Don’t Waste Good Leads on Bad Sales People

According to a report published by The Bridge Group, a Massachusetts-

based sales strategy organization, 42% of companies it surveyed said that
less than 50% of sales reps were meeting or exceeding their quotas.

Training and coaching can and do help most reps improve sales
performance, but some just don’t benefit from education or guidance.
Despite attention, some remain on the bottom tier, year after year, with little
or no improvement. Yet managers continue to hold on to these poor
performers. Why?

Many sales managers retain ineffective reps because they themselves are
on the edge of meeting their sales quota. A few sales, these managers
believe, are better than no sales. But the cost of keeping bad sales people
may outweigh the benefit of meeting quota. Even one solid lead lost to the
competition is a price that’s too steep to pay.

To help you gauge when it’s time to say goodbye to a bad rep, make the
following three steps part of your regular routine:

1. Monitor reps in the lower tier closely to see if they improve with
training and coaching. If data shows that a rep’s performance
remains poor quarter after quarter, year after year, then the rep is not
cut out for the job.
2. Monitor managers’ behavior. Analyze data to determine who
managers are letting go, and when. If data shows fewer bad reps are
let go when sales teams are close to quota, managers may be
holding on to these reps to gain a few sales rather than no sales. If a
sales manager admits he would let a rep go if that rep’s quota was
taken out of the group quota, consider giving the sales manager
quota relief.
3. Keep track of how much bad sales reps cost. Use data to determine
exactly how much a rep costs, versus how much he brings in. When
data shows the contributions of a rep do not justify the costs of
keeping him, a manager is more likely to let a bad rep go.

Keep a close eye on sales reps in the bottom tier, and learn to gauge when
it’s time to cut them loose. Don’t accept poor performance, period. And
don’t allow your managers to do so either. For every sale that brings you to
or just beyond quota, many more are wasted.

29 Sales Management Tips to Improve

Performance

 
As sales managers or employers, you play an undoubtedly crucial role to the
success of your team. You set the tone, culture, and expectations of the
work environment. With so much invested in your team, it may not be easy
to take an objective look at your team. Whether you’re a new manager or a
seasoned one, sometimes you may need a quick reminder about how you
can make small changes and improvements to your hiring process or
management style to foster a more productive work environment and team.

Here are 30 tips that will hopefully inspire you to look at your own team and
how you manage them with fresh eyes:

1. Just as we always encourage our sales people to follow up with potential

clients, be sure to follow up with your sales team on discussions brought up
in coaching, training, or sales meetings. Ask them whether the information
was useful, how they are able to apply it, what issues they are still
encountering. When you follow up on key discussions, your sales people will
be more likely to actively apply the material to their daily activities.

2. Managers often emphasize to their employees the necessity for constant

development and training. Don’t forget that the same applies to you.
Consider taking a professional sales management or sales coaching course
to help you manage your sales team toward more productive and profitable
possibilities.

3. Goals do not have to be just about hitting numbers; you should also set
developmental goals with your sales people. Tangible goals around habit
and attitude improvements as well as knowledge and skills acquisition goals
will produce well-rounded professionals who will better be able to achieve
their sales targets.

4. How do you set your sales team up to succeed? Assess and evaluate
skills and learning curves, and then set goals that are challenging but
realistic based on the skill set of the individual. The more successes a sales
person sees, the more likely they will strive for larger challenges moving
forward. Setting unrealistic goals right off the bat may not allow for an
environment in which the sales person can grow toward the challenge. 

5. Be a resource for your team. Share your own success stories, best
practices, and advice on your areas of expertise, and direct them to
appropriate external resources when needed. Show your team that they can
come to you with challenges and questions.

6. Do you know your sales team and how they learn best? Take some time
to identify the personality types and learning styles of the people within your
team in order to help you deliver your sales meetings, coaching, and training
sessions in the most effective way.

7. Too often the delivery of bad news or criticism makes up the majority of
communication between sales managers and their teams. Make it a point to
regularly comment on and celebrate good news, effort, results, etc. A little bit
of appreciation goes a long way in developing a motivated and resilient
team.

