There is a way to improve Your Struggling Sales Team
What do you do
with struggling salespeople? It's a problem that's vexed almost
every business, assistant managers, presidents of boards and even new start-ups.
It's simply hard to know when to pull the trigger on
removing underperforming team members when it could be that the staff just
needs a little guidance, encouragement, or training to get back on track. A
little professional nudge in the right direction is a more economical choice
over the time-consuming and expensive process of hiring a replacement sales
representative. Many sales professionals would rather give their struggling
sales people a chance to improve and bring their results up to company
standards.
When you're trying to figure out whether your sales team
can get back on track, first try these strategies I gather through my personal
experience on how to lift sales team out of the profit gutter. Since i do not
have decades of experience, some might find it a childish approach, but I am
trying my best to share some advice through my own niche of experience. For me,
there are only four simple steps to overcome this challenge.
Step One:
Install a Hardcore Sales Manager
You can't have someone overseeing your sales team who is
nothing more than a glorified cheerleader, you need to employ a manager who is
not only willing to engage the team, but to also identify weaknesses and work
directly with sales staff to overcome their challenges.
It's not somebody who can just pat somebody on the back
they do only team talks and team talks aren't enough for some salespeople.
Many companies make the mistake of promoting their top
salespeople to manager positions, but often the most skilled salespeople don’t
have the coaching expertise needed to effectively guide a whole team.
In fact, sales representatives strongly prefer leading to
come from their direct supervisor. By far unless the direct supervisor is
perceived as owning that, the coaching is likely to have relatively minimal
impact, at the end of the day, people don't leave bad companies. They leave bad
managers."
Step Two: Implement One-on-One Coaching
The first step to improving sales is talking directly to
the team to find out what struggles they are facing. What makes their jobs
difficult? What could they do better? What could they be provided with to do
better?
Sometimes they're very open and they tell you a lot of
things, other times you will have to try a little by asking how they're
managing time, what an average day looks like and to describe how they run
sales call.Then he picks one problem at a time to work on to get
better results. That sometimes means removing technological distractions and
giving additional management support.My personal recommendation is to pair low-performing
sales representatives with successful ones. This strategy was a better learning
experience at my first sales job before graduation in Granton Marketing Canada.In Granton they put a sales team on a strict schedule so
they are making sales calls during dedicated blocks during the day, instead of
sporadically throughout all work hours. Limiting the coaching to specific
groups of employees is often more effective than spreading it around the
company as a whole, one should also remember that coaching is not meant to be democratic,
too many managers fall back on what he calls "spreadsheet coaching," where the focus is on whether the sales
staff is hitting its numbers. Instead, you should be working closely with the
individual sales representatives to understand the context of the problems.When it comes to coaching, they're so focused on that
number and hitting that quota, ultimately they lose sight, the way that you do
that is not focus on those outcomes but focus on behaviours. Furthermore, it is
very essential to bring a battle plan to help the employee assault obstacles to
productivity. Often times, the problem is a lack of follow through, which leads
to fizzling sales momentum. Having an action plan helps keep track of things
like that which might otherwise be overlooked.
Step Three: Put
Your Team on a Sales DietJ
It is kind of funny but like anyone leading an unhealthy
lifestyle, a sales staff sometimes needs a "sales diet" of sorts to
get some perspective on challenges.Giving struggling employees a smaller stack of calls to work
through, they can gain confidence and avoid the burnout of intense extended
sales pitch efforts.Then, work with them to analyse the sales calls to note
areas for improvement: Do they have good rapport and conversation skills? Are
they moving through the pitch at a natural pace or steam rolling right to the
point?
Setting individual benchmarks can help put people on the
right track to success, especially if you are forced to put sales staff on
probation until performance improves. But it's important to keep a balance
between realistic goals and creating too much performance anxiety.
Step Four: Looking to the Future, Hire Smart:
The best way to handle lackluster sales representatives
is to not have them in the first place, or to at least identify them early.It's really important for the management team to avoid
this situation, stay on top of the rep's performance, and intervene before they
become the worst sales person or significantly under performing.What I believe companies need to sit down and figure out a map of the behaviours that drive success before doing any hiring. If you've got a profile
of the behaviours to drive success, you'll make sure people more likely to be
aligned to great behaviours. Your company's expectations should be communicated
during the job interview so candidates know what company’s vision is. You can
test their skills by including in the interview exercises that force them to
think on their feet; or may be sending them off with a homework assignment to
see how they can prepare for a big task.
But when all else fails, you may have to come to grips
with trimming the sales team of dead weight.
At the end we should remember one thing “For true under performers, no amount of
good coaching is going to make them better at their job”.
