CloserIQ: 8 Creative Ideas for Motivating Underperforming Reps

This guest post is brought to you by CloserIQ.

One of the hardest tasks of a manager is to confront employees who are underperforming. How do you have that conversation? What do you focus on? What can you do to help things improve? The following eight ideas will help you motivate underperforming sales hires and improve their numbers.

Have Them Send Daily Reflections

Asking your underperforming reps to send daily reflections on what they need to improve forces them to start thinking about how they can help themselves — not just how you or the company can help them. This is especially true for junior reps who don’t really think they have control over their own career development. This pushes your underperforming rep to be more proactive about their development and helps them get out of the low performance.

Go Out of Your Way to Help Them

It is your job as a manager to establish you’re on the same team as your employees. Spend half an hour and sit down for a one-on-one with them. Schedule in roleplays, do a call with them, actually prospect with them — this assures the employee that you care about getting their performance up and that them performing well is important to you. They’ll feel like they really have support in place.

Ask Them to Put in a Little Extra Time

In school, when someone is struggling the teacher might ask them to do some extra practice, extra credit, come in early or stay later — it’s the same thing with an underperforming employee. Ask them to stay a bit later, make more calls, or come in a bit earlier to go through a roleplay with you. But you should be with them every step of the way — your rep won’t want to do this alone, and you should make sure they know you’re in this with them.

Pair Them with a Rep Who is Performing Well

One of the most productive things you can do is pair your under performing rep with one who is performing well and interested in mentoring others. Not only will it give meaningful responsibility to your rep that is performing well, but it will serve as a reminder to your underperforming rep that they’re just like the rep that’s performing well — and they can get there too.

Ask Them to Set Daily Goals

Ask them to set daily goals in terms of what they’re going to do each day. Since underperforming reps typically see the goal being very unattainable or far away, setting smaller, daily goals helps them track their improvement and feel as though they’re accomplishing something every day. The goals can get better over time too — if you’re at zero qualified meetings a day and need to get to five, do it in increments - one a day, then two, then three, etc.

Help Them Focus on Intermediate Goals

If your employees are having a tough time reaching their goals, have them focus on smaller, controllable goals. Sit down with them and help them create intermediate goals that are directly in their reach. If setting up qualified meetings is the main number they’re not reaching, have them focus on number of calls. Whatever it is, make sure that you help them focus on those specific goals they can control, and the end goal will eventually follow.

Come up with an Actionable Game Plan

Identify where the gaps are in your rep’s performance and come up with a list of actionable solutions. Saying that you want to up someone’s performance is one thing, but thinking critically about what you can take action on is what will actually result in better performance. Writing it out also allows the rep to feel more comfortable that they can get out of their underperforming state.

Celebrate Any Improvement

Your rep might be putting in a lot of work to move upwards in their performance, and you want them to be able to see their progression along the way. Make sure to notice these small upticks in performance and celebrate and encourage them. If you can help them notice the upward trend, they’re realize they’re making progress and know they can keep going.

At the end of the day, the most important thing you can do for your underperforming rep is be there for them in the long haul. When they know you care about their performance and want them to succeed as much as they do, they’ll feel a lot more confident about getting on an upward trajectory.