Episode 9: How to Build a High Performing Sales Team that Actually Delivers

Foreign hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world World of B2B Sales Management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to become build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop your super powered B2B sales teams. Today is a series or the first in a series of podcasts that I've really been looking forward to because for me, there's few more important building blocks to an organization's success than essentially the performance of their sales team. And there's this quote that I have looked at and looked at and looked at and have always struggled to comprehend it, and that's that why are only 52% of sales leaders confident that they have a good understanding of what good looks like for their sales roles? Now, I had to read that because you really want to get it right, but it's a quote that published out of Korn Ferrian. For me, when there's such importance in the success of your sales team, why only half of the sales leaders around the world are confident that they actually know what good performance or good results or good engagement look like for their sales roles really staggers me. But once you sit back and you have a think about it, the answer is actually quite simple for me, and that's that salespeople have such a huge depth and range of skills, like building relationships, like thinking on their feet, like being compelling or being able to influence people, being able to challenge a customer to think differently about their process, being able to work with numbers, showing resilience, showing persistence, engaging a plan B or a plan C or a plan D when the first strategy doesn't land, or being technically proficient, or negotiating, learning when they can and in essence when they will negotiate, and even things like understanding that there's multiple decision makers in a deal process or influence, or even multiple decision makers internally that they need to influence. So it's such a huge depth of Skills. This is a really difficult bunch of people to lead because these type of skills and this engagement levels, they naturally lend themselves to people with higher IQs, of course. And these people, and even if it's higher EQ on top of that iq, these people are wanting to be involved in or us people are wanting to be involved in team strategies, in day to day operations, having a say in the direction that an organization or at the very least a department moves in. So the complexity to leading these types of teams is very difficult. So it makes sense to me why 48% of sales leaders actually aren't confident that they have an understanding of what good looks like for their team because it's quite difficult and complex to master. Of course that means that that sales leader role, it is so critical to the performance of an organization. So being able to get this right, those sales leaders who can actually nail what good looks like in their teams, that can actually build a process that leads to a high performing team, they are the types of leaders that succeed. So how do we build that environment so that environment of performance without stifling creativity or reducing engagement or even taking away the ability for people's individual approaches to shine? For me, that comes down to what we're talking about today and it's all about responsibility. So building responsibility into teams and accountability to our systems and processes. Responsibility, so responsibility, that's if you look at someone like a John Whitmore's learning, that's all about a positive and proactive approach to our roles, whereas accountability is more of a reactive approach to our systems and processes. So for me, the leaders that can really succeed, and we're going to go through it terrific model in a couple of minutes. But the leaders that can really succeed are all about those who can embrace responsibility and accountability and embed that into their teams. So we're seeing four key habits that are consistently driving the success of sales leaders globally. The first one is a sales process. So we've been through this in some of our earlier episodes this year, whether it be five steps or nine steps, but essentially a process around lead generation, meet and greet, needs analysis, quotation and presentation closing, which often includes negotiations and objection handling. And then the post sale key account management leaders that have that down pat are absolutely starting to build that responsibility, that positive and proactive responsibility into their teams. The second thing we're seeing is that leaders that we work with who embrace essentially four key levers for peak performance. Now they certainly don't note these down as four key levers, but we see it really consistently come through their team's performance that if they can embrace four key levers or essentially three key levers to then get the fourth lever to work, they're really succeeding. And we're going to go through that today. We call it the teamstepped model. But stay with me for a minute and we'll get to it very shortly. The third area, we're seeing people or sales leaders who succeed. The types of process that they're embedding is a very clear, concise and repeatable measurement model. So we have a three box model that we use with our teams. There's lots of different types of measurement models around the world, but those sales leaders that have consistency in measurement and that their teams know what they're measuring, absolutely succeeding in this type of environment. And last but not least, sales leaders who are able to drive responsibility and accountability into their teams and essentially the 52% of people that know what good looks like for their sales teams, they have a really strong focus on training. So that's a long term focus on coaching and accountability from that training. So let me go through those four again before we get into what we're all about today. Sales leaders that we see succeeding globally, they're