Several years ago, as part of our sales team evaluation, the skills, tendencies and effectiveness of the sales leadership team was also assessed.  The findings indicated that of the 224 leaders, 23% had at least 60% of the skills required to be an effective performance manger.  Of the 5 sales management skill sets required - coaching, motivating, recruiting, mentoring and performance management – this last one, performance management, is where the team “scored” the best. The skills/tendencies within the skill set are as follows:

• Doesn’t accept mediocrity
• Has no need for approval from sales people
• Takes responsibility
• Manages behavior
• Asks Questions
• Manages pipeline
• Has beliefs that support accountability

Before digging into this topic further, just take a minute to examine these results: 

• 224 sales leaders
• 23% (51) with the minimum % of skills needed to be successful in their role
• 67% (172) sales leaders below the minimum standards of effectiveness
• Only 1 out of 4 managers, hired to do the job of managing performance and holding sales people accountable, had the skills to do so.

Assume for a minute that this might be your sales organization.  Now, you might be thinking, “I don’t have that many sales managers and so my numbers won’t look like this.”  You are right; they won’t look like this, but consider the possibility that maybe you didn’t get the 1 out of four!  How would you know?

• Do your salespeople meet and exceed goals?
• Do your salespeople consistently have the right volume of pipeline?
• Do your salespeople have a tendency to have up and down weeks, months, quarters or years?
• Do your salespeople blame the economy, the competition, the pricing, the lack of marketing, lack of support, too much paperwork for failure to prospect?
• Have you spent a small fortune for CRM and yet still struggle with trusting the reliability of the pipeline report that you get?
• Are people late to meetings or fail to show up at all, or leave early?
• Does your sales manager take bullets for the failure of the sales team?

Performance Management – Definition (As defined by the University of California Berkley)

• Performance management is an ongoing process of communication between a supervisor and an employee that occurs throughout the year, in support of accomplishing the strategic objectives of the organization. The communication process includes clarifying expectations, setting objectives, identifying goals, providing feedback and reviewing results.

Hogwash!  This is part of the definition and this might suit the academics, but in the real world of business, there is something missing!  “What’s missing?” you ask.

• Identifying and implementing Rewards for success
• Identifying and implementing Consequences for failure
• Implementing disciplined approaches (structured activities) to correct failure to perform effort or execution.

The Berkley definition is kind of like the LifeLock commercial you see on TV commercials.  The bank is being robbed and customers ask the security guard if he is going to do something about the robbery.  His response is that he is not a security guard but rather a security monitor.  If all a manager does is communicates expectations, sets objectives, identifies goals, reviews results (“you are not hitting your goals”) and provides feedback (“You have to work harder”), then performance really isn’t managed; it’s just monitored.

As long had you have a sales team consisting of self-starters, self-managed, high figure-it-out people, then you are okay.  BUT, and this is a BIG BUT(T), you probably don’t have an entire team of people like this.  Short of having a team that just needs to be pointed in the right direction, an organization needs someone to manage performance and hold people accountable to individual commitments.

The organization needs someone that can reward people for success through compensation and recognition.  As important, if not more important, your performance management manager MUST be able to recognize early when people are off-track. This person must have implemented the right systems and process for early detection.  And the person must be strong enough to have fierce conversations with people when they are failing to perform.

Finally, there must be a process of disciplined and structured correction procedures so that those failing to execute have a chance to succeed.  PIPs are not the answer.  PIPs are to late to have a significant impact.  By the time you attempt to put someone on a PIP that horse has left the barn.

Additional Resources:

• Sales Management Certification – Call me at 513.226.3913 or text SMECert and provide me a name and number to call
• For our SME Certification Slidedoc – Email Jeni@anthonycoletraining.com
• Evaluate your sales team – Email Jack@anthonycoletraining.com

Earlier, I stated that eliminating the variability of performance all starts with people, right?  And then, I proceeded to tell you that I thought that eliminating variability starts with systems and process.  Now, it’s time to talk about people and that means talking about recruiting.  Here are the big ideas about recruiting:

• You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.
• You must be excellent at it.
• You must know exactly what you are looking for – What is your *Zebra?
• You must stick to your plan of hiring nothing but Zebras!
• You must have an excellent onboarding system and process.

Companies hiring salespeople do not hire talent intending for that talent to be average.  Companies creating business plans do not put plans together with an end game of “Let’s be average.”  No one starts a company, starts a career or initiates a marketing campaign with the excitement of “I think this is really an average idea that will bring us average results and make us average in the marketplace!”

So, why should we use average, above average, okay, trending, making progress and “in line with out peer group” when describing our results?  It’s the wrong way to measure success or progress.  If you don’t intend on having average results, then don’t intentionally hire average people and don’t accept it when evaluating effort, execution or performance!

How do we know that this actually happens?

