Value Selling – 3 Levels of Sales Team Performance to Manage

Just about any sales team can be divided into three major performance levels based upon performance, cultural fit, and knowledge and skills. 

Depending upon your sales strategy, sales performance is typically defined in terms of some combination of revenue, margin, win-rate, portfolio mix and customer satisfaction.  Cultural fit is usually defined as people’s ability to fit into the accepted and desired ways your sales team thinks, behaves and works.  Knowledge most often accounts for company, industry, market, customer and solution understanding while skills refer to the consistent ability to add customer value and sell solutions to help your clients to succeed. 

With that as context, the three major performance levels are:

• A Players – Your High Performers. (~ 20%)These sought after sales team members have it all – high performance levels, a strong cultural fit and the knowledge and skills required to consistently and profitably deliver on your value proposition and brand promise.
  
• B Players – Your Average Performers. (~ 60%)These sales team members are doing well in some areas and not meeting expectations in other areas.  For example, they may be hitting their sales targets, but not be a great cultural fit or selling the wrong things to the wrong customers in a way that does not align with your brand promise.
  
• C Players – Your Low Performers. (~ 20%)These sales team members are currently falling short in all areas.  

If you want to raise the overall performance of your sales team, here are some proven ways you can juggle those three performance levels for the best possible results…

1. Let’s deal first with your top 20% high performing sales reps. First, you must identify who they are.  Then your challenge is understand exactly what is required to consistently engage and retain them. From a sales strategy perspective, that means making sure that they feel that the sales direction and plan is clear, believable and implementable enough to succeed.  From a sales culture perspective it means creating an environment that sets them and their team up for success by making sure they feel rewarded, supported, recognized and included.  From a talent perspective it means making sure that they and their team have the resources, tools, skills and knowledge to achieve their targets.
   
2. The Middle 60%Then there are those who get results but whose sales skills could use a boost. Chances are their success is due to perseverance and a reliable network of order takers built up over the years. They may be hard workers but just think how much more effective they could be if they truly understood and practiced what they could learn in value selling training. Respect their results but help and incentivize them to try a new selling approach that will make their job easier and more productive for the long haul.  Perhaps the simplest solution is for these middle performers.  Identify what critical few sales skills matter most.  Assess their skills gaps.  Provide targeted and scenario-based value selling training that fits your exact sales strategy and culture.  Give them support, ongoing coaching and reinforcement. Then measure their progress and adjust as necessary.
   Then there are those who appear to have the sales skills and knowledge but just are not getting the desired results.  This is a more difficult situation to solve.  You need to identify the root cause of their substandard performance.  Do they not trust their ability?   Do they lack the drive or motivation?  Are they in the wrong role?  Do they feel taken for granted?  Is something happening on a personal level?  Are they unaware of how they are performing?  As their sales manager, it is your job to figure out what they need to perform at a higher level and create a meaningful plan to lift their performance. 
   After making sure that you engage and retain your top 20% sales talent, your greatest leverage point may lie in lifting the performance of this middle 60% group.
   
3. The Bottom 20%For your sales team members falling short in all areas, it would benefit both them and the company as whole to place them on a meaningful performance development plan to help them improve or move on in 90 days.  The plan should give them the support, ongoing coaching and reinforcement to have a chance to raise their game. Then keep close track of their progress. If they show little improvement or little effort over a reasonable period, it is time to let them go. If ever you are to build a high performing sales team, you cannot hang on to poor performers.  

Evaluate your sales team and treat each performance level differently. This is how to build a high performance sales team.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/solution-selling-training