You hired someone with experience. They came in confident. Six weeks later they’re struggling, you’re frustrated, and you’re already thinking about replacing them. Before you do that — I need you to stop and ask yourself one question: did you actually set them up to win?
I’ve been doing this work long enough — running regions, coaching district managers, working with owner-operators in wireless, appliance, AV, and specialty retail — to know that most performance problems don’t start on the sales floor. They start in the first two weeks. This episode of the Sales Manager Academy podcast is about exactly that: the small coaching steps that get overlooked during onboarding that end up costing you big later. If you care about sales leadership coaching that actually moves the needle, this one’s for you. Read it all the way through.
“I’ve Got Experience” Means Nothing If You Don’t Know How Things Work Here
Here’s something I say to every experienced hire — and I mean it with zero disrespect: I don’t care where you came from. I care what you can do here.
That sounds harsh. But it’s actually the most respectful thing I can do for them. Because if I assume their previous experience translates perfectly to my organization, I’m setting them up to fail. And that failure lands on me.
Every location has differences. Maybe at their last company, there was a project manager who handled all the delivery scheduling. Here, that’s on the rep. Maybe their old POS system let them skip steps yours doesn’t. Maybe their previous team sold out the door and never worried about what happened after — but in your world, you get charged back if the install falls apart three months later.
Those differences aren’t small. They’re everything.
What I’ve learned — and I learned this the hard way taking over underperforming locations — is that the worst thing you can do is assume a new hire with experience just “gets it.” The subconscious incompetence is the most dangerous stage. They don’t know what they don’t know yet. And if you’re not deliberately pointing out what’s different here, they’re going to keep doing what worked at their last job. And it’s going to quietly tank them.
Monday Morning Move: Sit down with every experienced hire in their first week — not to review your products, but to walk through specifically what’s different here from everywhere else they’ve worked. Procedures, deliverables, expectations. Name the gaps out loud before they become problems.
Your Team Doesn’t Understand How They Get Paid — And That’s Killing You
I will die on this hill.
There is a massive difference between knowing the pay plan and understanding how to make money from it. Your reps know if I sell this, I earn a percentage of that. That’s not the same thing as being able to look at their KPIs on a Tuesday afternoon and say, “If I improve my attach rate by 15%, that’s an extra $700 on my check this month.”
One is information. The other is a roadmap.
I’ve built compensation calculators for my teams in wireless, in AV, in appliances — because I realized that if I couldn’t show someone exactly how their daily actions connected to their monthly paycheck, I was just asking them to trust me. And that trust runs out the second they get a disappointing check.
Here’s the line I use with every seller and every local manager I work with:
> “My goal is to make sure you can make the most amount of money working the least amount possible.”
Watch their face when you say that. They look at you like you’re insane. “You want me to work less?” No. I want you to be so good at this that it doesn’t feel like work. I want selling to be second nature — unconscious competence. You don’t have to strain to think through every step. You just do it. And because you’re not burning all your mental energy on process, you can actually focus on the customer.
But you can’t get there if your rep doesn’t understand what they’re working toward. When a seller sees — really sees — that bumping one KPI could mean an extra $500 or $700 on their check, they stop fighting you on training. The resistance disappears. Because now the training isn’t something you’re doing to them. It’s something they want.
Monday Morning Move: Pull your compensation plan out. Sit down with one rep — not your top performer, someone in the middle — and build out a simple calculator together. Walk through three scenarios: where they are now, what happens if they improve one metric, what happens if they improve two. Let them see the number change. Do this before any other coaching conversation this week.
You’re Trying to Skip Stages That Can’t Be Skipped
I talk about the four stages of learning a lot, and I’m bringing it up again here because I watch managers get this wrong constantly.
Subconsciously incompetent — they don’t know what they don’t know. Consciously incompetent — they know they’re missing something and they’re asking questions, making mistakes, learning fast. Consciously competent — they can do it, but it costs them. They’re exhausted because every rep, every close, every procedure requires active mental effort. And then unconsciously competent — it flows. It’s natural. They’re not thinking about it anymore.
Most of your reps are in stages two and three. It’s exhausting for them. They’re building new neural pathways. They’re re-wiring habits they built somewhere else. And what I see managers do — constantly — is try to drag someone from stage one to stage three in two weeks and then get frustrated when it doesn’t happen.
> “When you bring people in from different organizations, even in the same industry, you don’t know what habits they have. You don’t know what habits have to change.”
This is the part nobody talks about in district manager training. It’s not just about teaching new skills — it’s about identifying which old habits are in the way and being patient enough to do that work correctly.
And here’s the part that managers forget: you were once in those stages too. You don’t remember how hard it was because you’ve been unconsciously competent for years. That disconnect — between where you are and where your reps are — is why so many coaching conversations miss.
Monday Morning Move: Before your next one-on-one, identify where each of your direct reports sits in those four stages. Not based on tenure — based on what you’ve actually observed. Then adjust your coaching style to match the stage. Stage one needs explanation. Stage two needs guided reps and good questions. Stage three needs encouragement and repetition. Stage four needs challenge and autonomy.
Motivation Won’t Build the Habit. Training Will.
I hear managers say this all the time: “I just need to get them fired up.” And I get it. The rah-rah approach feels like leadership. It feels like energy. People smile and nod and you feel like you did something.
But here’s what I know to be true: motivation without action is just noise. It fades. Every time.
> “We got to create the actions first. When we see the results, we start to become self-motivated. When we motivate first and don’t follow through on the actions, they’re not seeing results — so it fades.”
Habits aren’t built by inspiration. They’re built by repetition that leads to a reward. Your rep does the thing, they get a decent check, their brain connects the loop, and now they want to do the thing again. That’s how it works. That’s science. You can’t shortcut it with a Monday morning pump-up speech.
And here’s something I love about the seller mindset when it’s working correctly: they start to help each other. Once a rep figures out that their income is connected to foot traffic, and foot traffic is connected to the reputation of the location, they start caring about whether the person next to them knows what they’re doing. Self-interest becomes team culture. That’s not an accident. That’s what good training produces.
> “When things hit the fan, you don’t rise to the occasion. You fall back to your level of training.”
That line stays with me. Because it means the investment you make right now — in the mundane, repetitive, unsexy work of training your team — is the exact thing that determines how they perform when the pressure is on.
Monday Morning Checklist
- Identify the gaps, not the experience.With every current team member who came in from another company, have a 15-minute conversation this week about what’s different here. Specifically. Don’t assume they know.
- Build one compensation scenario together.Pick a rep. Sit down with the pay plan. Walk through what happens to their check if they improve their top KPI by 10%. Make the number real.
- Stage your team.Write down each of your reps and where they genuinely sit in the four competency stages. Then ask yourself: am I coaching them for the stage they’re in — or the stage I wish they were in?
You Can’t Coach Around a Foundation That Isn’t There
Everything I talked about here comes back to one thing: your team can’t outperform the foundation you gave them. Not long term. The reps who seem to be doing well despite a shaky onboarding? They either figured it out on their own or they had someone mentor them through it. You got lucky. You can’t build a team on luck.
If you’re looking for a community and a resource built specifically for sales managers in boutique and specialty retail — wireless, AV, appliances, small footprint businesses — that’s exactly what Sales Manager Academy is. This is the work I’m most proud of. Coaching sales leaders who are in the trenches, running small teams, expected to do a lot, and not getting nearly enough support to do it well.
Come find me. Send me a message. Let’s build something real.
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