Coaching the Struggling Salesperson to Turn Things Around!
One of the toughest things that leaders go through when managing a sales team is handling the question of what to do with a struggling salesperson. On the surface, what typically occurs is that we focus on numbers and why their numbers are low or what we need to do to raise their numbers. While this is very important, it is also critical to understand the person. First, does this person want to truly improve their ability to sell, or do they simply want their numbers to go up? This might come off as splitting hairs, but the fact of the matter is true sales professionals are constantly getting better even when their numbers are sky high. A true salesperson is someone who's willing to practice and read and go to seminars and take courses online or observe their fellow teammates to find different tactics and strategies to improve. The first question we must ask is, does this person want to improve?
Another helpful tip to keep in mind when working with a struggling salesperson is to make a list of the person's strengths. One of the best research studies that I've read is the Gallup Organization when they state that people will engage eight times more when we lead with strengths than when we lead with constructive feedback. It is such a knee-jerk reaction to sit down with a salesperson who is struggling and immediately go to the obvious, and that is that their numbers are low, which, by the way, the sales rep is fully aware of. What if a leader brought somebody in and simply talked to the salesperson about their strengths and how we need to go about leveraging those strengths and bringing those more to the forefront?
One of the best things that a sales leader can do is dissect the sales process specific to the person in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, and specific areas where they need to improve. For example, if you have a really nice person who's selling for you, who for whatever reason just struggles at the closing stage because they don't want to be viewed as too aggressive or they have a true anxiety over disrupting the relationship, then closing needs to be practiced. On the other hand, if you have someone who's a very aggressive closer, but for whatever reason during the sales process they come off too aggressive and do not leverage relationship building as much as they could, you would focus more on relationship building. This seems simple and, quite frankly, very obvious. But the fact of the matter is that sales leaders will sit down and dissect numbers when, in fact, the sales process needs to be dissect specific to each salesperson's strengths and areas and opportunity to improve.
If we know where our people have strengths and where they have opportunities to improve, specific to our sales process and approach, we will be ahead of the competition.
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