Sales and Sales Management Blog

October 27, 2010

Squeezing Boils–A Disgusting Sales Management Post

Filed under: Leadership,management,sales,Sales Management,team development — Paul McCord @ 11:08 am
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A recent LinkedIn discussion reminded me of Ted, a sales manager I knew years ago, who mentioned a couple of times that he was dreading going into the office because he had to “go squeeze some boils.”  After his second or third time to mention his need to squeeze boils, I asked—more than a bit hesitantly—what he meant by having to squeeze boils.  He explained that he had some underperforming salespeople who he had to let go before they poisoned the rest of the sales team.  He had to drain the pus before it infected the rest of the body.

In some respects Ted had the right idea; he just wasn’t nuanced enough (my God, I sound like a  Democrat).  Ted treated all underperformers the same.  To him, an underperformer was an underperformer.  A loser.  A waste of human flesh.  If you weren’t performing up to his standards, you were a boil that had to be squeezed and drained out of the sales body. 

Ted understood that there are underperformers who can and will infect other sales team members.  His mistake was believing that all underperformers are the same and consequently they should all be treated the same—summarily get rid of them. 

The result of Ted’s one size fits all death penalty for being an underperformer was a sales team that feared him far more than they respected him.  It resulted in a sales region that was always short of team members–and short meeting quota.  And it resulted in an unhappy, unsatisfied, disgruntled manager.

The problem wasn’t that Ted sought to squeeze the boils and get rid of the poison before it could spread throughout the team.  The real problem was that he didn’t recognize that not all underperformers are boils.  Although all underperformers must be dealt with, not all are full of pus.

Over the years I’ve found that there are basically three kinds of underperformers:

Parasites: Parasites are those team members who are simply hangers on, sticking around because they’ve found something worth milking—salary, draw, benefits, whatever.  They have no intention of ever performing.  They may talk a good game.  They may use every trick they can think of to appear to be a contributing member of the sales team.  Bottom line is they’re going to take advantage of the ride as long as they possibly can—or until something better falls into their lap.

Destroyers:  Destroyers are the true pus filled boils Ted was fearful of.  Destroyers are usually, but not necessarily, underperformers.  You’ll find Destroyers bitching and moaning about how crappy a deal the company is giving the salespeople, how lousy the company’s products are, how unrealistic the sales quotas are, how the only reason that big producer always hits her numbers is because the manager gives her all the call-ins.  Destroyers intend to hurt the company.  They delight in destroying morale.  They find great pleasure in bringing another salesperson over to the Dark Side.

Slow Developers:  Slow Developers are as far removed from Parasites and Destroyers as you can get.  Slow Developers are sellers who have the potential and the desire to succeed but for whatever reason aren’t up to speed.  Maybe they lack the necessary skills such as listening, asking questions, or finding and connecting with quality prospects; maybe they need intensive individual coaching on how to apply what they’ve learned; or maybe they haven’t learned a reliable, effective sales process.  These are men and women who can become, and want to become, great producers but who need more time and attention to mature into the seller you want and need them to be.

Pus Filled Boils Will Kill Your Team
Ted was right to drain the pus from the sales team body.  One of the responsibilities of every manager is to protect the integrity of the company and the sales team. 

Parasites and Destroyers must be mercilessly eliminated immediately upon discovery.  There is no room in any organization for Parasites and Destroyers.  Mercy and compassion has no place in dealing with these men and women.  The idea that letting these folks go is in their best interests should play no role in the decision making.  Frankly, they’re not worth the concern, worry or loss of sleep.  They are sucking the blood from the team.  Why in the world would you lose sleep over letting someone go who is intentionally or even unintentionally destroying you?

In fact, if a manager allows any of these boils to stay that manager should be immediately fired; it is simply too serious, too damaging to the future of the company to allow the sales team to become poisoned, and if the manager won’t take care of his or her team, they are worse than the boils with which they refuse to deal.

Slow Developers Aren’t Boils
Treating Slow Developers in the same manner as Parasites and Destroyers is both morally wrong and a bad business decision.  I’m not saying that you cannot let a Slow Developer go.  You not only might have to let one go every once in awhile; I’m sure you will have to let some go.  But letting a Slow Developer go should be a last resort, not a first.

Obviously the first step in getting a Slow Developer up to speed is to figure out what’s missing.  Hopefully you’ve got a good idea already.  Enlisting the aid of a quality assessment tool would be a wise decision. 

