Is your answer, "What day is it?" Have you ever heard that "A" players won't work for "C" managers.
Read the second to the last paragraph in this post. What I left out of that story is that 1/10 was the day of his review and his manager 'reminded' him that dooms day was approaching. Did that reminder kill him? It probably didn't help.
The truth is that a lot of sales managers don't understand why some salespeople can and some cannot, but what's more frustrating for them is that there are so many variations of the cans and cannots that sales managers have to be prepared to handle hundreds of combinations of cans and cannots.
Look at this post-it.
What are the skills that your salespeople need? Smart enough? Tonality? Know the process? Know some scripts? Which solution when? Hundreds of possibilities.
What do we mean by guts? Call even though they don't feel confident? Try even though they're being ignored? Ask a question that the prospect may not want to answer? Get right back to it after a total rejection?
Last week a salesperson told me that he knew what to do, he just couldn't do it. (Guts issue.)
Another salesperson called an upset customer, but when they got on the phone, he didn't know what to do. (Skills issue.)
How many of your salespeople do a proposal and then 'check in' every week/month forever until the prospect tells them to go away? They have the guts to stay at it, but do the same thing every month. Do they know what to do that's different and will work? If yes, why haven't they done it (guts)? If no, what else could they try?
Look back at the post-it. Think about the steps in your process. A, I, D, A or B, A, N, T or G, P, C, T. Whatever step in whatever process, what skill is necessary in that step and does each of your salespeople have the guts to do it?
Is your team performing as well as they should? Do you want Q2 to be better than Q1?