Are you confident that you have set your team up for success? I will be answering a question on how to set your team up for success. I am confident if you find the right direction to go for quality communication, continual encouragement and a better outcome of their area your team will improve immensely!
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Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Today we are sharing one of the questions in our Next Level, Mastermind Q, and A. So in our Next Level Mastermind group, while they have all kinds of amazing things, they attend events and weekly stuff, they also have a monthly Q and A with me where they can ask anything. Doesn’t matter what it is, it can be business, it can be leadership, it can be personal, and that has always loaded up with leaders and business owners to ask their questions. Today we are taking a question on meetings from Eric Stoll at Summertown Metals, but here’s what I want you to know. While he asks a question about how to set up a specific meeting, the information that I’m about to share is how to set up the team first and how to make sure that you are setting up the meeting for success by making sure that your team is set up in a successful way. So when those aren’t in place, what you end up with is a lack of productivity, which is the opposite of what you want. You again end up with confusion. Uh, and I’m not saying that every meeting that you have is a horrible meeting. What I’m saying is if you want the best possible meetings, make sure the team is set up well before you get to those team meetings. So we’re going to get to Erick’s question right after this.
Next Level Leadership Live Event.
I’ve never seen a leader that’s had everything that they wanted. Out of thousands of leaders that I’ve coached most are probably a lot like you. You wish you saw greater productivity and less drama from your team, that you didn’t spend your energy putting out fires, that you had more time to invest in your family and the things that you enjoy and you felt more equipped to lead your team to success. The only thing that’s holding leaders back from the results they desire is having the right tools and you can get those tools at the Next Level Leadership Live Event. So if you’re young, old, new, experienced, struggling, or really successful, this event is for anyone who is ready to learn from 25 years of best practices that get proven results. It’s not about short-term fixes. In three days. I’m going to teach you how to have sustained revenue growth to generate greater productivity from your team and get immediate momentum toward the results that you want. It’s going to be detailed, practical, and loaded with how-to’s from the lessons we’re teaching, our clients have seen an average of 46% increase in gross profit in one year’s time. That’s one year’s time. These clients run normal, everyday businesses, and your business can have the same level of success.
Q + A: A healthy team.
I Want to talk about sales meetings, Sales team. You had a sales team of 10 people.
How often would you conduct a sales team meeting? The goal of that is, keeping morale, and building competitiveness among the sales team.
So before I get to the sales team meeting, There are certain aspects of a healthy sales team. It doesn’t mean crap if you get to a sales team meeting and you’re talking about exciting things or trying to encourage them and we have all these other pieces that are missing when it comes to a sales team. All right? So there are certain things you have to have first. So the first thing you need to have, if you have 10 salespeople, you need at the bare minimum, one leader. Bare minimum. Right now, I don’t believe if you have 10 salespeople selling exactly the same thing day in, day out, you can have one people lead 10 people. That’s still a lot. I usually like to go eight or less. I would probably if I had a sales team of 10, break them up into two groups of five. If, assuming they’re selling the same stuff, right? And have two people out of those 10 be kind of like captains where they’re kind of coaches, where the person could come to them and ask them questions. They’re not their leader. They are not spending a ton of time making them successful. They’re kind of like that captain that can give pieces of information and encourage and all that kind of fun stuff because too much put on one person makes it very difficult for that person to lead every single person to success. And you know what I’m going to tell you about that. It’s their job to lead that whole team to success. The captain’s also can support that team leader in the leader leading the captains to get information to the rest of the teams. Still the team leaders, a major focus. But it helps you can look at giving the captain over a group, um, a spiff, maybe it’s a, you know, 0.025% of the sales of the other people because they do spend time giving advice or answering questions, but they should not be spending hours a week leading people, right?
They need to do the sales themselves. So that’s structure-wise how I would look at that. The sales team leader, you have to ask yourself the question, you may already have a sales team leader or you may be thinking about a sales team leader. Always everybody who’s been through Stratplan has heard me ask this question. What makes you think that person can lead that team to success? Seriously, the sales team leader of all people we make 90% of companies in is probably higher than that. Make the same mistake. They take somebody who’s really great at sales and make them a sales team leader because they figure, well, they sold really well. They must be able to lead people to success. What in the world makes you think that person can lead anybody to sell well? So if the person is not a great leader, don’t put them in the role of leading the most important money-making part of your business, you know, as a leader in that, in that area.
Structure.
