Five questions that separate a rep problem from a territory, skill or effort problem wearing a performance costume. For managers. No names.
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Patch · Customers · Pipeline · Craft · Will
The first question a new manager asks is usually "what's wrong with these reps?" The better one is "what exactly did I inherit?" The order below is the order to think in.
PATCH: Could a good rep make this number here? Territory, account quality, installed base, the quota, the comp plan, the competitive situation, who has had the patch before. If three people have failed in the same patch, you probably do not have three bad reps. Look here first, and be honest, because nothing you do to the rep matters if the answer is no.
CUSTOMERS: Do customers choose them? Not meeting count. Five real customer conversations beat fifteen calendar entries. Do customers call back, take the next step, introduce them upward? The weird rep who skips internal meetings but has customers calling her may be worth more than the polished one with immaculate CRM hygiene and no pull.
PIPELINE: What exists because they're here? Separate inherited and renewal business from what they created. Ask where the pipeline came from, how old it is, whether it is moving, and what customer evidence makes it real. A seller can look fine today and leave a crater for next year.
CRAFT: Can they actually sell? Prospect, run discovery, understand the customer's business, qualify, get to power, build urgency, get through procurement, close. This is the question that separates can't do it from isn't doing it, and those are completely different management problems. One you coach. The other you manage.
WILL: Are they still trying to win? Energy, ownership, follow-through, coachability. A rep who has decided the year is over stops doing the things that would have saved it. The activity goes first, then the pipeline, then the rep.
Good rep, bad situation. Fix the situation: the patch, the number, or the plan.
Good rep, skill gap. Coach them. Name the skill and work it, one deal at a time.
Capable rep, effort gap. Manage them. Expectations in writing, with dates.
Wrong rep, reasonable situation. Start the process. Waiting does not make it kinder.
They're fine. Leave them alone. Do not invent a management problem because they do not love one-on-ones. Figure out what visibility you actually need and let them sell.
The mistake this tool exists to prevent is spending six months coaching a territory problem, or redesigning a territory to avoid dealing with a performance problem. The manager's first job is not to make everybody look alike. It is to figure out which differences matter to selling and which do not.
Do not decide who is good and who is bad in your first few weeks. Sit with each rep and go through five real opportunities. Listen to how they describe the customer. You will learn more in that ninety minutes than in a month of dashboards, and every one of those five deals can go through Deal Check while you sit there.
I've spent a lot of years helping customers buy complicated technology. For six of them I led partner sales teams at AWS. Before that F5, Red Hat, and a couple of storage companies you've probably forgotten. Before all of that, 20 years as a Marine.
Along the way I've been the seller defending the deal, the partner trying to help, the manager asking annoying questions, and the guy one level up explaining why the forecast moved again.
QuotaBird is where I put the things I've found useful. Most of the tools are free. Most take a few minutes. None of them require you to adopt a new sales religion. Use whatever helps.
Rarely just one of them. Usually a couple at the same time, quietly making each other worse.
The forecast call has become the job. Your manager wants a status on everything by noon, the CRM wants a next step on every line, and the customer is the last person you talk to each day.
The pipeline looks better than it really is. Plenty of opportunities in the CRM, but once you ask about budget, timing and who actually wants the thing, the number gets smaller fast.
The partner likes you, but nothing is happening. Plenty of meetings, maybe a joint deck. Nobody can point to the accounts where the two companies are actually trying to win something together.
The team is busy, but there isn't much rhythm. The forecast call happens. The one-on-ones happen. Nobody is sure what the team should do differently this week to make next quarter better.
The number from above doesn't match what you see below. Leadership has a growth number. Your team has a pipeline. You're the one who has to explain why they disagree without sounding like you've already given up.
A team can be behind plan for a lot of reasons. One seller needs help getting in front of customers. Another is doing fine and wants you to stay out of the way. Someone else thinks the year is already gone. Sometimes the rep is fine and the territory, the comp plan or the pipeline they inherited isn't. The useful part is figuring out which one you're dealing with before you fix the wrong one. That's what the tools here do, one deal, one rep, one territory at a time. It's also most of what I do.
Sometimes a calculator isn't enough. If you're stuck on a deal, an account, a partner, a territory, a QBR or a federal problem, I'm happy to look at it with you. Here's exactly how it works:
If I don't think I can help, I'll tell you.
If it's something that takes more than a conversation, we can figure that out too. I also build fedhoo, a federal market research tool.