1. Coach early, verbally, the day you notice it.

The moment a gap shows up, the conversation starts. Never wait. The same day, write the date and the gap in your own notes. Not a file for HR. Just your record. You will need it later.

2. Document everything when the gap starts costing the people around them.

Capture every issue, dated and specific. Use peer input for pattern recognition, not for the file. The evidence file is what you observed and what you coached. Keep peer context as your own.

3. Build a 30-day plan with HR. Numbers, not behaviors.

Write success criteria in numbers a stranger could grade. Twelve discoveries, four proposals, two closes by day thirty. Name the outcome of failure inside the plan itself. The clarity removes the surprise.

4. Weekly check-ins. Send a written summary after each one.

Same format every week. What we discussed. What is on track. What is not. What changes by next Friday. That document is the spine of the file. It is also what makes the final meeting calm.

5. Time the meeting early in the week. Never on a Friday.

Run the exit Monday or Tuesday. The person needs daytime hours to make calls, line up references, and reach their network. A Friday firing leaves them alone with the news for a weekend. That is cruelty disguised as convenience. Early in the week is the kinder move every time.

6. The exit meeting. Open the same way every time.

Have someone else in the room. Have logistics ready. Open: "I have bad news and it directly impacts you." Repeat it. "I have bad news and it directly impacts you. You have been terminated. Today is your last day." Hand them a one-page summary. Be kind. Be brief.

7. Tell the team the same day. They hear it from you, not from each other.

The moment the exit meeting ends, send a short note or hold a quick huddle. Two or three sentences. "[Name] is no longer with the company as of today. [Person] is the temporary owner of the accounts. More to come." No story. No detail. No speculation. Silence is what creates the rumor mill, and a rumor about a teammate is the worst way for the rest of the team to find out.

8. Talk about the standard at the next team meeting. One or two business days later.

Save the standard talk for an in-person or video meeting in the next day or two. Not about the person. About the seat. Here is what this seat is responsible for. Here is what we hold each other to. Here is what I owe you. The exit only becomes a culture moment if you say something out loud. Otherwise the room writes its own story and gets it wrong.

FOR SELLERS

You are not the one making this call, but you are not powerless either. If a peer is dragging the team down, tell them straight, peer to peer. If your manager is not seeing it or not moving, manage up. The room is watching how you handle being next to the gap.

FOR MANAGERS

You own the call. You also own the months of evidence, coaching notes, and missed milestones that led you here. The move is humane when the work has already been done.

FOR OWNERS

Every seat you keep too long becomes a culture decision. The team reads delay as your standard. The seat is a signal long before it is a number on a spreadsheet.

The revenue impact is direct. A wrong seat in a media sales team costs more than the missed quota. It compounds in lost accounts, slow ramp on replacements, and the energy your top performers spend covering the gap. Moving with care and timing protects the people you want to keep.

Documented Plan

A dated written record of expectations, gaps, coaching, and timeline. It protects the company, the manager, and the person leaving.

Performance Bar

The minimum standard for the seat, defined in numbers and behaviors before anyone falls below it. Without a bar, every exit becomes a personal judgment call.

Transition Plan

The post-decision plan covering accounts, pipeline, comms, and replacement timing. The exit conversation is one step inside it, not the whole event.

DO

DON'T

Document the gap, the coaching, and the timeline weeks before any conversation. Keep it dated and specific.

Never surprise someone with a termination. By the time the words are said, the person should already know it is coming. Surprise creates lawsuits and broken teams.

Walk into every meeting with a written checklist. The script is your discipline. It keeps you on point and out of your own head.

Never fire on a Friday. Run the meeting Monday or Tuesday so the person has daytime hours to make calls and reach their network, not a weekend alone with the news.

MODULE 01 - FOR SELLERS

When the Drag Is the Person Next to You

Know how to handle yourself when a peer is dragging the team down.

Are you holding your bar, telling your peer the truth, and managing up where it matters - or are you quietly drifting with the room?

EXAMPLE

A media seller at a regional broadcaster watches a peer coast for two quarters. She says nothing because it is not her job to police him. The peer keeps the smallest accounts and avoids new business calls. The team's group quota slips. Her own pipeline thins because she stops sharing leads. The drag was never just him. It was her silence next to him.

STEP 1

The expert reframe: you have two real moves and they are not optional. Tell your peer the truth, peer to peer, before management ever gets involved. If your manager is missing it, manage up - bring the issue forward in writing or in your one-on-one. Silence is the third option, and it is the one that costs you.

STEP 2

In the example, the seller had a peer-to-peer conversation available the whole time and never used it. She could have said, in private and without judgment: "I think this is hurting both of us. Here is what I am seeing." That is not betrayal. That is what good teammates do. If that fails, she takes it to her manager with specifics, not complaints.

