What makes the difference between a team that crushes all known sales records and a team that consistently fails to launch?
A team made up of individual superstars that’s divided isn’t going to make it, the issue is, it’s fractured, separate, going in multiple directions that aren’t in alignment.
Make it public
When the pace is crazy, like in a startup, you need to have fun, the business must be oriented towards its sales team, if revenue or margin is the goal, and you must empower and celebrate your teams wins properly, every single one.
You must make a formal channel for celebration. Making it public, frequent and a whole company win is the way to do it.
It’s simple, but many companies mess this up.
Just adding a Slack channel that every new booking goes into, highlighting the client, the revenue amount, the salesperson and give them an opportunity to highly anyone that helped.
It’s simple. Makes a huge difference to the sales culture and because it’s frequent, it builds a mindset and winning energy to those who are wondering if the company is going to make it.
They get a visible reminder daily that the company is taking new ground, moving forward, progressing. This is important, sales people need to see that the company values them, that it values sales and is geared towards making the sale.
2. Empathy
Empathy is misunderstood and not what people think. Empathy, in its simplest form is caring about what the people you care about, care about.
Empathy is the life blood of winning energy.
As a sales leader you should be leading with empathy, when you want to influence your sales team they need to know you care about what they care about.
Without this, there’s disconnection.
Fight their battles with them side by side, get stuck in and help them elevate and win deals, pass them solid leads, unblock their path, give them motivation to succeed that aligns with their specific goals, dreams and vision. Motivate them by investing in them achieving their goals.
Get to know them, what inspires them, where do they want to be next year, get curious in their success.
Remember, be interested, not interesting. This is how you influence for success and raise the standard of your team.
When you care about them, truly care about what they care about, you dissolve this barrier and get cut through, this is where you get the opportunity to influence and persuade, because you’ve earned it.
It’s easy to say “sell more” but it’s futile. Most blame the sales person, rather than looking at the sales leader. What barriers did they remove for their team, what fires did they put out, how did they streamline and smooth out the process internally.
3. Stop taking the credit
If they feel you only want them to sell more to make yourself look good, to make your own commissions and to take the credit you will tank your sales teams culture.
If you play favourites, disappear when your sales team need help or don’t put out fires you’re not doing your job correctly. You need to be in the trenches, with them, not because it will help you make commissions but because it will help your team win.
A winning team starts at the top, you must set the example be a role model. Your team will remember this, do you show up for them, or do you throw them under the bus when revenue numbers aren’t hit.
You need to be the role model of the behaviours you want to see from your team. If you require 8 sales meetings a week, then you must do 9 meetings a week.
Be the standard, live it!
Sales leadership is a wonderful privilege. People want to feel part of something bigger, a collective sense of winning, they need the human-ness to be real, feel alive, and see daily acts of service from their leader.
This is how you win and create a team of winners.
Consequently, your sales team lean in. They go to bat for you, they take more risks, they fear less, and give the client space to think.
This is important because the more they give their client conversations room to breathe, space to slow down, the quicker they achieve the right outcomes.
The Yo-Yo’er — is this you?
In the award winning book The Momentum Sales Model, I talk about one sales character you might have witnessed, the Yo-Yo’er, they move between being all in, and sedated.
The Yo-Yo’er’s main habitual pattern is to send out 100 emails in a day just to play catch up and feel like they are taking action after cruising for a few days without taking much action. They play this game with themselves, all driven by external results.
When times are good and the sales are coming in they take their foot off the gas and glide into the day with steadfast confidence that this will always be the state of play.
However, when times change (as they always do), they panic and go into full on battle mode. This creature emerges, driven again by an external stimulus, this time the lack of results, and they are forced into bulk email mode.
Their nature is to react and go through this emotional rollercoaster every month.
Their sales activity is chaotic, sporadic as they go back and forth between these surges of energy output. Always at the will of the market.
As a sales leader, it’s your job to develop these Yo-Yo’ers into Momentum Sellers, salespeople that are driven by internal reward, motivation and validation.
A winning energy comes from within, it’s a place where you don’t focus on the result but instead follow a process and in doing so gain joy, energy and small wins that incrementally ramp up and accelerate the business.
The sum is greater than its individual parts. Much like a team out in the field. When the team is signing from the same song sheet, wins come in from all directions, there’s a flow to the business.
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