After you’ve identified the area or areas that are keeping the Slow Developer from becoming a valued producer, sit down with him or her and work out a training/coaching/development action plan.  The plan should:

  • Have a realistic timeframe based on your sales cycle and the specific areas to be developed.  Too short a timeframe and you’re not giving the salesperson a realistic opportunity, too long a timeframe encourages a lax attitude and performance
  • The plan must be based on objective, measurable actions, not generalities or mushy goals.  Instead of a goal to “increase daily cold call dials,” put a definite number on it such as “make a minimum of 75 cold call dials per day.”  Instead of a goal of “increasing line items per order,” set a specific goal such as “average 8 line items per order.” 
  • Progress must be monitored with frequent review sessions and specific, measurable progress landmarks.  Reviews should be set frequently enough to make sure the salesperson is staying on track, as well as to identify problems and make necessary adjustments. 
  • The action plan must specify the specific training and/or coaching, as well as who is responsible for the training and coaching and when it will take place.  Leave nothing to chance or some iffy future scheduling.  On the other hand, use common sense when some part of the action plan needs to be changed or rescheduled.
  • The action plan must have a specific outcome:  either the salesperson has met the action plan goals or they will be separated from the company. 

Slow Developers can become some of your sales team’s most reliable producers if given the chance and help in developing their potential.  Although it takes a commitment of time and resources, it is cheaper to cultivate your Slow Developers than to hire a replacement and you have a moral responsibility to work with those salespeople you’ve hired who have the desire and potential to grow into quality producers.

Like Ted, you must drain the pus out of your team before it infects the entire body.  Unlike Ted, you have to recognize that not every underperforming salesperson is a boil on your sales team’s butt.  Unfortunately the most common problem companies have isn’t an overzealous Ted but rather a sales manager who takes the easy route and simply allows the boils to fester and the Slow Developers to fade away out the door—often out of sales completely.

Sales management is a proactive position that, along with its rewards, on occasion requires some hard decisions be made and some unpleasant actions to be taken.  Squeezing boils isn’t pleasant.  Working with your Slow Developers is hard work.  If you’re not willing to take on both, you don’t deserve to retain your job.  If you’re on top of both, you’re in an elite class of managers.  If you haven’t recognized the need to deal with your underperformers, take them on.  It won’t be fun or easy but you’ll shortly find your team’s morale and production increase and your team easier and more pleasant to manage.

February 16, 2010

Hey, Sales Leader, How Are You Taking Care of Your Customers?

Filed under: Leadership,management,Sales Management,team development — Paul McCord @ 1:55 pm
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Over the years I’ve asked hundreds of sales leaders that question. 

The answers are enlightening.  Most of the time, the response I get is about how the sales leader participates in taking care of the company’s customers.  Every once in a while I get a response that takes a very different view of who the sales leader’s customer is and the conversation centers on how the sales leader addresses the wants and needs of upper management.

Once in a blue moon I have a sales leader who interprets the question to be about how he or she services the needs of their sales team.

As sales leaders shouldn’t our primary focus be on serving the needs of our primary customer—those sellers who look to us for guidance and support—the sellers who create our success or failure?  Why do so few sales leaders recognize their team members as customers to be served rather than servants to serve?

 I’ve heard many a sales leader make cracks about how lucky their salespeople are to have a job, how expendable and replaceable they are, or how underworked or overpaid there are.  I’ve also noticed how many companies have extremely high turnover within their sales team which is often attributed to just the nature of the beast.

 But maybe the high turnover is a result of poorly supported salespeople, of low morale, of undertrained sellers who are looking to move somewhere where management supports them, gives them the training and the tools they need to be successful, and where they feel wanted and respected.

Maybe some—maybe a lot–of the low performance, tardiness, lack of focus, and low drive within the sales team are our fault.  Maybe the way we treat our team members is reflected in their actions—or non-actions.

Certainly there are salespeople who no matter what we do will fail, who lack drive, who don’t have the discipline and desire to develop the necessary skills, who will whine and complain no matter what.  Those are the applicants we must do a better job of not hiring by learning to interview better and by using well designed assessments to help weed them out before they ever get hired.

But do those salespeople account for all of the frustration, failure, and underdeveloped skills we see in the sales team?  That certainly isn’t the case with most of these situations that I’ve seen over the years.

