As a sales manager, you’ve probably had to contend with difficult salespeople from time to time. Attempting to motivate, encourage, organize, and enforce systems while juggling the needs and demands of the personalities on your staff can feel like an intricate game of chess. Chess is hard enough as is, but when the chess pieces are actually diverse humans with different personalities things can get really tricky.
Usually, these difficulties are rooted in a salesperson’s placement in the wrong environment, with the wrong manager, or the wrong motivational approach.
As a sales manager, how can you ensure that you place the right people in the right positions? How do you handle each type of difficulty that occurs? To do this, you have to begin by identifying what types of difficult salespeople you have. To learn about the first two styles of salespeople, check out part 1 of this blog series.
Let’s just group this style with the "I Know More Than You" style because they normally go hand-in-hand. These are often very confident salespeople, but they lack substance and depth. Because they know more than even their boss and seek high personal freedom, they seldom listen and often overlook important things in the sales process. This type of difficult salesperson, along with the "Strong Forceful Closer," will have the highest percentage of dissatisfied customers after the sale. They don’t truly understand their customers' needs, so they often sell them the wrong product. The rule of thumb is, for every satisfied customer, they tell one or two of their friends about your product. However, an unhappy customer will tell 10 of their friends about the bad experience. These types of salespeople, while appearing successful at times, can actually cost you a lot more business than you will ever know.
Before we get to strategies for dealing with these salespeople, we need to look at the specifics of the "Hard Working but Non-Productive" salesperson. I once hired one of these, and when I checked their references their former boss said, “They put in more hours and work harder than anyone else in the sales department.” The fact they were no longer there should have been my first hint they were not productive, but that was many years ago before I understood behavioral patterns and management strategies. Sure enough, they put in more hours and always seemed busy, but never sold. This person may not know what they need to do to produce, so they exhaust themselves by spending their energy on the wrong things.
The strategies for dealing with any of these sales styles come down to some key principles. If you work through these strategies and you don’t have a resolution, then you may need to consider ending the relationship.
The reason for salespeople becoming difficult can vary. For some, it is because of a lack of success, training or understanding, or the wrong perception of the process. Failure leads to conflict; success leads to synergistic team relationships. If your sales force is struggling, there will be more conflicts. However, most of the problems you have will be resolved with the following steps.
Your best people will always have HIGH Commitment (motivation) and HIGH Competence (knowledge). Your next best style is HIGH Commitment, but low competence. This is just a matter of more training. It is sometimes much easier to train someone than inspire to the un-inspired. The next best, but not necessarily good, is a LOW Commitment but HIGH Competence employee. This may be the salesperson who "knows it all" or wants to do things "their own way," not the team way. Understanding your own leadership style and their sales style will greatly aid you and this employee towards improving both your relationships and their commitment. Last, and these are the employees you probably want to sever ties with, is a LOW Commitment, LOW Competence employee. My suggestion for this is that you put a more comprehensive hiring process in place to never hire this style to begin with or to avoid hiring them in the future. Believe it or not, sometimes these people can interview well (because they want to get the job) so it is especially important to use some of the hiring tools that are highly validated, recommended, and used, such as PeopleKeys' talent management solutions.
There are many ways in which increasing your understanding of your style and the styles of your employees can help to minimize conflict and increase productivity. DISC theory-based assessments can help you to narrow down what personality styles your salespeople have, and, subsequently, how to use this information to help them succeed. There are several key strategies that can be used in dealing with the difficult salesperson, which will simultaneously increase your own team’s performance. I have worked with all styles of managers and salespersons, and there is not a definitive right or wrong style. The best salesperson is the one who can adapt to their client’s buying style.
Read more about how to Mirror Other Personality Styles to Gain Trust.