Mere hiring good Sales Team won’t work but Real Game starts after that!
“It takes 7 times efforts to retain them and get the performance after onboarding the team.”
Even More, As per one research paper by Harvard Business School, After cutting the staff by 15%, the performance of the Team can fell down by 24%.
Building a sales team may be an art but fetching the performance from sales team is purely science.
The hiring game is quite similar to dating!
You put tremendous efforts at the beginning to onboard the perfect match for your company. Think about the tedious recruitment process from advertising vacancies to interviewing candidates. After onboarding, months of training period and resources spent on the new employee just to refine him as a professional who can thrive under target pressure and market competition.
Even after all these efforts, what if he is not the one and performs poorly?
As this can have a negative impact on other reps in the team and can bring the morale of the whole team down, an impromptu decision would be; fire the obsolete and get a fresh hire!
Well, firing people looks easy but it ain’t and spoiler alert, it doesn’t work!
In one of the Study by Magnus Sverke found that; After a layoff, the remaining employees experienced a 41% decline in job satisfaction, a 36% decline in organizational commitment, and a 20% decline in job performance.
Be Aware of Consequences, before you convey your final goodbye:
- Termination comes at a cost: Do the maths! The cost to replace a highly-trained employee can exceed 200% of their annual salary.
An underperforming salesperson will cost you way less money and resources rather than hiring, training and onboarding a new addition. And even the new hire doesn’t guarantee success so it’s another high risk after all. So, a better solution will be focusing on providing constructive feedback, further required training and highlighting the strengths more than the downsides in order to fuel up the motivation of the low performing sales rep.
- Breaks your image as a leader: A true leader is not a pusher!
Leadership is more about pulling people out of their insecurities and motivating them towards their best versions. Frequent firing and hiring raise serious questions about your leadership abilities, making others think you are the problem and a team under the impression of a bad leader is destined to crumble!
Good Leaders don’t fire but they Hire and then Inspire
- Redefines new roles for the rest of the team creating havoc: A new person in the room!
To fill the gap after a drop, the existing team needs to redefine their responsibilities and it’s chaotic at the start until a new person takes the exact role in the team again. It also disrupts a familiar environment to a repetitive process of accepting a different person, redefining relationships as well as mutual compatibility. It also affects the existing team spirit.
- Creates a ripple of trust issues: Am I the next layoff?
Frequent changes creates an insecure environment for the rest of the team where anyone can be dropped down if they fail to deliver. The employees may feel pressured and always under the knife which can affect their trust in their managers. It can also affect their creativity as experimenting can mean errors and errors means you’re fired. It can shunt their growth and they might seek other opportunities in search of a more appreciative environment.
- Self doubts when performance falls further: Did I do the right thing?
Again a new hire doesn’t guarantee immediate success as he/she will need time to adjust and match the pace of the existing team. In many cases, the overall performance goes down after a drop which can lead to self-doubts about the decision. So, you can keep notes that it will cost your conscience until you see positive results of your decision.
- Most importantly, it affects your customers: Bring back the one with the pretty voice!
A drop in the team will affect the existing pipelines as now the customers have to deal with a new sales rep. This can sometimes make the customers uncomfortable if it’s too frequent, making the overall experience rough for them. This also highlights an inconsistency within the company which is more likely to affect a sense of mutual trust between you and the customers. Therefore, your sales will suffer.
Now that you are aware of the cons that comes with firing, what should you do?
Quick Hints :
First of all, Hire better!
Let’s face a harsh truth. You can be hiring the best people on paper and field but they can still be incompatible when it comes to working in a team. Or you can be hiring someone with less experience but they pace up with the team so well that it raises the bar of team spirit, resulting in booming sales. The first case might work when your company follows an island structure for the sales team where one sales rep deals with the whole process – from generating leads to finalizing deals. However, when it comes down to assembly line structure, coordination is the key!
A good leader understands this dilemma very well which is why the best hiring methods follow a golden rule: Character over skills.
While professional and technical skills are trainable, a person’s character comes from within. A person with a positive attitude, adaptability and determination can not only outperform individually but also blends in a team as required, if given the right environment to grow.
“Great Companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them but they hire motivated people and inspire them.”
– Simon Sinek
After onboarding, the new hire, follow the 3T rule:
- Trust: 69% of most successful organizations have higher level of trust; both among the employees as well as with their managers as compared to moderately successful companies.
Trusting an underperforming employee during bad performance situations makes them feel understood and supported. This further motivates them to deliver their bests.
- Train: Investing in further training not only helps in upskilling but it also increases the self esteem of the underperforming employees which further increases their work efficiency. At the same time, it costs you less than hiring a new one so a win-win situation.
- Thrive: Teamwork makes the Dreamwork! Now that you’ve hired people with the right characters, trust in their potential and trained them right, it’s time to reap the benefits. After all, thriving in a competitive market is easier with the right team with a positive outlook.
Still struggling with team building? Recall stratefix and let us make the right decision for you!