building sales processes into their team. They're focusing on three, leading to a fourth key lever for peak performance measurement. They have a measurement tool that's really clear and concise and they have a long term focus on training, particularly a training approach that's around coaching. So those that get the above right, they tend to have their high performing teams follow. And then of course, things like a great culture, long term tenure and high engagement scores tend to come with that as well. Okay, so today I've gone through those four areas, those four key habits that we consistently see sales leaders who are successful in building high performing teams achieve. But the second one, I was really loose in that definition, pardon me. And they're those four key levers for peak performance. So we've actually built a model around those four key levers and we've been able to pull it together into some areas and essentially present a model around it where sales leaders can thrive. We call it the team step model. I'm really excited. It's a new name for the model and we've got some great resources coming with it shortly. But essentially the teamstep model is all about ensuring that we have a team who's focused on the letters of the of the word step. So the team is focused on S for strategy, T for talent, E for energy. And P for peak performance. So we call it the TeamStepp playbook. So we have a team that's focused on strategy, talent, energy, which delivers peak performance. So how do they all combine together? Well, the strategy, talent and energy pillars, if we get them right, or levers, they lead to the typical peak performance indicators that we see from teams. High engagement, great close rates, effective movement through the sales cycle, teams that stay together, teams that learn internal cohesion between businesses, and then the final piece around hitting budgets, particularly revenue, but even more importantly around profit. So if you can get one or two of those right, we see teams often are successful. So get your strategy right, get your talent right, and we often see the teams are succeeding. But we know that when teams get strategy, talent and energy right, they almost form an irrepressible team environment that sets them up for that ongoing peak performance. We love it. We think it's an amazing model or an amazing playbook that sales team should be building or sales leaders should be building their processes from. And we're going to share it. In fact, we're actually sharing the whole model for free. So we're doing it through the podcast series. There's going to be some great resources that come out with it and we just think that it's too strong a playbook to keep in the dark. So we can't wait to get it out there. So stick with us. Today we're going to talk about introducing the model and then over the next three or four weeks, we're going to start to look at a real deep dive into strategy, into talent and then into energy. So let's get into today. So today we're going to focus on the top end definitions. So let's look at strategy first. Strategy is the one that most teams tend to find a little bit easier because they're quite defined in what they do. It's generally a process that you look at once yearly, and you tend to review it half yearly or quarterly. So it's not omnipresent in terms of your day to day actions, but it certainly can be embedded in as a system, symbol and norm of your business. So what is the strategy lever in the TeamSTEPPS playbook include? Well, it includes things, and we'll talk about a couple here, three or four here, but there's really, there's about 18 of them that we've diarised and we've noted really consistently through teams that we work with. But let's look at a couple. They're things like your key target markets, your key target Geographies. Who are you going after, what type of targets you're looking at within your markets? Are you an IT business that has a great SaaS solution but you need a critical mass of at least 200 employees in a business? Or are you a manufacturing business that needs to target companies with certain types of products that they sell into the market or certain types of property that they have? Or are you a service based business that is really looking for customers who are having the same problems in growth or in processes or in building their team in an efficient manner? Then there's things like your pricing strategy. So how do we price our products or how do we price our services? And these are things like whether or not value based pricing is going to work for you or if you're building your pricing based off a competitor stat, which to be frank, often isn't the most successful way, but certainly value based pricing or really truly building your pricing up off what the market will bear. Things like a sales process. So important. We've already seen it as one of the four key pillars, but it definitely comes in under the strategy, your sales technology stack. So this is beyond the quoting and marketing tools and includes your key technology enablers like video messaging software, those type of technology levers that are really important in delivering your product or service. And then the strategy part of the TeamSTEPPS playbook even goes as far to talk about things like your communication templates. So where do you have predefined templates that we use with our teams to make sure that they get a consistent message across to customers? So things as simple as email templates but all the way through to more advanced quoting tools. So TeamSTEPPS playbook part one of S is strategy. Part two we're moving into talent. Talent generally also makes sense. It's the skills and capabilities that you have within your team. Now that doesn't mean the skills and capabilities that you've recruited in. You know, you're a basketball team, you have had terrific ability to go to the recruitment table and you've been able to bring in starting five super high end talent with a pretty solid bench coming behind. It doesn't tend to happen