Deaver must go

As my Granddaddy loved to say, "he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground." Now you're blaming the reps for this companies gross ineptitude?
ZB just sucks.

 

What? You aren’t happy with a $1,500 paycheck?

W.T.F?

 

Q1 not going quite as expected, huh?

Here's my op-ed piece.

Pre-merger, the average rep tenure was approaching 5 years and that number was growing. When Bart was running the show, the sales force believed in him. Finally, someone rather than Maggie. Here was an exec who came from the digital side of dentistry, he understood the clinician. He had a vision of spinning us off and going public, ridding the company from the shackles of the ortho world. Morale was not perfect, but optimism was growing amongst the salesforce, even with the whole DOJ and product issues. He had a vision we needed post Maggie. Reps were making better money then vs today. Plus, the company rev was approx. around $300mil (give or take a few).

Then boom, merger happened! Out goes Bart and all hell breaks loose. Tenured reps get double the base but literally a 90% reduction on their commissions (.005%). Make no mistake, this was to streamline their largest expense, make it a bit more predictable, yep payroll! Rather than lay people off, they forced them out. You see, it's cheaper in the short term to force reps out rather than pay severance payments. It was their way of saving face and not going back on their word that every rep keeps their job, with the caveat if they choose to stay. Can I key the phrase "Alternative Cost Cutting." Tenured reps, guys that played hard, and worked hard, and partied hard were forced to move on. They were the ones that gave a dam.

Their focus was to go with the younger 1-3 years of sales experience types coming from copiers, enterprise, and ADP/Paychex.

Why? Simply put, valuation determined diminished returns on the production and value tenured reps bring to an ever increasing commoditized market. When I say valuation, I mean those consultants that wandered the halls of corporate with their laptops, having no clue of the dental market. But, they do know spin models. Think about the focus at the sales meetings harping about the erosion of the premium market by the value players (which was true, to an extent, see Straumann today).

Queue in the concept of a hotel marketing/pricing and service concept Deaver expertly tried to pitch at the NSM. That eureka moment probably came while sipping on an ol' fashion at the Marriott. While on stage, you can feel his confidence was waning as the realization of what sounded good in front of the mirror and within the confines of the exec board room filled with bottom line ratio hawks, just lost it's muster.

Look at the latest financials, the combined dental revenue produced a $500mil behemoth at merger. Where's that number today?

To save face, you require alliances from within. How? Provide a few sweetheart compensation deals with certain minions. The ones who will lead you to believe they took a pay cut too (you know who you are, certain RM's and legacy TSR's). Think, why would they stay for all these years when the corp numbers clearly show that the combined company is literally half of what it once was at merger?!? Regardless that the top line suffered, those bottom line net profitability numbers that the ZB top honchos wanted were looking better by the day....till now.

Make no mistake, Deaver is tasked to prep this company for a spin, just with the alternative vision of lower payroll costs vs quality representation. The approach is fair, and history will be the judge. What can be determined now is his lack of fore vision and professional grace of good ol' Bart.

 

Mr. Awesome here again reminding you knuckleheads what to do in order to maximize your opportunity in the shit show you currently are in.

Although I’m no longer employed at ZB (thank God), I’ve heard through the grapevine that a bunch of you are getting pre-PIP letters based on low performance over the last two years. Well, MAKE THEM FIRE YOU!!! Take that PIP, roll a big fat blunt with it, smoke it til ur head is in outer space, and than accept that $30k+ severance which they will BE REQUIRED to offer you once you go through your 3-month PIP cycle.

Don’t quit. Don’t work harder. Be smarter. In fact, stop working, get a side hustle for now, and find a new job later once you sign your acceptance letter of your severance package. Deaver is fantasticly incompetent and a complete douchenozzle. Make him pay for this.

You’re welcome,

Roy

 

Required? Wouldn't they just simply fire you for under performance? Why would they have to pay $30K to go away? That's news to me, please elaborate?

 

My father is an employment attorney in CA, and he says this is, in fact, sound advice for employees to take full advantage of if they are working in similar soul-crushing work environments like the one Deaver has created.

95% of the time corporate America has the upper-hand in employment related matters, but “Mr. Awesome” is dead on in this scenario. It’s abundantly clear that Deaver and everyone in Warsaw are trying to force people to quit in order to get new blood in while simultaneously trying to avoid having to pay severance packages to reps.

