4 Indicators You Should Fire a Salesperson

Rob  00:00

If you’re a sales manager and you have a salesperson and you’re not sure if they should stay on your team or not, shame on you, but but if you have a sales team you’re not sure what to do, when is it time to let somebody go? When is it time to fire a salesperson? We’re gonna get into that right now.

Rob  00:20

So the first thing, though, to me that a salesperson is struggling is obviously they’re not closing deals, right? That’s obvious, but really, when you talk to managers, it’s how do I know when it’s time to really start to move them through the process or let them go?

Rob  00:33

And if you’re a salesperson, by the way, and watching this, I get it, that means you’re probably struggling a little bit. You might want to check out a couple of the other episodes, because it should help you close more deals, but let’s get into, if you’re a sales manager.

Rob  00:45

One of the things that might be an indicator that a sales person is not doing the best that they could be doing is they kind of fail to do all the activities, essentially, right, so they’re not lining up enough calls, meetings, having enough discussions with potential clients, and working them through a process, they’re not calling enough people, they’re not holding enough meetings, they’re not sending the emails in a cadence that should require them, they’re just not doing the things that they should be doing. That’s one thing, that’s just an activity.

Rob  01:14

The second thing is, is they’re not moving their prospects through their pipeline, and essentially what I mean by that is, they’re stalled in the early stages of their pipeline, they’re never really moving all the way through, they never really close anybody, they’re having a difficult time identifying the pains that the people are having.

Rob  01:30

So, as a manager, you’re asking questions about what are the problems that you’re solving, and are they able to identify if that person has that problem, can address what that means to them. In other words, if they’re having a conversation with a prospect and they say their problem is xyz, and they don’t get into discussion about how much it’s costing them to not fix it, or they’re not talking about what they could do if they could fix that problem, they’re not getting into the pain part of that conversation.

Rob  01:56

That’s that’s when you know they’re they’re struggling, and they’re not qualifying people early enough, nor are they qualifying them at each step of the way, so if they go through the process and they made to step three or four and they’re still not requalifying them as they go, that’s a mistake, you got to make sure that that gets addressed and fixed as quickly as possible, and I feel like the last real thing that I would look at.

Rob  02:18

In terms of like they’re not moving through the pipeline. Is that the sales person is ahead of the buyer, meaning the sales person thinks this person is ready to go to the next step, and the person who’s on the other side of that is like not moving to the next step.

Rob  02:33

They consistently don’t do it, and they show activities to say that they’re not going to do that. That’s going to be an indicator that this person is is really kind of struggling, and they need some help. You can help with those things just by making sure that they understand what the problem is that your service and product fixes.

Rob  02:50

But if you, if you get them to understand that, and they understand that fully, but they refuse to get to that pain thing, there’s something internally for them that they’re afraid of making somebody else feel like, or putting them into pain, they’re having a difficult time talking to them about the pain part, and I get that, because that can be difficult sometimes; but what is really important is, is you have to understand what their pains are as a prospect in order for them to go through the sales process, and if you don’t have that, they’re never going to close, and so it’s really important that they get comfortable talking about pains of other people.

Rob  03:23

So so far, if you found this to be helpful, make sure you like and subscribe, because there’s more content coming just like this in the future.

Rob  03:28

The third thing is, is they’re giving excuses when they’re being held accountable, so in other words, they, they blame the product, whatever you’re selling, your service, whatever, whatever, that they blame the price, right, that those are things that would be like defraying accountability to something else besides themselves, they’re not.

Rob  03:43

It’s not them that’s causing the problem, it’s the price of the product, it’s the leads that was given, that those are the kinds of things that don’t, that don’t, they don’t close because these are bad leads, or the market conditions are just not right for this right now.

Rob  03:56

Well, that can happen with a good sales person, you wouldn’t have that where market conditions are the problem every time, because they will find somebody that will be interested in buying, because they have a need, there’s a pain, they have to buy, they will find that a not so good salesperson is not going to do that, they’re not going to push, they’re not going to try to find, they’re going to blame the market, and that’s not good.

Rob  04:16

An alternative to that would be, as a good salesperson, would be that they would adapt their strategy a little bit. They would also increase their activities in terms of making the calls, making the meetings, you know. Anytime that I’ve struggled with with sales, things go kind of like all of a sudden get quiet or slow, or I could start getting more nos than normal.

Rob  04:36

I have to increase my activity because that means I need more stuff in my pipeline, and by doing that, you end up with more potential yeses rather than nobody saying yes and nobody in my pipeline, so you have to make sure that you start to fill that up.

Rob  04:48

A not so good salesperson is going to say, well, it’s just not the market conditions for this, we can’t do anything about it, and the price is too high, and blah blah blah. No, that’s not the answer. You have to go out there and get more, and that’s difficult for some people.

