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. 

I see this far too often.  Sales managers and sales leaders reactively manage their people. They reactively manage because they to manage to results.  Results are a trailing indicator in sales. If you manage to results your too late.

It’s a common approach in sales.  The sales rep misses quota. The manager says that’s not good, don’t miss quota again.  The rep misses quota again, the manager puts him on a PIP (performance improvement plan), which in essence lays out goals the rep must meet in the next 30 to 60 days or be fired.  In the less agressive scenerios like this, the manager works with the rep to figure out what is wrong but even then it’s still being reactive.

I have always felt this is a bad way to manage and lead sales teams, yet it has staying power and seems to be the course of action for most organziations.

Being reactive does little for anyone.  The key is to be proactive.  Like most things in life getting ahead of the problems or preventing them entirely is far better than trying to fix them. The key is find the leading indicators of failure.

To find the leading indicators I break down sales management into 4 integrated categories; planning, execution, results and talent.

Failure and poor performance can and will be seen early in any and all of these categories. They are a barometer for failure or success.

If a poor plan is put in place, failure is imminent even if it’s executed well by a talented sales person. – Manage the plan.

If a great plan is in place but is executed poorly by a talented person, failure is just around the corner. – Manage execution.

If the sales person lacks the skill or talent a good plan won’t make a difference. – Manage talent

If it’s a poor plan, executed poorly by someone with out the talent you’re screwed. – Manage all three.

If it’s a great plan, executed brilliantly, by a talented sales rep and the results aren’t there, you’ve messed up somewhere. – See 1, 2, or 3.  The problem is there.

Proactive management requires a process that embraces and monitors all the critical elements to sales delivery.

My management process to increase sales and get ahead of the problem works like this;

1) Everyone on my team builds a yearly plan.  They share it with the entire team, peers and all.  We cut it up, attack it, challenge it, and rework it until its a solid plan.  Plans go through a rigorous evaluation process to ensure they’re sound.

2) I focus on execution.  Plans are reviewed every quarter asking the following questions: what did you say you would do, what did you do, what did you learn, what are you going to do next quarter.  The process ensures proper execution by evaluating WHAT a rep is doing and HOW they are executing to the plan.  This allows problems to be identified early and changes made on the front end.

3) I hire for talent, and coach.  The most important aspect of proactive management is talent.  I hire for talent and I coach them.  I have standing one on one meetings every 6 weeks with all of my direct reports.  During these sessions we talk about what they do well, what they need to improve on and what they need to stop doing.  These are not performance reviews.  They are coaching sessions, designed to help them grow as a sales person and as a leader.

A process that embraces all of these elements is proactive.  Problems are seen early and symptoms are separated from root cause.

Getting poor results with proactive management is almost impossible.  You see it coming long before the boat sinks.  It gives you time to course correct, limit the damage or turn things around.

If your results aren’t there, if the numbers are off, if quota is in jeopardy it’s one of 3 things; a bad plan, poor execution or lack of talent or selling skills.  

Quick can you tell me which it is?

How do you know?

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?

Sales leaders, pull out your 2012 sales strategy right now. Go through it and take note of how much of it is dedicated to sales support and enablement. How much of the budget is allocated to sales improvement or support tools?  How much of the plan focuses on training? How much of the strategy focuses on value proposition development? How much of the strategy focuses on marketing and collateral support? How much of the plan DOESN’T focus on direct go to market and numbers making? If  the plan as good coverage in all of these things, you have a good plan. But if your plan is like most, it’s lacking in almost all of these areas.

The best thing sales leadership can do is support the sales team. In order to do this, you have to build team support and enablement into your overall sales strategy. Like a go to market strategy, critical analysis is paramount.

Take a look at your plan then ask a very simple question. What does my team need today, that they don’t have to make the number? Ask the question over and over. Each answer should then become an initiative. If the answer is nothing, unless you’ve already asked the question, your not being honest with yourself.

Sales teams are not ready made, out of the box organizations. They require care and feeding. The best organizations understand this.

Ask the team what they feel is missing. Ask them what they think would make it easier to make their number. Ask them what you could provide to accelerate sales. Get familiar with the team’s weaknesses and strengths. Identify initiatives that will offset the weaknesses and leverage the strengths. Getting to your number, growing sales, and moving product is more than setting revenue targets and creating motivational rewards and recognition. Getting to your number means getting the most out of your team and that requires support.

Know what your team is lacking, know where it is weak, know where it is strong. Know what could make it stronger and then give it what it needs.

What is your sales support and enablement strategy? Do you have one? You should!

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.