Salescraft Training
Learn to sell anything to anyone!
Who is your avatar?
You know what you're selling, but what is your customer buying? Hint... it may not be what you think!
I'll share tips and insights from my years of selling to B2B and B2C clients. So welcome to the Podcast!
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Salescraft Training
Transforming Underperformance: Empowering Sales Teams to Excel
Unlock the secrets to rejuvenating your sales team by transforming underperformance into success. Discover how insufficient training can erode confidence and amplify fear of rejection, stifling even the most promising of salespeople. We'll guide you through tangible solutions, like implementing comprehensive training programs and devoting time to connect with your team. Learn how to effectively diagnose root causes of underperformance and prevent the disruption of constant recruitment, ultimately leading your team to new heights of achievement.
Join us as we share insightful stories and impactful management strategies that emphasize empathy and support. Through the tale of a team member's journey from pressure to prosperity, see how prioritizing people and understanding their personal challenges can turn obstacles into triumphs. We reveal effective management techniques tailored to individual needs, fostering a supportive atmosphere where your team can thrive. Whether you're a sales manager or a business owner, these actionable insights promise to enhance your leadership and boost your team's performance.
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Graham Elliott
You can contact me at graham@salescraft.training
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Managing underperformers is one of those issues that I guess you're bound to come across at some point, as either a sales manager or you might be a business owner with a salesperson working for you. So I've certainly had this myself in a sales management role. I've had people who haven't been performing for whatever reason, haven't been performing for whatever reason. So I thought in this podcast I'd just talk through at least some of the things that I've come across and things that can contribute to people underperforming, and also some suggestions on what you can do about it. So I guess the first thing that you need to understand when you're dealing with an underperformer is what's the cause of it? Now, I've had people in different situations who weren't hitting their numbers, and I guess it probably breaks down into a couple of areas. One comes down to just training, and I've had this particularly with younger sales engineers, people who haven't been in sales for very long or have come straight out of university, for example, and got into a sales career, and what I've found is that, certainly in the situations I've dealt with where that's been the case, they really were never properly trained in how to do sales. It's as simple as that. So they were just thrown in at the deep end. They might have been in this case. We were selling technical equipment, so they were engineers. They'd learned how to use technology this was radio comms in this particular case and they were just given the kit and told to play with it, understand it and then go out and sell it. Now how on earth I mean realistically, how on earth do you expect someone to go and sell something when they are just straight out of university? So this comes back down to one of the vital things I think. For me, it's to make sure that people are properly trained. They understand the basics of sales and not all of them are as obvious as some people would like to think and what I mean by that is you need to understand avatage, you need to understand questioning, you need to understand what type of people you're dealing with, you need to understand what problems you're solving. You need to understand how to have a conversation with someone that can result in closing a deal.
Speaker 1:So there are lots of elements, lots of aspects to sales that, in that kind of scenario, are missed completely, and it's hardly surprising that somebody who is straight out of university with no previous sales experience whatsoever except they may have bought a car from somebody. They've been on the receiving end of what might well have been quite poor sales technique and they're then trying to make it work. They just don't know really how to approach it. They don't know how to act in front of clients and there's a huge lack of confidence. And one of the big issues with salespeople and this is going back to a study I saw in the US and it's something I've spoken about in at least one other podcast is that many salespeople are just afraid to ask for the order, and the reason for that is they don't want to handle a no, they don't know how to handle a no, they're afraid of getting a no, they're afraid of getting rejection. It can feel personal, but also they don't know where to go from there. So if you do work in an environment or a business where that's how salespeople are treated, yeah, it's probably not a big surprise. You're going to have underperformers and you likely have all sorts of other problems as well. So people may just say whatever it takes to get the deal and not worry too much about the problems that happen post-delivery when the solution doesn't meet the client's requirements. That sort of thing can happen. So you really open a whole can of worms if you're not prepared to invest in salespeople up front.
Speaker 1:So if you're in a situation where you've inherited maybe you're just joining as a sales manager or a regional manager, whatever it might be and you have sales people reporting to you and you have one or more underperformers, the thing I would definitely recommend is to just get out with them. Go and just visit clients with them. Have time to have a cup of coffee with them before and after visits. Just get a handle on where they're at, understand how they approach the meetings. For example, if they've got a client meeting, just sit down with them beforehand to get an idea of what's going on. What's happened with this client, where are you in the process? What's the objective of the meeting that we're having? That kind of thing. Get very clear and get their view, really get in their head about how they see things, because that will start to tell you where the problems lie. So maybe they've got unrealistic objectives for the meeting that's coming up, or demonstration, whatever it might be. Maybe their whole qualification process is completely off the mark and you may well be going in to see people where you have completely the wrong solution for them and it's just wasting everybody's time. So these sort of things it's really important to get a handle on Post-meeting.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I found really valuable was to just sit down with the salesperson afterwards and just say to them well okay, how did you feel that went? And just get their input, ask them questions. What do you think could have gone better? What would you perhaps have done differently if you had another chance? Those kind of questions.