right. This is the talent that's partially recruited, it's partially developed within your business and often you'll find that it has a blend of both that actually drives the most successful teams. So the more experienced team leading the younger team and some of the energy from the younger team rubbing off on the more experienced team. But for me, talent, it's something you tend to have A monthly program about. So you're not looking at it every day, but you're certainly looking at it more than you'd be looking at, say, your strategic elements of the TeamStep playbook. So the talent part of TeamStepp includes such things as the sales skills that are required in the team. Are they hunters, are they farmers, are they inbound, are they outbound? Right. It's your training program, how you build a training program, how you consistently apply on the type of content, things like negotiation principles and delegations. What can people have some delegation in making decisions around and what can't they. When and how do we leverage technical support or industry support? Right. Self learning. Do we have a program for our teams to be embarking on? A self learning program? Coaching templates, one to one templates. Right. The talent piece is all around recruiting and building talent and really fostering it to become a long term structural key core of your business. And those teams that we see really heavily investing in the talent. So the s of the TeamSTEPPS playbook we're seeing, that's a really key part of their future success. Okay, so TeamSTEPPS playbook, the team's looking at S for strategy and the team's looking at T for talent. E E stands for energy. And this is the type of area of the TeamSTEPPS playbook where you are focusing weekly, if not daily. This is all about the cadence of the team, the energy they bring, how hard they're working, where they're focusing, is it in the right spot, are they working efficiently? Right. And it's more than just how they turn up to work. It's more than just the effort they put in. There's a whole combination that brings out energy in a team. And as sales leaders, we've certainly seen how evident it is when the energy's up and how evident it is when the energy's down and just the significance of impact it can have on the team. We'll define energy a little bit later. I'll go through the episodes in a minute. But these are things like your rules of engagement within your team, what you'll be known for, external communications, internal communications, how you treat these type of stakeholders. It's the personal network plans or growth plans that the team have around, things like social media, networking, the partners that they work with, it's deal reviews, the support that we provide to our sales team to make sure that they're learning in situ and within their deal cycles, but also getting support from the rest of the team to make sure they're landing projects and giving them every chance of succeeding. It's what do we do about post sale referral processes? When do we abandon a sales process? How do we have difficult conversations in the team? And again, much like strategy, there's a core of about 18 items in the energy playbook that we think really leads to high performing teams. So there's a bit in the TeamSTEPPS playbook, right? We have S for strategy, T for talent, E for energy, leading to P, which is peak performance. And I don't think we'll go into peak performance really too much more because it's essentially about a measurement metric. But certainly over the coming weeks, I'll continue to talk about team performance or peak performance, but when we have a look at that playbook, we know that when those three elements, the strategy, the talent and the energy, are all humming and combining well, we are giving ourselves every chance and every likelihood of having peak performance within our team. What I will say is that there's about 18 items within each of these strategy, talent and energy levers or buckets. We don't typically see teams get all 18, right? And to be honest, all 18 don't actually apply to every business that we work with. But we know that when teams across the three levers are getting the majority, the 65, 70, 75, 80% of this right within each of those buckets, they're really giving themselves that chance to succeed. Part of the TeamSTEPPS, in fact, a critical part of the TeamSTEPPS is making sure that the sales leaders are driving the development and execution of everything within the playbook. And there's a few recommendations and a few things that we know work consistently well for sales leaders to be able to allow them to succeed in building out this teamstep playbook. And there's seven of those I'll go through now. First and foremost is that they use it as a framework. So the TeamSTEPPS playbook, it's not gospel, but it's a fantastic set of guiding principles that come together to form your strategic plan. So it's certainly not the word document where you or the PowerPoint presentation where you move through section by section. What's our vision? What's our mission? What are we going to be known for? Who are we targeting? Right? That often sterile type of strategic planning session that we see teams and we've all been a part of over the years. But it's much more of a dynamic process where we openly, from the start, talk through with our teams around the levers that will develop peak performance and really build our strategies around it so they use it as a framework and they really get the team to buy in. Right. So importantly, and this is the second part, number two is that the team come together to build out the steps in that playbook. The third part is allowing time for ideation. It's a critical part of strategic planning. We have ideation meetings and we have decision making meetings. So ideation meetings are those meetings where you don't need to have an end outcome. It's about setting aside the time to let the brain work and to creatively bring together ideas, allow everyone to contribute and really explore what can happen. The decision