Celebrating Your Staffs Achievements

On The Price of Business with Kevin Price and Walter Rogers Discussing the Twelve Best Practices of Sales Management and Celebrating Your Staffs achievements

[Kevin Price]: That’s right, it is the show that never ends and I am your host Kevin Price; talking to you about you and your business. Hey with a name like Kevin Price what else would you do but host a show called, “The Price Of Business”. Yeah, you know if I had been a little more clever, I usually read Walters’s article’s quit early before the show begins. We would have had different music for this segment; we would have had “Celebrate Good Times” because that’s kind of the theme that we have on today’s program with Walter Rogers. Walter of course is with Baker Communications, one of the most brilliant sales strategists out there, and customer service strategists out there. Helping incredible numbers of people in some of the largest companies in the world, and you come in and help me and our audiences of entrepreneurs and aspiring sales leaders of course some C-class individuals as well, according to our research so we are very fortunate to have you a part of our team here.

[Walter Rogers]: Kevin you are making me blush and you are making me sound way too smart today.

[KP]: Well don’t prove me wrong (laughing).

[WR]: Thanks for having me back.

[KP]: You know what winning is fun you know and we should celebrate we should have a good time we someone makes an accomplishment we should have an achievement. In this economy numbers are harder to come by, it seems harder than ever to come by and so we are kind of in that grinding mode and the reality is; if you think sticks alone are going to make people happy and stay with you the reality is, that you really have to have some carrots as well.

[WR]: Yeah, you really do. I was listening to your segment right before mine and you talked a little bit about the on going increase in job losses, the jobless recovery and while it might be a great time for employers to find and higher new talent, as we talked about on previous shows, it’s also really important for employers to make sure that the people on there staff, their sales force, their sales managers are happy, as best as you can. You can do that by celebrating all kinds of things; little things, big things and we are going to talk about some strategies on how to do that today, Kevin.

[KP]: Yeah, you know; people think sales you know companies, companies think awe man you’re talking more bounces, talking about expensive trips, and You’re not really talking about that. Your really talking about, I mean that can happen based on a certain volume based a specific goal that takes place, and believe me giving those rewards is cheaper than not acknowledge them long term but, you could all kinds of little things.

[WR]: Yeah it’s all kinds of little stuff, and really what I wanted to talk about today is that there are two types of celebrations that you could have. One is around formal contest that the company puts in place for there sales teams and those should be celebrated appropriately; typically with some sort of bounce or trip whatever, were talked about a few different strategies there, but also the little things like you mentioned and there is a lot of really in expansive ways to create some team comradery and I’ve got a list of 10 items that I will run threw here in just a little bit. But, you know, Kevin one of the things that’s always frustrating to me is, you know, you talk you sales managers around the types of contested put in place and, invariably what do you think they are, there around who has the most sales.

[KP]: Right.

[WR]: Who has driven the most sales.

[KP]: That’s right.

[WR]: And what do you think the problem is? It’s that, typically the same person wins that contest every time.

[KP]: That’s right. The same animal and that totally ignores some of the other things that are worthy of recognition.

[WR]: Yeah that’s right and so a couple of ideas that we have seen work up really well, in terms of formal contest, are things that anybody can win. For example: The sales person who revives the most past costumers and the costumers that haven’t purchased from me in a while. Maybe a sales person has the single highest sale or shipment, or sales person who sales the first prepaid order or, a sales person that’s got the highest gross margin, regardless of the dollar value. So these are all sub-contest that the company can put in place to give everybody a chance to win and it is so important to give everybody a chance to win.

[KP]: Yeah, even the most appointments, they may not have the highest closer rate but if every company has specific steps in their sales process and if they say, “Oh that’s not true.” they haven’t looked very closely and their company is not running as efficiently as it should. I would assume you would agree with that?

[WR]: Yeah, absolutely you need a sales process or you’re definitely running blind.

[KP]: So, all of those processes and all of those steps should be rewarded even if there not the one that ultimately leads to bottom line. They all need to be rewarded because they all need to be reinforced.

[WR]: They all really do, and in fact you mentioned one just a minute ago about setting appoints so, you know, if somebody’s having a hard time setting appointments their probably not your stellar performer but, at the same time if they make a substantial improvement from their appointment setting target to what they are today; that’s something that you should recognize and you should reward and it could be something as simple as giving that person a parking spot for a week. You know great job you can have my parking spot this week, if your fortunate enough to have your own parking spot, but, I mean little things like that make a huge difference and improve motivation at that real individual level.

[KP]: Yeah, my parking spot is that bus stand just outside of our building and it never really parks. But anyway, no I am just joking. But yeah, your right, that is exactly right! That’s the good thing though, every company every sales process, you’ve got prospecting, you’ve got your appointment, you’ve got your follow up, you’ve got your closing and you’ve got your customer relationship going forward. There you go, who’s retained the largest percentage of there clients over the last year? That’s a great recognition.

[WR]: It really is, because it’s a lot easier to keep customers than it is to get new ones and there’s actually a really interesting technique called, “The Net Promoter Score”, that a lot of companies use now to actually judge the effectiveness of customer satisfaction. It’s a really simple question that they ask, It’s, and “Would you recommend me to somebody, yes or no?”. If the customer gives you a yes, guess what they are pretty happy, if they give you a no, then you probably have a little bit of work to do. It’s a pretty simple system to implement that actually helps you measure costumer satisfaction which you can then celebrate.

