“Be a good leader. Do something to inspire your team. That’s what good leaders do.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 1271
Do you have the right incentives?
Join the conversation below and go check out the links!
1256: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #1 – Expectations
1257: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #2 – Tools
1263: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #3 – Plan
1264: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #4 – Boundaries
1270: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #5 – Models
Rethink The Way You Sell Podcast
Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
[email protected]
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jeff Bajorek is back with part 6 of his 8 part series on why your team isn’t creating more opportunities. Here it is:
Jeff Bajorek: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities.
Reason #6: They don’t have the right incentives.
Sales leaders all the time complain that their reps are doing exactly what they get paid to do. That’s right. You heard that correctly. They are complaining that their reps do exactly what their comp plan incentivizes them to do. The problem is, they don’t recognize that. When someone comes to me and says, “Jeff, can you help get my team motivated to make more new prospecting calls, more new accounts? We need to grow. We need net new revenue.” I always ask about the comp plan. “What does it look like? Are you incentivizing that? Or is all revenue good revenue?” And there’s a moment where they scratch their head, kind of look off into the distance, and then all of a sudden the light in the room gets brighter because the light bulb just went on over their head and they realized that the comp plan is incentivizing growth. But it’s not specific.
Oh, look, you know this it’s easier to get a $100 out of a current customer than it is to get $20 out of a new one. And so the path of least resistance points reps toward account management. That’s not a bad thing because growth is growth and revenue is revenue. Now, we’ve got this concept here that we can’t grow sustainably for the long term without bringing on new logos. Of course. But you also know that the psychology of a sales rep is I’ll get to that later. Right now, I need to take care of the people, the companies, the customers that are right in front of me. And as long as I’m growing, I’m not in trouble. I’m flying under the radar.
So is it clearly communicated that a certain amount of revenue needs to come from net new accounts? Is it clearly incentivized? Is there a commission SPIFF on new accounts? Is there a bounty on new logos? Is a portion of the annual bonus, if you don’t work on commission, is it tied to percentage of new revenue from new accounts? Or is it just here’s your base, if you have one, here’s your commission, and here’s a bonus on growth? It’s interesting. The simpler the comp plan, which means that the leaders really want to stay out of it. They want to let their comp plan do their managing for them. The simpler the comp plan, the less likely it is to incentivize the behaviors that the leaders want them to incentivize. This is a disconnect that needs to be stored up.
If you are leading a team and you can’t change the comp plan, you at least have to communicate to your reps, what your expectations are. And in the lack of incentives. In the absence of incentives, communication can fill a portion of that void. But the best way to get your reps to do the things that they need to do, to do the things that you want them to do, is to incentivize them to do so. Feel free to get creative here. It doesn’t have to be money. If you do have a situation where you are handcuffed, you don’t have the ability to change the comp plan and get creative. Be a good leader. Do something to inspire your team. That’s what good leaders do. But make no mistake, if there is no expectation that is clearly communicated and understood, you’re not going to get the new accounts that you want. The rest of your strategy is just hoping that your reps are going to do the right thing and that is not a good one for sustainable growth.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Jeff and ultimately, links to the rest of this series, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1271. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!