• Companies use stack ranking and the sales managers/executives reviewing the sales reports brag about outperforming their counterparts in similar markets. If the counterparts are successful, then that’s a good analysis.  If the counterparts suck, then one team just doesn’t suck as bad as the other teams.
• Companies use year over year performance. I get it.  I understand it because companies are trying to demonstrate that they are improving. That makes sense, kind of.  But, let’s suppose you are a sports team that plays 10 games.  Last year, you won 2. This year, you won 4 – a 100% improvement; however, you still lost 60% of your games!
• The 80/20 rule doubled. If you look at most sales teams that have at least 10 salespeople, normally you find that about 36% of the salespeople are responsible for 90% of the results.  What the heck is the other 64% of the team doing?

How does this happen?  Recruiting, on-boarding, training and development, sales coaching and performance management. 

It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult – to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult.)   - Aristotle

How do you minimize the opportunity for failure in recruiting thus minimizing the variability in performance?  Answer: Have a system.  Have a system managed by quality people that are more interested in hiring quality people that will actually sell.  Have partners internally and externally whose objectives are aligned with the ultimate goal – creating a sales team built for growth.  Manage the process like you would manage any other process in your organization.

With all of that said, here are a couple of key things to consider:

• Have a pipeline process. Imagine for a minute that you were talking to your salespeople about their prospect pipeline and they informed you that they didn't have one. What would your reaction be?  Why then is your company allowed to NOT have a candidate pipeline or a process to build a pipeline when necessary?
• Have huddles to discuss internal activities designed to generate candidate leads. Internal ownership in the recruiting process is critical. Hiring an outside firm and them blaming them or using them as the excuse for poor hiring is not an option.
• Profile the results needed to be successful rather than write and publish a job description. Look into what is being done by your most successful salespeople (*Note- These may not be the same people with the biggest revenue contribution). What are they doing? What kind of activity do they have, who do they call on, what is their average size case, close ratio and sales cycle?  How are they being managed and at what level do they succeed? Attract those that aspire to work and succeed at that level.
• Assess for job fit, sales skills inventory and WILL to succeed in selling. The resumes are going to look good. References are pointless these days and almost all of them will have a decent profile on LinkedIn.  So, use a pre-hire assessment tool so that you have the same set of sales skills inventory questions being asked the same way all the time.
• Screen for the skills you need. Just as an example: If phone skills are important and the salesperson will often face prospects that are not terribly over-excited about getting a call from a salesperson, then you must first screen for that skill, that talent.  If closing for an appointment is important for sales people to do, then make sure that this candidate closes you for the next step.

These are the big ideas in recruiting. This is the start of the transformation of your sales team.  Stop hiring those people that end up on the wrong end of the 80/20 curve.  Be a leader and break the trend of accepting mediocrity from people you hired to succeed.

If you’ve followed my blog for any period of time, you know that there are several phrases that I use when discussing sales outcomes, sales management, recruitment and talent development:

• Your organization is perfectly designed for the results you get today.
• When you evaluate talent that is not performing as expected, you must ask yourself: “Did I hire them this way or did I make them this way?”
• Hire people you cannot afford.
• Hire great people when you find them, not when you need them.
• Catch them early (refers to performance management).
• You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
• When all else fails, hard work works.
• They (your underperforming salespeople) either are lying about their activity or they suck at what they do.
• You should begin the exiting process of an underperformer the moment you have the first thought.
• All prospects lie all the time.
• Don’t look, act or sound like a salesperson.
• When goals are clear, decision making is easy.
• Events happen to us all, destiny is what happens next.
• They’ll only do it once.

That's about it.

Do you have favorite business phrases? Share your feedback and comments below!

I’ve been writing about solutions to variability of performance and, as often happens, I see/find something connected to the theme of sales or sales management.

Earlier, I discussed three reasons for variability of performance:

• Situational Factors
• Task Characteristics
• Individual Differences

Dr. Peter Jensen, sports psychologist, founder of Performance Coaching, instructor at Queen's School of Business, Canadian Olympic Coach and author of Ignite the 3^rd Factor, states the following:

“The developmental potential of human beings has three major components: nature, which establishes the physical and mental road map of an individual; nurture, which includes social and environmental factors that help would an individual; and the Third Factor, which is the factor of choice or "the important role an individual plays in his or her own ‘becoming’.”

Nature, nurture and The Third Factor define individual differences.

I was taking my morning walk when I noticed a young boy and what appeared to be his dad riding their bikes in the cemetery across the street from our house.  The boy seemed to be enjoying himself and feeling the excitement of peddling his bike faster and faster.  I turned my attention back to my walk and then looked back one more time.  I noticed the young boy on the ground, his bicycle a few feet on the ground away from him and his dad dismounting from his bike.  It appeared that the boy had tried to take the corner too fast, lost control of his bike and fell.

I stopped to watch and make sure that there wasn’t a serious injury. The dad walked over to the boy, bent down and spoke to him. Then he sat down on the ground and the boy moved over to sit on his lap; it appeared the man was checking for any injuries on the boy’s arms, legs and head.  All seemed to be well.
I continued walking and then crossed the street like I normally do.  I looked over to my right and again saw the man talking to the boy. The boy climbed back on his bike and continued riding.  And then I pondered.

