4 Quick Wins for Sales Managers

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Four Areas that Make a Real Difference on the Floor:

24:07 Video (103 MB) Audio (22 MB)

So welcome. And we're gonna talk about huddles. So first of all, what they are. A huddle is just what you see. It is a stand up meeting, a very brief stand up meeting, and to begin either a day or a shift.

It is ultimately the sales manager's role to get everyone starting in the right direction and to establish what the day is gonna do. What are you meant to accomplish individually and as a team today? What are the markers? What are the targets? How is it gonna happen?

So that's what ultimately what it is. Why it matters is when you start implementing them, you're gonna see you're gonna see a lot of things. You might see a level of cohesiveness on your team that may not exist right now, that you don't know it doesn't exist until you actually see it change. You're going you will see a level of focus with your team members because they, in front of everyone, said what they're out to do today.

You will see people managing their time better collectively because if someone says I have a 02:00 appointment, then we all know that they've got a 02:00 appointment. So they're off the up sheet at 02:00, and we need to manage around that. So it just it sets the tone for the day. It sets the direction and the target. It sets who's doing what so that everybody knows it, and we commit to to hitting that target today, like together. We're gonna hit that target, and this is how we're gonna do it.

So it not only sets what the goal is for the day and where where you're at so far, But it we know how it's gonna happen. So where is that gonna come from? And I'll go into that a little bit more deeply, especially when I show you the two documents that you can use to line up what your meeting's gonna be. So how often should you have huddles? I say every day.

I say every day because you wanna line them up every day. If you wanna start once a week, start once a week. If you wanna then say, well, you know, that actually worked on Saturday. Let's do it Saturday and Sunday. Okay.

Then do it that way. And then let it grow to I really encourage you to do it daily. And I know that there are probably people on the call that might have the store opens at nine and the morning group comes in, and then there's an afternoon group that comes in at eleven or twelve. I say do two huddles.

You know? So some will say, well, I don't because I hear that. I don't do huddles because I have two shifts. It's like, then do two huddles. Like, how is this difficult? So because the intention is to get people going.

Alright. So who should be there? Everybody. Like, you might start with the sales team. But let's imagine that you've got let's say that the drivers don't go out.

Let's say if the drivers might I don't know. They might have their first at 10:00, their first delivery at 10:00. If you've got a 09:00 huddle, do it in do bring them. Bring them in. You might say, well, where am I gonna do this?

I don't know. Pick a place. If you are you can there's a team that I know that works does it a lot in the mattress department because they're looking to beef up their mattress sales, so they want people to actually feel more comfortable in that space. Like, pick a place. But I would encourage you to have them stand up to do it.

Don't nobody sits down for a huddle. Like, nobody. It's not long enough. Stand up. Stand up. Attention.

Alright. So I would say that some of the sort of broad stuff about huddles. Now I'm gonna break it down and give you some chronology to this. So I would say, first of all, keep it to fifteen minutes.

Don't exceed fifteen minutes. It's a brief it's a huddle. It's not a meeting per se. It's a huddle. And some of you are in my sales management program.

When we talk about this, at some point, we might we might break up a huddle and do it as a motivational meeting instead of a huddle. That's great. But the huddle is really only fifteen fifteen minutes. You wanna start with celebrating successes. Like, what are the successes before you even get into the data?

What are the successes that we're here to celebrate? And so let's say that let's say that the alright. So we're the end of the third month of the first quarter. Right? So you might have a lot to celebrate right now.

Or and you might have that your goal has been for the first quarter to get sketches from 12% to 20%. And you might have that to celebrate because month to date or quarter to date, you're actually on hitting that target. Or you might have something like, let's say, stay with sketches that someone had a sketch yesterday that they've been really trying to sketch and they've been struggling with it, but they had someone who came in for, well, let's say, a chair and ottoman yesterday and ended up buying a sectional to go with it because the salesperson sketched. Like, that is not unusual, and the more you sketch, the more not unusual you're gonna find it to be. And so those are the kind of things to bring up.

Things that are really yay yay yay. Let's let's start this on a really up note. So I would say start it that way. And then I would say to start to move it to the data. So here we are at March 19, which is about, I don't know, two thirds, almost three quarters of the month in and say, you know, that that our goal is x.

Our goal is 11 to say, let's our goal is 500,000. Our goal to date is x. Our actual to date is y. So we're either above or behind. Simply.

Like, there's no story in it. There's no opinion right now. There's just the facts of it. Here's what we are. And, for us to stay on track or to get on track, what we need to write today is x.

