Tired of Poor Sales Execution?

While the focus of our business is helping leaders improve sales team performance, poor execution isn’t relegated just to sales. Other corporate functions, sports teams, classrooms, and even households succumb to poor execution. What follows are the three key fundamentals we teach our client leaders which enable them to create better execution within their team. They’ll work for you too. Give them a try.

Be Clear

Team members need to know specifically what should be done and how to accomplish it − vagueness is not an option. For example, a common directive from sales managers is “be prepared for an appointment.” But, what does prepared mean? Know your objective, outline how you will get into the conversation, prep the thoughtful questions to help you uncover priorities, plan your response to a likely objection. That's much more specific. You get the idea. Be specific - where, what, why, when, how.

Check for Understanding & Agreement to Act

This is simple to do, but rarely done. After sharing your clear expectation ask, “what is it I’ve asked you to do?” This simple, yet powerful, question eliminates misunderstanding and allows each individual to part ways knowing they are on the same page. If you like what you hear, follow that up with “so can I count on you to get that done?” Now you’ve passed ownership of the task to the other person. This is a key to setting up execution accountability. 

Follow Through Often

Check in, debrief, observe, and practice - each is an example of follow through on an expectation. All help speed and improve the quality of the execution. The more often you follow through, the more obvious the urgency around the expectation becomes. Conversely, if you ask for something to be done and never follow through on it, how important does it appear that it is in the grand scheme of things?

Try these out. Practice it daily at the office, at home. You'll see the quality of execution improve and timeframes shorten.