Why positive reinforcement
“You’re killing it, bro!” were the first words I heard when my new manager got back from the vacation he took after I was only a couple of weeks out of training. I was new to the inside sales team there and got lucky to be in a great place at the right time… but his words seemed to come out of nowhere and I certainly didn’t feel like I was “killing it”.
Don’t get me wrong, I was doing okay… but certainly other people on the team were beating my number and I was on track to just squeak by.
All Sales Development Representative KPIs are weighed and measured and taken into consideration for periodic evaluations. And it was true my KPIs were the highest, but I still had a lot to learn when it comes to the world of B2B SaaS sales.
That positive reinforcement just does something for the confidence.
Noticing that I was slightly confused we had a conversation about grit, effort, and playing the long game while building the sales pipeline.
My sales conversations were going decently well, and this gave me a huge boost of confidence to keep going and maintain my manager’s perception that I am “killing it”.
Shattered Confidence
Fast forward a few years and we are in the throes of a really bad quarter. Marketing had not performed well, the inside sales team was struggling, and the sales conversations we were having seemed to end in delay after delay. We were certainly not “killing it”. What, at what seemed to be the first time, we heard from our less-experienced leader was that we were doing it all wrong. He would literally want to sit on every call and micro-manage every aspect of the conversation. After the conversation, we would sit down to review everything that went completely wrong on the call, and pick apart the call recording piece by piece.
In some ways, this was a great way to role play, but in other ways, it completely shattered confidence on the next call because I would fear the call being picked apart again. Clearly, there are some major differences between these two experiences. The first made me want to seek out the continued approval of my boss and peers, while the second made me actually begin job hunting. Fortunately, I found a couple of offers that made me care quite a bit less about “what if I lose my job” and my normal happy-go-lucky confidence was restored which became reflective in my contributions to the number and thereby eliminating the need to change employers.
Criticism and Sales Personas (Ego)
There are really two major success factors at play with inside/outside salespeople when it comes to their performance.
One is grit and the other is confidence.
Positive reinforcement boosts your confidence. Sure, there are other things… but these two go a very, very long way.
The need to be accepted and feel like we are achieving something is actually human psychology. We absolutely need to be needed/feel productive.
In the sales world, this means that we may need our egos stroked every once in a while with an “atta-boy”. That said, some managers tend to focus on what can be “fixed” rather than what is going amazingly well. This ultimately leads to nervousness and creates resistance to coaching. Often, this leads to the salesperson leaving or being left because it directly ties to performance in a high-stakes performance career.
As a manager of a salesperson, coaching needs to take place, but it can be super positive and the frame in which the sales conversations are presented makes all of the difference.
Even in some of the most challenging situations, it can make sense to help an inside salesperson with their confidence, even if their sales conversations are not going great.
Coaching to Confidence
So how do we get reps to adopt the correct behaviors, smash their sales calls, and make every conversation a winning outcome?
The answer is sales coaching, not criticism. Unfortunately, salespeople are known to be a bit ego-centric and often have fragile feelings (sorry salespeople… but it’s true). One way that boosts them up is by leaning into their successes in any situation and making the situation turn from “you’re doing it wrong, do it this way” to “you’re killing it, and here is how you might be able to keep killing it”.
By leaning into the things that are going right, the situation becomes more collaborative and the salesperson feels like you are on their side helping them as part of a team that wants to win the championship, instead of feeling like you are against them and trying to be critical to tear them down.
Give it a Shot
Don’t believe me?
Give it a shot.
Measure your lowest-performing rep and find 3 things they are doing that are amazing. Say nice things about them, and then just let it go – aka positive reinforcement. That’s right, don’t coach them yet.
Just let that ball of confidence roll for a day or two. Then pump them up again, only this time, be on their team and ask questions like “I wonder if we tried X, Y, and Z what would happen, what do you think?”.
Doing this will leave your rep much more receptive to the feedback because you are on their side and trying to solve the problem together.
Want to help them even further?
Maybe get them a real-time coaching tool that combines best practices with live call guidance so they don’t have to make decisions with limited information under pressure… Keep killing it!