I watched a story on 60 Minutes about St. Benedicts Prep, a grade 7-12 Catholic school in Newark, NJ that is primarily composed of Black and Hispanic inner city kids coming from low-income families. In short, the students in this school perform incredibly. Not just for minority kids from poor families – they perform incredibly against any scale. Why? The primary reason I took away from the story is because the kids run the school, not the administrators. The kids hold each other accountable, and make sure their fellow students succeed with the same desire they put toward their own success.
Let’s shift to your sales team for a minute. Let’s think about your entire company for a minute. How much encouragement do your sales people receive from others outside of management? Do your techs congratulate your sales people on good months? Does your accountant personally deliver a large commission check and shake your sales person’s hand for a job well done? Do your sales people coach each other to get their CRM reports done? You can hold your sales people accountable, but to gain full engagement and influence, it takes a village.
Great, but you’re the sales manager? How can you get the whole company involved? Below are a few ideas.
- Work with your team on holding each other accountable. There isn’t enough room in this post to include how to change the culture of your sales team, but a first step is to bring them outside the office for a few hours to discuss it. You want a trusting, self-driven team – and they’ll appreciate it.
- Get your big dogs on your side ahead of time. A big dog is the locker room leader. The sales person that everyone listens to. It might be the best performer or most senior person, but not always. Think about the one or two people that can influence change and bring them into your plan before anyone else. Use this simple statement: “I need your help.”
- Post the sales metrics around the office. I love the idea of posting a scoreboard of individual performance. If you’re not comfortable with this idea, then post the team performance against the previous month or year.
- When a salesperson or the team hits a milestone (e.g. $100k of new annual recurring revenue for the current year), throw a celebration for the whole company. It can be as simple as a pizza party or limited happy hour at the office. Allow everyone to benefit from these wins.
- In your next company-wide meeting, devote the entire time of speaking to this initiative. In fact, ask your boss to present the initiative if it is more effective. Let everyone know that you plan to post the metrics and have the parties. Get them excited. Don’t ask them to help you hold your sales people accountable – the sales people don’t need anyone outside the sales team asking about their numbers. However, ask everyone for encouragement and awareness.
Start next week in creating ideas and getting your big dogs on board. If you don’t do something next week, you probably won’t, so set the meetings in your calendar now.
