How To Manage An Underperforming Salesperson: VARs Weigh In

By Jim Roddy, VP of Marketing, RSPA

Acclaimed business author Chip Heath did more than just present a pre-planned speech at the RSPA INSPIRE 2015 Conference. He engaged the 100+ retail IT channel executive attendees in real-world problem solving within the framework of his presentations, including a mini-workshop that featured resellers sharing their biggest dilemmas.

BSM has already provided extended coverage on what Heath had to say at INSPIRE (Heath Says Channel Leaders Need To Find “Bright Spots”, Heath, INSPIRE 2015 Attendees Discuss VAR Salesperson Challenges and Heath Answers Questions From Channel Execs At RSPA INSPIRE 2015), so why the need for one more story?

Two reasons.

First and foremost, this workshop discussion provides incredible depth on one specific subject: managing an underperforming salesperson. This article isn’t just snippets and sound bites. You can follow the though process of the group in detail.

The second reason I wanted this article published is because it shows a fraction of the unique value offered by the RSPA INSPIRE event. I’ve told every VAR and vendor who will tolerate listening to me that if you’re serious about the retail IT space, you must attend INSPIRE. Past events have been held in locales like Maui, Aruba, Costa Rica, and St. Thomas, but the 2016 event — slated for Jan. 31 to Feb. 3 at the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort in San Diego — will be easily accessible for you. INSPIRE’s education and networking are unlike any other event I’ve experienced. So join the Retail Solutions Providers Association today and sign up for INSPIRE. Commercial over …

The following are excerpts from the aforementioned INSPIRE workshop where the group discussed the problem of how to best manage an underperforming salesperson.

VAR: I think that each and every one of us, whether a reseller or a vendor, always has at least one underperforming salesperson in our company that we should have fired or should have done something with that we have not.

So, this person is in the hospitality vertical. They have four-plus years of experience. We have multiple product lines for the quick service, table service, and fast casual. We do traditional client server pricing as well as SaaS pricing.

We do credit residuals, so we comp our salespeople in that portfolio as well, and she has been an underperformer for two to four years, so we’ve tweaked the compensation plan. We’ve done different other things to try and motivate the person to do what we would like them to do.

You just have so much sunken cost into this person, with the training, as you try to figure it out. We all have that issue with salespeople — when you get a salesperson, you just teach her the business forever because the vendors quit doing it. So, we bear that cost, as a reseller. That is the situation that I have. What would you do or how would you work this salesperson using this process?

Audience Member 1: I guess under the category of wider options, can you identify one or two things that this person really is good at? Perhaps they might fit into a different area?

VAR: We have moved people between implementation and sales in the past. I would say that that’s had very mixed success, because when they’re in sales they do their own thing and have their own schedule, and when you move them into implementation, they find it very difficult to be on more of a structured schedule — or you might have to work weekends or evenings, different things that they’ve not had to deal with in the sales position. I don't think this individual would do that. I think it would be an ego thing for this person.

Audience Member 2: What would it look like if they weren’t there?

Heath: Which part of the framework are you referencing?

Audience Member 2: Client interactions.

Heath: The vanishing objects test.

VAR: I’d have to replace her with another person. I mean, that’s what I would do.

Audience Member 2: … Maybe looking at the behaviors that drive their attitude … Is it just because they just don’t want to and they’re comfortable? Or can you change that?

VAR: I think I would say that, if you asked me what was wrong, I don’t think it’s knowledge of the industry. I don’t think it’s the ability to do it. I would think, if I looked at the big picture …He can’t shut up.  I think a lot of salespeople want to talk about what they know instead of solving the customer’s problem. I have been on some sales calls with the person. When I’m on the sales call, they don’t do that. But you can’t be there all of the time to do that.

I’ve had very forthright conversations, “Do you like working here? Do you like this business, or do you want to do something different? What is the situation?” This is more looking for general ideas. I think a lot of us have this issue that we don’t address. It’s one of the things we push to the side.

Audience Member 3: Under the framework of attaining some distance, when you first started to describe that, the 10-10-10 concept (How will we feel about this decision 10 minutes from now? 10 months from now? 10 years from now?) jumped out at me. Based on what you want your organization to be at those different milestones, it’s painful right now, but does that change at all, what you want to be as an organization when you grow up, and then looking at this one individual?

VAR: Yes, I think that the 10-10-10 thing, especially in the framework that it was explained, was very helpful. We always have what I consider a long-term view of looking at things and doing things.

I think that part of the ten-year piece — and maybe not ten years, but five — has always been a fairly clear focus for us. Ten minutes, I think we’ve always looked at this as I know it’s going to be painful, but I never put the third piece in there, of ten months.

The truth is, with the salesperson, with most of them, you don’t hire A’s, typically. At least, that’s not my experience in this business. You make A’s. Unless you steal an A from someone else – and there’s a fair amount of stealing of A’s that goes on within our industry.

