I recently sat down with my newest salesperson, Brock. He just drove from Colorado to Milwaukee, WI to join our growing sales team. Like most new hires, Brock is ambitious and hungry to succeed in his role - and like all sales people - he wants to make money.
One of the biggest mistakes that management staff often make when hiring new salespeople is holding new reps accountable to their own expectations. Managers tell their new hires how many calls to make, what their quota is and share a litany of other KPI's and metrics that need to hit in order to fulfill their responsibilities within the organization.
This is a foolish approach because it disconnects the new hire from their intrinsic motivation to pursue their goals. Remember, new salespeople don't join your team initially to pursue the goals of the company, they join your team to pursue their own goals.
When I hire a new sales rep, I spend a bit of time learning what they want to accomplish so that I can reverse engineer their goals and show them what KPI's and metrics they should hit.
This approach has a few benefits:
- Usually, sales reps have higher goals for themselves than I have for them. Instead of having to hold my salespeople accountable to hitting what I think they should do, I position myself as an accountability partner focused on helping my reps accomplish what they think they should do.
- This strategy invigorates my sales reps because they know I'm here to help lead them to their goals instead of bossing them around like most managers.
- When I do have correct behavior or 'push' a sales rep to accomplish their daily activities, I get to remind them that they set their goals - not me.
When asking my new hire how much money he wanted to make in his first year at Stupar Enterprises, he told me he wanted to earn $250,000.
Although this is a lofty goal, it is very realistic and I introduced him to my Income Action Plan to show him what he would need to do in order to achieve this goal.
Watch the full conversation below.
If you're a manager, sales leader or executive, I strongly encourage that you take some time to learn what your people want to accomplish and help them reverse engineer their goals into daily, bite-sized activities.
Yes, 253 calls might seem like a lot, but then again, so is $250,000/yr as a new salesperson. Instead of holding him accountable to my expectations, I have the luxury of holding him accountable to his expectations - which were significantly higher than my expectations.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help implement more effective sales training and skill development practices in your business.