6/3/2025-Getting PIP’ed can be helpful

Your manager has just invited you to a meeting with HR, which explains your weeks-long stomachache. You’re about to be PIP’ed. (Arrrfff.)
While you may not be surprised, it’s not fun to be told you’re on a Performance Improvement Plan.

Alas, your world is not ending. Breathe!

The lemonade you’ll soon be making marks a new phase of your professional growth: you’re gonna get a big lesson in what it means to fight.

(If you’re nowhere close to a PIP right now…GOOD, but learning to fight is a superpower you still need to develop.)

If you’re on a PIP, about to be PIPed, or curious about what you should do when/if it happens, take notes:
1. What specifically do you need to do to get un-PIPed? Get details and exact expectations from management.

2. How will the org support you in getting un-PIPed? Request supplemental training and coaching in the areas where you need improvement.

3. Develop your fight plan? "Flight" is not an option.

Even if you’ve grown out of love for your company, product, or manager…fight! Don’t bail. And don’t make excuses for whatever happened in the past.

Move forward swinging hard.

Remember that time as a child when you got into a minor fracas on the playground, and Mr. Big Bad ten-year-old, punched you? Remember?

Most likely, you cried. Maybe you even fled the scene. Getting punched taught you how it felt…and of course, you didn’t like it.

In sales, different kinds of punches get thrown at you constantly, eh?

The same applies to when you were on the playground: your reaction reveals a lot.

And while a PIP is a pretty good-sized punch, DO NOT for one-second entertain anything but a fight. Start by eliminating your emotional reaction and replacing it with a practical response.

1. Understand everything you possibly can about the performance issues. Assume culpability but through an analytical eye. What skills do you need to learn to improve performance?

2. Discuss how communication between you and your manager needs to improve so s/he understands how you are working. You may think you’re doing the things that directly lead to success, but you may benefit from specific coaching to help you get the desired results.

3. Give yourself a break…whatever you do, do not beat yourself up and decide you’re not a good seller. That’s not true at all. Apply grace to your self-judgment and recognize that your standing as a sales professional is not tied up to any one segment of time in your current role.

The sales life is a loooooooooong one and you don’t learn unless you get punched. Learn to take a punch and fight, and you’ll learn the formula for sales success.

Many in the TOP 10% have been PIPed…and even fired. Don’t feel so special! (ha)

The seeds that define your fight took root a long time ago. But you’re better at it today than you were yesterday, and the same goes for tomorrow when you’ll be even better.

You came to the sales game with plenty of ambition and a strong aversion to losing. But fighting through adversity is a learned skill – it’s acquired over time and through many battles.

Whether you’re at the bottom of the sales standings or the top, this training montage from the first Rocky movie may bring out more fight in you.

Fight takes work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQsw5U7KsdQ