People are the most precious assets of any organisation. We help people realise their full potential through upgradation of skills and transfer of knowledge. We provide customised learning and consulting solutions post carrying out detailed contextualisation exercises for understanding the needs of our esteemed clients.

Ravinder Singh Chawla

Founder & CEO

Joe was really excited when he got a telephonic call from XYZ Company Ltd. It was one of the leading financial services companies. The caller informed him that he had been selected for the position of Sales Executive. After all, he had really been very keen to join that organisation. Two months later, however, Joe was a frustrated young man who decided to quit his job, vowing to never take up a sales job.

Why is it that so many new hires, who were extremely keen to join a particular organisation in a sales role, get frustrated early in their career?

Why is it that many new hires may not want to take up a sales job as they may have heard about there being ‘excessive pressure’ in a sales job?

It is true that people generally do not leave organisations but leave managers!

How can the managers ensure that their new hires start enjoying their jobs?

What are the top 5 actions that managers of new hires, in sales role, should take?

Here are the top 5 best practices that the manager of a team must follow, with the new hires in his team, after they have been through an induction program:

1) Clarity on Roles and Responsibilities

The manager explains them their respective roles and their key responsibility areas (KRAs), giving clarity on how are they going to be appraised on their performance.

The manager helps them know as to what are the business opportunities and the importance that their role means for the organisation. For example, how does their individual performance impact the profitability of the company?

2) Help viewing the bigger picture – Linkage of Professional Goals with Personal Goals

The manager sits individually with each new hire, on a one-on-one basis and attempts to know them personally.

He helps each new hire work out their personal goals (basis the SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-bound – term that the new hires would have learnt about in their induction program) and makes them write down these goals.

The manager helps them see the linkage between the professional goals with the personal goals and understand as to how could the achievement of professional goals enable the new hires realise their personal goals.

For example, let’s say the personal goal (in SMART term) of a new hire is, “I want to buy a new Honda City car (model V) by August 28th, 2021”. The manager then helps this person understand as to how he could achieve his personal goal through his sales incentives, if he could achieve his professional goals, as defined by the KRAs.

This linkage is the critical ‘What’s in it for me’ (WIIFM) factor, that drives people. Once people can see the bigger picture (or the purpose) of their job, they would go all out to achieve the same.

3) Demonstration and Observation

Demonstration

Once the goal setting exercise is done, the new hires would be raring to go.

The manager now helps them get clarity on how do they need to go about doing their jobs by arranging demonstration of the role to be performed by them.

This could be done by assigning a mentor (could be a high performing senior peer) but in a direct selling role (B2C business), it should be ideally be done by the manager himself.

The manager ought to accompany the new sales person on at least 3-4 sales calls and should demonstrate the actual implementation of whatever would have been explained in the induction program.

This shall also help the manager command more respect from the new hire, by projecting him as a leader who knows his job well.

In a sales role involving indirect channel (B2B business) involving dealers or distributors, the manager needs to take each new hire along and demonstrate how to go about doing their tasks.

Observation

Once the new sales persons have observed their managers, it is time for them for them to demonstrate to their managers their newly acquired skills.

The manager needs to encourage their new hires about the confidence he has in them and that they now need to go about performing the sales call on their own. The manager just needs to be a silent observer on the call.

Post the sales call, the manager needs to give appreciation and encouragement to the sales person for everything that he / she may have done well. Unless it was very critical to point out, feedback about any improvement area may be reserved for later.

The objective here is to develop confidence and self-belief in the sales person to be able to make sales calls on his / her own.

4) Feedback and Coaching

The next set of actions is regular feedback and coaching sessions, on a one on basis, for the new joiners. This shall help them get clarifications to their doubts and help them improve themselves. Giving feedback is also a skill and the managers are expected to be skilful at that. The schedule for the feedback session ought to be shared well in advance.

The Manager should get into an asking mode, encouraging the sales person to share about the experience. The manager should start with whatever went well, generously applauding and appreciating the sales person towards the same. Feedback about improvement areas (including those about observations during the sales call) should come thereafter.

The manager must also schedule regular coaching sessions so as to help the sales person get the best out of him.

5) Performance Review meeting (PRM)

On a periodic basis, it is critical for the manager to periodically review the performance of the team member on the goals agreed upon. It is important for the manager to stick to the agenda when interacting with the team-members. Feedback and Coaching sessions ought to be utilised only for the purpose they are meant for and not to review the performance of the sales team-member.

Conducting performance review meeting (PRM) in a professional manner is also a skill and the manager must know how to go about the same. PRM, if conducted professionally, would be a motivational experience for the sales persons. However, if not taken up properly, it could leave the sales person disheartened and demoralised.  The PRM is about “finding what the reviewee is doing correctly, applauding as well as appreciating him / her for the same and guiding the person on how to tide over the areas of improvement. All these five steps would ensure that the sales person would remain motivated and would surely want to do well. After all, the sales person would have got selected after a thorough recruitment and selection process and must have had the requisite qualifications, skills and attitude to perform the given role. If Joe’s manager had adopted these five steps, he wouldn’t have left the company he was so keen to join and would not have got disenchanted with career in sales.