Page 56 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active

As a salesman, I had a fully loaded Chevrolet, but as a manager, I got a fully
loaded hardtop Buick. However, since I was flying much more, I only drove about
30,000 miles a year. At the time, I had 15 salesmen generating over $100M a year,
and the market share was being reduced.

This division did not have the latest technology, and competition was eating Dow
Corning’s lunch. I worked hard to change this. First, I stopped the bleeding by

committing loyal customers with older applications to multi-year contracts, which
placed me in a defensive posture; this was not my comfort zone. Then, I proposed
new product development to the marketing supervisor and very selectively reduced
some prices to acquire some competitive business. I, personally, with the salesman,
called on sales people of key accounts, which, unfortunately, had not been done by

the former regional sales managers for several years.

Now it was time to address the people problems. One problem was a tenured
sacred cow – a guy by the name of Gene. He was a twenty-year employee who was
much older than I and was at a much higher pay rate; he felt he had paid his dues
over the years and was now on cruise control. Dow Corning used an annual rating

evaluation form, and when it came time for Gene’s, I had a “come to Jesus”
meeting. I was very firm but fair and worked to establish an understanding of how
he needed to step up to the plate. Since Gene had years of knowledge and decent
performance, I assigned him to assist me in training new sales people; this kept
him close to me while still creating a team approach. Due to a prior poor
relationship with a general sales manager, Gene felt the company no longer cared
about him. He thanked me for my honesty and openness and soon did a complete

180-degree turnaround.

Then the next problem child that needed corrective action was Bob, who was a
former Nebraska Cornhuskers football player. He was large, a peaker in
temperament, either very happy or very depressed. He liked to use his size to
intimidate everyone, including me; he also had a temper. Bob was not making sales

calls, was taking advantage of sick leave, was falsifying expense reports and was
interfering with colleagues. My first discussion with him was to detail what I
sensed and heard and to sort out fact from fiction. He went silent and refused to
participate in the discussion. I informed him I would be critiquing his future
actions and non-actions. It took about two weeks to confirm all I had expressed to

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