High Performance Or High Maintenance. What Is Your Sales Team Made Of?

High Performance Or High Maintenance. What Is Your Sales Team Made Of?:

I was speaking with the CSO of a medium size BPO firm that has been around quite some time but is not yet a household name here in the United States. He has been in his current position several months and is in the process of rebuilding a sales team. I asked him what were his top priorities as he was preparing to enter a new selling year.

He stated he had two goals, the first was that it was critical to improve sales effectiveness by standardizing and streamlining sales processes, a goal of almost every organization we talk to. His second goal was to eliminate all the “sales drama,” a somewhat surprising answer.

When I probed a little further it became apparent that two of his top producing sales people felt that the sales process rules didn’t apply to them. Their actions were a continuous resource drain that was negatively affecting the rest of the team’s ability to make the number. Compounding this issue was his intent to add more rigor to the sales process.

Every sales leader loves to have one or more rainmakers on their team, but when the actions of one or two individuals jeopardizes the health of the selling organization you need to either “coach them up “or “coach them out”. Take a look at your current bench. Do you have one or more sales people that constantly demand more of your time either by listening to their tales of woe or fixing issues they created by being a renegade?

As a CSO your job is to facilitate an environment that makes it possible for your whole sales team to function effectively. If quotas are properly set you will be successful when 80 percent of your team meets or exceeds quota. Having two people exceeding plan and 10 missing plan due to resource constraints is a guaranteed miss on next year’s plan!

Do you have Rainmakers or Prima Donna’s? Find out fast!

Take the time now to look at your bench to determine who you should coach up or out, your team will be far stronger from your actions.