NO More Excuses From The Sales Team! Accountability Framework You Need
Adam Bensman walks roofing sales leaders through a seven-step accountability framework to eliminate excuses. The steps move from identifying problems objectively to rating preparedness on a 1-5 scale, then building specific action plans like confirming appointments by 10:00am and recording sales presentations. Leaders must take extreme ownership and follow through with reminders and CRM checks.
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No more excuses from your sales team. It was a bad lead, it was a bad customer, it was a bad crew. In this video, I'm going to teach you a simple seven step framework to rebuild your company culture. Kill excuses for good, and have a culture of accountability and self improvement. Because I know what you're probably going through is that when you get these excuses, you start seeing more and more excuses and then you start wondering, should I just fire this person? They're toxic. I want to start over. And you're dead set on firing them. And then that doubt creeps in and you're like, man crap. They're producing X amount of revenue and I can't replace that revenue. Am I going to be able to find people who actually show up for an interview? People that I can hire that actually want to go to work and people that aren't poisoned by this TikTok get rich quick. And the lost art of actually hustling hard to get something that you've been wanting, like a goal. And then you start questioning everything and you decide not to fire them. But then it doesn't get better. Yeah, it's almost like I've been through this myself. So I hope this seven step framework helps you. And if you're a sales rep who's tuning in, I promise that this framework applies just as much to your own self reflection and personal development. So thanks for joining me in this video. My name is Adam Bensman and everything I do here has a new mission and that's to help you and your team survive and adapt in today's unpredictable and fast changing times. So let's rock and roll into today's video. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. All right, before I teach you the seven step framework to use to kill excuses and increase accountability, I want to talk about why this is happening. And it's called the Pygmalion effect. And that is the rising or falling of expectations in comparison to others around us. So in other words, you get what you accept. And it's amazing how many roofing company owners or sales managers or general managers I talk to that are like, I can't get my team to do this or if I tell them to do this, it won't happen. I was like, well, if you accept that behavior, you're going to get that behavior. And it's really hard to upright the ship. I get it. Change can lead to people turning over. In fact, it often does. Because when you redirect the ship and let's say you switch from 1099 to W2, you increase your standards, you introduce a quota, there are folks that won't like it and, and that can result in churn. But what you have to do is make a choice to continually lower the bar of Pygmalion effect and have this toxic culture or make this pivot and take extreme ownership yourself. Yes. Thank you. Jocko Willink. Great book. Read it. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Great read for all leaders and the team. So now that we know that this is happening, because you have accepted it and I'm not placing blame, I'm speaking objectively, this is a great opportunity to say, hey, you're right. But now because I own it, I can take responsibility for fixing it. So now let's get into this seven step framework. Hey, I'll make this quick. My goal is to help you win big. So now you can get free one on one coaching advice from my brand new AI clone. That's right. You can call, text and even video chat with me. So click the link in the description and check it out right now. All right. First I'm going to go through these one by one so we can build upon it and then I'm going to summarize them at the end. Okay. Before we get too deep, it's important that we lay the groundwork that this will require you challenging your salespeople. So when they make the excuse it was a bad lead, a bad homeowner or a bad crew, we don't fight them. We introduce, hey, I just want to walk through this new seven step framework with you so we can have a culture of accountability and self improvement. Okay? So I'm going to ask you some questions and we're going to challenge them. Number one, we need to identify the problem objectively. This is where you're going to need to keep salespeople on target. Because if you ask them these questions, oftentimes they're going to go off the rails into excusitis land. So for this example I'm going to say that there was a lead that they ran and the homeowner wasn't there. So the excuse is what? It was a bad lead and you wasted my time. And they get mad sometimes at you or the lead gen service but they have no accountability. It's excuse. Itis. It's a bad lead. So let's identify the problem keyword objectively. What happened? The homeowner wasn't there. That's the objective identification of the problem. Number two, why did it happen? Why did it happen? Now, this is where we start to have a conversation again. You're going to need to challenge your salesperson, say, well, it's because the lead source is crap and this has happened before. And these guys that are setting the leads, and every time I get a cold call lead, this is what happens. And no, that's not why. That's your feelings. And feelings aren't facts. Sadly not sadly. Truthfully. And again, I'm a salesperson. This applies to me, too. We're emotional and we jump to conclusions. So we need to just reel them back in, say, no, objectively, why did it happen? Now, let's say that the answer to this is, well, we never confirmed the appointment. It's that simple. Was the appointment confirmed? And then again, the salespeople that want to go on excuses. Well, it was when they set it up. No, no, no, no. Were they reminded and was it confirmed the day before? Just like when you have a haircut scheduled through your