Bad Salespeople Kill Sales Leads
February 19th, 2007 by 
Chris
Part of lead optimizing your website and marketing is to make sure all the links in the sales chain are strong from advertising through the close of the sale - and even follow up. Why waste marketing dollars when your sales person is going to aggravate your hard earned lead? No matter how effective your marketing becomes customers are going meet disappointment when they reach your bad sales person. Fire a bad sales person.
Over the past few weeks I have been trying to convince the owners of a great company to fire a bad sales person - a very bad sales person who bothers other employees, wastes time, and repels customers. My wife tells me I am mean. I think I am being nice - to the managers and owners of the company, to other employees, and to customers who deserve great (at least good) salespeople.
We have all seen rude, incompetent, downright horrible salespeople keep their seats because…well, I don’t know why but I have heard a lot of excuses. If you have been in this situation you have definitely heard some, and maybe all, of these “reasons” (i.e., excuses) for keeping the bad salesperson around:
- We need the warm body to answer the phones
- He/she has good margins (probably no volume, though)
- “Customer X” likes him/her
- He/she is related to…(could be anyone from a secretary to owner)
- We don’t want to train someone else
- We have invested more than X into training and (whatever else)
- We are busy with other things
If you are a sales manager and have said one of these things yourself then shame on you. Alright, anyone can make a mistake but get out there and do what needs to be done. You have good salespeople, too (hopefully) and they want to work around other good salespeople who give their company a good name. “Low performers drive away high performers,” says Steven Johnson, author of Selling is Everyone’s Business, in this article from Next Level Sales Consulting. It is way more fun to say, “Ted is a great sales person and makes us all look good.” instead, “Ted’s an idiot.”
Companies have limited resources (e.g., money, time, people, equipment, customers, suppliers) which they must use effectively to attract more resources. Think of your salespeople as resources and rate them based on how well they attract (or repel) additional resources (e.g., more customers and money). Maybe you should consider time. How many additional hours do other employees have to spend repairing mistakes?
Salespeople should be resource attractors. If you find that a salesperson is not attracting as many resources as he should, let someone else try. There are plenty of deserving sales professionals out there who would be happy to attract resources (that is, sell) for a fair wage+commission.
Firing people is never easy, especially when you have been working closely with them. You have to worry about morale issues, lawsuits, your conscience (not if you are firing someone for the right reasons), the short-term effect it will have on service levels (one less warm body to answer calls), and the short-term effect it will have on your schedule while you train someone new but you have to use your resources effectively and be fair to all parties involved from owners to employees to customers - heck, even yourself! Culling bad salespeople is good for sales.
I hope you are blessed with a salesforce that is blazing trails but if you are not, drop the poor performers - you know who they are. Now get out there and fire away! Maybe that does sound a little mean but I like it anyway. Fire every bad sales person you have!
Here are some good general and straightforward tips about firing salespeople and here is a good look, albeit a slightly humerous one, at some of the typical sales personalities you will run across.
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Posted in Lead Optimize, Marketing | 
February 26th, 2007 at 11:19 am
[…] Lead Optimize takes us back to employee management issues, specifically as impacts sales generation, but also applicable more generally, with Bad Salespeople Kill Sales Leads. Sometimes people just have to go and everyone is better for it, even them. […]
February 27th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I have seen this more than once. In my last excutive sales area one particular guy stole half of the prospects and did not sell virtually anything. His method was to catch half and let them walk on the highest possible price. Very few bought but when they did managment loved him. They did not look at the other eighty percent he had burned. Managment also inserted a non-salesman into the mix and his closing average was one out of ten> I was top salesman with a closing ratio of 40% but was froze out by lack of prospects. Managment was faced with falling sales and a temporary market slowdown and what did they do but hire more less than qualified salesmen. Time was too short to wait out the correction. O yes, they transfered the first guy to a location with weaker managment and they ended up closing that profit center. One bad guy can bust you. I have thought about a consulting company illustrating this extremely dangerous common practice. Highest regards to author
March 6th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Ok, this was great. Being a salesman, let me offer my .02.
1st, I would say spot on about pigeon holing the sales types. They may wear different hats, but generally, just long enough to put on the one that they find most comfy.
I think a lot of salesmen kill leads by attempting to qualify the lead in their mind.
Example, salesman thinks, “Bob didn’t sound that serious about buying and last year he didn’t have the funding so I will give him a call later this week (if ever.)”
Way to go! Our salesman has already decided for Bob that he doesn’t want to buy anything. Over and over, salesmen make these decisions.
Maybe what it melts down to is the salesmen cut and run when they think the prospect isn’t going to the alter. Even if I know a prospect isn’t going to the alter, I still walk with them, focusing more on relationship building so when they do want to go down the aisle, you are a familiar, safe person. Even if they don’t have the need, maybe they have friends.
Relationships = Sales
- I am in capital equipment sales and I have learned that the more relationships I have with users and prospects, the more sales I have.
I would ask that those generating the leads give us good leads. Some sales managers will add people with a pulse to their list of leads. Doing that stuff is probably what gets salesmen started in making decisions for prospects. Example - If we sell wood products, don’t keep sending me leads from people wanting cotton candy and ponies.
March 18th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
[…] Lead Optimize presents Bad Salespeople Kill Sales Leads posted at Lead Optimize.com, saying, “Bad salespeople hurt everyone - get them off your team and don’t feel about it. Someone else deserves the chance and you deserve to work with someone better.” […]
July 12th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
[…] The second set of responses makes me cringe in sales meetings. Read how I really feel about bad salespeople in companies. Yes, I understand people can be trained or motivated or whatever but until that is done, they are B-A-D, bad. Leaving leads on, or in (see below), the table is something of a worldwide epidemic among the populations of salespeople and the types of leads generated. Michael Hatch at ExhbitorOnline writes about the importance of following up on leads from trade shows and other marketing events. He discusses three main points for better lead management of trade show leads: […]