Knowing this, you need to set the bar high for the sales people, and moreover when you are talking performance. Take advantage of your model position, as well. Show these through example.

Right here are some ideas on boosting performance:
Certainly no company desires to fire a competent employee. Show all of them you got what it really takes simply by reaching your quota, and meeting it promptly.
But do not simply hit your quota either – you can do much better.

Hitting quota and accomplishing some more is actually certain to get the interest of the superiors. Now keep up that good performance.

But it must be noted that quota is equal to minimum expectation. Every person in your group is targeting for that exact same thing. So aim higher.

Maintain the mindset that you should surpass the quota every time. This is what is “setting the bar higher” is all about. Exceeding once or twice is forgettable, especially if you are a part of a huge group.

Go beyond quota, that’s the definition of excellence – and make that very clear to your sales team from the very beginning.

As being a big brother to your sales people, or perhaps a big sister, you’re in the special position to empower the sales team as well as affect their performance in the field. And so hold training seminars as well as team-building activities. It can help tighten your family-like connection and also relationship with the team.

But don’t get too caught up in it, either. As much as you’re a big brother to your sales reps, you’re also an employee of the company and should answer to your own superior. Concentrate on the intent of your team-building activities-that is, to improve your sales reps’ performance and also set the bar much higher.

Focus about what you would like your own sales team to achieve. If carried out right, they’ll follow your example. That is what being a model employee is about.

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get more great information on sales management.

A top sales manager does this job by providing specific behavioral feedback. It is by no means an easy task. Each sales rep has his or her own set of behaviors he or she brings on the job. The top sales manager should be able to analyze these behaviors based on reports and turn them into feedback in a way that would inspire growth and positive change from the sales rep.

One way to pull this off is to develop a shared vision—between the sales manager and sales rep—of the expectations and style of coaching the sales rep needs to improve his or her game. For example, during pre-call planning, a top sales manager could use this opportunity to take notes of information as well as his own observations to be used as feedback later on.

Sales management is a tough job, sure, but who ever said otherwise? If anything, it’s one of the most emotionally gratifying jobs in the world, knowing you did what you could to help someone get better in his or her career.

Speaking of helping people, a top sales manager recognizes the power behind giving positive behavioral feedback. Confident sales persons produce better results, period. Top sales managers know this, and adjust their strategies accordingly. Underperformers might even change and start making consistent sales, while average sales reps, under the right encouragement, could grow to become sales superstars someday!

Who knows? Anything is possible with the right guidance of a top sales manager who knows what he’s doing.

Visit the blog post How To Deliver Words Of Encouragement To Your Sales People That Eventually Make A Difference for more in-depth tips on providing positive feedback to your sales reps.

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Share your ideas on encouragement and positive feedback by leaving a comment below.

In the first article, we talked about knowing when to let go of your underperforming sales people. It’s a tough decision, anyone who’s ever held the authority to fire someone can sympathize. But it has to be done, it needs to be done. To make things easier ask yourself these questions:

1. Would I hire the same sales person again?
2. If he or she left the company today, would I feel happy or sad?

An underperformer who gets a “no” and “happy” answer from you needs to go. It’s a simple as that.

I mentioned in the first part of this article that there are two ways to get rid of an underperforming employee – top-performing sales manager-style. The first one was discussed in the previous article. So let’s move on to the second part.

“The Talk.”

This second method, more effective technique, involves getting the sales person to leave on his or her own.

Industry veterans refer to it as “The Come to Jesus Talk,” but I’ve never been able to determine how Jesus figured in all of this.

First things first, the talk should always be done in person. Never on the phone, never on Yahoo!’s instant messenger (Jesus!). A serious talk needs to be done face-to-face. You – a top-performing sales manager – should know this above all else.

The Talk revolves around a two-step process.

1. Lay out the facts. Tell them straight their performance is sub-standard and that their average quota leaves much to be desired. Reiterate your minimum expectations, and then compare it to their personal records.
2. Look them in the eye and tell them one of the following:    

a.  You’ve got an enormous amount of talent inside you. But I don’t think this company is the right match    for those talents. Have you considered that?

b.   You worked hard for me and I acknowledge that. I really want to help you. But maybe the best way for us to help each other is for you to be part of another company where you could actually be happy to work for.

c.  According to my deduction of your recent performance, I’d say you can’t possible by happy here.

