ElevenLabs sales leader defends public criticism: You need to shame underperformers
“And you need to actually publicly tell them so that, like, they understand that they haven't done their job, and everyone else knows that, like, they're getting shit for it.”
People learn from it. Right? So the learningcom like, components, I think it's important, specifically from a sales perspective. How do you do that without shaming people? I don't know. You need to shame them. Like, if someone hasn't done their job, they haven't done their job. And you need to actually publicly tell them so that, like, they understand that they haven't done their job, and everyone else knows that, like, they're getting shit for it. So you don't agree with the praise in public, criticize in private? No. I don't agree. I think, like, I need to tell you, like, what is right and what is wrong. Of course, I'm not gonna tell you, like, this is, like, full shit, like, you're gonna get fired. I'm not gonna say that. But at the same time, I'm not gonna hold back on saying if you haven't done a good job. And for instance, there was, like, a case earlier this year of one of my account execs that I told the person, like, you just were lucky, and you've closed these deals just for pure luck, but you haven't done any good job. And then, like, the next one, there was like, it was so funny. Like there was exactly two people the same case. And then the next one that came in presenting
About this clip
Carles Reina from ElevenLabs argues against the traditional management advice of 'praise in public, criticize in private.' He believes in publicly calling out sales reps who haven't done their job so both the individual and the team learn from it. He shares a specific example of telling an account executive they closed deals purely by luck, not skill.
Why this clip
This directly contradicts widely accepted management wisdom about giving feedback privately, making it a memorable contrarian position on sales team management.
What they said next
Why your salespeople should never be in the office
26:52 - 42s · contrarian take
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