If someone in your team is performing at a disappointing, unacceptable level when it comes to service and results, you need to ask, ‘why are they failing, and what can be done to give them a helping hand…or perhaps the boot?’ Using the word ‘measure’, it is possible to assess where and why someone is falling short of the standards and targets they must achieve…
There are seven key ‘measures’ to consider when reviewing the performance of a team member – motivation, enthusiasm, awareness, selling-ability, urgency, responsibility and effort.
Motivation
Motivation relates to an individual’s ambition to be valuable and successful in your business, because if the practice is committed to growth but the individual isn’t, it represents a serious contradiction and therefore a recipe for all round failure.
The key task of management is not to motivate people; it is to hire and work with motivated people, otherwise every other factor to be ‘measured’ is redundant.
There are seven key ‘measures’ to consider when reviewing the performance of a team member – motivation, enthusiasm, awareness, selling-ability, urgency, responsibility and effort
‘Is the person Gung-ho or ho-hum?’
Score out of 10/____
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm concerns the extent to which a person feels strongly that the service ‘propositions’ they offer are very much needed (but not asked for) by customers and extremely valuable. To feel less than enthusiastic means that the person doing the serving and advising is more like a plain envelope than an attractive, seductive gift-wrapping!
‘Has the person mentally bought what they must sell?’ Score out of 10/____
Awareness
Awareness refers to someone’s understanding of the details of the proposition they sell, beyond being excited by it. If a doctor prescribes a drug he should be able to explain how it works, and the same principle applies to selling.
‘Is the person fluent or flummoxed?’
Score out of 10/____
Selling Ability
Selling ability reflects how a person presents themself and their practice as a leader to customers, rather than as someone who uses hackneyed sales techniques to ‘up-sell’. This area also relates to their skill in presenting their service story as an opportunity, and not as an ‘add-on’ or ‘change’. Also crucial is asking quality questions to find needs, and recommending action that customers see as being completely acceptable and important.
‘Can the person open and close the
sale well?’ Score out of 10/____
Urgency
Urgency means the extent to which an individual operates with a plan and a commitment to ‘make sales happen’ – in an agreed time frame – so that key selling work is ‘arranged’ as a deliberate and responsible act, and not as ‘something to be tried when time permits’.
‘Is the person committed to success for customers, the practice and for themselves… or not?’ Score out of 10/____
Responsibility
Responsibility concerns the positive pressure applied to staff by the team leader, to ensure that results are monitored and acted upon according to the level they must be at. Leave this issue to staff and you will lose control and they will lose sales. Every week, people should be asked ‘are you confident of reaching your sales plan this month?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ and proves correct, fine, but if the answer is ‘no’ then work by management and the individual needs to be organised to ensure the desired result is achieved.
‘Is the person aware of being in a performance spotlight?’ Score out of 10/___
Effort
Effort refers to the quality and quantity of action initiated in support of the sales objective. Talk can be helpful but it is vital that people in service and sales roles be committed to exertion and endurance, otherwise the exercise will prove academic. The ally and driver of effort is anticipation, and the enemy and inhibitor of effort is negative imagination… manifested in language such as ‘the economy is against us’, or ‘customers are not spending at the moment’, etc. ‘Getting the job done’ is preceded by the act of ‘doing the job’, and so effort is key.
‘Is the person willing to get their hands dirty?’ Score out of 10/____
Cause and Effect
The law of ’cause and effect’ is at play here, in that the ‘measure’ device enables management to look beyond results… so as to see and act on the reasons for poor performance.
The ‘measure’ device should prove very helpful to team leaders who want to provide a serious support service to people with service and sales obligations, beyond ‘noticing’ and ‘complaining’ about poor results. In my view, team members ‘dance to the tune of management’, and so the ‘measure’ device will help leaders to choreograph the key elements of service action… to the point of consistent success for all parties involved. The challenge then is to give the right people a hand, and to give the wrong people the boot.
If poor performers (people with a score below 40) are allowed to stay, they will come to represent your true standard of service and sales behaviour to the entire team!
John Lees is a sales and marketing specialist, operating as a professional speaker, trainer, consultant and business coach. He is the author of 11 books on business development. Email: [email protected] Website: www.johnlees.com.au