So, uh, and there is, you know, a great example, I don’t remember Bill Walsh ever played football, but I don’t think Bill Walsh or Tom Landry ever actually played. I could be wrong. Two of the winningest coaches ever, I don’t think they ever actually played, but great leaders, and great coaches. They were able to teach people how to be great at what they were doing. They were able to teach people who were experts at playing the role that they were playing, how to be even better. That’s what we’re looking for. So those pieces are in place. The next thing is, man, you’ve got to have accountability. Sales is a very important place for you to put accountability in. Now, two biggest problems with every business as far as Chris LoCurto is concerned. For those of you that have been through Stratplan, you hear me say this, number one by far, communication, lack of quality communication is the biggest issue you have. You just don’t realize it, right? The second thing is a lack of accountability. If you do not have the pieces in place that you can hold somebody accountable, how can you possibly expect to hold them accountable? Right? So if we don’t have solid KRA’S for this, and this goes for everybody, but you know, let’s just point it at the sales team. If we don’t have really solid KRA’s for the salespeople, what do we expect them to do every single day, how can we hold them accountable? If we don’t have, you know, the expectation just had a second Stratplan for a company in here a couple of weeks ago and you see this all the time. The conflict between admin and sales is always laughable. Sales never have enough details and the admin always wants way more details, right? The inability to actually hold your salespeople accountable and say, “Would you please put the address down?” Great. You now sold this, you know, I’m looking at Jeremy Painting Job, where the crap is it? Where do we go? We don’t, nobody knows. You know, I’ve got a crew set up to go, where are they supposed to go? Right? I mean you have to think through this kind of stuff. So that’s not a that Jeremy went through. I was just thinking of Jeremy. Um, so what is the, you know, make sure that you’ve got all of the accountability pieces you need in place to hold the salesperson accountable? If the only accountability you have is that they have to sell something today, guess what? Morale is going to be way low because all you keep doing is coming along and going, did you sell something great, sell more, sell another, sell three of those, you know? Right. So you have to have the accountability piece in place.
Setting goals.
Next thing you should have, if at all possible, daily goals for every salesperson. Now, some people can’t do that. We had Milborn Seeds in here recently and they actually have sections of time where sales just do not happen. And so they don’t have a dollar goal, but they have a contact goal, a communication goal, good quality conversations goal. So as much as possible. If you can have a daily revenue goal, set it, let it be legit, let it be something that the team member and it might have to be different for different people, but we don’t want to really go low on somebody and make it an excuse that you know they’re not good enough. Make sure you’re setting the revenue goals that they’re going to hit, but set the revenue goals, set the call goals, set the quality conversation goals, set the email goals, whatever it is that they need to do in a day that they need to hit those goals.Why daily, Chris? Because when you set a weekly goal, if I don’t hit it in the first two days, I still have three more days to get there. And then the next three days look a little bit more desperate, right? Set a daily goal. So I go after those things today. It goes back to zero tomorrow. You know, it’s okay to have a weekly goal but point me at something today. Now, if all of those pieces are in place, I’ve got a great team leader. I’ve got possibly captains, and I’ve got great accountability. I’ve got daily goals for them to go after. Now the meeting matters, right? Because all of those pieces are holding me accountable in my day and I have things to shoot for. So now for me, a team that size, I would probably have a standup meeting every morning. I would look to have a five to probably shouldn’t be 15 minutes, maybe five to 10 maybe have a standup meeting because salespeople more than anybody need some great encouragement to start their day.
Okay. Admin folks usually don’t. They come in and they’re doing admin work, right? More than anything, an admin person needs a well-prioritized day, done the day before. They need to close out their day and prioritize the next day so that they come in, they’re already encouraged because everything’s in control, it’s in order. They know what they’re supposed to do. The salesperson needs a touch. Right? And I’m saying this assumingly that these are all outbound salespeople. Inbound salespeople are more order-takers. So this isn’t as important. It’s really more difficult to set goals for inbound. Right? So really focusing on the outbound side. The person who has the ability to sell outbound is, I mean that’s a, it’s a very important role and it’s somebody that you know, that is dealing with conflict on a continuous basis. So let’s encourage them first thing in the morning, and talk about some goals that you’ve got going on.
Encouragement in meetings.
