If you are a manager with a struggling seller, this blog post is for you!

Too often, managers place the blame of a struggling seller at the feet of the struggling seller. This is usually a mistake. There is a better way to find out what is causing the seller’s lack of performance, and it involves an analysis of the following five things:

• Talent and Fit
• Relationship
• Expectations
• Feedback
• Compensation

Use These Five Points to Analyze Poor  Performance

Below are five areas to help you assess your seller's poor performance. Review and consider these questions and tips to determine adjustments that could be made to improve their sales performance.

1. Talent and Fit

• Do you have reliable information about this individual’s talents and non-talents?
• Is the talent configuration appropriate to the challenges they face? Are they a good fit?
• Is there enough overall strength in the profile to ‘carry’ the non-response themes?
• Does the person have the specific themes needed to provide workarounds for their non-talents?

2. Relationship

• Characterize your relationship with the seller relationship from your point of view.
• Characterize the relationship from their point of view.
• How do you know this characterization is accurate?
• What difficulties have you experienced in developing a powerful relationship?
• People respond best to expectations set by someone they believe has their best interests at heart. What have you done to make your intent crystal clear? 

3. Expectations

• What have you done to tailor your expectations to his/her talents, goals, values, and expectations?
• Are you certain you have clearly communicated your expectations?
• Is more than one manager sending mixed messages?
• When was the last time you updated the seller’s Growth Guide? Do you have one?
• When was the last time you updated the seller’s Priority Coaching Strategies? Do you have these? 

4. Feedback

• What have you done to notice productive behavior?
• What have you done to notice nonproductive behavior?
• How much of your recognition comes from a print-out of billing performance (goal achievement)?
• How much of your recognition comes from observation in the field (skill achievement)?
• Is your recognition in sync with talents and expectations?

5. Compensation

• People do what they get paid to "do.”
• Is your ongoing compensation program custom-designed to reward the behaviors that are right for this individual?
• Are short-term sales incentive programs and contests appropriate for this person’s talents, skills, and account assignments?
• In what ways do you really ‘pay as you say?’ 

Test Drive

Take this analyzer for a test drive. I bet you'll discover some things that are tied to a seller’s performance. Once you do this, the next step is to make some adjustments to see if performance improvement occurs.