Maximising Performance of a Sales Team through a personal lens - Part 3

Part 3 - So what if there’s a problem “Houston” & Wrap Up

With a Story, and a Baseline of how the business is performing/reported and your minimum expectations set then we can look at where you have your team members who are not meeting the required levels of performance and now the need to take the emotion out of the logical conclusions to be drawn. 

Lack of performance / achievement for me has 4 key tenants, 

1. The Market (i.e. Sales Territory)

2. The Product / Solution (if its no good / you don't believe in it - Leave FAST!)

3. The Price

4. The Seller

Going through this systematically and in a consultative way allows for a very objective way to understand the issues. It should not be rushed and is a great discussion point to have to solicit feedback. In my experience, it's often not (2) or (3). (1) is something you as a leader are likely to have control over and is another discussion about ensuring correct coverage models are in place, in itself a highly contentious and challenging topic.

So then its (4) where you have a team member selling but not achieving…. So then comes the opportunity to understand and diagnose motivation, skills, desires, fit for the role etc. Much can be written about this.

This is a system/process for me that is continuous and ongoing, and is not done on email, its a face to face engagement for full value. People will have good and bad days, and it's about recognising these and knowing when to push/back off a bit, we are talking about humans here after all. 

Selling is both an Art and a Science, and this is where your leadership comes into play, What worked for you? What examples do you have in your arsenal of experience? What have you seen before? How did you/it resolve itself?

But it all starts and finishes with some good honest talking. I continually ask myself how would I like to be spoken too… The opportunity to Coach / Mentor / Support or just talk to team members interests / personal life and values, along with where they are at right now is immensely valuable. Often "gems" are discovered that can be material to the performance issue. This then allows the human side of the opportunity to prevail.

For me, when you follow these steps, this piece just works itself out…. Just be human(e) about it.

Just some of my thoughts, maybe components of this will help or give another insight to you, it certainly seemed to be what has worked for me….

Let me know what you think.