Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 75: How To Create a Culture of Accountability In Your Sales Team

Transcript

75: How To Create a Culture of Accountability In Your Sales Team · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The sales team is probably the most easily measured organization in the company, and yet our accountability to simple metrics sometimes goes by the wayside.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: If that's happening in your team, here are four ways to solve it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the tip for today, this episode is sponsored by Sales Bluebird.
• 1:01
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• 1:14
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• 1:19
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• 1:29
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• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to episode 75 of the podcast here in Colorado under lockdown in April 2020 as part of the COVID-19 virus pandemic.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful day outside, working a way to build content for the trainees that I have in my group and also the coaches that I'm working with as well.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So when I first started in sales 20 odd years ago, I worked in a in two or three sales teams that were pretty ruthless when it came to their expectations, but also their accountability towards those expectations.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I worked at one company which was it was a reasonably transactional sale, except at the super top end, but they were desperate for market share because it was relatively new space and they were really trying to grab market share.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a very ruthless environment.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you missed your quota three months in a row, you were out.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the good thing about that was that A, you were held accountable.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you knew exactly what was expected of you.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was no ifs, buts, and maybes, no excuses.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the rules, right?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very simple conversation that you knew was coming if you missed three months in a row.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The downside to that, frankly, was that it encouraged a whole bunch of unethical behavior, let's say, on the sales floor.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: There were things going on that should never have been tolerated and certainly wouldn't be tolerated in any of the sales teams that I know these days.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very me-centric culture.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was all about me as an individual and the company hitting our numbers, and you know, very little concern was about the customer, right?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And making sure they got the right thing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there was definitely a downside to that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I think about these days, I wonder if perhaps we sung swung too far the other way.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think about a any anything like that, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: You go one way and then always the correction happens too far the other way.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then really what you want to be as much as possible is somewhere in the middle.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's ideally what you want to be when it comes to accountability as well, is that you want to you want to create that culture of accountability, but you don't want to do it in a in a manner that causes people to do things that are stupid, unethical, and shouldn't be tolerated.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no doubt that a culture of accountability creates an ethos and culture around execution.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And superior execution always produces superior results.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really where this is the key to all this.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a direct line that we can see between accountability to execution and then to results.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're in a situation in your team where you don't think your accountability is high enough, what do you do about it?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here are four ideas to help you along the way.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that everyone has to have their own plan for success.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they may be given their quota, which is very common, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not many people get to choose their quota, but they might be given their quota and assign some all the rest of it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it's super important that they have their own plan for success to meet their own goals beyond that quota, right?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if they're looking to get to much higher attainment than 100%, they need to have a plan to get there.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can instill inside your team the idea that everyone has their own plan that they own, and your job is just to help them get there to their own plan, it creates their own accountability, their own belief in that plan.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you get given someone else's plan, you don't usually believe in it, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't trust it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know how people came up with it, and you don't know how you're gonna get there.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when you end up having that conversation down the line about why the plan wasn't met, the fact is that you never believed in the plan in the first place.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to put your team in a position where they're working on something that they don't even know how is going to help them.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that all these plans and metrics need to mean something to the individual.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if they were to do this, what does it mean in terms of their results and their big why and their own goals and aspirations?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: You should be able to point a direct line again to say the reason why this is so important is because it's gonna produce these results down the line.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if they have their own plan, that's a lot easier.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But even in those situations, there's gonna be things that come down from corporate that they're gonna have to do, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's you know company activities, you know, it might be training events, it might be field marketing events, it might be attending conferences, that they're like, ah, I don't really want to do this.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the highest and best use of my time, but there's an expectation that goes with it.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's especially important in those situations to make sure that anyone that doesn't see and believe why doing that's gonna help them, that you connect the dots with them to say, look, this is why this is so important.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Third thing is be accountable yourself to your own plan and to what you're doing with the team.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it before where you know you first line managers might say they're gonna go do something and help the team in a certain way, and suddenly it all just kind of drifts away by the wayside.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know early in my career I did that a few times, and it took one person on my team to say, hey, what about that thing you said you were gonna do, right?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the harsh reminder for me to say, gosh, you know, I've got to do a lot better around that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was good as a rep to deliver on my forecast all the time and all the things I was gonna do, but suddenly I needed a reminder as a first line manager that there's certain things I absolutely need to do for the team and show them that I'm doing it, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's super important.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You if you say you're gonna go do something, do it, and then make sure you go back and say, remember three weeks ago when I said I would do something?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I did.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth thing is inevitably people fall short, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: You fall short of your commitments to the team, but they're gonna fall short of what's in their plan or what came down from corporate.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's at that point that it's important to have that tough conversation.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it needn't necessarily be very confrontational, it needn't necessarily be a really, in fact, a tough conversation.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: It should be very matter-of-fact, but it's an important conversation to get right.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is where accountability really comes to play.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it there's really two parts to it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, is you know, things didn't go like you said they would, tell me what happened.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why did it not work out that way, right?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to dig into the reasons why things didn't happen, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if there was one thing as part of the terror chief plan that they're gonna do certain things to grow a pipeline and they're not doing those things, it's important to understand why, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It might just be, you know, I didn't get didn't have the time to do it, or there might be some other thing that's the roadblock, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't understand why.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: The second part of the plan, and this is super important, is what are you gonna do to fix it?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And really, really get into that because that's where you can get things, help them get things back on track with their own activities and their own plan, and then hold them accountable to the new plan, as it were, further down the line.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, you know, when you're having the one-on-one, you say, Remember when you said your your fixed plan for this was ABC.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how are we doing?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you hold their feet to the fire a little bit to say, it's just your plan, I'm helping you, but it needs to get done.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this idea that these tough conversations have to happen is is super important because that's where the rubber meets the road in terms of accountability.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's where, frankly, too often where I've seen it before, where you go, oh, it didn't happen, and then you kind of say, Well, why didn't it happen?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you know, you need to figure it out, and then you move on.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: That second part of the conversation is okay, well, what's the plan to fix it?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the interesting thing about this is that, you know, we want to encourage our sales teams to act like CEOs of their territories.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this is just good business practice.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the best run companies in the world, they understand that plans don't always happen like we planned, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was Mike Tyson who said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in their face, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I got that's that's part of it, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the important thing is if something doesn't happen part of the plan, there's gotta be a backup to say, well, here's how we're gonna fix that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just good business sense to hold our sales teams accountable to say, you know, here's where you what what are you gonna do to fix what you said you were gonna do that didn't happen?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So remember, the reason we're doing this is accountability leads to execution, which leads to results.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would ask of you that if you want to improve in this area, that we use our structure here and do two things.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, where are you falling right down?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right, where are you falling down right now in accountability in your team, how you're working with individuals and how also with yourself?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then secondly, create a plan to go fix that, to make sure that accountability is part of the culture of your team.