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Underperforming Sales Reps, Put Yourself on a Performance Plan

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

In most cases, we see an official “performance plan” as the beginning of the end for some poor sales rep.  The performance plan seems to be more of a termination plan as the evidence suggests that the goal is often not better performance, but instead a way to begin documentation to justify termination.  In every case where I’ve seen someone put on a performance plan, that was their cue to start a full court press job search before they were fired.   

So, it’s safe to say that no sales rep wants to be put on a performance plan, right?  Right!

If you are a sales rep facing underperformance, my guess is that you are worried about your job.  You might be hoping no one has noticed, you might spend your time sharing the positive news while keeping everyone’s focus off the negative performance, you might be explaining away your bad sales (customer budget cuts, etc) or.. you might even be job hunting.

Here is something to try instead.  Put yourself on a Performance Plan.   This is a Turnaround Boot Camp style Performance Plan by the way. 

We know that we can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. That really is the premise of a Performance Plan. 

To get started:

  • Look at what you have been doing and critically analyze exactly how you are spending your time to determine what is producing results and what is not. 
  • Consult with team members who are exceeding goals for advice on what you could be doing differently. 
  • Once you determine which of your sales activities are producing positive sales results, triple your output of those activities.
  • Figure out where you are investing time in non-selling activities (learning a new CRM, sitting on an internal committee, etc) and eliminate those activities from your week. You can politely request to be excused – if you get fired, none of those things will really matter anyway.
  • Start your day earlier and end your day later.
  • Look the part. 
  • Exercise, eat right and get enough sleep.
  • Write out your 30 day plan.  This should include day by day what you will be doing and with which customers or prospects.  For example, maybe every day starts with 50 cold calls, maybe Sundays are research days, Tues-Thurs is for 15 face-to-face appointments, etc. 
  • Have an accountability plan in place – a report, updates in your CRM or something to monitor your progress.
  • Have a clear goal for the end of 30 days and a way to monitor progress along the way.

Now, here’s key element:

Request a meeting with your Sales Manager – NOT during selling hours (you need those).  Have an early coffee or after hours meeting with your Sales Manager to let them know you have put yourself on a Performance Plan, walk them through it and get their input to fine tune it and gain agreement on your course of action. 

By proactively addressing your underperformance with your Sales Manager you will open the doors of communication regarding expectations and possible outcomes of underperformance.  You will show the initiative to address the problem proactively giving your Sales Manager an opportunity to help you succeed instead of look for a way to manage you out.  

Too often we keep moving along hoping no one will bring up the issue everyone knows exists (we do this with customers, too).  If you know you are underperforming, your sales manager knows it, too.  His boss will ask him about it and it will eventually be dealt with.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could change the story by being brave enough to call it out and proactively do something about it? 

So, if you find yourself falling short, stop worrying and start acting.  Build you plan ASAP and start executing with your Sales Manager’s support.

Put yourself on a Performance Plan today.

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, CEO of Meeting to Win.   Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting topics for Sales Managers who want to run sales team meetings that aren’t a bore.  Inspire your team with Meeting to Win.  Subscribe here.)

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Posted in best practice, communication, discipline, down economy, how to have productive sales team meetings, management tips, performance, sales activity, sales management, sales manager tips, sales managers, sales meetings | 1 Comment »

Know Your Risks (Includes Sales Team Meeting Idea)

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

As we continue with Pipeline Health Check week, we want to address risks in pipelines.  If you know your risks, you can reduce the risks or at least manage them more effectively.  As you examine your pipeline this week, check for these risks:

  • A large percentage of the revenue in your pipeline is from one deal.
  • You are not positioned with decision makers in late cycle pipeline opportunities.
  • Your pipeline is heavy on early or late sales cycle deals – no balance.
  • You have not added new “suspect” opportunities to your pipeline consistently.
  • In mid-cycle deals you do not have a crystal clear picture of the decision process and who is involved and in what capacity at each decision point.
  • You haven’t discussed money in mid and late cycle opportunities.
  • You don’t know the competitive landscape in most of your opportunities.
  • Your pipeline does not have at least 3X your sales goal in opportunities.
  • You have deals that have stalled out with no progress forward in a few weeks.
  • You are guessing at the size of opportunities instead of basing it on real diagnosis.
  • You are chasing deals that are not in your company’s sweet spot.

These are just a few of the risks to look for as you examine your pipeline.  Know your risks and take steps to minimize them – the smallest steps can make the biggest difference when pursuing sales performance goals.

