Every sales rep knows the feeling.

It’s dreadful.

Underperforming. Missing your number. You can sense that you are going to get fired any minute

You’ve been working your hands to the bone, but your deals aren’t closing. You can’t figure out what’s going on!

You have it in you to be successful but you just can’t put it all together.

You don’t even want to get out of bed because your effort seems pointless. There’s no clear path to get out of your sales slump.

Sounds terrible, right?

That’s how your sales reps feel when they aren’t getting the job done.

If you are at this point with any of the sales reps on your team, you are not alone. 

It’s the sales manager’s responsibility to coach the sales rep to success. 

There’s a way to make the situation better, so long as you have a rep that is willing to work through the slump and turn their performance around.

You have to meet them halfway. It’s the only way.

‍Building an accountable sales team

Sales is unlike any other role in a company. The performance numbers are public for everyone to see.

When your name is next to a number every minute of every day, you are living in a world of ultimate accountability.

When you are performing well, you are on top of the world. There’s no better feeling.

When you aren’t performing, it can feel like the whole world is against you.

But here’s the thing. Success in sales requires so much more than the number that sits beside your name at the end of a month or quarter.

Quota attainment is a lagging indicator. ‍

Managing a sales team with exclusive focus on the reps’ quota attainment is lazy sales management. 

It provides a false sense of accountability.

It doesn’t tell you how the sales rep got to their number. 

It doesn’t give you any indication why the rep is doing well or why they are struggling.

The sales manager’s job is to coach each sales rep to success. To develop their skills and provide them with the support needed to hit their number.

When a rep is underperforming, the sales manager needs to step in and provide specific feedback to the sales rep.

But most sales managers would rather ignore the underperforming rep until they quit or get fired.

Let’s assume that you aren’t like most sales managers, you are one of the good ones.

You are here to learn how to help your sales rep get back to performing at 100%.

‍What’s a PIP?

The best way to address the sales rep’s underperformance is to confront them with the facts and to create a plan that will help them improve performance.

We call this a Performance Improvement Plan or a “PIP”.

Every sales rep knows about a PIP. 

In poor sales cultures, a PIP is a death-sentence for a sales rep. 

From the moment the rep receives their PIP, they are looking for the door. Interviewing for new sales roles. Trying to make sure they can pay their bills after their time runs out.

It doesn’t have to be this way. PIPs can work, but it requires a partnership between the sales manager and the sales rep to work their way back to success in the role.

‍When should you issue a PIP?

You issue a PIP when a sales rep has significantly underperformed for at least 2 months in a row.

It’s best to be clear about what is required to keep your job on the sales team.

Something easy, like: “If you are below 70% to quota for two months in a row, you will be issued a PIP”.

A sales rep should never be surprised by a PIP. If the sales manager is running an effective operating cadence with their sales team, they should be meeting with the rep at least once a week for a 1:1 meeting.

The 1:1 meeting is a 30 minute meeting between the sales manager and the rep to review what’s going on in that sales rep’s life at work (or at home). The meeting is for the rep, not for the manager.

Effective 1:1 meetings are essential for accountable sales teams.

My favorite format for 1:1 meetings, prepared by the sales rep:

• What's been going well since we last met?
• What’s not going well?
• What’s on your mind that we should discuss in this meeting?

If the rep is intellectually honest in these 1:1 meetings, there is ample opportunity to discuss underperformance and find ways to improve sales execution.

When you’ve been working with a rep for two full months and the performance hasn’t improved, it’s time to consider a PIP.

Diagnosing the cause of underperformance

The key to a successful PIP is isolating the exact issue that is causing the rep to miss their number.

Underperforming sales reps fall into one of two categories:

1. They are not working hard based on measuring sales activity. They aren’t following the playbook. They are making excuses for why they can’t hit their number. Their pipeline is messy. Etc.

These reps should be terminated. It’s very rare that these reps recover from a PIP. I recommend paying the rep for the 30 days that you would have them on a PIP and just let them go.

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2. They want to do well, they are working hard, but they can’t seem to find success. You can see their activity metrics are good, you can see them showing up to trainings and asking for coaching.

You can work with this. They have the will to be great, they just need to be coached up.

Before you meet with the rep to discuss the PIP, it’s important to identify the leading cause for underperformance.

Here’s a list of areas to investigate:

• Not enough sales activity (this one is a red flag, see #1 above)
• Slow time to first touch for inbound leads
• Low number of touches per account
• Lack of multi-threading within an account
• Slow to respond to inbound emails from clients
• Conversion from account to opportunity (pipeline generation)
• Demo show rate
• Conversion rate from demo to customer
• Deal size

This is not an exhaustive list, but it will get you started. Be comfortable with getting into the details of the reps performance. Look at activity metrics. Read emails. Listen to phone calls. Watch demo recordings.

If it feels like you are getting too granular, that’s a good thing. The only way to find the issue is to look closely at the work that’s being done.

‍Issuing the PIP

Once you’ve identified 2-3 things that need to be improved, it’s time to meet with the sales rep to review the PIP.

Set a meeting on the calendar. I find it is best to piggy-back on an already existing meeting, like a 1:1. 

Get your facts prepared to review with the rep and get ready for a difficult conversation.

You can use my PIP template here.

When you sit down with the rep, the conversation is simple:

1. Confirm that you are here to talk about improving the sales reps performance. Offer your support and reassure the rep that you want them to be successful. Be sincere, it’s the only way.

2. Outline 2 or 3 specific reasons why the rep is being put on a PIP. Fewer is better.

3. Prescribe an enablement plan for improving performance.

4. Outline the key outcomes that must be achieved as a result of the enablement work. Each outline should be an objective metric tied to a date

If the sales rep agrees with the plan, then both the sales rep and the manager will sign the PIP and get to work.

‍PIPS lead to success

Being put on a PIP is not a death sentence if you do it right.

The manager must be sincere in coaching the sales rep to success.

The sales rep must be deliberate in their effort to improve performance.

Through this partnership, the sales rep and manager work together to get to100%.

When it works, it’s a beautiful thing. I’ve seen many reps rebound by using a PIP to change the trajectory of their career.