When your numbers are down, the easy move is to march onto the floor and start barking orders. “I need you to close more. I need you to hit your number.” Stop right there. That almost never works, and there’s a clear reason why.
You’re Not the Problem. Your Questions Are.
When a rep misses target, most managers do the same thing. They tell the rep what to fix instead of asking what’s going on. It feels faster. It isn’t. Telling a rep to “just sell more” is like telling someone to “just be happier.” It gives them nothing to actually do with that.
The better move is to ask. Something like, “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the numbers. Walk me through what’s happening out there.” That one question changes the whole conversation. Instead of getting barked at, the rep starts thinking. And thinking is what actually moves a number, not pressure.
They Don’t Know What They Don’t Know
Here’s the part most leaders miss. You got good at this job through years of trial and error. Your reps haven’t lived that yet. They don’t have your experience, so the thing that looks obvious to you isn’t obvious to them. If you don’t ask questions, you’ll never find out what they’re actually missing.
That gap is even bigger for someone newly hired or newly promoted. If nobody ever showed them the right way to do something, they can’t be blamed for doing it the wrong way. Time on the job doesn’t automatically turn into mastery. Training does.
A Closed Mind Can’t Sell
Think of a rep’s mind like a parachute. When a manager barks orders and demands a number right now, their mind closes up. It stops working. They can’t think straight, let alone solve the actual problem. Your job as a leader is to open that mind back up so they can think again.
That starts with how you ask. Learning to ask better coaching questions instead of demanding a result changes the whole talk. Have the rep say the plan out loud. Let them walk you through what they’re already trying before you hand them more orders. Saying it out loud forces a person to work through the problem instead of just absorbing pressure.
Why New District Managers Get Promoted, Then Demoted
This same gap gets worse the higher someone climbs. A district or regional leader might visit a location once a week, maybe less, and still miss the full picture. If that leader never learned how to ask the right questions, they repeat the same barking orders mistake with their own store managers, and how store visits go wrong becomes a pattern instead of a bad day.
Some companies promote a person into a multi-unit role, watch them struggle, demote them, then promote them again later. That cycle is not proof the person can’t lead. It’s proof nobody built a real system to train them for the role. The fix isn’t swapping people in and out of the title. It’s learning to coach the coaches, not the floor, so every level of leadership knows how to ask instead of just order.
Show It, Do It Together, Then Let Them Fly
Real leading by example isn’t showing someone once and walking off. Watching you close one deal doesn’t teach a rep how you got there. They need to see it, do it next to you, and then try it on their own while you explain why each step matters.
This isn’t just a sales floor thing. It happens in office work too. Spending hours on a task that a more experienced person could finish in minutes isn’t always a skill problem. Sometimes it’s just not knowing what to even ask for. One honest question, “can you show me how you did that,” can make the whole thing click. That’s what your reps need from you too. Not a lecture. Not a one-time demo. A real walk-through, with room to ask questions without feeling dumb for asking.
This won’t work every single time. No system does. But small, repeated conversations that open up a rep’s thinking will move your numbers more than orders ever will.
You don’t have to invent these conversations from scratch every time your numbers dip. The free 15-Minute Coaching Framework gives you four simple steps to run with any rep, so the talk has real structure instead of guesswork. Grab the free 15-Minute Framework and use it at your next one-on-one.