MANAGEMENT


How to Shape Up a Difficult Sales Rep LAINE CHROUST EHMANN


Take any sales team and, at any given time, there’s going to be at least one difficult salesperson who needs extra management.


According to one general manager of sales at a large healthcare company, the question isn’t if someone’s going to get added to the list of difficult reps; the question is why – and what a sales manager can do about it.


The general manager has approxi- mately 100 people on his team. He has logged years as a sales manager, including his current position in a division that sees $17 billion in the diagnostic imaging equipment field.


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By now, he’s pretty much seen it all. “There are various reasons why a rep could ‘go bad,’” he says. In his experi- ence, problem reps tend to fall into one of two categories: performance or attitude.


Performance issues tend to be easily defined and measurable, and can be addressed head-on. Typically, he says, salespeople below quota already know there is a problem – and


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