Should Sales Managers Focus on Top Performers or Low Performers?
It's a question we hear a lot:
Should I spend my time with top performing salespeople or bottom performers?
Aren't you better off investing your time with responsive salespeople? After all, a good coach brings value to great players and sub-par ones. The same is true in sales management. However, if the salesperson you're coaching won't heed your advice, it's a waste of everyone's time. Right?
Responsive salespeople are...
- Humble enough to take criticism,
- Smart enough to solicit it, and
- Willing enough to act on it.
Responsive salespeople also want to improve themselves. They accomplish that with more than just your coaching. They look for ways to learn more about professional sales. They understand what it takes to be a top-performer. That's NEVER settling for stagnation.
The flip side of this coin is that you've got to offer good coaching. A sales manager who gives poor suggestions or old-school ideas will do more harm than good. So...
As a manager of salespeople, what are you doing to ensure you're a good coach?
In other words:
If you're not constantly investing in your own skill-set, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant. In order to offer valuable coaching, you've got to be improving yourself.
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August 25th, 2010 - 02:31
From top performing sales people we should learn, and manage for retaining them.
Concerning the low performers, I’ve been collecting the state of the art in a blog ( http://lowperformer.blogspot.com ) . I could summarize in “move up or move out ” policy.
But all this is talking about other’s performance, and I agree that we must take care of “what I’m doing to ensure I’m are good coach, a good manager”
August 25th, 2010 - 06:55
Nice blog, Santi! Thanks for your comment.
August 25th, 2010 - 11:38
Great comments.
Work out what % of the sales are made by x amount of sales people and you’ll know where to focus your energy!
Normally the 80/20 rule works with sale in that 20% of your sales team will make 80% of your sales.
It’s your role as a sales manager to:
Identify who your key players are keep them hot…..through coaching
Identify those who are not performing but who have the potential and then develop them….through coaching
Identify those that “just do not cut the mustard” and who will never make it and coach them out (it’ll be good for them and you in the long run)
A word of advice though:
Coaching and performance improvement is not just all about improving the poor performers. You could spend all of your time helping the poor performers only to get very little return. You really need to take an overall look at your sales team and work our coaching strategies for all groups.
Get to work!
Sean McPheat
August 25th, 2010 - 16:45
As always, thanks for the comments, Sean. Great points!