In fact, a good many of the team issues I’ve witnessed have emanated directly from management.  Most often when I find a situation where turnover is excessive, an inordinate number of salespeople are struggling with basic selling skills, and/or morale is low, the fault lies with the team’s managers.

Although some companies have excessive turnover and low morale by design (the churn and burn operations), many managers I speak to seem blind to their role in the situation. 

How can we effectively address this? 

To start with, it isn’t rocket science. 

Simply recognizing that the members of our sales team are our most immediate and important customers is a great start.  But recognizing that is one thing, managing as a servant is another.

Uh, oh.  That word servant probably isn’t sitting well with some.  But the definition of a servant is “a person working in the service of another” or “a person who labors or exerts himself for the benefit of another.”  Now certainly in common usage we think of a master/servant relationship where one is in mandatory servitude to the other.  That’s not my meaning here.  Servant here is more along the lines of a public servant, one who voluntarily does service for the betterment of the group.  Or to paraphrase Plato, you can’t be a good master if you aren’t a good servant.

What are our servant or customer service responsibilities to our sales team members?

Training:  We ask our team members to do a very difficult job—find and connect with quality prospects and then sell our goods or services to those prospects.  For many sales teams, if they aren’t successful in making sales, they don’t eat.  Even for those who are supported with a salary, in most instances the salary is designed to be only a percentage of their income.  We’re asking these men and women to make a very real investment in the company with the expectation of earning an income that will justify that investment.  We must justify their investment by giving them the training they need to be successful.  Whether through in-house personnel or from outside trainers, every member of the sales team deserves to be given proper training.  Anything less is dereliction of our duty to them.

Coaching:  Training without coaching is a waste of time and money.  The information salespeople get from training must be turned into action.  Turning information into action requires not only implementing the necessary actions but also working through the missteps and overcoming the problems encountered during the implementation stage.  In other words, coaching– and few salespeople are capable of coaching themselves to success.  Again, whether the coaching comes from an in-house coach or from outside the company, giving them real world guidance and feedback as they learn to turn training into action is paramount to helping our team members become successful sellers.

Support:   The members of our team expect and deserve more from us besides training and coaching—they expect us to be their go-between with senior management, to fight and advocate for them when necessary, to hold them accountable for their actions, and to demand the best from them at all times.  Unfortunately, some sales leaders offer little support of any kind yet still expect their team to produce results.  Most sellers seek only to be treated fairly and with respect.  If we as leaders can’t do that, we have no business in a leadership position.

Our job as sales leaders is to nurture and grow out sales team.  Our company depends on us getting the most from our team members.  In order to accomplish that task we must recognize our customer service–that is servant–responsibilities to our team members and work for their success because it is by demonstrating our servant-ability that we earn our leadership position.

February 8, 2010

Guest Article: “Developing Sales Professionals in Today’s Complex Selling Environment,” by Jeff Thull

Filed under: career development,management,sales,Sales Management,selling — Paul McCord @ 9:19 am
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Developing Sales Professionals in Today’s Complex Selling Environment
By Jeff Thull

Today’s marketplace is characterized by the increasing complexity of the business problems we solve and the solutions we offer that address them. Combine that with a highly competitive market that offers abundant solution options, and you’ll find that many customers are overwhelmed with choices and are looking for guidance in making quality business decisions. Salespeople are the obvious source for this guidance, and there now may be more people influencing the decision to buy as it moves higher and broader in the organization. Unfortunately, this level of guidance is frequently not forthcoming from salespeople, yet providing it can become a critical source of advantage.

How do you begin to develop and motivate your sales force to operate in this challenging environment when you know you have unique and valuable solutions that are not reaching or connecting to the right people, in the right place and at the right time?

Sales professionals who are capable of guiding their customers through the process of thoroughly understanding the problems they face and developing an optimal solution amongst the available alternatives is clearly the path to sustained profitability.

Designing sales development programs for these times starts with helping the salesperson understand how their role has changed. Their role today is that of a business advisor and a source of competitive advantage. Their required skills are more similar to those of a process analyst or project manager than the historic persuader. The objective of today’s sales professional is to create a solution that the customer would have been unable to think of or put together on his or her own. The sales professional looks at the issues beyond the expertise of the customer and collaborates with the customer to create such a solution.

