Our Sales Director has been with us for five years and is a core values match, but our new Accountability Chart requires him to build a standardized, data-driven sales pipeline. His Kolbe profile shows a very high Quickstart and low Follow Thru, and he is failing to build the system. How do we make this GWC call?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your Sales Director has the core values, gets the seat, and wants the seat, but he lacks the capacity. This is a classic conative mismatch. A high Quickstart, low Follow Thru profile is fantastic for closing deals, responding to market changes, and inspiring a team, but they instinctively resist building structured systems and maintaining detailed data pipelines.

You must recognize that conative strengths do not change. You cannot train or motivate a low Follow Thru person to become a methodical systems builder. If the seat requires building and maintaining these complex data pipelines, your Sales Director does not GWC the seat as it is currently designed.

To resolve this, you have two choices. The first option is to redesign the seat. You can pair him with an operations-focused sales coordinator who has a high Follow Thru score to build and maintain the systems, allowing the Sales Director to focus on leading the team and closing deals.

The second option is to move him to a pure sales or business development seat where his natural talents are maximized, and hire a systems-oriented leader for the Sales Director seat. Do not keep pushing him to do work that drains his energy and leads to failure. Make the hard call based on what the business needs to scale.