Ryan Dohrn explains how to fix reps missing sales goals: track activity in a CRM to model top performers, switch from punishment to short-term rewards like gift cards for specific behaviors, and use longer-term perks like remote Fridays that your team actually wants.
What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and to the video blog. Love to have you up to date each and every week. Next listener question comes from Terry down in Dallas. Hey, Terry. Terry's question is, Ryan, simply put, my reps are not meeting their goals. Any advice? What should I do? So, Terry, thanks for your question. And for all the sales reps out there that are listening, hey, don't be hating on me for talking about these things because your manager wants you to be at goal. It benefits them, benefits you, benefits the company. We all should want to be at goal, but more than anything, we should all want to be over goal as well. So, Terry from Dallas, here's what I would encourage you to consider. Number one, I hope that you're using some type of CRM, some type of customer relationship management tool. Now, I would encourage you to choose a CRM that has some type of scorecard that's built in, meaning the number of emails that have been recorded for a rep, the number of phone calls, number of meetings, number of proposals, 'cause I wanna track that activity. Find somebody in your organization that's a really good seller and then kinda look at their activity. What does it take? What is it taking for them to be successful? Now, if you've got a rep that's new in business, it's obviously gonna take more. Go back and watch the videos that I've taught about sales math, those types of things. You need to know how many prospects that you need. All right, so use some type of CRM. That's the first thing. The second thing is incentivizing positive sales behaviors, Terry. So if you need people to be making phone calls to book meetings, you want to incentivize the positive behavior. Instead, what we typically do is we penalize somebody You know, we put them in sort of in, you know, jail, sales jail, when they don't make enough calls or don't send enough emails. Instead, look at your collective team and say something like, hey guys, we know, or hey friends, we know that each of us needs to make about 20 calls a day if we're going to get to our meeting goal. So the first person to get to 20 outbound calls this week is going to get a $25 Amazon card, or the first person to get to 30 is going to get a $50 Amazon card. At the end of the week, the person who has the most accurate notes in the CRM is gonna get a $25 Amazon card or a $20 Starbucks card or whatever it is. Now, I recognize that not everybody likes these type of incentives, but whatever it is, incentivizing positive sales behaviors is something that will benefit you long-term. Now, for me, I'd much prefer to eat or drink, just as an example. So you could say, hey, if everybody on the team has the CRM updated and gets to 25 outbound calls by Wednesday, after work I'm buying the first round of drinks and appetizers down the street at our favorite watering hole. Those types of, types of fun things that we could do. Or if everybody's at the goal for proposals submitted by the end of the week, we're gonna all leave work. Everybody, not just sales, everybody's leaving work at noon. And incentivize everybody to help. the sales team. Incentivizing positive sales behaviors rather than just constantly punishing people is something that's gonna really be helpful long-term. The last thing I'd share with you, Terry, is that could be way more than compensation. See, a lot of times we're always thinking in terms of money with salespeople, and I'm not saying money's not important. Hey, I like money just like everybody else. But what I am saying is that maybe you wanna consider what are some of the incentives beyond just short-term, like longer-term incentives that would cause people to react differently. For it, like for example, if the sales team is at goal, we're not gonna— we're gonna work remotely on Fridays. Or if the sales team is at goal, everybody's gonna go have a barbecue out on the lake on Friday afternoon, or whatever it needs. I'm not really talking contests per se. Instead, I'm talking about incentivizing the behaviors that you need from somebody to get them excited. Now, if you don't know what it's gonna take to get them excited, just ask. Like, hey, we need to step up our sales game. What would it take to get you guys excited about something? And just ask, and you'll be surprised, Terry, the number of things that people come back with that you never even thought of. For example, I used to give away the prime parking spot, my spot right outside the front door, to whoever had the most meetings for the week or whoever had the most proposals submitted. I didn't usually base success on total sales. 'Cause a lot of times that was the exact same person. So think about incentivizing the positive behaviors, Terry, that you need from your salespeople. The other need from your— more training, you know, who knows? Oh, I know a good trainer that could help you. Reach out to me. Always happy to help. Hey, thanks for your question, Terry. Thanks for all the questions that were submitted this month to ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Reach out to you if you need some motivation to get your team pumped up over at ryandohrn.com. All right, keep those questions coming. We'll see you next week.
