How To Transform Your Underperformers By Teaching Them To Be Confident

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Dan

confident sales person The gym trainer tells you to do three sets of basic crunches, 15 counts each. Why is that? Why not make it 45 counts of basic crunches and get it over with?

There are times when breaking something down into smaller portions make it a lot easier to perform the feat. 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. Continue reading →

Pareto’s Legacy: Adapt Your Strategies Based On The Talents Of Your Best Sales People

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Dan

The 80/20 rule—or the Pareto Principle—tells us that our best results, 80% of productivity, would come from just 20% of our efforts. As a top sales manager, how do you work around this knowledge so that your team of 10 sales people could improve itself to be on par with your two best sales superstars?

This time we’ll discuss a real-life example of how the 80/20 rule has helped a manager transform employees by focusing on excellence.

Here is the thing – top sales managers should have a knack for sensing sales people with real talent. They must have a good nose for it, the ability to smell a sales person’s determination to become excellent and above average. Without this, then the person is simply looking for another job to fill his or her time. No one wants to hire somebody who’s only looking for a paycheck.

Why is that? Because those kinds of employees are most likely underperformers. And top sales managers are aware that if they spend too much time on underperformers, they have less time guiding the good to become truly great. Continue reading →

How To Let Go Of Sales Underperformers, Part Two

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Dan

sales manager talking to a salesperson

This is the second part of the article How To Let Go Of Underperformers – Top-Performing Sales Manager-Style.

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:

Would I hire the same sales person again?
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. Continue reading →

How To Let Go of Underperformers – Top-Performing Sales Manager-Style

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Dan

sales person in an exam paper background

You gotta let go of your underperformers. But making such a decision is easier said than done. Any sales manager will tell you that. After all, a top-performing sales manager sees his sales people as more than just employees. But it has to be done—that is, if you want to stay as a top-performing sales manager in your company.

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 two questions: Continue reading →

How To Turn Sales Duds Into Sales Stars | Rule #3

Posted on May 14, 2010 by ralphburns

very happy salesperson The thing with underperformers is that because of their failures to hit quota, they start to have a hard time picturing themselves on top. They know they’re performing way below their peers and like a baseball slugger in a slump, they start to lose confidence.

The real challenge for the sales manager is to help underperforming salespeople stop this destructive thought process. Not easy. But a salesperson whose lost confidence in their abilities cannot possibly perform at the level that’s expected of them.

And this is where the third rule comes in. Continue reading →