[KP]: Yeah and if they hesitate you probably have some work to do.

[WR]: Yeah, exactly.

[KP]: They maybe real polite. “I don’t want to tell you, you’re terrible.” So all those things need to be recognized, all of those things need to be validated and all those things need to be supported. See, I have seen sales companies where frankly certain performers would have absolutely no problem setting up appointments and in fact set up more appointments than the number one sales person, almost at a 2 to 1 ratio, but the number one sales person was a better closer; just a much, much, much better closer.

[WR]: Yeah, and every person has there own strengths and weaknesses, and the sales manager identifying those strengths and weaknesses and then providing some coaching and mentoring around on how to fill those gaps, and then celebrating right as somebody fills those gaps is really important. There is so many ways in which you can celebrate; I mean you can offer mentoring, you can give some kind of prize which doesn’t have to be monetary, it could be gift cards, and it could be anything. Of course, promotion is the ultimate form of celebration for an individual. Perks, which could be free meals, maybe you bring in lunch for the day or, offer to cover parking for a week of course you can offer some time off, maybe letting somebody go or, a team go, like noon on a Friday because, they have done a good job that week. Anything around personal growth so, we really under estimate how much people appreciate being sent to educational opportunities where they can actually advance themselves, that’s another way of celebrating.

[KP]: Yeah, there are all kinds of things that have very low cost. It’s just the whole idea that you thought they were so important that it was valuable for them to get the time off to go do that.

[WR]: Yeah, exactly. Then from a team perspective, you mentioned low cost, well there is a list of things you can do for less than $500.00 dollars that can get a nice size team, 10 to 15 people, some nice team comradery. I’ll just throw a couple of them out there; softball game, now in Houston you may not want to do that right now unless you have an indoor softball arena but, in most parts of the country, softball is a great way to bring the team together, volleyball is another, bowling which is something that most people don’t think about. You know bringing a team out and having a bowling expedition so to speak and setting up a little contest between the teams. There is laser tag, I don’t know if you have ever played laser tag.

[KP]: That is a lot of fun! I almost had a heart attack the last time but, it is a lot of fun.

[WR]: Yeah, it’s a blast and it’s really inexpensive! Or, a comedy club is another great alternative to getting your team out, talk about a good opportunity to laugh. You could have a picnic; you can literally get everyone out to a park and have a nice picnic, spend a couple hours getting to know each other at a social level. Going to a ballgame, my gosh, so many baseball games can be so inexpensive if you go during the week. Taking people to a movie, having a pizza party, pot luck lunches and these are all things that don’t cost much money.

[KP]: Yeah, you know when you are here in Houston, I don’t know how cheap you want to be, where the Astros play there is not a bad seat in the entire building, as you well know. Those upper cheap seats on Tuesday night with a couple of PowerAde bottles, you are getting those tickets for two dollars a person.

[WR]: Yeah.

[KP]: How expensive is that? In fact they have offers in the Mezzanine, which is a much nicer section, where it is twenty-five buck a person and they can eat all they can eat.

[WR]: It’s not about the quality of the seat it’s about having your team together, celebrating together some accomplishment, which doesn’t have to be, “we sold the very most that we ever have.” It could be as simple as celebrating the fact that there are three new sales reps on the team and bringing them into the fold with the rest of the crew. Just looking for those opportunities a manager needs to do. It is so easy to overlook because all of us are under this tremendous pressure to hit our performance objectives. It is much easier to criticize than it is to celebrate.

[KP]: It certainly is. Alright, I want to encourage people, we have two minutes left, that Walter Rogers again, extraordinary, I look forward to it, and frankly steal his ideas and use them all the time. Walter Rogers, he is with Baker Communications, Baker Communications is one of the premier leaders with clients in thirteen countries, three continents, award winning, I’m telling yah these guys are top flight. “Winning is Fun Celebrate It”, go now Houstonbusinessdaily.com you will see it there it’s the number one article right now listed on that page. Check it out, click it read it, enjoy it and while you are there, on the right side you will see other news and there you will see my article on BP and the petroleum I was talking about earlier in the program. So, you can check both of those out. Walter what is the phone number there at Baker Communications?

[WR]: (713)627-7700. That’s (713)627-7700.

[KP]: Hey, do you have any idea; I’m going to put you on the spot, with some of the upcoming things we are going to talk about?

[WR]: Absolutely. This is our last show on the sales management behaviors. We did twelve shows on that. The next twelve shows are going to be all around the top characteristics of Sales Professionals. We have been working with sales people for thirty years, we have trained over a million of them, and we have learned a few things along the way about what makes sales people successful and what doesn’t and so, we have an inventory of about twenty to twenty-five competencies. We are going to break those down over the next twelve weeks.

[KP]: Woe whoa! And you know what we are also going to do? We are going to make that into a book, I have sent you an e-mail if you are interested, and we need to have that conversation.

[WR]: Yeah, absolutely Kevin. I would be delighted to speak with you about that.

[KP]: You bet. Walter Rogers Baker Communications, awesome organization. This is The Price of Business on CNN650.