How to Optimise Your Team’s Results
It is no secret that Zig Ziglar was my personal mentor for a few years. He was a LEGEND in our industry. He reached millions and millions of people and has a lot of famous stories.
My favorite sales-related story that Zig used to tell is the pump.
You just have to Google it. If you can’t though, let me tell you about it!
So, he cranks this pump and talks about all the work it takes to get water out of a well and how that works.
That story gave us two one-liners that he had about sales that I always loved.
One was on how to answer the “I want to pray about it” objection, and incidentally, highlight the importance of motivation.
When it comes to supporting your team, there’s basically two types of ways. There’s like two high level things you’re going to do to support your team.
The Two Types of Support Your Team Needs
Zig used to say “people always complain that I’m a motivational speaker. They say that motivation doesn’t last.”
So, someone would ask him “Why would I waste my time motivating my team?” And Zig would always say: “That’s right. Motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing, which is why I suggest that you do it every day”.
So, one of your roles is motivation.
Motivational support is the mental side, the emotional side. It’s the feelings. It’s the inspiration.
It’s about helping your team overcome rejection, even if they’re doing great and leads are coming to them.
The other role you have is providing educational support.
Educational support is knowledge, information, and technical training.
It’s all about how to complete tasks to mitigate uncertainty.
And you, as the sales manager, have got to do both.
The most common mistake sales managers make is that they train their people once and assume that they’re done.
Which is why I prefer the term support to training.
Why the Term “Support”?
Support is ongoing. It’s perpetual. It’s continual.
It’s why sales management is a full-time focus and a full-time job because you’re leading people.
And when you look at training them, you shouldn’t just provide training on how to be better at your business.
You need to provide training on how to be a better person, and this is true about all leadership. You become a better leader by being a better person, but specifically in the role of sales.
The more they invest in personal development, the better they will do at sales.
You should always make sure that your team has access to the best training. You have to put the tools in front of them, you’ve got to help them do it.
What needs to be done?
First of all, there’s personal development.
How can we help mentor them in their spiritual lives or the mindset stuff?
What about family and relationships?
Did you know: If people are suffering at home, it carries over into their work life.
You also want to help people with fitness and health, like nutrition and energy.
Or productivity training, like teaching them how to manage their time, teaching them how to use calendars, teaching them how to use the tools of the day, and then finances and money.
Now, you might be wondering: why do I have to teach these people about money?
Because no one else has taught them about it!
No one has taught them how to balance a checkbook, how to get out of debt, or the difference between term insurance and whole insurance. They don’t know what a 401K is!
So you’ve got to teach them about these things.
Remember: A financially unstable salesperson is a risky salesperson.
If they’re so desperate financially, they’re not serving your prospects’ best interest on the phone.
And then you need to teach your salesperson about leadership, sales, and all of your systems training.
You need to have a follow-up drip sequence of how to use the CRM.
Just like you would have a drip sequence on a prospect, you’re going to create drip sequences for training: Here’s how we set up a new customer, here’s how we input the order, here’s how our membership Pro System works, here’s how we use Outlook and here’s how we use Slack.
You’ve got to train them on that.
And of course, let’s not forget customer service training.
Oh my goodness, people don’t know anything about customer service.
And by the way, if they’ve never stayed at a Ritz Carlton, spent $500 on a meal, they never bought a Rolls Royce…
How are they going to deliver world-class service to your people, if they’ve never been taught it and they’ve never experienced it?
They literally don’t know. That’s Another job for you.
You’ve got to create these processes, and then on-the-job training of the actual job itself. Like recordings to demonstrate.
Training is more than important, especially if you don’t have a lot of money, and you’re hiring young people.
You’ve got to train them on how to do it all!