Rob  05:00

And so if that’s the situation, then here’s your sales person that’s probably not going to make it in the end, right? Did I miss anything? If I did, please put them in the comments, I want to hear them, because I want to know what you guys see in terms of what indicates is a poor salesperson. I want to see that in the comments, so leave it, leave a comment below, and we’ll address those later in the, in a future episode.

Rob  05:19

The other thing that they do, and it’s the number four, would be they, their forecast is much higher than what it should be, so they think that more is going to close than what actually will be closing. So, they’ll look at their pipeline and say, I have 10 that are really good leads here, and they’re, they’re working their way through, you know, I think eight of them are going to close, whatever the number is, right?

 

Rob  05:38

If it’s 100 or it’s eight, doesn’t matter, the point is, is they have a big percentage are going to close, but they never do. That’s obviously a good sign, right, that they’re not a good salesperson. So that’s an indicator. Now, if you’ve had several of these indicators as we’ve gone, and they’re not performing based on these things.

Rob  05:55

It might be time that you need to either do some coaching or you need to do some things that bring them up to speed, so that they can learn what they should be doing, and if they don’t know, they don’t know, but if they’ve been doing it for a while, all of a sudden they’ve lost interest. That’s a totally different story, right?

Rob  06:10

The fourth thing that they typically do is they forecast inaccurately. What I mean by that is they’ll forecast much higher numbers than what are actually going to close. So, when you ask them, all right, you’ve got 50 leads, how many of these, and they’re in their final stages, or 10 of them in their final stages.

Rob  06:25

How many of these things do you think are going to close? And their answer is like, well, I think all of them are going to, or like 80% of them are. And the reality is, isn’t historically speaking, that’s not been accurate for them.

Rob  06:35

That’s an indicator that that’s a person that isn’t really understanding how this works and how to sell, because they should be more skeptical than they should be expecting that it’s going to close, so they a lot of times will over promise, they’ll under deliver, obviously they have a little lower qualifying skills, so what they would end up doing is think they’re qualifying somebody, but they’re actually not qualifying correctly, and they haven’t ruled somebody out, they should be approaching things with I’m gonna rule these people out versus they’re qualified instead of vice versa.

Rob  07:05

So, a lot of times people will qualify and say they’re qualified until I find out that they’re not. The reality is it should be the other way around. They should be saying no, they’re not qualified until they are qualified and prove me wrong, kind of a feeling, right?

Rob  07:16

So, they also don’t have a usually have a control of the sales process, so if you ask them where they’re at in the stage, what steps they’re in, and they start working through and talking through that, but they don’t feel like they know when the next piece of communication is going to happen, what’s going to happen next, what they’re, what they’re waiting on from the potential client, that’s a, that’s a problem too.

Rob  07:35

They should know what they’re waiting on, they should know all the next steps without any, any questions or confusion, and finally, the last one is that’s a really good indicator that you get a not so great sales person on your hands, as they don’t want any coaching, or they don’t want to help get some help from you, they feel maybe resistant.

Rob  07:52

They don’t want the feedback because they’re afraid of being exposed, really is what it comes down to, right, so they, they don’t want the pipeline review that you would go through every week, or a record, or whatever that number is. And so you’re going to want to make sure that you’re looking at it from in terms of how do I help this person being in a coaching scenario.

Rob  08:10

If they don’t want to be coached, that’s another indicator that you’ve got a not so great sales person that needs to probably move along, and so there’s a lot of steps you need to go through to prove all these things and show all these things, and obviously you’re going to follow your local laws and rules.

Rob  08:23

But really, what it comes down to is identifying this is not a sales person that you want to keep, and now what do you need to do, you need to start to have the conversations of coaching, and you need to start teaching and documenting, so that you have all the information that you need when it comes down to the conversation.

Rob  08:36

Conversation that comes at the end, which is this is just not a good fit for us, and in the end here, that you’re, you’re not performing the way we expect you to perform, and we’re not hitting the numbers that we should be hitting, and for that reason, we have to let you go, and that’s unfortunate.

Rob  08:48

It does happen, but sometimes what I found is that people that are think they’re sales people in terms of that they’re good at what they do, because they can talk and they go through all that stuff, when it comes right down to it, they can’t close deals, that typically means they just are they want to be pleasing to other people, they want to make people feel good, but the reality is it’s not closing deals.

Rob  09:08

They have to be able to feel comfortable talking about pain and going through the difficult conversations with people to make sure that they understand that your product or service is the best solution. If that’s the case, hopefully this helps.

Rob  09:20

If it does, please like and subscribe, and make sure that you let me know that this was helpful. And until next time, Slow Down and Close More.