So, in ten months, that’s probably why nothing’s ever happened, because in ten months, how much better can she be? Probably not good. That’s probably why there hasn’t been that decision, because it takes that long to train the new person. I think a lot of us struggle with that.

Audience Member 4: I consider you a friend … If this were a salesperson I had, knowing what you know, what would you advise me to do?

VAR: (immediately responds) I’d tell you to fire her.

Heath: (laughter) Notice the latency on that response? That’s what happens a lot in this situation. It’s really clear on what you’d advise the other person to do. It’s harder with the fog of things that are going on.

Audience Member 5: Are you providing any behavioral personality testing to this person to help them with awareness?

VAR: We do that as a standard practice of hiring. There is no one hired for us that is not profiled with the full tests that we have, that we share with them, and that are objectives on their annual plans. We do not hire anybody, from the secretary anywhere up in our company without testing. We have a full psychological test on everyone that we hire. In fact we do it at the interview … The testing says the person is capable.

Audience Member 5: You said in your presentation they can’t shut up.

VAR: Yes. Well, that’s my perception of what’s wrong. That’s not the reality.

Audience Member 5: But is that person aware of your perception?

VAR: Yes.

Audience Member 5: You’re certain? On the framework of reality testing of your assumptions, could you in CRM analyze objectively the one or more places in your sales process where this person’s not performing?

VAR: The number of contacts-to-proposals and the number of activities. We measure activities per week. We measure activities per quote and activities per quarter.

We have all those numbers, and we know that that person’s numbers. It takes more activity, which I think leads back to the fact of they’re not listening. Because if you’re listening better, the activities would drop, typically, and you would close sooner.

That’s the reasoning that I say I believe that’s what the problem is, and I have talked with the person about doing better in those areas. This is how you do it. You solve the problem, you don’t sell something. The people that are successful, I think, in our business today, help customers solve problems. That’s really what we do — solve their business problem.

Audience Member 6: Have you followed up with lost opportunities to find out they didn’t buy from this particular salesperson?

VAR: I have followed up with some of them, and it’s been for different reasons. The hospitality business is a brutal business right now. There are so many different business models in that business. It’s been price, it’s been initial investment. It’s never been directly correlated to the person. It’s been a multitude of different things.

Heath: Kudos to you for looking to the disconfirming evidence, but this is also a situation where you’re not necessarily getting it — people are going to come up with some justification for why it didn’t happen, but I think what you’re saying is this salesperson could have worked their way around those objections and come up with a solution that addressed those problems. It’s going to look like it’s all over the place when you’ve got a core problem.

This is clearly something you’ve thought about a lot. Is there anything that we’ve said that has helped you with this?

VAR: I think that, if you look at these, to me, wide number of options — I tend to want to make a decision that’s not quite black and white…

Heath: To your credit, at the moment, you’ve been thinking in your mind, “Should I fire this person?” but you’ve gone alongside on calls, you’ve given them some additional training. You’ve tried multiple options.

VAR: … to me, I think maybe distance is probably the biggest thing in addressing this.

Heath: That’s what I heard. When you talk about your reaction to the 10-10-10 analysis, it sounded like that was a clarifying moment for you. And then, I love the response to the best friend question — “fire her.”

In general, I’m not a Machiavellian organizational behavior professor, but I’m also not a join hands and sing Kumbaya organizational professor. I think you’ve done your due diligence in this situation, for thinking about different alternatives.  Here’s the challenge, though: Given that your tests have profiled this person, and not identified a deficit, is this something that you have an idea of how you avoid next time?

VAR: You know, I would say overall, since we’ve done testing with people, because we’ve done that now for three or four years, that I would say that our overall churn on new hires is extremely, extremely low, because we find things when we do that, that you don’t find in a typical interview.

We have done some of the side-by-side and stuff as well, to kind of expose people to what we do. But I think there were a lot of good ideas in each of these areas …

Heath: Final comment?

Audience Member 7: This is in the framework of prepare to be wrong. If you have somebody that was successful for two years, and then it’s in the last two years that she’s been unsuccessful?

VAR: It’s not in the last two years … she wasn’t that strong out of the gate, but two or four years …

Audience Member 7: Is it possible that if you’ve got four different product lines, this person should be focusing on one, or perhaps one of the things that you mentioned is that you’re providing the training, is that this person needs additional training?

VAR:  Oh, all of our people get training from manufacturers …We do internal as well, but there’s a manufacturer’s certification for all of the products.

Heath is the co-author (with his brother Dan Heath) of Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work (2013), Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (2010), and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die  (2007).

INSPIRE 2015, the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) conference for thought leaders in retail technology, is being held January 25-28, 2015, at the Grand Wailea Resort & Convention Center, Maui, HI. For more information, go to www.BSMinfo.com/go/InsideRSPA.