Then wait for them to answer. 

Whatever happens, resist the urge to answer your own question. Let the idea of leaving the company come from them, and see where the remainder of the conversation takes the both of you. In the end, I’m pretty sure the underperforming sales person will agree to leave the company on their own accord.

Your task as a sales manager is to come to the talk well-prepared. Do your research, and don’t talk lightly. Be familiar with the underperformer’s sales numbers and statistics. It’s a small price to pay for something that would make your life easier, as a top-performing sales manager, in the long run.

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How do you put your foot down whether a sales person needs to be let go – for your benefit and his or her benefit? Ask yourself these questions:

1. Would I hire the same sales person again?
2. If he or she left the company today, would I feel happy or sad?

If your answers are “no” and “happy”, then you’ve got your answer.

These two questions are all you need to realize your sales team’s long-term proficiency. Any sales person in your team that collects the answers “no” and “happy” respectively should get the boot right away.

So how do should you do it? How do you fire an employee without breaking his or her feelings?

There are two ways, one of which I’ll discuss in my next post. In this post, we’ll talk conditioning a sales person to leave the company on his or her own accord, and that is by getting them to replace themselves.

Are you familiar with the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) or any other variation of it? Simply put, PIP is a legal method, or simply an excuse, of Human Resources to fire an employee without subjecting the company to any age/gender/sexual orientation discrimination liabilities of any kind.

The Performance Improvement Plan tasks the sales person or employee to meet several specific criteria under a tight deadline. I don’t need to tell you that most employees who take the PIP fail at some point during the test. It’s okay, the test was designed this way.

Then Human Resources gives the employee another chance by appointing him two or three more chances to improve. Again these tests often are too difficult and aren’t very realistic. If the employee fails one of these tests again, which is likely, then the employee is let go.

It’s a little harsh, I know, but consider it as doing them, your sales people, a big favor. You are doing the underperformer a favor by allowing him to move on to doing things he or she is actually good at. You are doing your best sales people a favor by giving yourself more time to focus on them and not on your underperformers. Finally, you are doing yourself a favor by putting together a tight team of only the best sales people you can depend on, and that’s that.

The second method of letting underperformers go in my next post.

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All this time I’ve been talking about the techniques and the right ways to manage your sales team. But here is the thing: when is enough enough? When do you get to throw in the towel and say, “Sales isn’t your true calling. I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go”?

You are a sales manager. You are a very busy person. While your sales people are out working towards their quota, you’re stuck in the office, behind a desk, figuring out how to work your own quota. So I’m going to tell you the truth right here.

As soon as you figure that you need to micromanage a sales person, that’s when you know you’ve made a hiring error.

A top-performing sales manager knows this very well. Average sales managers are aware of it, too. But they tend to miss the point completely.

As a top-performing sales manager in charge of an elite group of sales men and women, never allow yourself to think that you’re responsible for micro-managing your sales people. I repeat, you are a sales manager. You are NOT a baby sitter. You’ve got more important things to worry about in your day than to spoon-feed an underperformer just so he, or she, could barely meet quota and save his or her job.

I understand that some people need more help than others. Sure, we all get that. I can even sympathize. But a line has to be drawn somewhere, and it’s you, the sales manager, who’s responsible for setting that line. Is the sales person capable of working independently of the help you offer him? Or do you need to check every once in a while to see that he remembers everything he should already know?

If it’s the latter, do yourself a favor and tell the sales person that he needs to find somebody else to work for. It’s harsh, I know, but it’s the truth. The best sales people don’t need to be managed.

Encourage, praise, lead, coach – but never micro-manage.

This is one way to determine the presence of a bad apple in your basket.

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When it comes to underperformers, you need to stop thinking about the war and start paying attention to the battle.

Focus on rewarding the “smaller” things – the small steps that might lead to a sale. Don’t wait until the actual sale is done before you start acknowledging their efforts. For example, you could praise an underperforming sales person for showing good probing techniques, for preparing a commendable opening statement, maintaining a solid rapport with other office staff, making good use of sales data, etc.

With an underperforming sales reps, praise all the basic stuff at first. But them, a simple, yet specific “Good job” from you means a lot…and could go a long way to turning them around now.

The point is to simply get your underperforming sales people moving in the direction of success.

