Your sales team has underperformed, and its sales results are several months underwater, too. You want to keep the team intact, but it's chronically underperforming. What needs to be done is obvious. Doing it is the tough part.
When sales results are below plan, sales leaders focus on significant sales activities. These are the tasks that, when the reps perform them, result in sales. Do enough of the right things long enough and your sales troubles will be over.
Some of these activities are not fun to do (cold calls, for instance) and are consequently the first things to stop when things get busy. Your team's reasons for non-performance might appear valid: it's too busy; the economy is tough out there; whatever.
This leads to (several) coaching conversations. You hear that these vital tasks are tops on the priority list. As the weeks go by, however, the audio (what the reps say they'll do) just doesn't match the video (what you see them do in the end).
You refresh them on what needs doing. They agree to do it. In the following weeks, some of the activities are done. But the activity levels don't hold and soon things are back to the way they were.
You think, "If I could just get them fired up, I could get them out of this rut." This is a mistake, and can lead to a long, frustrating journey for all involved.
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins lays out an elegant blueprint for business success. To go from good to great, he observed that the best companies get the right people on the bus. Who are your right people? To make this determination, measure each team member on these three criteria:
Initiative: a component of motivation. Your best people have it in spades. Initiative is what a person does when no one else is watching over them.
They see what needs doing and do it, no hand-holding required. If your sales team is continually trying hard, you're in a good place. If you need you to light a fire under them, look out.
Capability: in a word, skill. If motivation is present, skill can be taught and developed over time. A person who has a low skill level coupled with high motivation is clay waiting to be moulded. A person with high skill and low motivation is a manager's frustration.
Results: a well-motivated but less skilled team can move mountains. A well-motivated and highly skilled team can move bigger mountains. A poorly motivated and low-skilled team sits at the base and admires the view.
At first blush, it seems that if you simply motivate your team, activities and results will follow. But it doesn't always work that way. Here's why.
Your salespeople arrive to your company fully formed. Your role is to be clear on the specific activities they're to perform, how to perform them and how they will be measured. The rest is up to them.
If they don't have initiative and motivation when they reach you, you'll be hard pressed to instill these traits in them. Many sales leaders have struggled to no avail to do so. Lead your people; don't try to "save" those who just aren't a fit.
Start early. Ensure new hires share the traits and characteristics of your top performers: initiative, drive, desire to succeed and the like.
Next, get those who don't fit off the bus. To do so, remove all roadblocks to their doing their jobs well. Give them regular feedback on how they're doing. Be clear on the consequence of non-performance, and when that consequence will occur. When that time comes, their performance will make the next steps clear.
Managing non-performance is never fun. Both parties involved know that if the audio and video don't get in sync, the channel will have to be changed.
Being clear with your team on the expectations of their roles and engaging them early in creating solutions to non-performance may help make it more manageable. Who knows, you just may help someone save himself. •
