It’s not always easy to hold your sales team accountable. You might experience anxiety as you anticipate uncomfortable conversations. However, high-performing teams make time to develop a system of team accountability. How can you learn to hold your team accountable? Sales and marketing executive Jon Birdsong says there are four hacks to keep everyone moving forward.

In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we share Birdsong’s strategies for increasing sales team accountability.

1. Identify key metrics that drive reps’ daily behavior. Many sales managers focus only on end-goal sales metrics — pipeline, revenue, ops created, etc. Birdsong says that while these are great for keeping track of the health and effectiveness of your team overall, they’re not as good at identifying the daily success and progress of an individual rep. When focusing on team accountability, you need to identify the metrics that identify daily success, notes Birdsong. Even the best salespeople in the world don’t close every deal. Focus on what you can control — their daily tasks and numbers.

2. Make your key metrics crystal clear. For daily behavior metrics to increase team accountability you need transparency, according to Birdsong. Transparency means that you and your reps need to be clear on what the daily metrics are, what the overall goal is and how they stack up to their teammates. Birdsong says your metrics must be clear, but they also need to be easy to track. If it’s difficult to enter your key metrics into your CRM, it will be difficult to create a culture of transparency and accountability.

3. Create a rhythm for qualitative feedback. Birdsong encourages sales leaders to look beyond data. Instead, make time to answer the why and how questions:

  • Why are you prioritizing these deals?
  • Why are you prospecting these leads?
  • Why are you following up with these prospects?
  • Why are you crushing quota or struggling?
  • How can we create better results?
  • How can we generate stronger leads?
  • How can we have better conversations?
  • How can we close more deals?
  • How can we crush quota?

Birdsong says you can only get this information by conversing with your sales reps. Schedule regular one-on-ones or send weekly emails. However you do it, make sure you take the time to dig deeper and find out the story behind the data.

4. Follow up like a boss. Don’t forget about the follow-up. Birdsong says this is one of the most overlooked parts of team accountability. Have you had a meeting or one-on-one and not remembered a thing from the week or month before? If so, you’re not alone. Birdsong this happens all the time, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. You can automate follow-up with your sales development software and schedule follow-up reminders on your calendar. Birdsong says that when you get into a weekly scheduled rhythm of follow-up, you’ll be in the top percentile of sales managers.

If you want to see your team exceed goals quarter after quarter, try implementing the four hacks above.

Compiled by Audrey Sellers

Source: Jon Birdsong is a sales and marketing executive and a writer for the Sales Hacker blog.