barber, if you're using one of those apps, or when you go to the dentist, people confirm appointments to make sure people show up. Okay, so that's why. Were they. Were they reminded? The answer is no. Okay, which brings me to question number three. What can you control in this situation? What can you control? So in this example, the sales rep could have had control of reminding the homeowner the day before what is outside their control. This is number four. Number four, what is outside of the control? That is whether or not the homeowner actually shows up at their own home. Meaning, are they there? Okay, so that's pretty much it. In this scenario, that's the only thing they couldn't control. All right, which brings me to number five. On a scale of one to five, how prepared were you for for this situation? And just rank it. One is, I wasn't prepared at all. And five, I was completely prepared. And again, you want to challenge them because, well, I showed up on time. So cool. Three then, right? You're prepared. But we know that the root cause of why is because they weren't reminded. So now we're going to get into number six. Number six is our action plan. Okay, what is the action plan? To prevent this from happening again or to prepare us in the future. Now, this is where it will take some specificity in our leadership. Meaning what we don't want to hear is I'll try harder or I'll remind them next time, because that doesn't mean a Plan. How do you hold someone accountable to, I'll try harder. You can't. But for many leaders it's like, great. Well, I had that, that conversation with them and I reprimanded them and they're going to try harder next time. No, no. And I'll remind them next time isn't a plan. A plan is objectively 1, 2, 3 steps that you could say, did you do this? Yes or no. So it would be something along those lines. The plan is every day you are calling, emailing and texting your appointments for the next day to confirm them. And that will occur by 10:00am so you're, by 10 in the morning, you're calling all your appointments for the next day, call, text or email and you're going to remind them of the appointment and confirm it. Okay, you go one step further. We put together a call script. Hey, this is Adam with RSRA. I'm confirming your application call tomorrow at 11am if anything changes your schedule, please do let me know. Otherwise, I am super excited to see you. Can't wait to Meet see at 11. All right, and then we send a text and then we send an email. And this way when you go to hold them accountable, it's did you call, did you text, did you email? Did you do it by 10am because if it's, oh yeah, I called them, but they only called and left a voicemail at 7:30 at night. That, that's not following the plan. That's not good enough. That's why we need specificity. So your goal is to outline those action steps. Okay. And again, get granular with it. Break it down to one, two or three things and make it as specific and measurable as possible. Which then brings us to number seven. And that is the accountability part. That's for you to follow through. So on these steps as an example, I would set a reminder, let's say for the next three days. By the way, you can even pre schedule the text to the sales rep that says, hey, Mikey, and did you follow up with your customers today? Or if you have hopefully everything tracked through your CRM, you look at their activity and you say, okay, they called all their appointments, they emailed, they texted or they didn't. And if this is a few other steps, maybe it's requiring them to go through some training because they had a customer cancel. If we said, hey, the customer canceled, it was a bad, bad homeowner. Well, again, let's run through this under the scenario that was a bad home homeowner, what was the problem? They canceled. That's objectively why did it happen? They got a cheaper bid. Okay, great. What can you control? And that is setting clear expectations, being a stronger salesperson, letting them know that they could find cheaper estimates and caution them as to why they shouldn't go through with an estimate from someone else who can do it cheaper. All right. And then another thing they could do is stay in touch with the homeowner throughout the process. After you get the contract signed to keep them excited, have purchase validation, remind them about next steps. All right, number four, what can't you control? Whether or not they cancel. But I want to focus on what we can control first. Then again, number five on a scale of one to five, how prepared for you were you for this situation? And again, many sales reps are going to say, oh I was prepared, you know, I did what I said I was going to do. Which oftentimes they don't. Which is why it is really important to use recording software for the sales appointment so you actually see what's being said, not what they think is being said. So anyway, we can analyze on the scale of 1 to 5 how prepared they actually were. And then we can get into number six, which is the action plan. And the action plan is going to be I want you to do a mock presentation video and send it to me to review exactly how you do it in the home or we're going to do role play together or you're going to use let's say Xero or whatever softwares of your of your choosing to record the sales point in the house and audit it to spot the issues to that's causing people to cancel because they don't have the clear expectations. And then number seven is a follow through for you, the manager to go through it. So there you have it, the seven steps to stop excuses for good. Rebuild the culture of accountability and self improvement. Keep the people you have so you can dominate in today's fast changing and unpredictable times. If you want to join me and other experts like Daeshaun Bryant, John Cenac, Cody Landles and Jim Allein, along with a group of value aligned contractors in the trenches to do exercises like this literally every single day, then click the link in the description right now to learn more about applying to join our sra. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you in the next video.
