These sales performance improvement plan ideas will motivate your employees to succeed.
Do your employees struggle to meet their sales targets? This happens to every sales team from time to time, which is why a sales performance improvement plan is so essential. A solid performance improvement plan can empower your staff with the opportunity to succeed while simultaneously holding them accountable for past sales activity. Additionally, it can will educate your team on expectations, identify roadblocks, and uncover what tools or resources they need to be successful. If your business could use some sales performance improvement plan tips, here are a few you need to know.
Keep Information Confidential
Many salespeople do not react favorably to being on a sales performance improvement plan, and with (a somewhat) good reason. Often, with a performance improvement plan it’s not a safely guarded secret. This can be humiliating for the person on the plan, which can lower employee morale. So try your best to make the sale performance improvement plan a positive experience. Make it a chance for your team member to grow, to learn, and to increase his or her sales commission by meeting sales targets. Outline the benefits to them if they improve and provide encourage along the help to demonstrate that you believe in your team member. A little encouragement can go a long way.
Document Areas for Improvement
Once your company has established baseline expectations for all sales team members, discuss with their supervisor (if that isn’t you) on how to properly document what needs improved for each employee. When creating a paper trail for the sales performance improvement plan, work hard to ensure that the information gather is entirely objective, factual, and specific. Avoid generalities and provide detailed examples whenever you can. Once you have included the performance issues, what was expected, and what was actually delivered, then outline the consequences and discuss a plan of action and next steps.
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Make the Action Plan SMART
When crafting an action plan for your employee’s sales performance improvement plan, one useful tip to make sure the goals are SMART. You likely already are aware of the acronym, but for those who aren’t here’s a breakdown of what makes up SMART goals. It means that the goals are:
- Specific (simple, sensible, significant)
- Measurable (meaningful, motivating)
- Achievable (agreed, attainable)
- Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based)
- Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive)
For a sales performance improvement plan to be SMART, perhaps can start with creating smaller, more attainable goals such as getting to work 15 minutes early to prep for the day, or reducing personal conversations with coworkers during work time. However, to state the new goals though is not enough, there also needs to be consequences such as disciplinary action, up to and including, termination of employment. If you are the manager, even though it might be hard, you need to always follow through with the consequences or your staff may not take their performance plan seriously.
Follow up with your Employee
When the sales performance improvement plan is first discussed, establish a time frame for follow up meeting and get them on everyone’s calendars. It might be worthwhile to also offer informal weekly follow up meetings to see how things are going and to catch up on how the employee is working towards meeting their goals. At these meetings, helping your staff member to uncover potential roadblock and solutions for those issues is important if you want to your employee to feel positive about the company.
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What sales performance improvement plan ideas and suggestions have worked best for you? We want to hear from you! Please share your comments and suggestions with our audience by commenting below!