8. Don’t allow negative morale to pervade your company culture. When

signs of negative morale become apparent, find out what is at the root of
your employees’ concerns, and then have an informative and open
conversation with them about their concerns.

9. Do you spend enough time and effort coaching your sales people? When
done properly, coaching can develop in a sales person the confidence and
skills that will enable them to aim higher and accomplish more. Don’t stunt
the growth of your sales team by not providing adequate coaching time.

10. With your sales team at the heart of your business, it’s important to keep
them in constant development in terms of industry, product, and sales
knowledge. Early in the year, work out a training and development plan with
each sales professional, and stick to it, no matter how busy things get.
Ensuring that your sales team is equipped with the latest knowledge will
translate into more opportunities for new business and innovation. 

11. The growth and development of a sales team starts at the top. By

carefully observing your own workforce, you can identify where certain
shortcomings lie. Then you can prioritize the most pressing ones, and work
towards resolving them, whether through coaching, additional training, a
revaluation of strategy, etc.

12. A goal of every manager or employer should be to maximize the skills

and talents of their employees. Don’t limit your workforce by pigeonholing
them into one role. Instead, have ongoing conversations about where their
skills and interests lie, and help them reach their developmental goals.
Helping employees realize their potential can benefit the company in the
form of innovation and growth, not to mention employee-loyalty.

13. The primary role of any manager, especially a sales manager, is to

provide leadership and guidance. The only way this will be effective is if you
first build and maintain trust with your team. Then you can lead them to
many great successes over the course of your work relationship.

14. When a conflict arises within your team, be sure to address the conflict
openly and put some steps in motion for how to resolve the issue. Make it
clear to your team that the responsibility of conflict resolutions lies with and
is to the benefit of every member of the team.

15. Create accountability in your sales team by ensuring that you follow up

on instructions and advice that you have passed down to them. In following
up with them, you will also get a better understanding of the obstacles they
are facing and be better able to advise them on how to overcome these
issues.

16. It’s important for everyone on the team, not just management, to be

aware of and understand the overall goals of the company. Be sure to give
them lots of material and communicate frequently about this to ensure
everyone is on the same page and can keep the big picture in mind even as
they work in their own supporting roles.

17. The first step in creating a work culture, in which constructive criticism is

well-received, is to encourage your staff to give you feedback on your own
weaknesses and incorporate that feedback in an effort to improve.

18. Encourage your employees to develop a team culture by planning group

charitable or other community activities that get your employees working
together on something other than work.

19. Encouraging open communication in the workplace starts with you;

practice open communication yourself when dealing with your staff and lead
by example.

20. Take the time to learn what motivates your staff, and then work to
implement these things and create a positive work environment.

21. It is in everybody’s best interest to reduce stress levels at work. Proper

communication with employees about changes that may affect their routines
and roles can go a long way toward creating a positive work environment.

22. When a mistake occurs, your immediate priority should be to provide

support in order to resolve the issue, instead of wasting time delivering
blame.

23. Be sure to demonstrate your appreciation for your employees on a

regular basis, even if it in the form of a word of thanks for putting in extra
hours on the latest project.

24. One way to boost employee development and stability is to create an

ongoing process of providing and receiving feedback to and from
employees.
25. An employer who always works behind closed doors does not convey
approachability, but may instead foster a disconnection with the rest of the
staff. Try to keep your door open more often than not to promote solidarity
among the team.

26. Create an environment in which employees feel safe taking regular

breaks during the day, enabling overworked employees to be more alert,
engaged, and productive.

27. For all projects/ works you are taking up yourself or with the team,
brainstorm on risk factors and record them down for reference and further
actions.

28. Our worst time-wasting activities are often invisible to us. Ask direct
reports and peers to identify tasks that you could do less often or stop
altogether.

29. Avoid miscommunication with employees about their specific roles from

the beginning. Clearly lay out your expectations with new hires and have
frequent discussions to assess how the person is adapting to the new role.

