Measure, Manage, Multiply: The Accountability Playbook for Sales Leaders

Many problems that plague sales leaders and sales managers can be traced back to a lack of accountability. Because B2B sales roles provide more autonomy than most business positions, it is important they also come with the discipline of accountability.

Longtime readers of this daily blog will know that success comes from doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time. A sales leader is responsible for holding their team accountable for doing the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time. Without accountability, your sales results will be less than what they should be.

Doing the Right Thing

Your role as a sales leader is to ensure your team does the right thing. Let’s start with the most common area that tends to lack accountability: prospecting. No sales manager wants to have to continually badger their sales force to book the meetings that lead to new opportunities. If the sales force is allowed to avoid prospecting, the sales team will not reach their sales goals. There must be consequences for failing to do work that is essential to the job.

Another way salespeople avoid doing the right thing is by selling what they prefer to sell instead of what their company needs to pursue growth and market share. Imagine a salesperson who has sold technology now being told they need to sell services. The company’s strategy is threatened when there is no accountability for selling what the company needs.

Doing Things in the Right Way

There are effective ways to pursue deals and ineffective ways of doing things. One common gap is allowing salespeople to sell however they want to sell. This is difficult to monitor now that many salespeople work from home. Even though a modern sales approach exists, some salespeople still use an outdated sales approach that fails to create value or the sales experience that clients want. As a result, clients don’t buy from those salespeople.

You can tell when people are not doing things the right way because they will report that they did what you wanted, but they will have taken a shortcut. For example, when it comes to prospecting, you might notice that your sales force prioritizes cold outreach using email instead of the telephone. While your sales team is doing the right thing, they are not doing it in the most effective way. When you don’t require your team to do things in the right way, it lessens your chance of hitting your sales targets.

Doing Things At the Right Time

You must also hold your team accountable for doing things at the right time. Let’s stick with prospecting as a problem area. Suppose you have an average sales cycle that requires you to create the opportunities you need to reach your quarterly goals. When a number of your salespeople fail to prospect in January, suggesting no one is back at work, you will have no deals from them in April.

Your Expectations and Accountability

Accountability begins and ends with your expectations. Your team needs you to explain exactly what you want from them (right thing, right way, right time). Without strong direction in these areas, you leave an opening for your sales force to do something other than what they need to do to succeed in sales.

When you require your team to do something, you must also provide a date by which the salespeople must deliver the outcome you are holding them accountable to. Without requiring your team to self-report their results, there will be no accountability. You need to measure, manage, and multiply your outcomes. Most sales organizations would improve their results simply by improving their accountability for results.

Humane Consequences

One of the challenges of accountability is imposing consequences when one fails to produce the results they are responsible for producing. You want a psychologically safe culture instead of a toxic culture. Know that there are humane consequences. If you have sold, you will know that your results may vary. You will also remember what it felt like to find yourself in a slump. If you are honest, you may remember struggling because you didn’t do the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.

When a member of your sales team is failing to produce results, first explore what they are doing and how they are doing it. You may be able to improve their results by giving them the coaching they need to improve their results. You may also help by shortening the time between their reporting. This can prevent the salesperson from failing.

It’s important your sales force sees you working with a salesperson who is not doing well. You want your team to know you will help them if they find themselves challenged to produce the result they are accountable for delivering.

Unfortunately, there will be salespeople who refuse the help. When this is true, you have only three choices: 1) coach and develop the salesperson, 2) find them a role outside of sales, or 3) remove and replace the sales representative. You want this last consequence to be a rare occurrence.

Measure, Manage, and Multiply

Because you have a CRM, it is easier than ever to measure your sales force’s efficacy. What is difficult is managing and multiplying. Those who count calls instead of outcomes, like first and second meetings, will have a difficult time helping their team succeed.

Once you have your sales force doing the right things, in the right way, and at the right time, you will be able to multiply your results. Your accountability for your expectations is what causes your sales team to make the behavioral changes that improve their individual results and, eventually, results in a team that pursues their goals.

The three “rights” is a practical, tactical approach that is easy to execute. Your team is either following the three “rights,” or they are not. If you find some missing one or more of the “rights,” holding them accountable for all three “rights,” will improve the salesperson’s results, as long as you are willing to hold them accountable.

Leaving this article, assess your team on the three “rights.” Make a list of who needs help executing the three “rights.” Where necessary, intervene and set the expectations and the accountability that will ensure you and your team succeed.