Part 2, the steps: Sales targets were the worst thing I ever put my team up against

If you haven’t already read Part One to this article I suggest heading there first, but I’ll give you a brief overview anyway.?

I built up a multimillion dollar sales team from scratch. It took me twice as long as it could have to achieve this because I was hung up on hitting sales targets every single day. It was frustrating that the approach to sales that had made me so personally successful wasn’t translating to the agency and our growth was stunted.?

At that time, I had no idea how to be an effective leader to a sales team of 5 agents, but through some humbling experiences I saw the light.?

Our numbers finally skyrocketed when I changed my focus to truly understanding what makes my agents tick and changed my leadership style to foster a more collaborative, open, and trusting team dynamic.?

In this new way of working, the only time I needed to check the numbers was to file taxes.

So, here is a step-by-step of the changes I implemented for my sales team to reach numbers above and beyond any target I ever tried to set.?

Determining Their Goals

Often, “goals” seems like just a buzzword.?

We are constantly hearing, “If you want to see change and improvement, set goals”, for life at work and at home. But how often do those ‘goals’ fall flat and feel empty? I can think of a few New Year's Resolutions off the top of my head.?

Luckily, a great mentor of mine, Shawn Meaike, had taught me how short term goals and structure can create momentum. I was able to set attainable goals for myself back when I was still working my way up as an agent that made me successful and when it came time to teach my own team I had a very firm grasp on what actually works.?

Once you have an in-depth conversation to discover an agent’s motivations and how they envision success, what I believe needs to be at the root of every goal is determining how they’ll be held accountable and what they’re willing to sacrifice.?

For example, when new agents join my team I start this on a micro-level by saying something like, “The first step is for you to sign up for your pre-licensing course. Is there any reason you can't sign up today, if I send you the information?”?

They’ll usually answer, “Yeah, no problem,” which I’ll follow with, “Can you do me a favor? When you sign up, can you shoot me a text and confirm that you're in, just so I can mark it off my list and I know you're going forward.”

Here, the new agents are held accountable by agreeing to text me when they’ve signed up. It isn’t stated outright, but the agent has also agreed to sacrifice the time it takes later that day to sign up for their course.?

Pretty simple.?

What you may have also noticed is that this seemingly tiny goal also follows the SMART (sustainable, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely) logic. SMART can feel like another buzzword, but it is truly effective.?

Setting these kinds of goals, and starting as simply as I do with new agents, will absolutely build momentum towards achieving more complex and longer term goals.

Don’t Own Other People’s Goals

In Part One, I talk a lot about how important it was to change my leadership style and the team’s environment.?

A huge piece of that change in my mentality, and what made me a much more effective leader, was no longer taking it personally when my agents wouldn’t hit their goals.?

When they wouldn’t hit their sales targets I would lose my mind like it was a personal attack and whatever they failed to do was going to be what ruins my career and my business.?

In retrospect, the biggest problem we had was that I could hardly call it ‘their’ goals, when I was pushing onto my agents a version of success they had no interest in. I wanted everyone to be an elite producer and assumed that’s what they wanted as well.?

So, when other people don’t hit their own goals that they’ve set, allow them to hold the full responsibility for it and take it as a learning experience. Deep dive into what about the goal was unattainable and how either the goal itself or the accountability parameters need to be tweaked for the next success.?

Be a guide for your team, not a parent.?

Implementing Accountability Tools

A while after I had started as an agent, I figured out that the best possible tool for my own accountability is an activity tracker.?

I built an excel dashboard able to track down to the minute what activities I was spending my time on and it made a world of a difference in learning how to optimize my revenue-generating activities while making me feel more accountable knowing that whatever I did in a day was going to end up in that spreadsheet and I wanted it to look good.???

The first tool I give my own agents and mentees now is this same tracker. It’s turned out to be timeless in staying organized and supporting goals in quite a simple way.?

The second tool I use with my agents is an agency leaderboard.?

You may be thinking that I’ve just spent two articles now preaching that sales targets are bad and agents have separate goals, so why would I be using a sales leaderboard?

I promise, there’s a huge difference.?

Sales targets are one size fits all and clearly not the most effective motivator. This leaderboard is a ranking of how agents are measuring up against one another in achieving their own goals and it fosters a beautiful amount of healthy competition.?

These goals could be sales numbers, cold call dials, appointments booked, or any other metric the agents have chosen.?

Everyone in sales has a bit of competitive spirit that we can channel in the right way, but I have also seen this leaderboard bring the team closer together. When one agent sees another consistently reaching numbers they want, they’ll ask for tips, advice, and a gain a new perspective.?

In fact, most agents who inspire to be at the top are not far from the goal. And through doing a deep dive of their numbers we noticed that closing is not what separates the good from the best, in fact in most cases it was based on activity.

Success in Sales?

Each of these pieces to building a strong sales team were instrumental in increasing our revenue numbers simply because the team environment was a more encouraging, motivating, and positive place to be.?

When agents are setting their own goals, making their own sacrifices, and taking on that accountability they start to build momentum. Not only do they feed off their own successes, but the successes of those around them as well.?

Sales targets are the worst thing you can put your team up against, but if you really want to set those targets in the back of your mind anyway, this is exactly how you’ll soar past them to what you never thought attainable.?