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

At your next sales team meeting,

  • Ask your team to bring their pipelines.
  • Go through each of the risks above as a group. 
  • Add risks to the list that apply to your team.
  • Ask each person to honestly assess their pipeline against the final list of risks.
  • As a team, set one action item each person can do to minimize their most dangerous pipeline risk.
  • Plan to follow up as a team and do this exercise again, setting the next action item as you move toward healthier and healthier pipelines.

Meeting to Win provides in-depth sales team meeting agendas with training exercises, practice sessions, discussion topics and ideas to help your sales team sell more.  This Friday’s agenda is the Pipeline Health Check and will lead your team through exercises that will lead to more balanced, healthier pipelines.  Join us and get your own weekly sales team meeting agendas.  Learn more  here.

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5 Ways to Get a Return on Your Time Investment in the Annual Sales Meeting (Plus: Sales Meeting Idea)

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

(Make sure to check out the Sales Meeting Idea at the bottom of this post.)

This week we wrote about annual sales meetings that many companies invest in each year.  The problem with many is that the reps get back to the field and there is no post-meeting plan – or support – to implement any new ideas, training or on-going focus.  The excitement generated by the fancy meeting is not sustainable and all the company has left are the bills from the party. 

If your company has made little effort to bring the annual sales meeting ideas back to the territories and customers, there are things you can do to ensure return on the investment you made.  In life we ultimately take responsibility for our own success and, in the case of salespeople, the success of our customers, also.  You’ve made a significant investment of one of your precious resources – your time.  Now, it’s time to get a return on that investment.

5 Ways to Get a Return on Your Investment of Time in the Annual Sales Meeting:

1.  Don’t try to do everything.  Pick 1 or 2 ideas, best practices or skills learned during the meeting.  Figure exactly where you can try those things each week.  Practice your 1 or 2 new things each week until they become habit.  Ask a co-worker to hold you accountable or put the action on your calendar.  Pick a follow-up date to see what results you have seen from implementing the new actions.

2.  Ask your Sales Manager if your team can devote 10-15 minutes of each sales team meeting to new ideas, best practices or training from the annual sales meeting.  The team can choose 1-3 things that they believe can make the biggest impact on the team’s success.  Each week a different member of the team is responsible for bringing a discussion or exercise to support the focuses from the annual sales meeting.

3.  If you heard helpful information from your company’s CFO, Marketing Officer, CEO or Trainer, invite them as a guest speaker to an upcoming team sales meeting.  Be prepared to go deeper on their area of expertise to apply it to helping customers.  These internal resources can help you help your customers more effectively.

4.  If there was a new initiative or training program that is being contradicted in the field, bring that to the attention of sales management.  This happens often as different departments have competing goals.  For example, a client of mine spent a considerable amount of time and money on sales training designed to help reduce discounting.  The behavior was rampant and cut into their margins drastically.  The training was delivered and everyone left with solid skills to reduce discounting.  Almost as soon as they got back in the field, Marketing launched a new product and brought it to market at a 40% discount!  All the marketing materials, sales scripts and contests were focused on selling as much as they could right away using the 40% discount as the main sales tool.  This is absurd …and really not that unusual.  As a sales rep, you can respectfully raise this concern with your sales manager and at least get the conversation going while getting some direction in the midst of contradictory messages.

5.  Hopefully your annual sales team meeting provided an opportunity for you to get to know peers from other parts of the country and even the world.  Choose 2 reps from outside your immediate team and commit to staying in touch with them.  Put a call to them on your calendar monthly or quarterly and discuss best practices, ideas and customers.  Best practices have a way of staying in the territory where they are discovered.  If you take one or two top best practices from one or two other territories you will have a competitive edge and more successful customers.  Bring these ideas to your own team after  you learn them and the whole team has an edge. 

So, after years of annual sales team meetings which, by the way, are exciting and fun and usually filled with great learning opportunities, these are the top 5 ways I’ve learned to get an amazing return on my investment.  I hate things that waste my time – with these practices the annual sales meeting never did.

Good luck!

SALES MEETING IDEA: 

  1. Ask your team to read this post before your next sales team meeting. 
  2. During the meeting, as a team, choose 2 things from this list or other actions you can take to bring your annual sales meeting back to the field. 
  3. Decide what results you are looking for by implementing the changes.  Be specific about the results you are looking for.  If you learned new skills to negotiate price, you might want your result to be lowered average discount.  Pick the specific number so you will know if you are moving the needle or not.
  4. Then, pick a follow-up date to check your results. 
  5. At the next sales team meeting following that date discuss the results and everyone’s experience trying the new skills or ideas.  Decide how to move forward.

