Wendie’s Weekly Diary – Performance Management

Performance Management

• No. of salespeople under-performing in the company I am working with (year to date); 6 (out of 46)

• No. of these salespeople who need help rather than a kick up the bum: 5

When something like the snow gets in the way, it’s easy to use this as an excuse to fall behind with targets. In Financial Services, for example, successful salesmen and women will use such situations to their advantage. They might not be able to get out to see prospective clients but they can phone them. They can even use the snow as a conversational ice breaker (see what I did there?) to build an instant rapport.

Not everyone has the same level of drive, initiative or know-how though. It’s not that they deliberately come to work, hoping to fail. Usually people fail to deliver when they don’t know what to do or they lack confidence. This is where good team performance management comes in.

Establishing and then communicating a simple set of standards for what you expect means that everyone knows what’s required. This shouldn’t be overcomplicated – people will start to suffer from ‘motion sickness’ if they have too many hoops to jump through (i.e. they’ll get sick of working for you and move off to work for your competitor).

Once the standards are in place – monitoring performance is crucial. First, to enable you to recognise and appreciate the work of those who have done well and second; to show you where you need to focus your support for those who have not.

Performance management is not just about carrots and sticks. (If you have a carrot and stick, however, I’m sure they’ll come in handy if you’re planning to build a snowman when you get home).

Performance management means having clearly defined standards. It means keeping in regular contact with what your people are doing, thinking, feeling and achieving. It’s about recognising when they need direction, development, encouragement or just straight talking. Effective Performance Management is the key to improving your results. If you’d like to know more, contact us for a chat or take a look at our Team Performance Management Programme.