A Sales Guy Consulting Blog

My buddy Ken Granader and Author of How to Build Winning Sales Teams tackles one of the least leveraged levers in getting more out of your sales team . . . rewards and recognition. 

I love the creativity he brings to this. It's great sales advice.  

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Many salespeople will tell you that the only recognition that they want is more commissions.  Truth be told, they care more about recognition than just a commission check.  Successful salespeople like to be commended for large orders, competitive knockouts and love to be stack ranked against their peers.  Great salespeople are true competitors and love to win and to be recognized for it.

 The great thing about recognizing salespeople is that informal recognition can be just as powerful as formal recognition.  Mentioning a big win in a team email or a team conference call goes a long way towards motivating the typical salesperson.

 I always like to use simple and fun ways to reward accomplishments.  Depending upon your team, rewards will vary.  When I was a new manager managing a team of young twenty-somethings, I implemented a putt-for-dough program.  Every time a salesperson got a signed order, they got to “putt for dough.”  In our sales office, we put the ball catcher right at the door of the District Manager’s office.  When you got an order, you putted into the ball catcher from about 20 feet away.  If you made the putt, you got $5 cash.  If you brought in multiple orders or orders for our most expensive or strategic products, you got “bonus putts.”  This little game also brought in soft recognition from the District Manager who would often come out to see who brought in orders and congratulate them.  You would have been amazed at how much that team loved putt-for-dough.  It was a huge motivator and provided great reward and recognition at a minimal cost.

 I have also made a habit of providing sales team rewards.  Many times I will set a quarterly or annual goal for the team (over and above the quota) and if the team wins, everybody wins.  I have taken my teams white water rafting, on hot air balloon rides, golfing, water skiing, go-carting and bowling.  Obviously, the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.  Team rewards are great for getting everyone to come together for the greater good.  They build camaraderie and get everyone in the boat rowing together, so to speak.  Even in companies that I’ve worked where President’s Club trips were part of recognition, I still had team challenges.  Team challenges raise the bar to a higher level and reinforce the idea that just making quota isn’t really good enough—we need to do better than that.

 Other great, inexpensive ways to provide recognition are to have a salesperson who just closed a large deal present the win at a QBR.  They get to talk about how they “Made it Happen.”  They are on center stage and under the spotlight and the less experienced salespeople get to learn from these “win sharings.”  They think to themselves that they want to get a big win like that so that they can share it with the team—it’s another one of those silent motivators. At my current company, if we receive an order of $100K or more, we ring the “large order” gong over our PA system.  That becomes a company-wide motivator and then people go to order administration to find out who closed the order and then congratulate the appropriate salesperson.

Salespeople are best motivated by “carrots.”  If you want them to do more, give them more carrots.  It doesn’t have to be compensation though—commissions are already there for doing their every day jobs.  The carrots I’m talking about relate to getting a fast start on a new product launch, knocking out competitors or generating x number of proposals.  You can focus on the goesintas or the goesoutas.  If orders are flowing, stretch them for more orders.  If orders are lagging, offer incentives for focusing on delivering more goesintas.  The idea is to make it fun and meaningful. 

Salespeople just love to win…the more chances that you give them to win something, the better your overall performance will be.

A client sent us this email yesterday. I love getting emails like this. As a sales consulting company it's our job to make impact and influence our clients persepctives.  

"Keenan, thank you again for your time earlier today. It was a great coaching session. You opened my eyes to how my sales techniques that served me so well in the past need to evolve for selling FlixMaster. 

I'll be honest, I was going into the session today wondering, "what the hell am I going to get out of this?" And came out of it thinking, "WOW! That completely blew my mind."

 You've now got me laser-focused on selling the solution, not the product. And while I may have paid that distinction lip-service throughout my sales career, today truly changed my perspective as I could see the difference in what I had been doing versus what needs to be done."

To me the best part of this email is this quote: 

"I'll be honest, I was going into the session today wondering, "what the hell am I going to get out of this?" And came out of it thinking, "WOW! That completely blew my mind."

I experience this type of attitude often. Sales people, for some reason, have tendency to think they know it all. In particular, seasoned sales people who have been successful for years tend to be resistent to new things.  In a space where learning and growth can be the difference between quota attainment and failure, this type of attidue can kill you. 

How open is your sales team to assess their own capabilities. How well do they assess themselves? Are they accurate? 

How open are you? Do you believe you have a handle on it all? As the head of sales how often do you say; "What the hell am I going to get of this?"  

If you're like many sales leaders, unfortunately -- A LOT! 

If you're open to it, you could have your mind blown. 

Do You Have the Guts?

It takes guts to be a leader. It takes real strength to be a leader. Unfortunately, these characteristics scare people, they scare companies. They disrupt the status quo. They challenge the systems. The create chaos. They create unpredictability. Corporations thrive on predictability and the status quo and unfortunately the cost to maintaining the status quo is the loss of great leaders.

Do you have the guts?

A word I can honestly say I rarely if ever hear in business is, self-confidence.   I do hear it a lot when discussing entrepreneurs and start-ups, specifically when the discussion is about the founders, but what about everyone else?  Why doesn’t the word self-confidence enter the business lexicon?   It should.

