What to do When Your Company Inherits Some Low Performers

If you’ve done your homework, you’re not likely to find that the brokerage you just bought is a haven for low performers. Still, there’ll likely be some sales associates not pulling their weight. How do you address the issue? With tough love, says Steve Johnson, a national sales consultant based in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

As a new owner, you’re in a good position to light a fire under the feet of laggards because you’re starting your relationship with them from scratch. Be up front from day one that you’re watching everyone’s performance and, while you’re prepared to give help where needed, underperformers will be shown the door if they show no improvement.

“Low performers drive away high performers, eat away coaching time, and can bring down overall performance,” says Johnson, co-author of Selling is Everyone’s Business: What It Takes to Create a Great Salesperson (John Wiley & Sons, 2006).

A tough love approach mixes carrots and sticks:

• Cultivate a strong team. Your promise to let laggards go won’t be credible unless you’re bringing in new blood. If you’re not, your underperformers will feel their desk is safe.
• Send a message. Firing weak links is akin to the old technique of bringing a canary into a mine shaft to warn of danger. The demise of low performers lets others know you’re serious and could help keep them from becoming complacent.
• Make numbers public. Post a scoreboard in your office so that all associates know exactly where their performance stands relative to others. Such a display sparks healthy competition, but it also arms you with data for your first “low performer” meeting. If the lagging associate is bringing in 30 percent less revenue than the next-lowest performer, you start your discussion with both of you already knowing that.
• Differentiate skill from will. When you meet, ask questions—Why do you think your performance is low? What made you come to work here? What’s changed since then?—to determine the nature of the problem. Is it skill or will? Knowing which determines your approach.
• Skill equals practice. If it’s skill, have the associate work with top performers, attend a one-on-one training session with you, or attend a training event. If that doesn’t work, at least you gave the person a chance, says Johnson.
• Will equals motivation. If it’s will, work with the low performer to set up a plan. It might be that the associate has a closing ratio of 50 percent—a strong number—but is making an abysmally low number of appointments. Perhaps the associate is sleeping until 10 a.m. or running personal errands during the work week. Be direct that adherence to the plan the two of you agree to is the only thing that will save the person’s position. In either case, skill or will, Johnson recommends a probationary period of 60 to 90 days.
• Populate the plan with controllable factors. In setting the plan with the associate, focus on attainable tasks: a dozen calls to the person’s sphere of influence by Wednesday of next week, for example. But keep the goals challenging. Put them in writing; both of you should sign the document. Then, hold regular meetings and drop-by visits to gauge progress. “Constant follow-up equates to some very, very close management, which will drive a low performer either up or out,” says Johnson.

If your carrot-and-stick approach isn’t working, let the person go. Johnson recommends saying something like, “We’re trying to build a culture of high performance here, and you aren’t living up to our standards. You’ve consistently failed to hit your goals. You can be very successful doing something else, but this company isn’t the right fit for you.”

Firing someone is hard, but it’s crucial to get comfortable with it, both to keep low performers from weighing down others and to signal that substandard work won’t be tolerated. In the end, it’ll be the best move for lagging associates, because it spurs them to examine what’s right for them. “You really can help people out by helping them out,” says Johnson.