Personal Statement: Diminishing Returns

Mark,

I’ve spent a few weeks trying to piece together my thoughts on this, so I apologize for the long-winded email. You’ve encouraged me to come to you with my frustrations and concerns, and for a while now, I’ve been apprehensive about my role on the sales team, my role within the company, and the progression toward achieving my personal goals. I wanted to ensure I had all my thoughts written down and in order to hopefully convey a clear point.

For some time now, I’ve been operating within my role passed a point of diminishing returns. By design, a major function of my role is sales support, and to remain fluid and adaptable to the broad scope of what that may require. I’ve been trusted with a number of large-scale projects and tasks that

I want to cultivate the mentality within the company to work harder, to put in that extra effort, and to motivate us all to want to be better. I want to sway everyone from the current “that isn’t my job” attitude that has been a major impediment to PLT’s growth. I’ve always pushed myself to be a “team player,” and at the very least, I try to have a positive attitude. The negativity that, even recently, interrupts our ability to function as a team holds us back from providing the level of service customers expect, and PLT is known for. I try to do that by leading by example, and continually pushing to set the bar higher in an attempt to motivate them into wanting to collaborate and support one another so we can focus on what we should be focusing on. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way anymore. Instead, I’ve grown resentful, I’ve lost focus, and my performance has been substandard. Right now, my perception is that my hard work and positive attitude is only benefiting others, and I’m left spinning my wheels instead of getting to where I want to

Sales reps are provided an incredible base, and in return, we’re required to (for lack of a better term) pay back that base before we are eligible to accumulate commissions. For me, however, I’m required to pay back my base + an additional $87,000 in revenue before I’m able to start accumulating commission. But, taking into account the time I spend on other responsibilities and helping others build their sales and commissions, I have very little time to focus on my own commissions and sales. The skewed lean toward supporting the other reps first came into play when Iost my $320,000 order for Rhodiola simply because “we didn’t want to give Mary from Nutristar more than 200kg of our inventory.” A month later though, we are able to provide 2,000kgs for one of Jen’s customers, and fulfilling the incremental orders that have been coming