Talk about exciting things. Definitely share testimonials if you’ve got them, great job with this. Pat some people on the back. You know, you don’t have to Pat everybody in the back but don’t go a long time of leaving, you know, certain people out. Make it very encouraging of what we’ve got to hit today. And guys here’s the, here’s the focus. Also, if you can, if you don’t have a weekly sales team meeting, I would, I would have a weekly sales team meeting on probably the least productive hour of the week, whatever that is. It might be Friday at four o’clock, right? But look for the least productive hour of the week. And that’s where you go over sales training. That’s where you go over mistakes that we’re making. That’s where you go over guys for the love, If you do not get the address and the information, I’m going to come around with a mini baseball bat, knock you guys upside the head, and make it happen. You know, I’m gonna hold commissions. You know I’m going to, I’m going to do something. Get the information because you’re affecting the rest of the company. The funny thing is the same personality style that has the ability to call out and speak to people and deal with conflict also believes that they’re most important being in the whole business, so ho helps them to understand they’re one part of the process. Yes, they’re great for bringing stuff in, but they’re one part of the process, right? If it doesn’t matter if they sell 10,000 jobs, if nobody can actually go do the jobs, we don’t need them. So make sure that they’re, they have a really good balance of understanding that people need things done correctly. So if you can do that sales team meeting, then don’t add a whole bunch of that stuff in the morning standup meeting. If you can’t do that sales team meeting, then I would include it in your morning meetings. Maybe extended to 15 minutes every morning. Make sure you’re ending on a high, something. Very encouraging. Testimonials. So-and-so has done a phenomenal job over here. Um, so all of that. On top of that, people repeat what they’re praised for. So this is a crazy balance. This is a crazy balance. I am going to spend a lot more time praising my people on their godly characters, character qualities type of stuff. I’m going to spend a lot more time trying to compliment those because I want them to be more Christ-like and trust that God’s actually sending us more business. That’s where I live, right? I totally believe we get way more business than we put effort into. So I’m going to focus a lot on that, but understand they also need to hear that they’re doing a great job with the talent that they have, the gift that God has given them. So make sure that you’re complimenting people on, on those things as well. If your compliments are more focused on their sales, then they’re going to, you know, they’re always going to be seeking that compliment. If they sell a $5 widget. Dude, did I do a good job? What do you think of me now? Right? So make sure that we’re complimenting how they treated clients. Uh, you know, that so-and-so said, man, that was a such a, it was the best sales call they’d ever experienced because the person was super nice and you know, really seemed to care about them. So compliment those pieces as well, but also compliment their ability to sell. So that’s a lot of information. Questions, thoughts, comments?
That really helps me out. I got a bunch of notes here.
Okay. If you do those things in the right order and, and most people don’t, what do we focus on?
Wrap Up.
Go sell, go sell, go sell, and then we wonder why we can’t hold them accountable and why people are, have low morale, all that kind of stuff. If you hold me accountable and I know it and you give me the consequences of my choices and it becomes something that I can anticipate, but I don’t struggle with that. It’s when you don’t hold me accountable and you keep asking me to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and then three months later you go, why the crap are you doing this? You’re not supposed to. No, that’s wrong. That’s bad. Why are you, why are you telling me now? Right? So just keep those things in mind.
There you have it folks. If you are putting all of those pieces in place in that order, literally if you are setting up the team itself in the right way if you are making sure you’ve got accountability if you’re making sure that you’re praising people for the right stuff, then when you get to your meetings, whether it’s a meeting to encourage your team, whether it’s a meeting to set direction, whether it’s a meeting to, you know, call out some things that we’re not doing well because the other pieces are in place, your meeting becomes more successful, you’re able to hit the things you need to hit. People are already aware if they’ve been held accountable for stuff, they’re not surprised when things aren’t going well. They’re not surprised when things are going well and you’re praising them because you’ve done a great job in praising your team.
If you have the right leadership in place, whether it’s captains or a single leader, whatever it is, they’re not surprised at the amount of information that they have because you have high levels of quality communication. You’re doing all of the pieces to set them up for success. So instead of your sales team meeting or whatever your meeting is being something where you’re doing the bulk of your teaching and training, it can be the thing that you’re hitting highlights on, that you are pointing them in, you know, with better training on how to do things better or hitting the things that they’re doing really well or encouraging or just allowing them to be that team unit that is unified that is moving in the same direction. If you don’t have those things in place, then you can’t be surprised that the team meetings really kind of suck, that they’re not helping, that they may be causing more confusion and more issues. So put these things in place, and make it a focus that you set the team up for success. I don’t care if it’s your sales team if it’s an admin team if it’s a marketing team, whoever it is, a production team, whatever it is, set the team up, set the leadership up, put the right pieces in place and you will have phenomenal meetings as well. Well, there you have it. I hope that has helped you today. Thank you for joining us. I hope it serves you well. I encourage you to subscribe, rate, and share the podcast to help more people join our community. And as always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.
