In this video Adam Bensman addresses the common problem of sales performance dropping when owners or sales leaders are not physically present with their teams. He attributes the fluctuation to the Hawthorne effect – the tendency for people to work harder when they know they are being observed. Bensman outlines a simple, repeatable system that can be deployed immediately to sustain high performance without micromanagement. The system is part of his GIT (Get It Together) operating framework and relies on a company‑wide communication platform (e.g., Slack) with two core daily rituals: a "Most Important Thing" (MIT) check‑in at the start of the day and an end‑of‑day sales report that tracks concrete metrics such as doors knocked, appointments generated, deals closed, and dollar value. By making these data points visible to the whole team, the Hawthorne effect is recreated, fostering public accountability, enabling targeted coaching, and giving leadership a real‑time pulse on sales activity. Bensman recommends adopting the Slack‑based channels, standardizing the MIT and sales‑report formats, and using the resulting data to identify performance gaps (e.g., wrong neighborhoods, timing, or pitch). He concludes by inviting viewers to join the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance (RSRA) community for deeper support.
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This is the easiest fix for inconsistent sales performance, especially if you're an owner or a sales leader and you notice that when you're out in the field with your team or when you're checking in on a regular basis, they're performing really well. But if you get busy or maybe you're even on vacation, you're not out there with them, then performance really drops and you're wondering like, who's working and who's not and why aren't the numbers coming in, coming in the way they were when you were more actively involved. Well, there's a reason for it, a studied reason called the Hawthorne effect, and I'll be sharing more with you on that in this video to give you a really simple system you can roll out literally effective right after this video to keep that consistent high performance from your team without changing really a whole lot. My name is Adam Bensman. Welcome or welcome back, and these are the kinds of conversations that we have inside the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance private community. In fact, something like this just came up recently. And this practice that I'm about to share with you is something I learned from Cody Landels, one of our mentors who built and sold Reimagine Roofing doing some very innovative stuff selling roofs over the phone. So, here's the deal. When people are observed, they perform better. And this has been studied in this concept called the Hawthorne effect. And what happened is there was an experiment done. I don't even remember the year. But you could look it up. Google the Hawthorne effect in the history. In a factory and they wanted to check if different lighting would change the output of the factory workers. And then it did. But then they realized it wasn't actually the lighting, it was the fact that the factory workers were being observed by their supervisors and the folks who were running the experiment. So, they ended up calling it the Hawthorne Effect because what they discovered is that humans by nature perform at a higher level, end up actually in this factory setting following safety protocols and having better output when they were observed. So later on, it was Jonah Berger in the book Invisible Influence. They did a similar experiment where someone went out in the morning for a jog and no one was around and they simply measured the pace or the speed at which that person jogged. And then the next day the person went out for a jog again and they planted an actor across the street walking a dog. Now this is someone they didn't even know, just another civilian walking a dog. And the results were shocking. Well, maybe not. The person that was out for a jog ran faster Why? Because of the Hawthorne effect. Because they were being observed. So, you might be wondering how you could roll out the concept of the Hawthorne effect to drive the performance of your team without micromanaging or having to be out in the field. And that's what I'll be sharing with you right now. In fact, this is part of the GIT system. GIT stands for Get It Together. It's an operating system for roofing companies that I put together and I've shared inside the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance. To help companies get control of their companies and then build scalable models in their business, whether it's systems, procedures, but it all starts with what I call your company comms, your communication. And again, this was heavily influenced by Cody. So here's how it works. To get started, you want to get a communication platform that the entire company uses. So if you're just using like a group text, that won't work because everyone's going to get billboard blindness, seeing it over and over again, ding, ding, ding, everything all the time in one place. I like to use Slack. There's dedicated channels, one for sales, general, production, and then the list goes on. So whatever platform you want to use, use it, but I like to use Slack. Now we have our first channel called the MIT, which is the most important thing of the day. And everyone on the team, my team included, posts their MIT. Now, what does this tell you? This tells you two things. One, who's checking in when, so you know when they're up and at it, and two, what it is that they're working on. In the MIT, this most important thing is like, if you went to bed at night, you could only accomplish one thing, what would it be? So, if they're in a sales role, maybe it's getting a deal closed or getting back in touch with this commercial prospect. And if they're in production, it might be getting this project over the finish line. Or if they're in admin, it's like clearing their desk of getting all the permits applied for. So, you know what people are working on. Then at the end of the day, you have the Sales channel. And this is a place for your sales team to report what they did that day. See, the Hawthorne effect is about to take place. If they're out knocking doors, you'll— you will track the following. Number 1, how many doors were knocked? So, they'll self-report it. Number 2, how many appointments they generated? Some people call them inspections or touches. What I'm looking for is how many roofs did you get on? And then number 3 is how many deals did you sign? And you could track this in a dollar amount or or a quantity reporting. And if you're signing contingency agreements, quantity is easier. If you're signing contracts, then of course the dollar amount is easier. And then if you're in the retail sales environment, you'll do appointments run, you'll do— and again, if there's a fourth one you could add in, if they're responsible for self-generating any leads, you could say leads generated. Okay, then deals closed, that'll be a quantity. So if they had 5 appointments that day to be a heck of a workload in the retail space. Then how many deals that they signed and then the dollar value of those sales. So it'd be 3 or 4 numbers on the retail side. And then what you end up creating is this Hawthorne effect that your team will perform at a higher standard because they know that everyone's observing. And it also creates this feeling of public accountability. So when everyone on the team is punching in their numbers, you know, like, well, this person knocked 20 doors and this guy knocked 120. 20, 120 doors, like what's the difference? And it helps from a leadership and coaching perspective so you know who needs help where. And by simply tracking the numbers, you're like, okay, this person's knocking a lot of doors but they're not getting on many roofs. We know it's one of two things. Either they're knocking in the wrong neighborhoods, or three things. They're knocking at the wrong time and no one's home so they can't get in touch with anyone. Or number three, their pitch is terrible. But it'll help you coach them to peak performance. And it gives you, the manager or owner, just a really strong pulse on the company so you can keep an eye on trends and provide feedback throughout your sales team's development. Now, I recommend this to everybody. Get your comms channel set up and do 2 things. There's more to it, but here's the quick version. MIT, what's the most important thing for you to focus on that day? So everyone starts their day with this and then the sales report at the end. Implement this in your business right now and you will solve the inconsistent sales problem for good. It's conversations like this at a high level where we together develop high performance sales teams. So if you want to join us inside the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance, click the link in the description to learn more or go to rsra.org/join.
