For context about us, we are: * A SaaS tech company who sells a physical product that requires a subscription. About our sales process: * We basically don't do or expect cold calls. * Our CRM currently has over 5,000 leads/deals/contacts that consist of businesses who have contacted us in the past, interested in placing an order but then didn't follow through on a purchase. * This salesperson is fulltime and works from home remotely, about 10 minutes away from our office. * They are paid a base salary of $90,000 AUD + Super + Commission of 8% of after GST sales * We have set a very low sales KPI of 30 "successful" calls per day or 60 unsuccessful calls with a successful call being talk time over 60 seconds. * We do have a physical office space, but everyone is allowed to WFH, so obviously not many people actually come into the physical office. * We get about 5-10 inbound phonecalls/day and 3-5 inbound lead enquiries/day * The sales process consists of selling our hardware product alongside our software product either as a bundle, or just the hardware alone during the initial sale. * Sales are either processed over the phone, by emailing a quotation proposal with a payment link, or by self-checkout with a coupon code in our online shop. * We also have an account executive whose job it is to call our old leads/deals/contacts in the CRM and make sure they're in the right stage of the sales funnel in the CRM, and handover any newly reignited deals to the salespeople. * The Salespeople are expected to keep up with their current pending deals so they don't go cold or too long between touching base with them. * Our established sales funnel can be seen here (you don't need to read this, I just wanted to include it for as much context as possible to show why I don't think we're setting our salespeople up for failure). **1. Identify Customer** \- Discuss their needs and schedule in a time to have a comprehensive call or Teams meeting **2. Pre-meeting documentation** \- Send any pre-meeting documentation to inform the client of what to expect in the meeting so they can prepare for it \- Prepare their mind to identify and discuss the issues they're facing **3. Meet with the client (presenting product)** \- Meet by phonecall or Teams Meeting as requested by client \- Build rapport by listening to their issues or restating their issues back to them to show that you've read and paid attention to previous information they've given. \- Show your knowledge by how you could solve their issues and how you have done it in the past with previous clients \- ROI Calculator, case studies, screen-share demonstration of the product/software \- Either lock them into another meeting or a sale with a money-back guarantee **4. Second Meeting (objection Handling)** \- Reflect on the reasons they don't want to immediately go ahead. \- Meet again by Teams or phonecall to discuss \- What motivates them? Money? Time? Energy? \- Reiterate Value, ROI, Free Trial, Money-Back-Guarntee \- If already on contract or with competitor, offer heavy discount to cover costs of switching. \- If they aren't the decision maker, ask if they can let you know who is, and if that person can be added to the meeting. \- Ask directly what would be the main factor in coming to a decision today **5. Final Closing Attempt** \- If still undecided after all offerings we can offer further incentives only at this stage such as further discount on yearly plan, first 3 months free, etc \- Don't be forceful. Instead ask questions to really understand why our proven ROI hasn't been effective in convincing them. \- What is holding them back? Does it not solve their problem? **6. Nurturing (Retention & Onboarding)** \- This is where we need to ensure the client successfully activates the device and is fully onboarded. \- Upsell oppurtunities here, such as higher tier plan or additional seats. \- Assist with setting up account features. \- Show the specific use-cases for their previously discussed issues \- For example, how X will help fix their Y problem or how much time the Z report will save them each day/week. \- This encourages them to use the service in their everyday activities and shows how they can't do their work without it, or wouldn't want to. ***Now for the nitty gritty - The aforementioned salesperson*** I have a salesperson who makes on average between 10-30 dials per day, with most of those dials being unsuccessful calls due to voicemail, disinterest, unavailable to talk now, etc. On average they probably have 7-10 successful calls per day with a total talk time on the phone being between 30-45 minutes on a 7.5 hour sales day. There is work obviously to be done pre and post call, so they also send between 10-20 emails/day; but these are very short and utilise our pre-built template system in the CRM, so there's very little actual typing being done to generate these emails for the most part. They also send about 2-3 quotes per week on our quotation software and currently has 42 unaccepted quotes in that software that are fast becoming (or are) cold. I have continually told this person that they need to increase their outbound calls, that they're not meeting minimums, and they always have some excuse about how they were "helping a client with x", "supporting a fellow team member with Y", "collaborating with another team member on Z project", when I haven't authorised for them to do this work outside their sales scope. I mention that I don't want them doing this work as it's not in their required work or a part of their KPI and they instead need to focus on meeting their minimum KPIs and following up on their deals so they don't go cold, etc. Yet I am met with platitudes but no actual improvements to their output. \--- This particular employee requested to work on a public holiday so they could accrue a 'day in lieu' as they currently don't have enough PTO for the entire upcoming christmas break. I said that I would assign them specific sales duties that wouldn't be impacted by the public holiday. Essentially I had allocated them to follow-up with all of their pending quotes (42 of them) that were outside of the public holiday. They simply needed to call every pending proposal on the list, and email them with the supplied Hubspot template if they didn't answer. They mentioned that they had some enquiries in their inbox from overnight to take care of, but would get onto the list as soon as they action the morning's enquiries. 4 hours later and I check on their progress only to find that so far in the day they had made 7 phone calls for a total of 33 minutes talk time and 10 very basic emails. No quotes, no proposals, and most importantly, they had not touched any of the calls on the list I gave them from the morning, which was to be their MAIN task for the day. By the end of the day they managed 55 minutes of total talktime over 17 dials, 8 of which were calls over 1 minute, and 24 emails. I brought up this level of unacceptable work by this time of day and they said: >*"I am sorry to see that my output today has not meet your expectations. As mentioned earlier, there were a few actionable items that came through after work yesterday which I felt had to be actioned first. There has also been some important slack conversations about our online pricing for the \[redacted\] which is crucial to get right for not only online sales, but our ability to negotiate moving forward. I normally work on a detailed follow up schedule for both the leads and deals to make sure I touch base with them regularly and set future follow ups at agreed times, to not upset or aggrevate our clients.* They always have vague reasoning and excuses like the above. I am at my wits end about this and I have decided that I am going to put them on a Performance Improvement Plan, but before I did, I wanted to make sure I wasn't just being completely out-of-touch.