The content of today’s learning programs must reflect the sales professional’s desire to become a trusted business advisor. The program needs to be about business, not about selling. It needs to be about guiding customer decisions, not about presenting volumes of solution information. The content needs to be integrated into the customer’s environment. As a guideline, we have found the metaphor of “a bridge” provides a meaningful template. The bridge provides a roadmap or guide for a diagnostic conversation. It is literally designed to connect the customer’s business drivers to the value sources within your solution. It describes a series of relationships that extends significantly beyond the one-to-one nature of the feature/benefit relationship.

The intermediate relationships within the bridge would include:

1. The business drivers of a customer are shown to relate to various job responsibilities within the customer’s organization.

2. Job responsibilities are then connected to physical indicators or symptoms that would suggest the desired performance of the job responsibilities is at risk.

3. The symptoms must be associated with the possible causes of the symptoms, some your solution can address and some your solution may not be able to address.

4. The causes are connected to specific consequences that are or may be experienced by the individual and the business.

5. And finally, your solution capabilities need to be tied directly to the causes of the problem to be solved, noting how they eliminate those causes. If the cause of the problem is eliminated, so are the consequences of that problem.

The net effect of developing the bridge provides a direct corollary between the absence of your solution and the customer’s ability to attain their desired business driver performance. The flow of the bridge content teaches a diagnostic strategy, provides the flow of a diagnostic conversation and supports the development of the skill to thoroughly diagnose a customer’s issues, design an optimal solution and deliver maximum results.

By designing learning programs with the objective of developing today’s sales professionals, your programs will connect firmly with the individual’s motivation to be accepted as a professional, respected by their customers and colleagues, and successful in accomplishing their goals. Their value to your organization will be clearly defined, and the knowledge and skills they are developing will position them in high regard with their customer and within your organization.

The Commitment:

The question asked by many organizations and sales professionals is “What will it take to become successful in this new environment?” First, the learning path should be precise, including specific field applications, and the expected time commitment. As you create the development plan, include how they will be supported. How will they be coached, what reference materials are available, and if relevant, would you be able to supply a sample of their expected output when the skill is mastered? With this in place, the learner who knows what they want to accomplish will understand exactly what is required to get there. This allows the learner to make an informed decision to “pay the price and do what it takes.”

Very specific application steps should be described as part of the learning process, and coaching guidelines should be built into the design of the program. It should not be an option to participate in the program and not be required to demonstrate the knowledge or skills being taught. I realize this seems like a very basic tenet of program design, but sales training is notorious for being served as a smorgasbord of ideas, the “use what you like and set the rest aside” school of training. Imagine the effect of programs such as “Six Sigma” or “Principles of Finance” being offered up as optional components. Built in application and accountability ensures that the learner understands they are expected to take action and the manager understands they are expected to coach.

Finally, it is imperative to the motivation of the salesperson that you help them recognize the progress they have made. This is dependent on defining measurable and relevant milestones for each learned behavior. The milestones should tie directly to the desired success and be defined in both quantitative and qualitative terms, but more importantly they must occur early and often during the learning process. If the milestone selected is “increased sales,” it is certainly measurable in both a quantitative and qualitative sense, but waiting too long to recognize that success will no doubt be very de-motivating.

As an example of short term measurement, let’s consider a module on questioning skills designed to lead to more sales. Assume that part of the skill taught is how to research your customer and craft high-gain questions. The first step or measurement of the application of the skill could be to research one company and build a questioning strategy or diagnostic map. Feedback and coaching would follow and progress is noted. For step 2, the questions are used in a role-play with a colleague. Feedback and coaching follows and more progress is noted. In step 3, the questions are used during a customer interview. Quantitative measurement: asked four new questions. Qualitative measurement: uncovered more in-depth information than I ever have before. Logical conclusion: I am uncovering more relevant information, building a closer relationship of customer understanding and I am measurably closer to a successful sale. In this sequence of learning, criteria number four, “recognizing progress,” is accomplished.

The challenges of today’s sales professional have vastly surpassed the level of learning required by historic feature benefit/product training. We are well advised to develop our learning programs to reflect the characteristics of the programs designed to meet the similar challenges of other professions, such as teaching scientific principles to research scientists, diagnostic principles to physicians, and the coaching of top athletes.

The goal is to develop learning programs that meet the requirements of performance: a system that will guide performance, skills that will enable the individual to execute the system, and the personal discipline to address the emotional inhibitors of performance. With that accomplished, you have successfully delivered a development program that will equip your sales organization with the skills and mindset to successfully bridge the value gap and become a trusted business advisor to your customers.

