Three checks before the decision
- Equal traffic. Compare the volume and type of enquiries the strong and the weak rep received last month. If warm and cold are split unevenly, you are comparing conditions, not people.
- Onboarding happened. Thirty days with materials, reviews and a check at the end, rather than «here's your desk».
- Rules exist. A response deadline, a rule about quoting price, a stalled-deal list. Without them conversion depends on personality rather than on work.
What to look at once those three pass
- conversion over a month or more, on comparable traffic
- trend: has anything moved in the last two months
- engagement: is the person in the conversations or not
- adherence to process after two conversations about it
- whether the numbers hold without daily supervision
The last point decides it. A rep whose numbers are fine only while someone stands over them costs more than the report shows: they consume manager time that never reappears anywhere else.
Timelines after which waiting costs more
- Three months with full onboarding is enough time to reach the norm.
- Two conversations about process are enough to know whether it will be followed.
- One month after an improvement plan is enough to see movement.
Before the conversation
- gather three months of numbers rather than impressions
- take five conversations and point at specific moments, not at «you sell badly»
- check whether the same moments appear with everyone else: if they do, it is a process problem
The most expensive mistake
Letting someone go and hiring a replacement into the same process. With no rules in place the new rep will be at the same level in three months, and you will have paid for recruitment, onboarding and lost time twice.