Every work day you wake up early, grit your teeth, then travel toward your office with one name in mind, Tom – one salesperson in particular that you just don’t want to continue to face off for the truth, someone who seems to “know-it-all” and isn’t performing but always has a “good” reason for low activity and poor sales numbers. Tom has an answer for most every action or inaction and doesn’t listen to advice and doesn’t close many sales.
With training in over 300 companies and close to 100,000 salespeople, I’ve seen Tom again and again and again. Today, I try to help anyone not hire a sales rep that looks like him, talks like him or speaks like him.
What I’ve discovered in training sales managers and in leading sales teams is that there’s really only three ways to approach the Toms of the world and deal with them.
Tom isn’t the real reason why I developed the Coach the Best!™ training to certify expert sales leaders. I created it to teach young sales leaders the philosophy and system for installing high-performance sales cultures with sales people who want to be coached.
Coach the Best!™ instructs:
- Don’t hire Tom
- If you do, challenge him with strength and directness with the facts of his situation, and if he doesn’t listen or want to admit his weakness or commit to his improvement.
- Threaten to fire him, and if that doesn’t work
- Promote him to someone else’s team in another company.
For instance, in the Coach the Best!™ certification, people learn to staff their teams with young self-motivated recruits who want to grow, compete or earn a certain amount of money. Then, the stages of guiding individuals and teams to sales success in this best practice system gets a whole lot better.
The system also teach them how to develop outstanding sales cultures with consistent sales results – how to build inspiring and challenging environments in which people want to get better under the direction of nonjudgmental leaders.
But, one thing they learn to do is to:
avoid the uncoachable and choose people they can teach to sell what they sell, at the right levels and in the right way – so that referrals and repeat business occur.
Plus, they learn that people are different and to shape their approaches to them based on their individual personalities and motivations. Some need more time – some less. Others want to compete while most want money for a specific reason in their lives.
Leaders should care to find and develop those who want to be coached. Today’s young salespeople entering the workforce look for a nonjudgemental mentor – one that will get to know them and will help them master the sales position and build security through the appropriate level of sales and then through personal financial management.
They want their anxiety lowered not heightened by those who lead them.
Pay attention to the coachability of people before you hire them. Then, put all your effort into getting to know the reps you do hire and make them successful as salespeople and as competent persons in home and in business. Think long-term impact on their lives. That’s what they want and that’s what will help your sales team be the best.