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Virtual Salon - March 24, 2020

Creating a High-Performing Sales Culture

The theme of this virtual salon is Creating and Sustaining a High-Performing Sales Culture. All of our discussions centered around this topic.

These conversations also naturally centered around the ongoing pandemic as this was the first time a number of these sales leaders could be candid about the challenges their facing.

Key Takeaways from each Breakout Room -

• Breakout Room 1

  • Most of us have never had to shift quotas mid-year - it’s the pandora’s box, you don’t want to set that precedent. However, in light of current events our room thought it might be time to reconsider that.

• Breakout Room 2

  • The best way to make sure your comp plans work is to really get to know who will be receiving the compensation. The quotas should be relevant, personal, and attainable for each rep. 

• Breakout Room 3

  • We talked about motivating teams through contents. One idea shared from the ChiliPiper team was cross-functional projects like Adopt an Engineer where a sales rep partners with an engineer to develop and launch a new feature.

  • Paying on the steps to close a deal, not the closing of the deals. We should be rewarding the behavioral actions that results in a close-won deal, not just rewarding the closed deal. 

• Breakout Room 4

  • Morale: Over-communicate, morning and evening standups, do human things together via Zoom, eat lunch together, etc. 

  • Contests: Especially virtual in today's world - it helps team and employee engagement and morale. Would be worth asking the Modern Sales Pros community what they think!

• Breakout Room 5

  • Non-Monetary incentives have been really successful in motivating teams. People enjoy doing service for other orgs - whether it's through team building or working towards a monetary donation for an outside organization. 

• Breakout Room 6

  • Goal Setting: It can be tricky during unprecedented times, The top down method doesn't work. You need to work with the bottom level to get realism. Employee then has buy-in and can see corporate goals reflect their own individual goals, it takes more time - but it results in better morale all around. 

• Breakout Room 7

  • You need to be capturing activity data to know if your compensation plans are successful or flopping. 

  • Non-Monetary: Think about the impact you can have, by giving a gift instead of cash to your low-base salary employees they may be happier. For example, consider a $500 bonus in which they'd get $250 of or a $500 ipad as a gift.

  • The world is chaotic right now. For recent college grads - this is the first holy crap moment they've had in their lives, like the world might actually end (similar to how we felt after 9-11). It's important to be empathetic to these team members who are new(ish) to the adult world. 

  • Walk on songs when deals are closed-won. Think baseball walk-up songs for closed-won deals. Whenever a song plays, the team knows X closed a deal.