Speaker 1:The key thing is not to just tear them apart. You are there to support them. Ideally, you want to get this person up and running effectively and efficiently as a salesperson. You don't really want to have to go through a whole recruitment process if you don't have to, because, frankly, that's very disruptive. I've had to do that as well and it's just really disruptive because the person who is in the role currently with those clients if they really can't cut it, then they need to be out of that role as quickly as possible, because they're probably doing more damage than good while they're there, which means that somebody else has to cover, which then gets you into complications about who's doing what and whether you do it, all these kinds of things. So if you can remedy the situation.
Speaker 1:If the person is open to learning, wants to learn, then by all means coach them, give them guidelines, suggest changes they could make, maybe even go in and run a meeting for them so that they can see how you do it, so that they can see how to handle certain situations. What I would also do on a joint meeting with my people, with my sales staff, is we would just agree a code, if you like, that if they were struggling, for whatever reason, they would just turn to me and say Graham, do you have anything to add to that? Now? Often they would know the technology better than I did, but because of years of experience in doing this, I'm pretty much fast enough on my feet. Thinking on my feet to come up with something to buy them with. Their manager is just piling on the pressure. So it's really important for you, as the manager, to take as much of that pressure off and make it very clear what the reasons are for you being there.
Speaker 1:And I had this with one person who I joined one company and I was told by the owner that they were consistently hitting 50% of their monthly target and I would have to make a decision very quickly whether or not we kept this person or got rid of them, and there wasn't really another role within the organization they could fit into. So it would mean that they would lose their job. And I sat down with this person. I was quite upfront about where we were going, but I made it very clear that my job was to help them to fix it, that we were going to work together and deal with the problem. We would work out what was going wrong, we'd fix it and then we would get that person on target. And the outcome of that was that within a year they were hitting 120% of target and it was a higher target because I'd looked at the targets Everyone in my sales team was being set and some of them I felt were too low.
Speaker 1:So I put them up and I felt they were achievable. I felt that the people were able to do them, but it needed to be viable. Basically, a business has to be viable. So when it comes to selling targets and things like that, the people who are being given the target need to feel that it's achievable. Because it's the old adage if you think it will happen, then it probably will. If you think it won't happen, then pretty definitely it won't, then it probably will. If you think it won't happen, then pretty definitely it won't.
Speaker 1:So it's really important, I think, as a leader, as a sales manager whatever your role is, but where you have salespeople working for you that you start to understand them. You understand strengths and weaknesses. You build on the weaknesses, build them up so they become strengths. You get a feel for what they're capable of doing, which kind of deals they're better at doing. Some people are good at lots and lots of new clients, lots and lots of different people. Others are better at more kind of major account type work, where you're dealing with the same people over a longer period of time but you're getting business in, perhaps with longer sales cycles. But certain people are definitely more suited to that kind of selling than they are to the sort of really fast new client, new client, new client, new client all that kind of thing. So you need to understand where they sit, where their strengths are. It's really important that you're seen as somebody who is there to help them to be successful.
Speaker 1:I have worked as a sales person for some pretty awful managers. I mean, one guy was pretty idiotic. He became almost ridiculous. He had this edict that people within the sales support office were not to tell the salesperson if an order had come in unless they were specifically asked. I mean, how ridiculous does it get?
Speaker 1:As a leader, you're there to build a team. You want a team that supports one another. You want salespeople to support one another because different salespeople are likely to have strengths in different areas, whether it's dealing with clients dealing with technology. In different areas, whether it's dealing with clients dealing with technology. Sometimes it's good to get one salesperson just to sit alongside another salesperson for a day and just see them in action, see how they handle certain situations. It's all about building up a team that is strong, where people feel supported and that they are willing to go get the business.
Speaker 1:If you're constantly looking over your shoulder the whole time, you do not have a salesperson who, first of all, is likely to be very successful and, secondly, he's likely to stick around for very long and you may also push somebody out of a sales career, whereas with a little bit of appropriate training and coaching and guidance, they could become very good salespeople. So that's the first thing that I've seen come up quite often is simply lack of training and, as a sales manager, going out regularly with people and just seeing how they're going, having a chat, you know, shoot the breeze, have a cup of coffee, have dinner in the evening if you're both traveling away from base, whatever it might be but get to know them, get them more relaxed with you so that they feel that you are on their side and in my experience that has paid dividends. The sales managers who sort of believe in using the stick I've worked for people like that and it is a very unpleasant environment to work in and those tend to have been the not very many of them but sales roles where I've left very quickly because that to me, was not an environment that I cared to work in. I didn't enjoy it. That, to me, was not an environment that I cared to work in. I didn't enjoy it. There was lots of pressure.