Is your sales team performing far below

potential?
Mine was. In my first sales manager's job almost 20 years ago, I inherited a
10-person sales team that was ranked dead last out of 64 offices. Our only
producer was an 18-year veteran with the company. None of the other nine
salespeople had more than one year of sales experience. Obviously,
they/we were performing far below standards. The attitude in the office was
pitiful.

I heard a lot of excuses for poor performance like "lousy territory," and "our
prices are too high." But what salespeople really lacked was a success role
model.

Eighteen months later the office had moved up to number five, having
posted the biggest increase in sales of any office in the company. Perhaps
a few of the strategies I used will help you improve the performance of your
sales team.

* STEP ONE: DO NOTHING When you first arrive on the scene of a sales
office in distress, don't do anything. Take the time to understand your
organization's situation, gather information about the people involved,
and...

* STEP TWO: ANALYZE YOUR PROBLEM(S) My main problem was my

salespeople didn't believe in themselves. They hadn't yet experienced
success, and there was no role model, a salesperson of whom others could
say, "there's somebody like me who's successful."

You may be thinking, "Hey, isn't it my role as a sales manager to set a

leadership example?" And, of course, the answer is "yes." But the example
you set for your people is not enough, because many salespeople emulate
the actions of their peers. Since many salespeople play "follow the leader,"
you've got to ask yourself which salespeople do your less experienced
salespeople look up to? And, what kind of example are these "leaders"
setting?

You can get peak performance out of average producers if you can get
average producers to emulate the success habits demonstrated by a
leading salesperson. Clearly, I needed to find a leader. Fast.
* STEP THREE: FIND YOUR SUCCESS ROLE MODEL In sports, when a
player assumes a leadership role on a team, it's called "stepping up."
Hopefully, you already have a few players capable of stepping up. If so, talk
to them. Help them see the importance of their success example, and ask
them to share more of their knowledge and experience with less
experienced salespeople.

Unfortunately, I had to recruit a new salesperson to be my success model

because nobody else on my team was capable of leadership. I knew that
my next hire could play an important role in reversing the downward
performance trend.

I had my new leader when I hired Bill Zeeb. I told Bill, "if you stick with me,
do exactly as I teach you to do, you will succeed." Bill knew that I was
counting on him, and he didn't let me down. In his fourth month, he
produced 200 percent of quota.

Overnight, the attitude in the office changed, from one of making excuses
for poor performance to "What's that Bill Zeeb doing?" Bill's performance
forced others to take a hard look in the mirror. That's the day when they
finally accepted responsibility for their own poor performance.

* STEP FOUR: DON'T TOLERATE MEDIOCRE SALES PERFORMANCE

Far too often, poorly performing salespeople are allowed to continue their
lackluster ways. A manager may not want to face the hassle of recruiting a
replacement, or may want to avoid confrontation. This is a big mistake.

A successful sales manager doesn't tie the ship to a poor performer's

anchor. Instead, successful managers take a "hands- on" role by providing
the coaching and training the poor performer needs to improve.

Your objective is to bring those that are lagging behind to "the intersection
of choice." By that, I mean poor performers must make a decision
themselves to either a) recommit themselves to perform the necessary
behaviors and activities, or b) leave the company immediately.

As my manager once told me, "There's only one thing worse than
somebody who quits and leaves - and that's somebody who quits and
stays." The key question is this: If you knew then what you know now, is
there anybody on your team you would not have hired? If so, get "hands-
on" and escort that individual to his or her intersection of choice.

* STEP FIVE: INSTALL PERFORMANCE STANDARDS You've got to

communicate your expectations. So raise the BAR on everybody with
standards that consist of Behavior, Activity and Results.

A behavior standard, for example, could be to arrive in the office every

morning before 8 a.m.. An activity standard could be to make a minimum of
25 telephone prospecting calls every day. A result standard could be that a
sales rep with seven to nine months sales experience must sell a minimum
of $50,000 per month.