Jeff Thull is a leading-edge strategist and valued advisor for executive teams of major companies worldwide. As President and CEO of Prime Resource Group, he has designed and implemented business transformation and professional development programs for companies like Shell Global Solutions, 3M, Microsoft, Siemens, Citicorp, IBM, Raymond James, and Georgia-Pacific, as well as many fast track, start-up companies.  Visit his website

March 24, 2009

Guest Article: “Managing the Millennials,” by Gregory Stebbins

Filed under: management,Sales Management,team development — Paul McCord @ 7:58 am
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Managing the Millennials    
by Dr. Gregory Stebbins

Independent, tech-savvy, social, and optimistic – why are these “kids” so hard to manage?

The New Millennial’s, people born after about 1981, are now entering the work force en masse. Even seasoned sales managers are having challenges helping these people become productive. They have a different approach to life, which greatly impacts their ability to sell effectively. Understanding them and some key events that took place during their youth will help you get a handle on their outlook on life in general and work in particular.

While they were growing up there was a technology explosion. Their every day reality included video on multiple devices, mobile phone, computers, and iPods. They have been bombarded with marketing messages that are constantly changing. School violence and global terrorism (specifically 9-11) have made them wary about the world and helped them develop a global perspective. For the most part, poverty is something that they have seen on television. Watching their parents get downsized in the 80s and 90s has caused them to question loyalty to the company. Reality television, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life and Google have caused them to believe (and experience!) that information is available for the asking so being “transparent” (putting everything out there for all to see) is the way things should be.

While I often hear comments about their lack of work ethic, those are the same comments that were leveled toward Generation X and Baby Boomers when they first entered the work force. Neuro research now tells us that the prefrontal cortex of our brain continues to mature until about the age of twenty-six. So Millennials may continue to be a little irresponsible until they’ve been on the job for a while. It’s neurological, not attitudinal. So make life a little easier on yourself and cut them some slack.

What is different is their work style, motivations and view of the world, especially the corporate world. These individuals do have loyalty, which is focused on their social network and specific managers and members of the team – not on the company.

Generally they have an ability to find information about anything at a rate that far exceeds expectations of management. What they lack is discernment about the accuracy of the information. If it’s on the Net they tend to believe it must be accurate. They can instantly communicate this information to their social network via Blogs, Instant Messaging (IM), personal Web pages and cell phones. Some companies have found out the hard way that their management mistakes are common knowledge within days, if not hours.

Many of these people had parents who hovered over them during every waking hour, giving birth to the term “Helicopter Parents.” With probably hundreds of possible activities, from soccer to music lessons, Millennials have been over-committed and over-scheduled. They also have been smothered in praise with constant reinforcement about how great they are: blue ribbons for the entire team, there are no losers, etc.  They expect recognition for everything, even the most mundane activities. They may not know their own strengths and weaknesses because there have not been many opportunities for self evaluation or honest, constructive criticism.

This creates your greatest management challenge. How do you help them understand that there are indeed losers as well as winners in the sales world? How do you provide constructive criticism without devastating their psyche?

Keep in mind that these people will tend to look at you as a parental substitute. I know that makes most sales managers more than a little uncomfortable. Nonetheless, since their parents didn’t wean them, you get to do that. And, generally, this is going to be a shock to the Millennial. You’ll need to teach them basic decision making by coaching and guiding them step-by-step, before you tell them, “You decide.” Don’t be surprised if they’re calling you constantly asking the simplest questions.

Here’s a four step process that can be helpful in guiding them in decision-making (this process may take two to six months total):

1.    The first time they approach you, work with them to think through at least three options. Then make the decision for them. Having them consider options is the first step of developing the ability to reason.

2.    After this, when they want your input, make sure they come in with the three options already thought about. Then help them understand the consequences of each option. Add in other options if they haven’t considered all of the consequences. Then, you make the decision.

3.    The third stage is that they come in with three options, understand the consequences and a recommendation for the course of action. Either agree with their course of action or make suggestions. Essentially they will be making the recommendation which you are approving.

4.    The final stage is to cut them loose and have them handle a situation on their own. However, also have them provide a written report (IM or Text message is OK). The report needs to tell you what the situation was, the options they considered and the decision they made. This step won’t last that long as their need for independence will kick in and they’ll just stop coming to you with every little situation.

