I am in the middle of reading the bestselling book, The Orange Revolution. Based on a 350,000 person study by the Best companies Group, authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, share the drivers and characteristics of high performing teams.
I found myself thoroughly enjoying Chapter Seven titled: Cheer Up. There are two reasons this particular chapter resonated with me. The first is that I worked for the largest cheerleading organization in the world for ten years—I get cheering! Second, SalesLeadership teaches Emotional Intelligence skills and one of the EI skills found in top sales producers is optimism. We know that happiness produces bottom line sales results.
So how do you get your sales organization to cheer and become one of these top producing teams? It’s easier than you think.
#1: Choose teamwork as one of your core values. Many CEO’s and sales managers still accept bad sales behavior from their team such as salespeople competing with one another and not sharing best practices. C’mon folks, your salespeople should be competing with external competitors, not internal. When a sales organization does not have teamwork as a core value, good ideas are not shared, and mentoring doesn’t occur and as a result, true revenue potential is never reached. Top performing sales teams are made of highly competitive salespeople. They compete with themselves on achieving their personal best while still contributing to the team.
#2: Expect, inspect and measure. There is an old saying, “What gets inspected and measured gets done.” Establish a metric for cheering at your sales organization. When you get together for your weekly sales meeting, start the meeting off by asking members of your sales team to recognize a fellow member for an accomplishment, helping someone or sharing of a best practice. Ask members of your sales team who else they have recognized and thanked within your company. Have they told the customer service rep just how much his efforts and hard work are appreciated? Written a note to the warehouse crew for shipping on time and accurately? Make cheering a part of your sales culture.
Cheer up and cheer often. It is a great selling and influence skill embraced by top performing teams.
Good Selling!
Colleen Stanley
Chief Selling Officer