DO THIS TODAY

Have one honest peer-to-peer conversation this week with the teammate whose drift is affecting you. No manager. No complaint. Just the truth, said well.

SHARE IT

If your manager is missing it, send a short note before your next one-on-one with three specific examples and what you have already tried. Manage up with facts, not feelings.

Q: What is the cost to your career and your earnings of staying quiet next to a peer who is coasting?

A: It is the deals you stop chasing, the leads you stop sharing, and the standard you stop holding. Silence is never free. You are paying for it in pipeline.

MODULE 02 - FOR MANAGERS

Run the Process. Use the Script.

Build the case, run the exit, and protect the team you keep.

Walk through the last 90 days of this rep. Coaching dates, missed milestones, written summaries. Could you hand the file to a stranger and have them grade it fairly?

EXAMPLE

A sales manager at a digital publisher carries a rep four months past the point the data was clear. The rep is liked. The manager hopes a big deal will land. The deal slips. With no plan and no script, she pulls him into a conference room at 4:30 on a Friday. He is blindsided. He spends the weekend alone with the news. By Monday two top reps have heard a version of the story that is not hers, and they start interviewing. The slow exit, the surprise, and the Friday timing each made it worse than it needed to be.

STEP 1

The expert reframe: the process is the kindness, and one rule sits above all of it - no surprises, ever. Coach the day you notice it. Document when peers start carrying the weight. Build a 30-day plan with numeric criteria and the failure outcome named on the page. Send a written summary after every weekly check-in. Run the exit Monday or Tuesday so the person has daytime hours to make calls. Walk in with a script. By the time you say the words, the rep already knows.

STEP 2

In the example, the manager broke three rules at once. No documented plan, so the news was a surprise. No script, so the meeting felt cruel. Friday at 4:30, so the person was alone with it for 60 hours before he could reach anyone. The two top reps did not leave because she fired him. They left because they saw how she did it.

DO THIS TODAY

Use this week to fill out a 30-day plan and a weekly check-in template for the seat you are avoiding. Walk into the next conversation with the page in your hand.

SHARE IT

Walk one peer manager through the page before you act. A second set of eyes catches what hope is hiding.

Q: What is the cost to your top two reps of waiting another quarter on this seat?

A: Your top two reps will move on long before the underperformer does. The cost of waiting is paid by the people you most want to keep.

MODULE 03 - FOR OWNERS

Set the Standard the Company Runs By

Make the bar real and visible across every seat in the company.

If a new manager joined tomorrow, would the seats on your revenue team show them a clear standard, or would they have to guess?

EXAMPLE

A media company owner notices a long-tenured seller is no longer producing, but the manager keeps avoiding the move. The owner says nothing because the seller is liked. Six months later, two senior account leads resign within a month of each other. In their exit conversations, both name the same problem: the bar in the building was no longer real. The owner's silence was the policy.

STEP 1

The expert reframe: in any revenue org, the seats you tolerate are the standard you publish. Your job is to make sure every manager runs the same process - coach early, document, plan, check in, run the exit early in the week, never on a Friday, use the same script, tell the team the same day, hold the standard talk a day or two later. Two rules sit above the steps: no surprises, ever, and never on a Friday. Without a shared playbook, every exit is a one-off and every manager invents their own bar. With it, the standard is the company, not the personality.

STEP 2

In the example, the owner believed staying out of it was respect for the manager. The team read it as the bar moving. What was missing was not a hard conversation - it was a company-wide process. If every manager had the same five steps and the same exit script, the seat would have been addressed nine months earlier.

DO THIS TODAY

Walk your revenue org chart this week. Mark every seat below standard for two quarters or more. That list is your accountability list.

SHARE IT

Bring the list to your next leadership meeting. Ask each leader the same two questions: what is the plan and the date, and what process did you run.

Q: What standard does your team think you actually run by, based on the seats you keep?

A: Whatever the seats say, that is your standard. The team does not read your words. They read your roster.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz · 2014 · HarperBusiness

The clearest writing on what real leadership feels like when the decision is hard, the team is watching, and waiting is no longer safe.

amazon.com/dp/0062273205

Radical Candor

Kim Scott · 2017 · St. Martin's Press

A practical framework for the kind of direct, caring feedback that prevents most exits from being a surprise to the person leaving.

amazon.com/dp/1250235375

Revenue vs. Sales

Mort Greenberg · 2024 · digitalCORE

Operator-level guidance on building a revenue team where the bar is real and the seats you keep prove the standard you set.

amazon.com/dp/1961059223