The boy didn’t wait until the next day to start riding. He didn’t push the bike back to his house.  He didn’t sit there for an hour looking at it, debating if he should try again or not.  He didn’t appear to cry or be afraid.  He just got back on the bike and peddled away.

The Third Factor at work.

As a sales manager or hiring manager, it is difficult to assess talent.  There are many contributing factors that make recruiting difficult.  At Hirebettersalespeople.com, we define 8 steps that, when implemented and executed well, can help eliminate hiring mistakes and improve the probability of success once the hire has been made.  But, one of the steps – the vetting step (assessing, qualifying and interviewing) – is always challenging because of the human factor.

Specifically, the vetting process is difficult because of how hard it is to determine “the will” to succeed in selling rather than “the can” succeed in selling.  The will to sell = The Third Factor.  Objective Management Group’s sales talent assessment and pre-hire assessment does the best job of this (Worlds #1 Sales Talent Assessment) with the following findings:

• Desire
• Commitment
• Responsibility
• Outlook
• Figure-it-out factor
• Source of motivation

Why is this important do know?  It’s important to know because resumes and application answers are great works of fiction.  Over the last 22 years in this business, I’ve seen the development of resumes go from a bullet-pointed document about the history of a candidate to a short story of great accomplishment and adventure.  There are no “bad” resumes anymore.

When you calculate the cost of bad hires, hires that don’t produce as expected, hires that are there and then gone in a blink of an eye (calculate the costs of ghosts), the problem can be, as Roy Riley described it, a two-comma problem.  Yes, you want people that have the required technical expertise; yes, you want people that have experience in your industry; and yes, you want people that have experience selling in your environment and have success selling to prospects you are looking to sell to.

But, if you don’t know exactly how they have succeed in the past, if you don’t know if they are wired to sell and help your company grow, if you don’t know the “third factor” choices they make to succeed in spite of all external factors, then you will continue to fall victim to hiring people that fall off the bike and have a difficult time getting back on the seat.

Additional Resources: 

 Assess a candidate

It all starts with people, right?

Wrong… or at least I believe that to be wrong.  When I was the strength coach at Iowa State University, we had a debate/discussion/disagreement on in-season strength training.  Actually, the disagreement was with just one person, our defensive coordinator, who eventually went on to be a great success in the NFL while I went on to start and run a success business in sales training, coaching and consulting. 

The reason for the discussion was to eliminate variability of performance mid to late season. At the time, I didn’t recognize it as eliminating variability of performance. I just suggested to our football staff that, if we wanted to eliminate or minimize injuries to our players, we needed to keep their strength and endurance at a high level.  Other consistently high-level performing teams, like Nebraska and Penn State, had very aggressive in-season conditioning programs.  I respected the conditioning coaching at both of those programs and the records of the teams spoke for themselves.

The argument started and ended with this:

• Coordinator: “What good is it if my linebacker can bench press 300 pounds but doesn't know where to go?”

• Me: “What good is it if he knows where to go but gets his ass kicked once he gets there? Or if the guy that is supposed to be there is on the sideline because he separated his shoulder, blew out a knee or pulled a hamstring?”

• Head Coach: “Starting next week, we’ll make sure our guys are working out at the end of practice every Tuesday and Thursday and we will include light lifting sessions during our recovery running and stretching sessions on Sunday.”

The variability of performance didn’t just apply to a single individual, but the performance of the team was impacted by the inability of one person to perform or perform well because of injury or endurance.  What an organization needs is a system and process in place to minimize lapses or lack of performance by individuals.

I believe it all starts with systems and processes in place to support the function and execution of the people expected to perform.  The organization needs to be strong and have endurance to support the skills of those going to the right place at the right time.

Take a look at the following findings from a Sales Effectiveness and Impact Analysis that we conducted for a sales team:

Management is asked to identify, answer questions about the systems and processes in their organization that support the implementation and execution of effective selling by their sales team. The numbers and colors you see are reflective of how they answered the questions.  There are no “leap in logic” questions and findings here.  Just straight up math based on an individual evaluation by the manager.  If they said “yes” to five questions in accountability/tracking, they got a five.  In this example, the number is 2.

Forget about what the colors and numbers actually represent in terms of implementation or execution - just look at the variability of numbers in the red boxes.  This alone is a major contributor to the variability of performance expected of those to execute sales systems and processes that are designed to help them be more productive.  Looking at “accountability” alone should give you pause to think about your own organization:

• Failure to have or execute a tracking system that looks at leading indicators for future sales success
• Tracking frequency is hit or miss on critical “smart numbers”
• There is a lack of automation thus making it easy for salespeople to make excuses about having time to record data needed to help them grow and improve.
• If there is automation, in this case, there aren’t any standards or there is a lack of accountability to using the automation (score of 4). So, if you have incomplete data, or missing data or incorrect data, then how can an organization gather any reliable business intelligence to help support sales teams grow, correct problems or eliminate constraints in their sales approach?

If variability of performance is an issue - and it always is (see below) - then assess your systems and processes as you assess the variability of the individuals that make up your sales management and sales team.  That post is coming NEXT!