Don’t Let MT and Lay-Z Tank Your Sales Team: Lessons from Squirrels

It seems like only yesterday when I wrote about Ernest, MT and Lay-Z, but it was actually six years ago and the three squirrels still live on our property. Check out the two goof balls!

In 2019, I named the hard-working squirrel Ernest (for his non-stop hunting and gathering), and the two goofball squirrels MT (for his empty pipeline) and Lay Z (for his lack of hunting and gathering). It was an analogy to the typical sales team where 80% of the pipeline and revenue come from 20% of the salespeople.

Please read the 2019 article for the reminder of this article to make sense because all three are still going strong.

Just as he was six years ago, Ernest was busy finding and burying lots of nuts, oblivious to the fact that MT and Lay Z were distracted and goofing off again.  Ernest is like a first-born child that takes on some of the parenting responsibilities when the parents aren’t able.  In this case, Ernest probably keeps MT and Lay Z alive by burying three times more nuts than he needs for himself.

I’m fine with the squirrels sticking around, but it’s baffling that their sales counterparts are still on the payroll. Just like MT and Lay-Z rely on Ernest’s hard work, too many sales teams lean on a few top performers while tolerating dead weight

When we conduct sales team evaluations, it’s not unusual for 75% of the sales team to be ineffective, and for up to 30% of the sales team to be untrainable and ill-suited for selling.  Yet most leaders don’t want to terminate or replace these perennial non-bloomers and prefer that we “try anyway” and give them an opportunity to respond to training and coaching.

You might wonder if that ever works and I’m thinking about that as I write this.

I’ve been developing, training, coaching and mentoring sales teams, sales leaders and individual contributors for forty years.  That translates to more than ten thousand sellers and yes, there have been a handful that defied the odds. But the overwhelming majority of the time, under performers that are untrainable, uncoachable or ill-suited for sales don’t improve their effort or effectiveness and still don’t get terminated.  Sometimes they quit but mostly, like MT and Lay Z, they are still around, recipients of weak sales leaders who are reluctant to pull the trigger.  I came up with eight reasons why this happens and on day one, my contributors came up with several more!

From me:

• They are naive and hopeful that things will change, after all, they have one more year under their belts.
• Eternally optimistic that this is the year they’ll figure it out. They do have those big proposals out there waiting for decisions.
• Ignorant of the importance of building a successful team from top to bottom.  They just don’t realize that everyone must contribute!
• Afraid that customers will follow the lousy salesperson to a competitor.  You should be aware that never happens.
• Afraid of a rebellion if they terminate a well-like salesperson. That kind of thing definitely never happens.
• Lazy and unwilling to do the work in replacing and onboarding a salesperson.  It is a lot of work but that’s in the sales leader’s job description.
• They fear the confrontation that goes hand-in-hand with a termination.  Most people are uncomfortable with confrontation but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
• Not up to the challenge of replacing the salesperson’s mediocre revenue.  They might have to do some account management in the interim and don’t welcome the additional responsibility but that’s the life of a sales leader.

From contributors:

• Those salespeople are critical for team knowledge or legacy accounts (From Nelson Fernandes)
• They don’t have the budget to recruit and train a replacement (From Nelson Fernandes)
• The market is too niche; we just can’t find the right talent (From Nelson Fernandes)
• We don’t want to signal instability to our team or clients (From Nelson Fernandes)
• They lack bench depth (Larry Levine)
• They don’t know what a good salesperson looks like (Ed Marsh)
• The sales manager has a Need to be Liked, preventing them from moving on from recent hires because they worry about appearing unsuccessful to their boss (Brad Ferguson)

If you’re a salesperson, it’s crucial, especially as fall arrives, that you behave like Ernest and build your 2026 pipeline.  If you’re a sales leader, it’s important to replace the sales equivalents to MT and Lay Z as soon as possible so that their replacements can get busy to assure a successful 2026.  If you need help,  we’re always available to make things easier for you.

Will you be Ernest in 2026, or let MT and Lay-Z drag your team down?

Image created by Grok4