendor or solution is, and regardless of how much ‘pain’ they are in. So all of this internet data is not helping the internal decision structure be more efficient because it doesn’t address the personal, political, and emotional issues going on behind-the-scenes.

One vendor sent me a 3 page testemonial showing how she was really ‘there’ for the client – but in a way I would never use her for. So I guess she’d be terrific for someone else, because I would need her for something different and I can’t close the belief gap.

As sellers, why do we focus on ourselves? Why do we think that being terrific is good enough to make a sale? When are we going to realize that before buyers can see how terrific we are and understand why and how and when to use us, that they have some internal work to do, privately? And sales just doesn’t manage this.

Who would we be if our jobs were to help buyers figure out how to make the decisions they need to make even before they might need information, or before they need to know how terrific we are?

sd

Why being terrific isn’t good enough to make a sale is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com