Keep in mind that these individuals are going to need much more coaching than their predecessors. The good news is they are used to being coached. After all, many of them have been on soccer teams since they were four or five years old.

Like all previous generations they’ll be coming into the work world thinking that they have all the answers and know how to do the job better than you do. Once we turn about 35, we begin to realize that we don’t have all the answers and things may not be as they seem. Developing mastery at work requires us to listen intently, understand the history of each situation and gather the different perspectives of each of the players involved. However, growing up protected and interacting with others largely through technology, has created a generation whose people savvy is very limited. Their ability to read a person in a face-to-face situation (and almost all selling is face-to-face) will tend to limit their success, especially when selling to people of a different generation. Help them understand the nuances of body language, the uniqueness of each person’s office and what the contents of that office reveals about the customer. (Shameless promotion: Our book, PeopleSavvy for Sales Professionals covers these points in detail.)

In your coaching efforts with Millennials, your focus and approach may need to be different from others you have worked with. You’ll need to provide structure and give information in bite-size pieces. Praise for what they do is important to their self-esteem. If they’ve messed up you’ll need to present it as a development opportunity. Course correction instead of scolding or brow-beating is a better approach.

Millennials generally have short attention spans, so keep your coaching sessions short. If you go beyond about 20 minutes you will lose them. Use technology freely before and after the session; they’ll come in to the session better prepared and will actually appreciate the follow up. If you’re not comfortable using IM, it’s time to learn. Their mobile phone is like a third arm and gives you more access to them than you’ve probably ever had with anyone.

Have frequent coaching sessions. Remember they’ve been sitting in front of video games knowing instantly what their score is and how they compare with others. Waiting to give them feedback at their annual performance review won’t work. In fact, without feedback, they will probably be long gone before that performance review happens.

Provide the rationale behind your coaching. This generation is hungry to learn and if they feel they’re learning from you, they will be loyal-to you. If they feel like their skills aren’t being developed, they’ll leave.

In some ways you’ll need to teach them patience. They’re used to instant gratification. On the plus side, their impatience for results can be a bonus in the sales world. On the negative, they can be easily frustrated when they don’t get immediate results.

Work/life balance is important to Millennials. One of the biggest challenges to Baby Boomer managers is that Millennials don’t want the same life style. Many Baby Boomers were brought up in sales to believe that if you were working from 6 AM to 6 PM, you were still only working half days. Millennials want “time and flexibility” often before financial compensation and benefits. No other generation has had “time and flexibility” in their top three drivers.

And finally, transparency or confidentiality is often mismatched between Millennial and manager. It is not unusual that a private discussion between a manager and employee becomes public. You’ll need to teach your Millennials why discretion is important, and it may be difficult for them to understand. If your entire life is on the Web for anyone to see-even pictures in a drunken stupor at a college party-they just won’t understand why someone wants to keep something private or would be embarrassed about it being public. Be patient and explain why it’s to their benefit. In other words, you may need to sell them on the idea.

Smart managers that focus on developing Millennial’s people savvy and who understand flexible work roles and effective virtual teams while leveraging technology will help them become a valuable asset sooner rather than later. Managers who meet the challenges of working with, not against, this generation will reap the rewards that come with shorter ramp times and more rapidly gaining some very valuable sales professionals.

Sales Psychology Expert Gregory Stebbins has helped over 20,000 sales professionals become the point of differentiation while their competitors struggle with how to differentiate their product and service. In his book PeopleSavvy for Sales Professionals, he unveils for the first time his simple but groundbreaking plan to win your customers’ trust and business forever. Visit his website at http://www.peoplesavvy.com/

March 12, 2008

Managing Underperformers to Sales Success

Filed under: career development,management training,sales,Sales Management,selling — Paul McCord @ 8:15 am
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Most sales teams are overflowing with underperformers, from those who are consistently far below quota to those who meet quota but could be performing on a much higher level to some of the top salespeople who haven’t reached their full potential but who just can’t seem to find a way to step up another notch or two.

All of these underperformers are costing the company money—even those top salespeople who have reached a plateau they can’t seem to climb above.  Lost sales, wasted training dollars, discontent and anxiety, and turnover are just a few of the serious issues associated with underperforming sales teams.

Traditionally, managers have focused their attention on those salespeople who are not meeting quota, allowing those who are performing at a minimum acceptable level to continue without being challenged to stretch themselves, to maximize their performance.  Most managers are concerned about production quotas and goals, not maximizing the performance of each individual on their team.

