I run a mid-size sales company and count on my employees to
help get the job done. Like most bosses, I need to know that my workers are
working their hardest—that they are doing their jobs and not slacking off. But
how can I really know?
Making sure that my workers are actually hard at work can be
a job in itself. Truthfully, I can’t be bothered constantly micromanaging them.
How would I get anything done? And let’s face facts, many of my employees have
jobs that are not easily monitored. Sure, I can gauge my sales
representative’s performance by the amount of revenue he or she is making for
the company—whether they are reaching their expected quotas—but that can take
months before I see the results.
I had one sales rep who had to travel to conduct business.
Some outings were minutes away—others, hours. I trusted that my rep was doing
his job, because he would tell me everything … or so I thought. It turned out
that, while yes, he was going out on sales calls, there wasn’t always a person
to meet.
It turned out my employee was often meeting his girlfriend for
a quickie or a buddy for beers or was going to the movies! While he did often
meet up with a client, the fact was that he was padding his hours—making it
seem like he was going above and beyond the call of duty. It turned out he
wasn’t. When I confronted him about it, he said that he was doing his job and
that he was just trying to find a way to spend the time in between clients. He
defended himself by saying that lots of my employees do things similarly by
surfing the net, going out for cigarette breaks, and chatting in other people’s
offices—all things that I myself was guilty of.
I thought about what he said and let him off the hook,
because he was one of my top sales reps, but that was a mistake. Several weeks
later, he went off on a planned sales trip to Los Angeles. I didn’t worry,
because we had a big client there that he visited from time to time. It was
only after that trip that I discovered that the client cancelled two days
before and my rep still took the trip! He then
decided to head out to Vegas! When I discovered the truth, two weeks later, he tried to refute, but there was plenty of evidence. I was so angry that he
betrayed my trust, especially after our last conversation, and then went and spent
my company dollars on a free trip.
Needless to say, I fired him.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Now,
I refuse to be fooled by my sales reps and here’s how I make sure it doesn’t
happen. I give all of my employees company smartphones to conduct their business—but
I install cell phone spy software on each and every one! Now I can see where
they are, who they are talking and texting with, what sites they are browsing,
and how much time they’re spending on social media.
There are a whole bunch of cell phone spy software for Android and iPhone devices available, and at first
I wasn’t sure which ones to go with, so I invested in five different programs.
The best ones I found were Highster Mobile and Auto Forward. The other ones
were good, but these two were inexpensive and did everything I needed them to
do. They were also easy to navigate, which was good for me, because I had a lot
of employees to watch. You can read more about these two programs by reading their cell phone spy reviews online.
Do yourself a favor and learn by my mistake. Monitor your
employees like I’m doing now. Remember, it’s your bottom line you need to worry about.
