b"DEVELOPMENT C A SE STUDYKurt SimaVP/Senior Consultant The Center for Sales StrategyA Sales Performance Improvement Story H ere'sasalesperformanceimprovementThe Processstory with a happy ending that features the efforts of Kassie Taksey, the General SalesHere's a summary of the process she followed:Manager at Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indi- Kassiereviewedperformancedatafromthe ana . previous years and evaluated each seller's per-The Problem formance (overall, not a pretty picture).She also got up to speed on each seller's talents, Kassey was hired near the end of 2019 to fix thereviewing their STAs and conducting talent feed-sales performance problem of a few stations. Hereback call with a CSS Talent Analyst.are some of the problems she inherited: She spent time with the sellers, getting to know Poor sales performancemissing goals and verythem,developingpersonalrelationshipswith little target to key conversion compared to thethem, and learning about their innate strengths.other stations in the cluster. She took a hands-on approach, getting involved Constant and massive turnover under the pre- with the sellers and their customers. vious GSM.A sales team that was too small as a result of theThe Planhigh turnover. Her plan was pretty simple, focusing on getting back Drama, plenty of drama.to basics (fundamentals) and soaring with people's Note: Kassie inherited these problems on the evestrengths. It looked like this:of 2020 (the year of COVID). A significant challengeMakedecisionsbasedoneach player'sinnate became even more significant due to COVID. talents and strengths.88"