Self-confidence is at the heart of performance.  The decisions we make are driven by our confidence level.  The decisions we DON’T make are influenced by our self-confidence.   The impact of self-confidence sees no boundaries, from the board room to the mail room, the confidence people have in themselves impacts organizations.

Executives without it have frozen themselves and their company in its tracks, not moving when they should, not making the investments necessary, not removing the EVP who isn’t making their numbers, or not buying that start-up needed to penetrate new markets.

Sales people without it don’t make the cold calls, they don’t ask for the close, they don’t challenge the customer, they are uncomfortable making the customer uncomfortable, they struggle introducing new products.  Sales people who lack self-confidence can not reach their potential.

Lack of self-confidence isn’t solely an executive or sales person challenge.  It affects everyone.  When people, therefore organizations, lack self-confidence innovation is stifled.  People are afraid to suggest new ideas.  They are afraid to try different things.  They are uncomfortable asking for the extraordinary.   When self-confidence is absent mistakes are made, opportunities are missed, innovation is stifled, and energy and excitement are diminished.

The best leaders I’ve worked for have made me feel I could take on the world.  They’ve known how to make me feel confident in my decisions.  The best leaders create environments that build confidence in its people. They build confidence into their sales coaching. 

Environments filled with fear, politics, fighting, bullying, indifference, unrealistic goals, and that are unaccepting of failure, breed lack of self-confidence.

How confident are you in your decisions?  How confident are your direct reports?  How confident is the CEO?   They all need to be.  Confidence is critical.  Does your organization build confidence in its people?  It should.

To build a good organization, start building confidence.

This is part 4 of an 8 part series on account governance

Relationships are the hardest element of account governance to write about. It’s hard because it’s difficult to measure. It’s not objective. There isn’t a paint by numbers process to create relationships, to know if you have the appropriate ones etc. Relationships are critical to good account governance, but it’s hard to put them in a box. Later in the series I will talk about account cadence. A good candence can help you manage the relationships, but it can’t build them.

This being said, understanding the critical nature of the relationship to an overall account governance is critical.

I remember early in my career a peer gave a presentation about two types of relationships. He talked about the person at your customer that would always answer your calls, who would accept your invitations to lunch and could always be counted on for a good game of golf. This relationship would always invite you into deals and could be counted on for support, BUT when it came to the really big deals or the core business affecting opportunities they would be conspicuously quiet.

This peer of mine then went on to talk about another type of relationship. He talked about the customer who called you and asked for advice. This relationship wasn’t always available for lunch or golf, but always invited you to the strategic business discussions. This relationship made few decisions without getting your insight. This relationship always made sure you were not only part of the big deals, but asked for your help in crafting the RFP and setting the strategic direction.

It was during this presentation, I first heard the term; Trusted Advisor.

There are clearly different relationships when it comes to managing accounts. It’s not good enough just to have a “relationship”. You have to have the right relationship, with the right people across many aspects of the organization.

The “relationship” I’m referencing in this pie chart is the second one. In an account management environment it is critical to develop a trusted advisor relationship or partnership where you’re seen as an information source, as an influencer.

Getting to this point requires a perspective AND an approach that is not product centric. I’ll say that again. It’s not product centric. If the conversations tend towards product you are not headed towards the influencer position.

To become an influencer requires a different perspective. It takes gambits, not transactions. It starts with your customers perspective and works out from there. It takes a tremendous amount of information about your account, the things your products and services enable and more. It’s more conversations than presentations. Most importantly, its having information your customer doesn’t have. It’s being smarter than your customer.

Being smarter than your customer is no small order. I rarely see people with this skill. Its magic when it happens.

The right relationships, with the right people, on the right level are a critical part of account governance. Build them on value. Build them on substance. Become an influencer. There will be plenty of time for golf, after they’ve called you to ask how to . . . ?

Tomorrow: Part 5
I’ll talk about cadence and how to manage the killer relationships you have.

Part 1: Account Governance - [The Ultimate Sales Process]

Part 2: Account Governance - [Vision]   

Part 3: Account Governance - [Account Plans]

You are faced with a limited budget, new or established products, a sales team that varies in strength and experience, competitors that are trying to kick your ass and a board and CEO that are demanding more and more revenue. As the head of sales (CSO, EVP, SVP, VP) you have to create a sales strategy that will deliver under ever more trying circumstances. 

To successfully do this, you need a specific, well laidout, plan of attack. Unfortunately, what I've found is most sales organizations don't have a strategy, they have goals. 

I recently met with the Chair and the CEO of a web based company. During our conversation, they shared their sales strategy. Their key strategy, get new logo's and net new business and move away from reliance on existing accounts. Great objective or goal, but this is NOT a strategy. 

Saying you are going to win the war by storming the hill is not a strategy. Saying your going to win the war by storming the hill with infantry on the flanks, calvary up the middle, archers for support and cutting the enemies supply line from the rear, is a strategy.  

Sales strategy is the "HOW" your organization is going to deliver the revenue and "get new logo's."  A solid sales strategy is multi-layered and capitalizes on market, product, team or other types of opportunities. 

A sales strategy must start from the demand side of the equation. It has to answer;

1. Does my strategy capitalize and align with my buyers investment strategies? 
2. Does it create demand or respond to latent demand? 
3. Does it take into consideration how my customers buy?
4. Does it leverage an internal strength and/or unique company advantage?
5. Is it capitalizing on an undentified market or industry trend or shift.