Is it me or does performance management rock?

Performance management has evolved into an important skill as either a stand alone position or one that has been built into a coaching or management role. Managing performance is valuable to any sales team, it helps to set goals, plan how to achieve them, produce feedback and recognise progress. So what is performance management? How does it work? Enter our guide.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with performance management, including:

• What performance management is and why it’s important.
• The different stages of performance management and how they work.
• Tips, tools, and best practices to succeed with performance management.

Read on so you can start to management the performance of your sales team!

What is performance management?

Performance management is working with individuals in order to improve their performance. This could be to develop skills and mindset with underperformers or to extend the ability of top performers. Anyone can become a top performer, with the right attitude, commitment and coaching.

Coaching performance is setting goals, creating a coaching model for an individual, providing feedback and recognising development or achievements. It is about developing an individual in order for them to become better. They feel more involved, competent and motivated.

Why is performance management important?

Managing performance, should be important to every company, but sadly there are a lot of companies which are meandering through day to day. 

• Motivation: Showing genuine interest in someone’s development, helps motivate an individual. They are involved in their development, they aren’t being told how they should work.
• Engagement: Having engaged sales people is second to none. Once they have started on the performance path, they will feel engaged and in control of their destiny.
• Development: The individual will be involved in their own development, the performance manger will provide feedback and support their development. You either ‘learn or earn’ in a company, and learning keeps people motivated.

Stages of performance management

Performance management is a process. I know that sounds boring, but there is a framework to performance management and with each individual you flesh it out to tailor to them and their need. Below is the basic outline of the performance coaching approach:

Development Plan

Together with the performance manager, a plan will be developed in the interest of the individual. It will discover what the individual wants to achieve and will help the performance manager understand the next steps. This is a great starting point to understand the skills they want to achieve and what tools are needed to help the individual.

Coaching Plan

Using a coaching plan the individual will be supported in developing a new skill to help them achieve their goal. The role of the performance manager here is to develop a coaching model with the sales person to take them from point A to point B. This will consist of a number of coaching sessions and measurable goals. These will be a indicator of the development of the individual.

Feedback

Feedback is essential as the individual progresses. You need to understand the person you are coaching to understand how to deliver feedback. I have always favoured the strength based coaching model to provide feedback, but sometimes the individual needs some tough love. With experience and training you will understand the individual better and know how to deliver feedback.

Recognition

The individual will be recognised for the progress they have made. They will be rewarded with their development and create new behaviours in order to push in the direction they want to go. This is an important step, because you need to recognise their success so they can then move onto their next skill or mastery.

How to manage performance successfully

Managing performance is highly rewarding, seeing someone develop before your very eyes is one of the most satisfying feelings you can have. To manage performance successfully you need to build a good relationship with everyone you work with. You will need to understand what they want from the process and what it means to them. You will need to understand their motivations, and feed into supporting them reaching their goals.

An underrated skill that performance managers should have is rapport building. In order to help your sales people or individuals is that you need to have a genuine interest in them and what they want. Without this you will never have a connection or understand what makes them tick.

Get started with performance management today

Thanks to ‘Is it me or does performance management rock?’, you don’t need to spend hours searching for performance management information anymore. You have everything you need to get started all in one place.

As you saw in the guide, performance management can make or break your performance efforts. Without performance management, your chances of developing sales people is almost zero. But when you manage performance the right way you can quickly develop your sales team to outperform the market.

Now you have everything you need to get started with performance management.

Before you start your first performance coaching session, make sure to leave a quick comment to let me know what you think of ‘Is it me or does performance management rock?’.