making meetings clearly generally come after ideation meetings and are all about making decisions and action items. But the third part of making a great success at this teamstep playbook is to allow time for ideation. Number four is picking a few key areas from each lever to focus on first. You can't focus on everything, so get a few right, review them, pick another few, get them right, review them and continue in that circular motion. Number five, review the Playbook quarterly. Make it lots of fun. And we see teams really engaging in this review process rather than seeing it as that chore. Number six, build a metric that you can measure your team off consistently. So it's a metric that's simple enough for everyone to sign up to, but broad enough that it encompasses what you're trying to achieve after this series. So once we get through the TeamSTEPPS playbook, we have a terrific measurement model that we're going to run through. Super simple, but clinical in indicating how your team's performing. Last but not least, number seven, give yourself some room to get it right. Give yourself some room and some understanding that you're unlikely to have everything tied up in a beautiful bow. If you can get to 70, 75% achievement across the Playbook without excluding some of your key items like sales processes and so forth, then you'll be well on your way. I think you'll really set yourself up to succeed. So to make life easy, we're actually launching a resource that you're able to download. Of course we'll have the session notes from this podcast, but we've actually got a beautiful editable playbook that our podcast listeners can download for free that you'll be able to get your hands on at the end of this podcast series. So we'll keep reminding you we won't forget, but don't worry too much if you haven't been able to take everything down that we've gone through. Okay, so time to take a breath. That was another episode with a lot of information in there. So as I said a minute ago, if you couldn't get everything down, jump onto the show notes in your own time. They're also on the website www.stringser salesteamswithan s.com and even more importantly, if you actually download it from the podcast notes and you get your hands on our free resource, but you still want a little bit more help, please feel free to book in a discovery call with us all the information that we're sharing on the podcast. It's about the what do we need to do? But of course, during discovery calls we're happy to dive a lot deeper into the how. The first call's free, so contact us through the website or DM me directly and we'll be able to set them up for you. So over the next month or so, we're going to dive deep into each of these three levers of the TeamSTEPPS playbook. So peak performance being the fourth lever in the outcome, we're gonna dive into the Teamstepps strategy, talent and energy parts of the Playbook. Once that's completed, we'll have a free how to guide that'll go into the detail of this TeamSTEPPS playbook. So it'll be a really handy piece for you to use within your team. It will be editable so you can get out and use it practically within your team. If you wanna be on the list for when it gets launched, just DM me teamstep on any of the social platforms, we're on all of them. I think you've heard before on LinkedIn. We're on Instagram, we're on TikTok. You can get us all through the website. But flick that across now if you want to be on the list for when it comes out and we'll get it straight to you. But importantly, before we finish up today, health and fitness, it's on every podcast. I'd like to make sure that we can give a tip for people no matter how small it is. But today's a fantastic piece of advice. I was given about five years ago and I was provided this advice when I was really struggling. Physically, I was fit, I was super fit, still playing representative level water polo, swimming competitively and doing triathlons. But mentally and emotionally I was really battling and I was battling with the demons that came with a surge of problems. So whilst the problems may have been small, just the sheer number of issues that were coming my way was Increasing my cognitive capacity. So the bit of advice that I had was to think about the impact that the problems would have on my life in the future. So would it be a problem in 10 minutes time, would it be a problem in days time, Would it still be a problem or having an impact in my life in a week's time or a month's time, or one year's time, or a decade out? And invariably, 99% of the problems were really short term. They were a few hours or a day or even a week, some of them stretching out to a month. And the advice I was given was solve that problem and give it everything you can to solve it, but exert the amount of mental worry to that problem that is corresponding to the impact it will have on your life. Really powerful. Give it the energy, not the energy to solve, but the energy and time and space in your head that matches the impact it will have on your life. So if it's a small problem, small worries, and that really helped me. It didn't solve all my problems, but I found myself regularly pulling myself up from putting too much emotional energy into problems that didn't deserve it. So, nice little tip. It's called the sphere of influence. Look it up, see what you can find online. But I love using it. I still use it today. So that's it. We've gone through the first part of the TeamSTEPPS playbook. We've identified it as one of the four key areas of sales process. The TeamSTEPPS playbook, a great measurement metric and a training and coaching program. One of the four key habits that successful sales leaders employ. Fantastic and powerful tool for you to put into your repertoire and we'll continue to dive into it in future weeks. But until next time, keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Thanks everyone. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're ongernga sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales teams.