Hopefully, your team will experience actual behavior change by practicing the new skills or ideas in the field and your return is worth the investment.  Happy Selling.

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win. Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers who want to equip their teams to win.  Subscribe by visiting us at:  http://meetingtowin.com/)

Posted in Uncategorized, agenda ideas, communication, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »

Communicate First

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting agendas and topics to our subscribers.  To see subscription options, click here.)

Communication seems to be the common theme in any successful relationship – parent and child, husband and wife, co-worker and co-worker, boss and employee. The most successful salespeople become masters of communication. Before you can master effective communication, it’s OK to … just communicate. If there is a relationship in your life that is suffering or just feels vulnerable (customer, employee, etc), first just communicate. Here’s the powerful part – to communicate you have to be there. You aren’t communicating my sitting in your office wondering about the problem. You have to pick up the phone, spend some time with them – just reach out.

Spend the time on the relationships you care about and communication will happen.  Mastering effective communication can happen over time and even then….you’ve got to be there to do it.

Posted in Uncategorized, agendas, communication, free sales team meeting topics, management tips, new managers, sales management, sales manager tips, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »

Stay “On The Grid” During the Holiday Season

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

It is almost impossible to not “go off the grid” with your prospective customers and customers during the holidays. Everyone is heading to some much needed time off.  You can have a competitive advantage by staying on the grid while your competitors are dropping off.  Here are 5 ways to do it that won’t cut into your much needed and deserved R&R.

1.  Send Happy New Year cards to your clients.  These cards should arrive right before or right after Jan 1st. Your greeting will stand out since it won’t be arriving with the pre-Christmas gifts and cards that get lost in the shuffle or arrive during vacations.  Your New Year’s greeting could include a calendar or some useful information for the new year. 

2.  Send an article or book that is relevant to the current business climate or their current business issues.  They can start the new year thinking about you and gaining some fresh ideas.

3.  Get on their calendar for a January meeting.  The new year is a great time to evaluate the business you did the previous year and set plans for the new year.  Requesting a Jan meeting in December is extremely effective.  Customers want to feel they have a productive Jan set up before they leave for the holidays, also.  Setting up a meeting with a good objective is a good way to help them do this.

4. Help them prepare for new year planning meetings.  If they are a current customer, one way to do this is to send them a slide deck outlining the work and accomplishments in 2009 along with some ideas to continue the good work in 2010.  Your email can start with “Often our clients ask us for a recap of the previous year so they can use it during thier new year planning sessions.  I thought you may also find this helpful.   Please see attached document.  I am happy to walk through the slides with you at your convenience.  Hope it’s helpful as you head into the new year.“  Write it in a way that they could use it with their superiors and in planning meetings.  They will see you as a true partner and you’ll cut their 2010 workload before the year even begins.

5.  Instead of just an “out of office” reply, send a proactive note to your customers and prospective customers several days in advance of your vacation.  Let them know you’ll be out and how they can get in touch with you if appropriate, or at least how to get in touch with someone who can help them in your absence.  They probably will be out, too, but they will have you in mind and feel that you took an extra step to ensure they are taken care of even when you are out.  (It’s a great reason to reach out to them when you return to let them know you are back in the office and move your relationship forward.)

Enjoy your time “off the grid” while a few small efforts will keep you “on the grid”.  Happy New Year!

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Posted in communication, how to have productive sales team meetings, management tips, new managers, new years resolutions, sales activity, sales management, sales manager tips, sales managers, sales tips, tips for meetings, tough economy | No Comments »

The Q4 Push – Are You In? The Time to Act on 2010 is NOW!

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

j0433410This has been a tough year for many.  It’s Q4 and salespeople could be feeling tired and ready to “write this one off” and take another shot at it in 2010.   Here’s the problem with that.  Momentum is a very cool thing and it’s great when it’s working for you and horrible when it’s working against you.  So, even if 2009 is a lost cause in terms of goal achievement, there is no better time (well, a month ago would have been better, but…) to get momentum going for 2010.

To gain more and more momentum as you close in on 2010, try these strategies:

The first five on the list come from the advice my friend Alvin of Tactivity shared in a LinkedIn discussion. I’ve added (and repeated) a few ideas that have helped me, also.

