What makes a good performance manager?

A performance manager creates goals and key performance indicators. Where a sales manger normally leaves their team to it at this point, a performance manger will help support and encourage the sales person to achieve what is expected of them. They will do this through training, coaching, development and tools to help the sale person succeed. So what is a performance manager? How does it work?

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started as a performance manager, including:

• What a performance manager is and why they are important.
• The different types of performance management and how they work.
• Tips, tools, and best practices to succeed with performance management.

Read on so you can be a great performance manager!

What is a performance manager?

A performance manager takes supports individuals or teams to achieve their goals. They use goal/target setting, KPIs, feedback and coaching to help the individual to succeed. It is a role which is more involved than a traditional sales manager. Performance management has to be fine balance between the numbers and the person.

A performance manager will plan how a sales person will achieve their goals through KPIs and goals setting. They will regularly check in and provide feedback, while offering ways on how to move forward and removing any obstacles the sales person may be experiencing. They will recognise the individual for their performance and the mile stones they have completed.

Why is a performance manager important?

A performance manager is finding an important role in every organisation. They provide a huge benefit to any business such as:

• Engagement: through the one on one time, it increases engagement as you are focussing on that individual.
• Increase Performance: This is obvious, but the end result is increase productivity and performance which means the business performs better.
• Increase Retention: Due to the engagement levels and the investment in each individual, this in turn creates high retention rates, which is a massive cost saving for any business.

How performance management works

Performance management is very straight forward. To put it bluntly, we are looking at how we can help each individual to be more successful in their role. There is a frame work in place for performance management, but every business or environment is different to the next.

Goal Setting

Firstly, we need to plan what each individual needs to do to be classed as successful in the role. This comes from an interaction between the performance manager and the individual. This will come with questions about what they want from the role, what do they imagine their career to look like and so on. In terms of performance figures, we would use the in house metrics to quantify these using stretch targets, success modelling and a number of other tools.

Monitor

Secondly, we will need to gather some data regarding the individual since the initial conversation. This helps us to understand their motivation, if our previous conversation has had an effect like behaviour changes. We monitor the progress and then check in to see how things are going. I tend to use strength based coaching in my interactions at this point, to provide some encourage and help any growth that has initiated.

Coaching

This next step can be before or after the data step. We coach and develop the whole journey, this could be initial skills or skill mastery, depending on what the goals is and the capabilities of the individual.

Feedback

The final step is the feedback step. I’ve seen this done in many organisations, in many different ways from 360 reviews, to top 3 strengths to one to ones. I personally favour, a detailed one to one which is geared towards the past, the present and the future. I think this is great at displaying the progress and taking the individual from one frame to another.

Then we go through the cycle again, in terms of setting objectives, coaching, intervening and feedback.

How to be a successful performance manager

Being a successful performance manager is a challenging, but rewarding experience. Seeing people progress and develop, or when seeing the lightbulb moment is amazing.

The way to be successful is to look after people, have a good rapport with them. If they are struggling, support them, try teaching them in a different way, remove the obstacle blocking them. Make them feel competent at every step of the journey, keep them involved.

Performance management tools

Get your calendar sorted straight away, you will be busy, so organise it. Create a fair and positive environment, where you service all your team. Use the time for appraisals and feedback. Create fair and realistic KPIs and personal development plans, so they believe they will succeed.

Most importantly, if you want to help someone to grow, be positive and supportive. Anyone can put someone down, not many people can build someone up.

Get started with performance management today

As you have seen in this guide, performance management can make or break your sales team’s results. Without performance management, your run the risk of creating a team of unguided underperformers. But when you help nurture a team’s performance you can quickly turn them into high performing sales champions.

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

Before you start on your first performance management, make sure you leave a quick comment to let me know what you think of ‘What makes a good performance manager?’.