 

Zimmer Biomet requires that severances be offered in most cases. It is not required by law. You are correct that they could fire you for any reason, up to and including poor performance. But, ZB desperately wants to avoid post-separation lawsuits. So in order to protect themselves from lawsuits, they offer a severance in exchange for you to sign an affidavit acknowledging that in receipt of said severance you give up your right to sue.

Make sense?

 

Those on a PIP should’ve moved on years ago. Leadership’s disfunction that you want to complain about is what allowed your stupidity and laziness to go unnoticed for so long.

 

Soul crushing is exactly what it is. What management/leadership strategy courses did Deaver attend that told him an environment of fear and dread is conducive to employee performance? His fall from the top just can't come soon enough. What a giant flaccid penis he is - good for absolutely nothing, and disgusting to even think about.

 

Okay, Brett. Lol. Why don’t you try to micro-manage us even more when ALL of the workplace related research shows that micro-management does not work and actually de-motivates employees.

 

how about posting everyone's bonus yesterday on the southern call? motivating???? NOT!!!!!!!
clueless management at its worst

 

Dude is totally tone deaf. Did anyone else notice the eye rolls from the ladies in the room when he bragged at the NSM on his (non-working) wife and how busy/awesome she was for chasing their kids and taking them to activities? Uhhh, half your sales force does that, while working full-time. Idiot.

And the purpose of that call was what? A check in where NO ONE ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING was asked to "check in?" But hey, we know about the trip to Mexico - Critical info at the end of a quarter.

 

I am hearing several tenured solid reps are leaving not only from the $15,000 salary cut but the way the upper and even the RSM level management are shrugging those cuts off. "Oh, well you can make it up if kill it this year and great job killing it last year"
I know I am disappointed that my RSM did not take a bigger stance against these cuts!

also hearing that there are some STSR that did not take the Salary cut if they were "favored" by the company.
this will do well in the lawsuit from that and paying us and then taking money away from us.

thanks leadership for not only cutting our compensation but also not giving us new products to sell.
TM? lol!!!!!!!!
good luck justifying that new product

 

I've given this a lot of thought, and I've decided that Brett Deaver will be receiving a performance improvement plan. I mean, let's think about it. He's done nothing to bring value, hell, he can't even get our basic drivers off back order. We launched a product three weeks ago and it's on backorder now too.

Deaver, you suck. If you can't pull it out of the trash in the next week, it's PIP time for you.

 

As predicted, that sugar high end of year 4th quarter bump was followed by a disastrous 1st quarter to a new year. How many reps sandbagged, and started off the 1st quarter like a Rockstar. From what I can tell, those that tried to sandbag didn't do so well regardless. What does that tell you about the State of the Union under Deaver's watch? A rep can't even delay sales in hopes of hyping up a fast start to the new year and STILL not hit the numbers.

My suggestion, have the entire sales team pool together $20 in Mega million/power ball tickets and play. It's the only chance to achieve financial security should you decide to tough it out (or, better yet, should they decide to keep you).

 

I think it’s funny to see all the reps who under achieved the past two years all of a sudden have a great first quarter. Don’t worry. It will catch up to them later in the year when they don’t hit the remaining quarters. Expect massive turnover and I am hoping there is major turnover at corporate as well especially regarding our unreliable terrible egotistical product managers

 

You sound like you don't want these reps to succeed? I mean, I agree on the worthless product managers, but I don't understand the disdain towards reps who have struggled. This company hasn't exactly made it easy...

 

don't get me wrong. I am all for the Territory Reps and their success. That being said I am rooting for defeat regarding the product managers and corporate management because they created a culture of Fear

 

Ah yes, the fear play. They are good at that. It's always the "IF/Then" tactic.

If you don't sell enough, then we may have to discuss PIP.
If you complain about the backlog, then you are not placing your energy on the available product lines.
If the implants are failing, then your not selling them the right implant line.
If you don't blame their drilling technique, then they will blame us for failed implants.
If you come to me about sandbagging for the next quarter, then you really don't know me (yep, had that said).
If you don't push more implants onto that client then they want to order, then perhaps you are not motivating them properly (yep, had that said to me once).
If you can't forecast accurately how many implants they place, then how do you expect me to help you sell?

 

Why is it that we’re told we can’t discuss our salaries with each other but in the southern call it’s legal for him to post everybody’s commissions !? Sounds like a legal issue there.
Demeaning and unprofessional to say the least!