On results standards, I recommend you set two standards. One, a lower

"keep your job" standard. Salespeople who fall below the minimum
standard for a three-month period are placed on probation. If sales don't
pick up in the next quarter, that person must be "de-hired." Another
standard performance is, of course, a higher sales quota.

* STEP SIX: DE-HIRE THOSE BELOW MINIMUM STANDARDS Your

salespeople will be wondering, "Do you really mean it?" The first person
you de-hire will send a loud and clear message - performance standards
will be enforced. If you don't enforce them, your standards are
meaningless.

* STEP SEVEN: COACH, COACH AND COACH SOME MORE Don't be a

"desk jockey." Get out and work with your salespeople. It's the only way to
grow your people and your business.

* STEP EIGHT: CULTIVATE A BETTER "QUALITY OF LIFE" Have more

fun. We instituted a series of contests that got everybody focused on a
team goal. For example, if we hit our office goal, salespeople who achieved
their individual standards earned a round of golf with the others.

Then there were sales blitzes, where everyone would pair up and make a
bunch of cold calls. The salespeople who received the resulting leads had
to repay the group with a comedic skit. Some of these skits were really
creative!

* STEP NINE: KNOW WHAT EACH SALESPERSON WANTS Every

person has his or her own personal motivators. Your job is to find out what
they are and help the salesperson toward achievement.

Sit down with each salesperson one on one. Try to learn something about
each of them: what are their goals with your company and beyond? What is
their past like? How can you help them be, have and do more?

For example, one of my salespeople wanted to buy a house, while another

wanted to play the top 10 golf courses in the world. Two very different
goals, but both could be achieved faster by the salesperson exceeding
quota.

The results we experienced from all these steps: average sales per
salesperson doubled, and turnover was reduced by 45 percent.

Good selling!
5 Strategies For Building A High Performance Sales Team
Tips for sales managers, sales directors & business owners.

Creating high performance sales teams is essential for any business

wanting to achieve sales growth. Proactive, positive, consistent new
business winning teams and salespeople are the holy grail of any sales
organisation.

All of my clients have their own unique ways of motivating, managing and
leading their sales teams yet they all have problems from time to time in
keeping those teams on target, focused and “up for it!”

I’ve recently finished a tour with my Motivate People sales training seminar
for sales managers, sales directors and business owners and I thought now
would be a good time to review some top tips for building a proactive,
results oriented, high performance sales team that achieves top sales
results.

In this article I am going to outline 5 of the most effective motivational

strategies and techniques that I have used to help many of my clients to
overachieve on their personal, their team and their business goals.

1) Focus on the individual

You need to concentrate on helping your salespeople to understand and

motivate themselves better. Help them to understand why they are in a
sales role and what they want to get out of it. Ask them what’s important to
them about their work.

What do they want to achieve? Why do they want to achieve this? What will
happen if they achieve it? What will happen if they don’t? What importance
does winning new business play in the achievement of those goals?

Begin to identify areas where they can gain quick wins. Helping your team
members to secure small successes paves the way to larger successes,
increased motivation and more activity. Make sure that they fully
understand the links between increased activity, increased results and
increased rewards.
Working mostly on their own and with your support you are looking to open
their minds to a new way of thinking. Why not create a questionnaire or an
audit of where they are at right now? What about creating a coaching form
or process? This need only take a few minutes per team member per day
but can produce phenomenal sales results.

2) Train on key sales attitudes, skills and techniques

Decide what the key attitudes and skills are that your team need to be
successful in winning new business consistently. Create a simple,
repeatable training programme and bring your team up to speed in these
techniques and skills as fast as possible.

It always amazes me how so many sales teams have no formal process for
new business generation with different team members working
substantially different strategies to try and generate new business.

Putting together a programme of proven skills, techniques and activities will

become associated with professionalism in the minds of your salespeople
and when you are looking to change beliefs, attitudes and skills this is
paramount.