Speaker 1:As we all know, sales is a very visible kind of role. So when things are going well, everybody knows. When things are going badly, everybody knows. So it can create an awful lot of stress for the salespeople themselves. So if they're in an environment that's hostile to them, the salespeople themselves, so if they're in an environment that's hostile to them, I think A that is just an idiotic setup to have as a business. I mean how these people are your cutting edge, they're dealing directly with your clients, and if they're one eye on the client, one eye over their shoulder, wondering what you're going to do next to trip them up, I mean, what on earth is the point of that? So if you're that kind of a manager, just stop it, knock it off and start acting properly. So that's the first bit. The other one is to look at what goes on, because I've also had this with a sales guy who was actually very good, very good sales guy working for me and then his numbers just kind of fell off the cliff, and this was down to external events. So this is the other thing to be aware of that.
Speaker 1:Obviously there's what goes on within the work environment let's call it that but also what goes on outside is, in many ways, far more important and it can have a much bigger impact on people. Obviously, people's lives, things happen. It might be good things, it might be bad things, but we, all of us, have to deal with things in our daily life, our personal life, and every now and again, those things will have an impact on our professional life and how well we're doing so. As a sales manager or as a manager, as a leader, whatever you want to call yourself, whatever your role is, it's really important to have an environment where people can talk to you if there is something happening. I had a guy who actually had to go through a breakup of his parents that had already split up and his mother was with in fact, I think this might have been his father actually, but it became very violent and he'd had to go and get his mother and sisters out of the house the night before and then he'd flown to another city to have a meeting with me. We put and I said to him afterwards you know, this is crazy you, your family's your priority. You, you did amazing thing, you did a great thing, but call me up and we'll cancel it because these things ultimately are less important, or I can deal with it if that, if the meeting has to happen. But you know, again, you have to remember that we are there to support our people. If sales people feel supported, that they, they can have a bad day, we all have bad days and they're not going to get beaten up for it, then that, I think, is very important. So the environment that you create as a sales manager, as a leader, is really important.
Speaker 1:And, as I've said, I've had issues. There was a person who actually was getting married, but his numbers did kind of fall off the cliff a bit and I reported to our managing director at the time and he said to me well, we need to do something about these numbers, why don't we put this guy on report? And to me that was just the most ridiculous statement that could have been made and I said look, leave it alone, I'll deal with it and I'll tell you. Now. It will get worse before it gets better, because I knew that this chap was getting married, I knew he was getting a lot of pressure from family and the last thing he needed was for me to pile that pressure on. So basically, I gave him some space to get all of that out of the way and I was definitely conscious that he was being looked at from the people above me, the owners and the MD. But that was my problem to keep the pressure off him.
Speaker 1:And that's, I think, another thing that we do. If you're in that kind of a situation, your role is to keep silly pressures, which some senior managers seem to like putting on people. Keep that off your people. You are the conduitit, you're where all of that has to stop and in that way you control the environment and in my experience that's worked really well. It's made it difficult for me sometimes being in the middle of that, so certain companies were not great at the sort of senior level.
Speaker 1:However, with this guy we did. We had the wedding and he had his honeymoon. He came back and then we just sat down and we looked at where he was. From memory, we're about halfway through the year. We were yeah, we were about halfway through the year. He was at about half of his year to date number, so he was well behind where he needed to be and we sat simply sat down and looked at well, okay, so what orders do we need to get in? What products are we selling? Average order value, what we need to do over the next few months? How does that equate to call rates? All this sort of stuff visits demos and I was there to provide support as needed. That he exceeded his target by the end of the year and I even had one of the owners phone me up and congratulate me, but I said look, all I can do in my role is tell him what needs to be done, but he has to do the work and he got stuck in and he did it.
Speaker 1:So I think the message and what I'm trying to get across here is that when you are in a leadership role, your people come first. It's about if you have an underperformer. It's first of all important to understand why that's going on. What's driving it, what's the reason? Is it someone who's always underperformed? Is it a training issue? It may be that they are the wrong person. They simply need to be in a different role. Or have they been performing well and then suddenly all goes wrong.
Speaker 1:And I, from afar, in the background, would always keep track of everybody's numbers, so I knew what everyone was doing and that allowed me to pick up very quickly if someone was starting to slip, and then I'd look at how we could handle that.
Speaker 1:But it all has to be done in a way where people your people, your sales people feel that you're on their side, you're there to support them, because as a team, that's where you get results. And if you take a more adversarial approach to your staff, in opinion you shouldn't be in a management role. I'll be straight, but I think it's a ridiculous approach to take and you're really unlikely to solve any problems. In fact, you're more likely to create more problems than you solve. So that's it really for this, but just some tips on some approaches to handling underperformers. Obviously it's it's down to the specifics of the situation that you're dealing with, but hopefully something in this podcast will give you something that you can use in practice in your situation. So thanks for your time. I hope you found it useful. I'll speak to you again in the next podcast. Bye for now.