Now, let's turn our attention to a topic that quite possible offend some of you, but without it...the entire world comes to a screeching halt. That topic is of course...SALES!
Sales...when speaking about sales, you must first address sales people and If you employ sales people or will in the future you've got sales management problems. Although I can't even begin to provide a full analysis of the solutions to sales management problems in a single email there are several fundamental and important things we can discuss that will help you have more productive relationships with your sales people, your distributors, or your franchisees.
First, you should remember that sales people are people. There are any number of problems that they can have at various times that will negatively affect their performance and productivity. Fears and insecurities, laziness, depression, personal and family problems, financial problems, health problems, automobile problems, all these things become factors affecting your business when you market through sales people.
This is probably one of the reasons for the volatility of the 80/20 principle in sales organizations. This principle In managing says that 80% of the sales come from 20% of the reps and 80% of the problems come from 20% of the reps. As long as it's not the same 20% you're in good shape and it rarely is.
In managing sales people you'll actually be dealing with three distinctly different situations. One - coaching the willing sales person to peak performance. Two - trying to motivate the mediocre performer and three - frequently cutting out and replacing the poor performers.
Let's take the poor performer first. Most managers spend way too much time on the poor performer and too little time with their high performers. And most managers postpone cutting the inadequate performer much longer than they should.
Once an individual has demonstrated his unwillingness or inability to perform effectively in your business you do no one any favors by letting him hang on. In fact, firing this person is the best thing you can do for him. He'll probably be more relieved than anything else and will now be free to find an employment situation that is some how better matched to his personality. It's also the best thing you can do for your own sanity as well as for the organization.
A firing now and then in an organization is a vivid reminder that unsatisfactory performance will not be tolerated. I have a poster hidden in one of my offices that says, "You should never try to teach a pig to sing. It only annoys the pig and you get covered with mud in the attempt." The point is that there are some people burdened with such a combination of negative attitudes and experiences that turning them into winners is much more trouble than it's worth. A lot of the manager's time is consumed by the mediocre performers. Those doing just enough to give you hope but not enough to warrant celebration.
Then there are the high performers, producing about 80% of the positive results who are mostly ignored by management.
[Via Dan Kennedy]
Mom dips into business world
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