They may not have reached it yet, but praise them all along the way by doing things “approximately right”…not withholding praise for only when they do things exactly right.

Use your influence as a model sales manager to guide them in that direction. Don’t be a seagull sales manager – that guy who spends his time criticizing and putting down his sales people. Trust me, you’ll get nowhere with that approach.

Here’s an example of how you could praise your underperformers as a way to condition them for the next goal. Lets say they were going into a call and did an excellent job using target data prior to the call that uncovered a specific client need. You might say this:

“I really like how you used our targeting data in your pre-call sales plan to uncover the client’s true needs during that last call. It was brilliant how you matched those needs with our product’s benefits. That was some really nice work.”

Pause for effect. Then say,

“So for the next meeting, I want you to focus on finding out what’s really holding the client back from buying our product. I’ve seen what you can do, and I’m sure you could pull this one better than our other sales people.”

You are using this one thing as a launch pad for even greater success. This is elementary human psychology, and it works!

You may also choose to follow up with a question after the initial praise. Remember that humans (and sales people are one of those), even underperformers, would always prefer their ideas over yours, simply because it’s their idea. As a top-performing sales manager, you must acknowledge this fact and incorporate it into your style.

For example in this case, you may follow up with:

“What do you think is the next logical step we should take to uncover the client’s reasons for not yet signing the deal with us?”

It’s that simple. A true sales manager acknowledges the power of his or her sales people to make a decision—yes, even underperformers. It is then his or her responsibility to guide the sales people to the right path to success.

Focus on the small everyday battles to win the war. Praise now for things done approximately correct…and don’t wait until later. And lastly, where appropriate, empower, don’t dominate.

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There are times when breaking something down into smaller portions make it a lot easier to perform the feat. The same is true with turning underperforming staff into sales wizards, which I discussed in my previous post. A top-performing sales manager is someone who catches his sales person doing something approximately right, and praises him or her to guide the sales person on the path to doing it exactly right.

Take note a top-performing sales manager doesn’t wait for something exactly right to happen before he starts giving out praises and kind words. Almost no one gets something exactly right the first time they do it, especially not underperformers.

The best example I could think of is teaching a baby how to walk.

When you teach a baby its first steps, you don’t stand up the baby, let it go on its own, and yell, “Walk, walk, you moron!” And when the baby falls down, you don’t yank it up and spank it for not doing it right. No parent in his or her right frame of mind would do that.

First you got to stand up the baby and keep holding its hands while it tries to balance itself on its wobbly feet. It’s okay for the baby to fall down every now and then. When the baby loses its balance and falls down, you embrace it and kiss it and tell it how proud you are that it’s finally learning to take its first baby steps.

Keep doing this day after day, until the baby begins to realize the more it tries to learn how to walk, the more hugs and kisses it’s going to get. Pretty soon you’ll be seeing your baby walk all the way on its own.

But don’t get me wrong though. Your sales people are no babies. But they are human beings, too, and human beings, in general, are known to respond better to encouragement and praise than under an air of criticism.

The drill is to “touch” your sales people in all the right places. This is done by the careful use of proper encouragement and praise, hopefully to get your underperformers to be confident about themselves. This is where it all begins – confidence. If a sales person is confident that he or she has what it takes perform better, then you’ve done your part as an effective and top-performing sales manager.

Praise your sales people and grow their confidence towards ultimate achievement.

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Houston, we have a problem.

The challenge for you, as a top-performing sales manager, is to help your underperforming salespeople change the negative images they have of themselves so they can then “rise from the ashes”, cast aside their underperforming ways, and achieve a level of performance that is acceptable to both you and them.

And this is where the third rule comes in.

The third rule: Set Small Goals and Achieve Them.

At first, set your sights low and achieve those goals, one day at a time. By setting small realistic goals, the underperforming salesperson will start to feel the exhilaration of actually achieving something.

After confronting your underperforming sales person in step 2, by now you should have talked about his or her personal goals and motivations. The trick is to divide these goals into smaller servings and supervise the sales person so he, or she, focuses on only one goal at a time.

With the successful completion of EACH small task, confidence starts to grow…and this is the first step to turning them around. Baby steps at first, then bigger and bigger steps as they gain more and more confidence in thier newfound ability.

Here’s how a sample “smaller goals” strategy would look like on paper.

