The Churn (CONT’D FROM PAGE 20)
to the number of face-to-face meetings. Also, try to mea- sure their effectiveness in working with the others within the company. What sort of relationship have they devel- oped with Production, Customer Service, Design, Sched- uling and Shipping? Go over the data with each rep on a regular basis. Be Fair But Be Firm One of the biggest reasons we choose to keep a rep on even when we don’t have any confidence that they will improve is that it is hard to find new talent. What is your process for finding, hiring and on-boarding new sales reps. Do you need to refine that process? Until you have a team that is working well on all cylinders, you have to keep churning the talent. Lastly, it can be expensive to invest in a new sales per- son so it is natural to be reluctant to let them go once you have taken them on. It is likely, though, that after only a short period of time after you have hired them – as little as a month – you have already developeddoubts that they will succeed. If you choose to keep them on for another six months before you finally let them go, how much did that cost? What is the cost of lost opportunity? In the end, my feeling is that it is better to follow your instincts and keep looking for the right people to represent your company, even if it means committing to a several years’ process of searching than it is to hold on to people who don’t meet your needs.
How familiar are you with these accounts? Make sure you know them. Create a Customer Profile for each. Travel with the rep to their most important accounts and try to connect with the key players at those facilities. Let them know that you are there to help support them and that the entire team at your company stands ready to help them. They need to understand that they are buying from your company, not the rep who sells for your company. Are you deeply familiar with the performance patterns of your sales reps? What does their record of new ac- count captures look like over the past year? 6 months? 3 months? What reasons does the rep give for not closing accounts that they have claimed for the past 6 months to have been hot and ready to close? If they have been with the company for more than 2 years, look at their relative growth year-to-year. If less than 2 years, compare their quarter-to-quarter record. Have goals been clearly set? How do you measure the reps record relative to the goals? If all reps are measured by the same principled goal system, it is easier to justify letting one individual go. What system of performance analysis do you use? If you don’t have one, develop one. Try to measure sales dollars, profitability, number of face-to-face meetings the rep has made each week, quote/sample requests per week, and quarterly or even monthly ratio of closed sales
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