Tool Box
Issue No. 44 - December/January 2008
Do’s and Don’ts
by Craig Stubing
If you are the ‘sales boss’ in your business, whether you are the business owner or an employed manager, you owe it to your sales staff to maintain a schedule of regular performance review discussions in regard to their sales activities and results. This applies whether you have a sales staff of one or many.
Unfortunately there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes when conducting review discussions, so here are a few ‘do’s and ‘don’ts’.
Do conduct your review discussions regularly and at appropriate intervals.
This may mean you have a review discussion with your experienced salespeople every three months. For a salesperson who is in the intermediate stages of development your review discussions may be conducted on a monthly basis. For an absolute beginner you may
conduct review discussions weekly.
If you don’t conduct review discussions on a regular basis you will probably fall for the trap of ‘reviewing’ only when the news is bad. This is not smart because it puts these discussions in a negative light.
Do have your salespeople do some preparatory work before the review discussion.
In my view the best way to do this is to provide them with a self-analysis questionnaire. This questionnaire should, as a minimum, invite them to (a) comment on their own performance (b) nominate any areas where they have experienced difficulty and (c) give them the opportunity to point out actions they, or you, could take to help them improve their performance. This questionnaire can then be used as the backbone of the review discussion.
Do be prepared yourself.
You will almost certainly have points you want to raise. Have these points prepared, with any backup data at hand so you can access it quickly if it’s required.
Do be open-minded and encourage two-way communication.
Because you have done your preparation you may be tempted to speak rather than listen. You...
