5 Ways to Establish Purpose, Conviction, and Confidence in Your Sales Team
It is a fact of life that even the best among us lose their way from time to time. As a sales leader, do you know why this mental rut occurred and how to fix it? Do you understand how to maintain a high-performing sales organization that is motivated and focused on the right things consistently?
There are five key areas that can impact the success or mediocrity of your sales organization. Do you have a vision of what you are setting out to accomplish, have a culture of winning, set clear expectations, track your activity effectively, and have a servant’s heart of investing in your people? By doing these things consistently, you will eliminate performance stress, create buy-in, and build a cohesive camaraderie to ensure that you reach your goals.
1. Have a Vision of Where You’re Going
I heard a story about a college football recruit who was touring the University of Alabama locker room. There was a gentleman sweeping the floor, and when the recruit’s father asked what he does at the university, he declared, “I’m preparing to win a national championship.” This is so powerful! Everyone expects that Nick Saban, his assistant coaches, and his players are focused on winning their next title, but the guy sweeping the floors, too? This is organizational focus at its finest.
When you can get your sales team bought in to what you are about to accomplish, and it becomes pervasive in everything you do, you are well on your way to achieving more than you ever thought possible. This means that goals aren’t quickly written down and thrown into your bottom left-hand drawer never to see the light of day until the next annual review. Is your vision displayed publicly in the office? Do you look at it every day, talk about it every day, and strive for it in things big and small? Being the best isn’t easy and it takes hard work, preparation, and attention to detail. Without a crystal-clear understanding of where you are going as a team, you won’t get there.
2. Create a Culture of Winning
Winning is fun. Winning is addictive. Winning drives teams to strive for even greater things. Sales can be so exciting, and creating a culture and habit of achieving greatness every day will help you reach your destination. There is no substitute for a team that has that inner confidence to make something good happen each day, regardless of what has happened that morning or the day before. If we are going to be in this industry, why would we ever accept anything less than hitting our goals, celebrating our victories, and having the internal satisfaction of knowing that a month of hard work paid off with success? By cherishing the victories big and small, it develops confidence, high expectations, and attention to the activities that lead to successful outcomes.
3. Set Clear Expectations
In a team, there are different roles and responsibilities. One group may be on the frontlines with customers. Another group is on the phones setting appointments, while another is handling fulfillment and customer service functions. Each unit must perform their tasks effectively for the other groups to be consistently successful in theirs. Does each individual, role, and unit clearly understand what is expected of them from a daily activity standpoint? Having a larger goal is fine and well, but if you take your eyes off of the basic daily activities that lead to the larger wins, you will not be able to get as far. It’s akin to gearing up for a five-hour drive and having air in your tires, a recent oil change, food in the cooler, but only a quarter tank of gas. You’ll have to stop and recalibrate before arriving at your destination.
4. Track Activities Properly
You know what you want to accomplish. The team is bought in, excited, and they are working with a purpose. Are they doing the right things? If so, are they doing enough of the right things? Being able to effectively measure results, good or bad, and understanding why that result happened is so important to maintaining consistent success. Fortunately today, most businesses have effective CRM tools to easily manage this task. The challenge is determining what to look for and how to measure. How many in-person appointments are enough? Is 20 calls a day an effective strategy or does it need to be 60? Do I have data to confirm that going after new customers in a high activity, shotgun approach is not bringing in the results that I’m after?
Understanding the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and helping them manage our day is a Sales 101 tenet, but it is so important. I have seen far too many talented people not be atop the sales board because they are scattered and chasing the wrong things. On the flip side, I have seen many people with less natural talent maximize their effectiveness by doing and measuring the correct activities consistently.
5. Invest in Your People
One of my passions in life is sports. I enjoy the competitiveness, the camaraderie, the struggle to achieve something great as a group while other groups are working just as hard to defeat you. Everyone is born with abilities and God-given talents, but maximizing them is when things get really exciting. One of the joys of my career has been helping others around me succeed and to become better today than they were yesterday. It’s easy to focus on the team as a whole, but a team is made up of individuals with unique backgrounds, fears, hopes, and dreams. By spending time getting to know them as people, we learn what makes them special and it assists us as leaders to put them in the best positions to succeed. When you have special people doing things they enjoy and are getting progressively better at, it builds cohesion and a team pulling in the same direction with passion.
Start Winning Now
As sales leaders, our mandate is to meet revenue quotas and show growth every month. Consistency in doing the right things over time leads to long-term productivity. By developing a vision of where you’re going, building a team culture of winning with clear-cut expectations, tracking your important activity metrics, and investing in your people as individuals, your team will run through walls for you. They will be filled with a mutual purpose, conviction that the things they are doing will lead to a successful outcome, and confidence in not only themselves, but their teammates and you as a leader.
How can you incorporate the things that you may not be doing consistently today to have a more productive tomorrow?