Time is partly to blame for this focus on only those salespeople who are not meeting quota.  But it is hardly the only factor.  In reality, it’s not the primary factor.

Managers concentrate only on the non-quota achievers simply because they don’t know how to help their salespeople fully develop their potential.  That isn’t an indictment of managers—most have never been given a process to help develop their team members.  The average sales manager uses ‘motivation,’ the carrot of a reward, extra sales training in the form of sales books, tapes, or seminars, and anything else they can think of to get their bottom dwellers to reach quota, including the ultimate weapon—the threat of being let go.

Yet, it is the responsibility of every sales manager to work to get each of their team members to reach their maximum potential.  It’s their primary responsibility.  In a very real sense, it’s their only job.

Nevertheless, how do you get team members to maximize their potential if you don’t know how to do it?

Here are four ways to get the process started:

1.  Like any other salesperson, manager, or executive, sales managers need a coach.  The coach should be someone who not only can give guidance and encouragement, but someone who has been where they have been and knows how to get the most from each member of the sales team.  In other words, the coach has to be coach, trainer, motivator, disciplinarian, and confidant.  Hiring or having the company hire a coach for you who knows the process of how to develop sales talent and can help guide you through the process should be a priority.

2.  Whether you have a coach or not, sit down with each member of the sales team and help them create a comprehensive sales and marketing history of their past year’s activity (or any other reason time frame—the longer, the better).

Reconstructing their history will not be easy and it will be time consuming.  Give them guidance in how to construct it, review their progress and give help as needed, but have them do the actual research and reconstruction.

Once the history has been reconstructed, work with them to develop their actual historical ratios—their closing ratio, their marketing ratios, all of their sales ratios.  The more detailed, the better.

Once the ratios have been developed, look for patterns that show where they have been successful and where they haven’t.  A salesperson’s sales and marketing history is a key to discovering how they can radically improve their sales business in an amazingly short timeframe.  Without a solid history, it is impossible to make logical, realistic and significant changes in the way they do business.  In order to make changes based on reality instead of guesswork and hope, they must know how and why they’ve gotten where they are and why they aren’t where they want to be.

3.  Have each team member take a quality sales assessment.  Use the information from the sales history and sales assessment tool to help each salesperson identify their individual behavioral and personality traits, as well as their sales skills.

Each salesperson has their own unique behaviors, their own personality and their own set of developed sales skills.  Sales skills can be learned, changing one’s behavioral and personality traits is difficult, if not impossible.  Yet with a thorough understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, you can help each salesperson find those markets and marketing methods and the sales process that caters to their strengths and minimizes their weaknesses.  Once one has aligned the way they do business to maximize their individual strengths and minimize their weaknesses, prospecting, marketing and selling becomes natural, their success soars, and their self-confidence and job enjoyment skyrockets seemingly by magic.

4.  Again from the analysis of the salesperson’s sales history and the sales assessment, establish an individualized training program that addresses their sales skill needs.  Most companies and managers try to give ‘universal’ sales training.  Everyone will get X training.  Everyone read X book.  Everyone go to X seminar.  Not only is that an ineffective use of time and resources, it is self-defeating.  Training only works when it addresses a need and where the individual being trained recognizes the need.  Forcing salespeople to take training they don’t need or don’t believe they need is futile.  Far more effective in terms of dollars and time invested—and results, is training that is geared toward the specific needs of a specific individual.  The initial dollars invested in each salesperson may be more, but the return will be many times what the traditional training approach produces.

Developing your sales team’s full potential isn’t easy, nor is it without a great deal of effort for both the salesperson and you.  If it were easy, there wouldn’t be vast numbers of sales teams staffed with underperforming salespeople.  Because it takes time, money and a good deal of commitment and dedication, few managers and companies will make the investment.  However, those that do will see tremendous returns.  Not only will they increase their business, they will have a sales and management team with new life and vitality that will seep throughout the rest of the organization.

Finding a comprehensive process to help you or members of your sales team work through their sales business in a logical, systematic process to discover where they are strong and where they need to make radical changes to their business isn’t easy.  As a matter of fact, the only comprehensive guide I know of is contained in my just released book SuperStar Selling: 12 Keys to Becoming a Sales SuperStar which is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all fine bookstores.

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