Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Salvaging Problem Salespeople

Brian Jeffrey, President, Salesforce Assessments

Some people will delight in telling you that all salespeople are problems and nothing but problems. That’s not quite true but every now and then you hire or inherit a problem.

What you do about the problem depends on what the problem is and its magnitude. Sometimes there’s nothing that can be done. Other times it’s simply a matter of coaching the person. More serious problems may be solved with counseling while the biggies may require major surgery (termination).

Problems generally fall into three categories: Operational, Personality and Performance.

Operational Problems

Operational problems are generally created by the company’s internal systems (or lack thereof!). They’re often beyond the salesperson’s control but can cause a great deal of frustration for the person and can create a demoralized sales team.

Operational problems, while not directly related to the salespeople, are often blamed on them. In most cases, operational problems are not evident to management because they can’t see the forest for the trees.

Be cautious about accusing a salesperson of being a problem until you’re sure that the root cause isn’t the system he or she has to work with. Listen to the person’s concerns with an open mind.

Frank, round-table discussions can help get to the bottom of most operational problems. Use standard problem-solving techniques to avoid finger-pointing. Remember the four problem-solving questions:

1. What is the problem?

2. What are the causes?

3. What are some solutions?

4. What is the best solution?

Brainstorming the answers to these questions will keep you moving in a productive direction.

Personality Problems

Personality problems and conflicts aren’t likely to go away. Some people are more flexible than others and can modify their behaviour to accommodate others. But modifying your behaviour is not the same as changing your personality.

Much like one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel, one bad attitude can poison the work environment.

You solve attitude problems by getting to the bottom of the situation and correcting it. Even when you are powerless to correct the problem, just talking about it often relieves the pressure. Sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic ear.

If whatever is bothering the individual can’t be changed, it’s time to suggest that he accept the situation and get on with the job. If he can’t manage that, perhaps it’s time for him to move along to another company where the climate is more to his liking.

Performance Problems

Performance problems can be difficult to diagnose. It’s hard to know if your new salesperson is just slow off the mark or if he’s a non-performer. It’s not easy to tell if a seasoned salesperson is simply having a dry spell or if she’s developing into a chronic poor performer.

Uncovering performance problems is easier if you’ve been keeping proper sales records. These records will allow you to do performance comparisons to uncover the problem areas.

Performance problems fall into four categories:

1. Non-performers;

2. Poor performers;

3. Over-performers,

4. Burnout.

Non-Performers

This problem generally surfaces with new salespeople although an old-timer can become a non-performer, usually because of burnout. To a great extent, sales is a numbers game. So if a new salesperson isn’t making his or her numbers on a continuing basis, it’s time to part company. Sounds blunt but it’s the only way.

The first thing to do is decide what is a reasonable time for a new salesperson to come up to speed in your company. Then provide the training, support and coaching, and monitor the results. Give the person every opportunity to succeed. If the results are not there within a reasonable amount of time and you can’t identify why, cut your losses. You can’t afford non-performers.

Poor Performers

A poor performer is usually someone who already has a proven track record but is not performing up to par. Assuming the person is not suffering from burnout, it’s time to monitor his or her activities more closely.

When things are going well, you can (and should) monitoring results. When things are not going well, it’s time to monitor the activities that lead to results.

Sit down with your problem child and set mutually acceptable quotas, activity levels, and a time line for reaching them. Poor performers can usually be coached or counseled back to full production by a patient manager.

Over-Performers

While this may seem like an odd problem, having an over-performer on staff can be very disruptive. These are the people who sell more than any three of your other salespeople but create havoc while doing it. Team spirit is shot to hell because the over-performer has his own agenda and isn’t going to let something like team spirit stand in the way of his commission cheque.

What do you do with over-performers? Sometimes nothing. Sometimes you can use the over-performer as an example for the others to emulate — providing the over-performer’s bad habits aren’t too bad and you can stand the increased aggravation. Most often we simply tolerate the over-performer and vacillate between being sorry we don’t have more salespeople like him and being glad we don’t!

Burnout

Good salespeople are masters at hiding burnout. They may continue to appear positive and upbeat, but their sales numbers will tell the story. Other signs of burnout are failure to keep commitments, reports not being turned in on time, excessive forgetfulness, change in general attitude, and low or no motivation. The three major causes of sales burnout are health/medical problems, personal problems, and overwork.

As a manager, you’re not really qualified to handle health or medical-related problems. You can, however, suggest (or in some cases insist) that a person get a thorough medical. A good general practitioner can also uncover personal problems, particularly if there are no major physical ones.

Many managers aren’t qualified to handle personal problems either. While I don’t recommend you turn into an amateur psychologist, sometimes all it takes is a sympathetic ear and the problem becomes self-solving.

Final Thought

While you might wish it weren’t so, a sales manager’s job is one of solving problems — performance problems, interpersonal problems, corporate sales problems, you name it. But, hey, without problems to solve, who would need sales managers anyway?

Author
Brian Jeffrey, CSP (Certified Sales Professional) and president of Salesforce Assessments Ltd, is a sales management consultant, columnist, author, and former sales trainer with over 40 years experience. His company provides hiring tools to help sales managers and others make even better hiring decisions. For more articles like this one, or to learn how we can help you avoid hiring duds, visit www.SalesforceAssessments.com

Posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Employee Relations, Sales, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.