1. Good pre-call plan
2. Good pre-call preparation
3. Good part of a sales call
4. Good total sales call
5. Good sales day
6. Good sales week
7. Good sales month
8. Good sales quarter
9. Good sales year

If you help your sales people achieve their goals over the course of one month or two, a sales quarter, a year and so on, etc., instead of forcing them to change right away, you should notice a considerable change in their performance.

But take note: only confident and talented underperforming sales people can make this change.

The point I’m trying to say is:

“To be successful, you have to first believe that you CAN be successful.”

Like I said earlier, if a sales person isn’t willing to change, then he needs to find another job. The desire to do better should come from them, not from you.

Your role is to see them through the process. Observe them, take notes, and don’t forget to praise them accordingly along the way. This way you aren’t only witnessing the gradual transformation of an underperforming sales person right before your eyes, you are also investing a little into their Trust Account.

When the time is ripe, you’ll gladly reap what you sow.

Your sales reps will be indebted to you for bringing them to the “buffet of success.” They are now your sales superstars. On the other hand, YOU just proved yourself to be a top-performing sales manager… all thanks to three simple rules.

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What can you say about the three rules of turning underperformers into sales superstars? Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below.

But someone needs to draw the line somewhere, and that’s your job, too. When it comes to underperformance, there’s no such thing as “lead by being led“. You become the dictator here – because sales performance is the obvious metric that you, your rep and your boss are all measured by.

This is where you have the opportunity to separate the men sales managers from the boy sales managers. If one of your sales people, despite your very best efforts, continues to not perform well, you need to find someone else who does and he or she needs to find another job. Period.

The second rule: Confrontation is Good.

Sometimes you need to create pressure to encourage your sales people to exert more effort. Most people hate confrontations and will do almost anything to avoid it. But this is a big mistake. Sure, confrontations could get tense and uncomfortable from time to time, that’s a given, but it’s also one of the most effective ways of drawing out your sales people’s true potential.

Think of it as simply an opportunity to set things straight with your sales people. If you put it that way, it isn’t so bad, right?

Sometimes it’s only by looking into the eyes of your sales people that you could get to the source of their fears and motivation. This knowledge is your trump card in helping them change their average, or below average, ways.

By confronting your sales people and being honest with them, you achieve two things:

1. You increase your chances of getting them to perform above standards.
2. You make it clear between the two of you what you expect from them in the future. Most sales people prefer managers who are honest and direct than someone who likes to beat around the bush.

I should warn you though:

Never confuse confrontation with negative criticism

They’re the exact opposite of each other. Confrontation is all about being honest and facing facts, whereas negative criticism is just you railing against their inadequacies. The difference is that confrontation is and always should be framed in a positive light.

I’ll close the article with a simple analogy,

“Coal turns to diamond under extreme pressure…will your salespeople do the same?“

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One of these reasons is that the person has limited amounts of talent. But if your instincts as a sales manager are telling you this person has something inside him or her that would make him or her an outstanding sales person, under the right circumstances, then let’s go ahead and apply the first rule.

The first rule: Set the Tone.

The first rule is to set the tone and be brutally honest with your sales people. Tell them the truth about their performance. If they did something right, praise them. But if they did something wrong, tell it them straight. Don’t sugarcoat your words.

Indelibly mark these two concepts below into the minds of your underperforming sales people:

• The only permanent value of work is achievement
• Achievement is a result of relentless effort and commitment

Invite them to a one-on-one discussion and talk about their goals. Explain to them what they need to do for the team for them to come closer to reaching their goals. I hope by now you’ve invested heavily on their Trust Accounts, because the only way that this is going to be effective is if your underperforming sales reps trust you enough to listen to your advice.

Remember it you who’s in the position of authority. Take charge. Be clear about your expectations, and if they did something wrong under your watch, tell it to them straight. Tell them underperformance is not an option. If they can’t change, then they’ll get their wish starting tomorrow – from here on out everything is going to be done their way… on the highway.

It sounds harsh, but it really isn’t. It’s the truth. And we all need to learn the truth if we’re going to be successful at what we do.

So remember, set the tone. A leader can do a lot of things right. But a leader will never be successful if he, or she, doesn’t set an expectation of excellence.

Rule #2 in my next post.

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What can you say about the first rule? Leave a comment below.