“We’re paying him £70 000 pa and he’s not brought that amount of business in terms of revenue.”
“You mean he’s not brought in £70K in profit in 12 months?”
“No, revenue. He’s brought in £59K in revenue.”
I’m not telling you who had this conversation with me, recently. Just to say he’s not by any means the first to tell me something similar.
How is this even possible? My good contact has hired a professional, seasoned salesperson and paid him a decent salary. How is he rewarded? With over-inflated enthusiastic opportunities that are wrong and won’t close. The small tightly-knit team are only too aware that there’s not enough business coming in. And that makes them nervous. Meanwhile the business owner is having to step in and find and close business and develop existing projects. That’s all great, but those things are supposed to be the “cream”, not the main source of business. It’s not looking good.
So why doesn’t the boss just fire their incompetent salesperson?
Have you tried to do that? There’s always the glimmer of a deal that might just close, large enough to make up for all the previous pain. There are contacts they have made in the industry that would be difficult to replicate. It’s really hard to let someone go that you’ve invested so much time, money and hope in. Maybe they just need a bit of training? Guidance? Coaching? After all, they did pretty well in their previous company.
If this all looks way too close for comfort, it’s time to do something different.
First check who you’ve got with some assessments. Are they worth saving? Can they be trained? Or should they just go? They did well in their previous company (so they said) so maybe they will do well in their next one- so by hanging on to them you’re doing them no service at all.
Then work out how you’re going to fire them in a way that they can’t claim unfair dismissal. That’s harder than it looks. You’ll need to set behaviour targets and have their manager both coach and hold them accountable over a period of months, put them on a performance improvement plan, all documented, so there’s no question of incorrect procedure. That means you need to train his manager to do those things. (That might be you)
You might decide it’s worth training them. You certainly must make sure you train his replacement. And this time use a bullet-proof hiring procedure.
If you’d like help with all these moving parts, contact me now and we’ll set up a meeting to see if I can help. Don’t wait until it’s too late and you’ve run out of time to fix your business