Start your training right now. You don’t need to be a great trainer or an
expert to do this. You can always call an expert in sales training (like me or
one of my team) later on! For the moment, what you’re trying to do is help
your sales team to feel valued, focus on what’s important to them, and
improve fundamental areas of the sales process.

Training Tip 1: Before you even start training you need to get your staff to
view sales skills training in the most productive light. There will be some on
your sales team who think that they don’t need sales training at all, or who
think that they’re above it or that it’s a waste of their important time! If you
don’t change this limiting mindset before you start then the results you get
will be unpredictable at best.

Try telling a story about peak performers and how training is important to
their success. Get your staff to do a brainstorming exercise on why it’s
essential for them to really take on board this sales training. Make sure that
you ask them what their outcomes are prior to every training session.
Training Tip 2: When doing sales training you will find that there may be
many conflicting sources of information with one sales trainer saying one
thing and another saying another. Try to stick to simple repeatable sales
structures and processes and one or two sales methodologies that work
together.

3) Teach personal responsibility

It is impossible to force individuals to change and even if you could, doing

so would only create resistance. That said, once you have the “buy-in” of
your sales team you need to empower them to take control of their sales
development programme for themselves.

Creating a personal action plan for each salesperson helps to consolidate

their thoughts, hones their personal sales skills and enforces the key
attitudes and behaviours necessary for sales success.

Your company may well have suitable action plans already that you can
use and I’m sure that they will be well thought out and structured. It’s worth
noting however that in my experience it’s usually more effective for the
sales coach to develop their own sales coaching and action plans because
they will be totally focused on your sales teams and your style of sales
coaching.

4) Reinforce key behaviours

One of the questions that gets asked by business owners and sales
training buyers for companies is, “What return on investment will I get from
this sales training programme?” I’ve seen many convoluted answers from
training and development companies however the most honest answer is
probably, “It depends what you do when I leave!”

Even as an sales speaker and sales training expert I aim to engage your
sales staff, create mindset change and inspire them to take massive action.
Unless I am paid to stay around however I cannot guarantee success!
Success is down to action and many members of your sales team will need
support from you to ensure that these new behaviours and skills become
part of their habitual behaviours.

You need to create ongoing, measurable and simple support tools to

ensure that the new behaviours happen. I follow the management-
coaching-autonomy model. Initially I manage people in their actions, then I
step back into a more reflective coaching model and finally I release them
to take autonomy for their own actions. When I work with teams I take time
to help managers to ensure that they know how to reinforce key
behaviours.

I went to one company where the HR Department was briefing the sales
teams by asking them to “assess the training and see what they thought of
it!” This was a team who weren’t making hardly any proactive calls at all!
What were they likely to take from this training? With a focus like that, not a
lot! How easy would it have been for them to walk out saying, “Not for me
that!” or “I don’t think it’s that relevant!”

The focus should have been, “We’re getting an expert in to help us. After
this training we want you to come up with your own action plan on how you
are going to use this to increase your daily activity and sales!” That way
they know they are expected to act differently and that their ability to
change and adopt the key sales training messages will be measured and
managed.

It always amazes me when staff that are seriously under-performing are

sent on training and come back and say they know it all. If they do then
why aren’t they top performers?

Don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes in your business or your sales
team! Make sure that you create simple, repeatable tools that ensure new
behaviours and that help to create a fun and energised environment, which
is supportive of the new sales behaviours that you want in your business.

5) Celebrate success

It’s important that any achievement is recognised and that as your team put
the work in you create ways to recognise their success. In my experience
many directors are internally orientated when it comes to motivation that is
they know when they’ve done a good job and don’t necessarily need telling.
Many of your sales staff, on the other hand, will need that recognition from
you because they are externally motivated. When I’m consulting with
businesses the number of staff who say things like, “I don’t feel
appreciated” or “I just wish that someone would say well done” is
phenomenal. Directors and managers often “forget” to tell them because
they don’t need it themselves or tell them but not in a way that is explicit
enough for their salespeople to hear it…

I worked with one director who thought that he always gave praise saying,
“Well done” to his staff yet they thought that he never said anything to them
an did not appreciate the work that they did on a daily basis.