  1. If you’re on pace to the President’s Club in your organization, then increase your activity.
  2. If what you are doing hasn’t been working, then complete a thorough cleansing of the pipeline/funnel: Is it real? Is it good business? Can you win?
  3. Prioritize your activities around the health of your newly cleaned funnel
  4. Brainstorm a list of possible actions for your top opportunities; then choose only the 3-5 activities that will really advance them towards closure
  5. Go get it done!
  6. Conduct business reviews with existing clients to secure relationships, identify risks and uncover new ways to help them.
  7. Examine your territory for new opportunities a tough economy has turned up.
  8. Increase your sales activity.  Oh, did we already mention that one?  Action creates action, energy creates energy.  Make more calls!
  9. Solidify referral partners.  Decide to gain 20 referral partners and stay in touch with them, ask for referrals, be accessible and be someone they would be proud to refer (hint: send them referrals, also).
  10. Stay “on the grid” with prospects and existing customers.  Share useful information to help them run their business more effectively.  Don’t be out of sight or you know where you’ll be…. Out of mind.  Many of their sales reps have “gone dark” lately as companies do lay-offs and reorganizations.  Just being there may differentiate you!
  11. Have a team meeting every week to celebrate successes, share ideas, collaborate on hot deals and challenge each other.  This team accountability and celebration is fuel for your sales engine.  (You know we couldn’t leave this one out!)
  12. BONUS:  Increase sales activity.  In my experience, there is NO substitute.  Commit to accelerated sales activity in Q4 if you do nothing else.  Yeah, it’s worth mentioning 3 times. 

2010 can be an amazing year.  Salespeople that build momentum now can get a head start and be rewarded by helping more customers in 2010 than they ever thought possible.  Not to mention, for some 2009 can be a distant memory….  Get started today.  Staring in January 2010 will be TOO LATE.

To help sales teams build momentum during Q4, Meeting to Win is running a Q4 Push Promotion which means…free sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers.  Sales Managers can subscribe for sales team meeting agendas and get all of Q4 for free.  First payment of $10/month won’t be charged until January 2010 (sales managers can unsubscribe any time in Q4 and never be charged).  The agendas are designed to motivate sales teams and accelerate performance while continually gaining and maintaining incredible momentum. 

Read more HERE then join us by subscribing HERE and entering the Promo Code “Q4PUSH”.

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Win in a Down Economy – #5 – PLEASE Run Interference!

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

Sales Managers, have you and your teams ever noticed how when times are tough and that begins showing up in the company’s results, some senior leaders resort to “communicating” more? All of a sudden, the noise level goes up dramatically. It takes many forms such as new reports to do, new conference calls to join, new discounts and offers to pass along, new activity goals, etc, etc, etc. What does this do to salespeople? It DISTRACTS them, often PARALYZES them and sends them running in circles which really isn’t a recommended approach for winning in any arena (business, sports, etc).
The best sales leaders I have had were really GREAT at something — RUNNING INTERFERENCE. They blocked a huge percentage of the noise and pushed back on senior leaders when there was too much noise.
Here are some ways you can run interference for your team:
1. With your team, pick one or two things that you can do that can make the biggest difference in your results. Focus on those things, report on those things, make minor adjustments as needed and don’t give into the temptation to abandon a good plan before it gets momentum.
2. Don’t just pass along everything that your leadership sends your way. If you must pass it along, do it in a controlled way. Decide with your team how they would like to receive all this information. Can you save it up and send all the information on a Friday afternoon, can you put it in newsletter form, does your team have a team blog or webpage where you could post these items. Figure out a way with your team to NOT distract them during the selling week with non-urgent matters.
3. Protect your team’s selling time. When times are tough, every department wants a piece of the sales team. Let anyone who wants access to your team know that you will decide what makes it through the filter and then when they can access them. I had a Sales VP who didn’t allow ANY internal conference calls, e-mails or any other communication except on Mondays. If you wanted access to her sales team, you went through her and if she decided it would help grow sales, you got limited access on Mondays. You cannot imagine how much the noise level dropped and everyone got back to selling.
4. Reports! If senior leaders want another slice of data, a quick report, etc, figure out how you can gather the information without asking your team to stop what they are doing to run a new report. Go into your CRM and get the info yourself, gather the info during your regularly scheduled one-on-ones – anything other than ask them to stop selling and start reporting.
5. Push back on senior leaders who are causing the noise. Follow your chain of command, but push hard to protect your team’s selling time and stop the distractions. Show senior leaders what you will do in return – more face-to-face sales calls, more sales activity, etc.

These are just 5 ideas for dealing with the additional noise our own company’s produce. Please share your experiences in regards to dealing with the noise.

(Information gathered and shared by Meeting to Win, LLC. Visit us at www.meetingtowin.com for engaging, relevant, productive team conference calls every week.)

Posted in communication, meetings, noise, sales activity, sales management, sales managers | No Comments »