SALES LEADERS: Here are 4 BEST PRACTICES that will help your team crush it in 2022:
BEST PRACTICE #1: ALWAYS BE RECRUITING
◆ FLMs: Understand that recruiting is not HR’s job—it’s YOUR job.
◆ The goal is not to find the most experienced talent from marquee brands; the goal is to find the best talent to fit your unique culture, sales motion, and company stage.
◆ Value attributes more than experience—esp. Intelligence (IQ & EQ), Character, Coachability
◆ View recruiting with the same rigor/discipline as you expect from your team when it comes to Pipeline Generation.
◆ 2nd-line Leaders: Develop a recruiting system complete with leading indicator KPIs & pipeline metrics and incorporate this into your 1:1s with your FLMs.
◆ REMEMBER: What gets measure—and consistently reinforced—gets done.
BEST PRACTICE #2: CHANGE YOUR MANAGEMENT APPROACH
◆ When it comes to building world-class, high-performance teams the difference that makes the difference primarily comes down to ONE THING: your approach. Stop acting like a manager and become a coach.
◆ There’s often a BIG disconnect between how we perceive our management approach and how our team perceives it.
◆ Whether you’re currently more of a Nice-Guy Manager, a Do-It-All Manager, a Micromanager, or somewhat of a Coach—there is always room for improvement. There is always another level.
◆ Your new job as a “coach” is to ensure that your team is consistently executing at a high-level—and continuously learning, growing, and improving.
◆ REMEMBER: Coaching is merely something that you, as a manager, must do. A “Coach” is someone that you, as a leader, must become.
BEST PRACTICE #3: CREATE A HIGH-PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENT
◆ Invest the time to really get to know your people on a personal level. Understand their backgrounds, their upbringing, their hopes, dreams, goals, and fears—what drives them—their WHY. Make it about them; not you.
◆ Forget employee engagement. Focus on team member loyalty and creating the type of bond where their greatest fear is that they’ll let you down.
◆ REMEMBER: The more you get to know someone, the more you’ll start to understand them. The more you start to understand them, the more you’ll start to care about them. The more you care, the more they’ll contribute.
BEST PRACTICE #4: IMPLEMENT A CONSISTENT OPERATIONAL RHYTHM/CADENCE
◆ To consistently crush it, you must have a consistent operating rhythm/cadence—anchored by the Weekly (1:1) Coaching Conversation. This is how you’re going to systematically ensure that your team is consistently executing at a high-level—and continuously learning, growing, and improving.
◆ REMEMBER: You cannot expect consistent results from an inconsistent process. Just as salespeople need a consistent sales process to manage the deals—sales managers need a consistent management process ➜ to shape/reinforce (IC) behaviors ➜ that drive the activities ➜ that generate the KPIs ➜ that produce the results.
