Colleen’s Blog

It's frustrating. When you see a sales rep struggling month after month, and missing target after target, it's enough to make any sales leader uneasy. The problem is most leaders handle poor performers the wrong way. There's a tendency to have "tough conversations" or attempt to punish them into higher performance. Some leaders even give poor performers the "cold shoulder" and allow a rep's professional performance to seep into their personal behavior towards them. These are all things that are extremely counterproductive and more often than not, contribute to more negativity and even worse performance. Luckily, there are strategies you can put into place to help improve their results. 

I spent the week with two teams of top performing sales professionals this week. Although I suspect that some of them will fall out of that position before too long. Here are my observations:

In an endless ocean of sellers that are often selling similar products and services, making your business or organization stand out is of the utmost importance. Being seen as a thought leader is, in today's world, one of the best ways to not only differentiate yourself from everyone else, but to have buyers chasing after you instead of the other way around.

I've seen it happen over and over again - chances are one or more of your team members are guilty of doing this too... Picture this, you have a prospect that is interested in your product or service. It seems that bringing them on board as a new client is more or less a done deal. Your rep continues to sell to them anyway. They keep piling on and highlighting features and value that your prospect doesn't necessarily even need. The prospect begins to back off, they go from being interested and engaged to hesitant. The prospect decides they need to think about the decision...you never hear from them again. What happened? The sales rep fell into the "oversell trap" and lost a potential client as a result.

They're hitting and exceeding their targets with no signs of slowing down. Should you even bother to coach your top sales performers? I've been working with executives for the last few years on sales coaching practices. I've noticed that many executives are on the fence about whether or not to coach top performers. Let me clear the air.