What the director usually said was actually, “So what’s next then?” In his
head that meant, “Job well done. Now we can feel good and move on!”
Unfortunately, what his staff heard was, “I’m never happy with anything you
do, I always want more out of you!” As you might imagine this was an easy
problem to solve once I heard it happening.

Exercise: Get a sheet of paper and write down as many ways of celebrating
success that you can. Try a simple “thank you”, competitions, games, wall-
charts and email reminders for starters.

Most of all remember that taking action in developing a proactive, new-

business sales team is not only essential it’s fun!

Motivating Salespeople: What Really Works

Sales executives are always looking for ingenious ways to motivate their
teams. They stage grand kickoff meetings to announce new bonus
programs. They promise exotic trips to rainmakers. When business is slow,
they hold sales contests. If sales targets are missed, they blame the sales
compensation plan and start from square one.

The finance organization, meanwhile, views the comp plan as an expense

to manage. That’s not surprising: Sales force compensation represents the
single largest marketing investment for most B2B companies. In aggregate,
U.S. companies alone spend more than $800 billion on it each year—three
times more than they spend on advertising. So naturally finance tries to
ensure that comp plans have cost-control measures designed into them.
Some companies offer flat commission rates so that compensation costs
rise and fall with revenues. Others cap compensation once salespeople hit
certain performance targets. Still others use bonuses to control spending
by pinning salespeople’s quotas to Wall Street revenue targets. (See the
sidebar “When Finance Calls the Shots.”)

When Finance Calls the Shots

But a few progressive companies have been able to coax better

performance from their teams by treating their sales force like a portfolio of
investments that require different levels and kinds of attention. Some
salespeople have greater ability and internal drive than others, and a
growing body of research suggests that stars, laggards, and core
performers are motivated by different facets of comp plans. Stars seem to
knock down any target that stands in their way—but may stop working if a
ceiling is imposed. Laggards need more guidance and prodding to make
their numbers (carrots as well as sticks, in many cases). Core performers
fall somewhere in the middle; they get the least attention, even though
they’re the group most likely to move the needle—if they’re given the
proper incentives.

A Performance Curve for the Sales Force

Accounting for individual differences raises the odds that a compensation

plan will stimulate the performance of all types of salespeople. In this article
we will discuss how companies can do this to deliver greater returns on
investment and shift their sales-performance curve upward.

Motivating Core Performers

Ironically enough, many incentive plans come close to ignoring core
performers. Why does this group tend to be off the radar screen? One
reason is that sales managers don’t identify with them. At many companies
the managers are former rainmakers, so they pay the current rainmakers
an undue amount of attention. As a consequence, core performers are
often passed over for promotion and neglected at annual sales meetings.
But this is not in the best interest of the company. Core performers usually
represent the largest part of the sales force, and companies cannot make
their numbers if they’re not in the game. Here are some proven strategies
for keeping them there.

Multi-tier targets. A project that Mike recently worked on with a national

financial services company shows that such targets help motivate core
performers. At the company a major proportion of the salespeople fell into
this category. In bearish months they almost always found a way to hit their
targets, but in bullish months they seldom exceeded their numbers
substantially. In an effort to nudge them upward, the company
experimented with tiered targets.

The first-tier target was set at a point that a majority of the company’s sales
agents had historically attained, the second-tier target at a point reached by
a smaller percentage of the sales force, and the third-tier target at a point
hit only by the company’s elite. All the firm’s agents were divided into two
groups: The first was given targets at tiers one and three, and the second
group got targets at all three tiers. The hypothesis was that tiers would act
as stepping stones to guide core performers up the curve.

The tiered structure indeed had a profound impact. Core performers

striving to achieve triple-tier targets significantly outsold core performers
given only two tiers. By contrast, multi-tier targets did not motivate stars
and laggards as much: No significant differences in performance were
found for those segments.