Ways to Handle Difficult Conversations with Your Salespeople
[mashshare]
Managing people is not that easy. Managing salespeople can be even more of a challenge. There will be times where you will face some difficult conversations with one or more of your salespeople. Each member of your sales team has their own unique personality and attitude. It can cause clashes and poor sales performance if you don’t know how to handle their personality or how to deal with a difficult conversation with them. Not dealing with these situations can cause ill feelings to fester making it harder to motivate your sales team.
Sales Manager Role
As a Sales Manager, your goal is to create and maintain a sales team with great results but it requires a lot of adjustments, understanding, and patience. It is a good quality of a leader to know how to handle tough conversations with any team member. It is imperative if you really want to have a great salesforce team. You should not only focus on the member who gives you a lot of sales and immediately kick out those who are a burden on your team.
There are sales leaders that don’t know how to handle a difficult conversation with their salespeople. They focus on the low sales result of particular salespeople without identifying what causes their poor performance. The conflict can cause more dropped in sales and possible demotivation of the employee.
There are also some who become blinded by their top sales representative even if they have a bad attitude because they are trying to keep the sales coming and avoid conflicts. They will only realize at the end that ignoring such kind of behavior has a great impact on the team and even to the whole organization in the long run.
You as a leader should treat each of your salespeople fairly, motivate them during hard times and appreciate all their effort no matter how much is their contribution to the team’s total sales.
Types of Difficult Salespeople
It is also important that you know the different types of personalities of your people. This is a great way for you to know how to manage them. If you don’t recognize and understand their personality, it will just cause serious damage to the team performance.
1.The Narcissistic
This is the type of team member that has a very high sense of self-importance and can be manipulative. They feel that they are special and superior. They are too confident with their skills and may underestimate his or her teammates. Controlling and giving them advice can be tough because they think they know everything.
This can be hard to deal with but you can manage this by creating a strong bond and team cohesion. You may use team meetings where each member provides peer feedback. This is less threatening to them compared to a manager’s criticism.
2.The Insecure
This is the type of member who feels a lack of confidence with themself. They tend to ask help from the other often. They also compare themself to others most of the time. It makes them feel so down and hopeless especially if they can’t add sales to the team.
This can annoy you and other team members especially if they keep asking for help even if it was taught to them several times already. You just need to empower them most of the time. Talking to them and praising them even with just small accomplishments can help them boost their confidence. You may also offer training that can help them improve their skills.
3.The Happy-Go-Lucky
This is the type of salesperson who is always late, who takes long lunches, loves to party and drinks so much alcohol after work. He can be a bad influence on other team members.
This can be toxic to the team and even to the organization. Talk to them and give them a constructive solution for every negative action
The Negative
This is someone who often talks bad about his or her teammates, the management, and the company. They also respond negatively to different situations that may also affect the thinking of his or her teammates.
Talk to them and encourage them to spread positivity instead and how it can greatly help her and teammates to have better relationships and sales.
The Blamer
This is the type of salesperson who always blames others with his low sales. He will reason out that his teammates took the sales away, the client takes too long to decide and management lacks support.
Divert the conversation in a positive direction. Tell her what she’s doing good. Explore by asking what makes him/ her feel that way and let her answer what she can do better.
How to Handle Difficult Conversation with Your Salespeople
If you are struggling handling difficult conversation with some of your salespeople, you have to make sure that you do the following reminders. This can help you resolve the conflict and turn tough conversations on a skyrocket sales team performance.
1.Treat them with respect
As a leader, make sure that you show respect to your subordinates so that they will also respect you. You can gain the respect of your team by treating them fairly and managing your mindset. Show them that you really care and you have good intentions. It can help you get their trust so that they can easily open up any arising problems before it gets worse.
2.Establish facts
Before you say that they’re wrong or they made a mistake, it is important that you establish the facts. Make sure you know how to control your emotions, keep your self compose and focus on resolving the conflict based on the facts you observed.
3.Active listening
This is really important in handling difficult conversations. You have to make sure that you listen actively to each word they were saying and make them feel you are interested to hear more. You get cues from what they say to better understand why they’re behaving like that or what makes them feel that way. If you missed a word, it can mean differently to you and may just lead to further misunderstanding.
4.Addressing with their names when talking to them
Using their names while you were talking to them is a way of showing respect. Never call them using inappropriate words that can trigger a sudden burst of emotion and may worsen the situation.
5.Do not interrupt
Make sure that you allow them to talk and let them say what they feel. Allow them to share their point of view and perspective. No matter if you do not agree with them and you are very eager to say your rebuttals, you have to control yourself and let him or her finish. Then, explore by asking probing questions if you need more details.
6.Avoid words that may increase conflict
Do you know that saying words such as “Never”, “No”, “Wrong” and “No way” can just increase the conflict? Try to acknowledge their point and seek further information instead of disagreeing immediately. It will help you understand why they say that. You may say “ That sounds interesting. What makes you think that way?” or “ Seems like a plan. Go on. I want to know more about your idea.”
7.Be careful with your questions
It is important that you have to be careful in choosing the right words in asking questions. Remember that your goal is to identify where their behavior is coming from and resolve the main issue. You can ask lots of probing questions until you get the core and as long as you don’t interrupt.
8.Create a plan of action together
After having a conversation and you have identified the issue and other contributing factors, it is time that you showcase your skills on how you will resolve this. Come up with a plan together then share what you can do on your behalf to support the agreed plan.
Remember that salespeople are the building blocks of your organization. Conflicts and misunderstandings may happen from time to time. It won’t be easy to handle difficult conversations once the problem arises. That is why it is important that you check them and ask how everything is going. Through this, you will know if they are struggling and if they need your support. This is also a great way to identify any arising issues to prevent difficult conversations or future conflicts affecting the whole team or organization.
They need your support as much as you need their cooperation and dedication to have a great team with great sales results.
[mashshare]