So if you were on track, then today, which is a Thursday, might normally be, say, a $20,000 day. But you say, let's make it up. You know, we've got a $5,000 deficit from where we should be by the end of the day today. Let's make that up today. So that's what it's gonna be. You don't have to tell all that, but if you need to make it up, then just say that that's what the goal is today.

So I would go around and say what's happening. Personally, I would start with appointments. And I would say who has appointments today? And go around the group.

Who has appointments today? And then I would ask a few questions to go with that. Who has appointments? What are they coming in for? What time's the appointment?

Have you made a confirmation call to secure this? And then I would ask, what are you expecting to close today? And they're gonna say whatever they say. I might ask any objections that you're anticipating, and they're gonna say something or not. And I would ask, do you need anything from me to help you with this?

And they're gonna say what they do or not. So I would start. If I need 25,000 today, then I would start. That's 5,000. Okay.

We're down to 20. Let's keep going. So that's the only appointment we have today. So let's work from the e let's work from the door.

Or let's work from, is anyone calling on sole quotes? Or does anyone have after delivery phone calls to make today? But I need 25,000. So I wanna see who's gonna be writing it. So I'm gonna get a commitment from everyone on what they need, what they're bringing into the party today. And if you get through everyone and you still have a gap, then we're going around again.

Right? Because we wanna find $25,000 today. So who do you need to call? What unsold quotes have you have you not reached out to? And what help do you need from me?

So a little bit of an aside is that one of the wonderful people in my amazing sales management group right now, in the training group, she had a person who got sick a couple of weeks ago, and she called all of his quotes and closed like four out of five of them. I thought, oh my god. And she said, you know, they're out for a few days and I wanted to get back. I didn't want you to feel stuck and, you know, do we want to do this over the phone? Whatever she said for closing, she just, like, closed them all. I thought maybe we ought to do this more often in a different way.

So what is it gonna take? Like, what's it gonna take? So you might find yourself saying it's a Thursday. Our traffic on Thursday tends to be about eight people.

There are four of you on the floor, so it's likely you're each gonna get two. So at your current close ratio of 32%, your current average sale of 4,200, you need to close at least one person today at 4,200. Like, use their data to say to do the math because you wanna end up at zero. Before they leave the huddle, you wanna end up at zero. And then to be able to ask anything else that you need from me to help you to do that.

Okay. So you wanna go so what the the the month to date or quarter to date or where you're at, what you need to write, who's gonna write that, how that's gonna get written, and then get down to zero. That's the intention. I would go around again maybe and say, I know that our focus this month is is sketching, or it's protection, or it's mattresses, or whatever the focus is, whether it's product or service, or we're looking to beef up our financing opportunities. What are we gonna focus on today?

What's the selling skill we're gonna today or practice with each other if it's quiet? And just say that. Say, okay. Great. Just looking to know.

I just wanna know that. So that you can use this as an opportunity to bring practice into the conversation so that if you're out on the floor and it's quiet, you know, I'd say, oh, we're gonna work on sketching today. I know one of the things that you were working on was how to initiate it and how to start that conversation. So why don't I demonstrate it first, and then we'll switch and you do it? It won't take longer than fifteen minutes.

Is this a good time to do that? Right. So that we can have a focused practice. I call those skill drills sometimes, that it's a focused practice, very small practice topic, and a very small amount of time to do it. Lastly, end with a motivational quote. Some sort of a quote to get us or you might ask, actually, I think as I think about this, I might have that be something I would delegate.

And maybe at the end of the meeting, like, who's got a motivational inspirational quote for today? And I would ask who wants to have it for tomorrow so that you delegate it out there so it's not all on you to do. And then I would say plan to check on on your team two to three times throughout the day to see how they're doing with their achievement. And if you have to have someone else do the huddle, the more that you do this as a as a daily practice, if someone else has to pick up the slack because you're not there or on your day off, it's really easy to do if you prepare them with the information.

Okay. So one of the things that I want to do with you is I want to show you. I'm going to share my screen with you. I have a couple of them. So you'll notice that you'll notice that it has on the right hand side, you're gonna see a timeline.

One minute, four minutes, like how much time to designate for that particular thing. So one minute for for successes that you wanna celebrate. You're gonna spend about four minutes. What's the monthly goal? What's the month to date actual?

What percentage of the month is, what's the percentage to goal, and what's the goal for today. So you prepare this and have all of this ready. You're not shooting from the hip. And then if you got if you have people that do appointments, I would go through who are they and what are they expecting to bring in that. What are they ex what's the what's the appointment coming in? And you might have two or three of these that that's gonna take care of the day if they're doing a design presentation.

So the the thing about this is that in rather quick time, if you have people huddling up every day and somebody never has appointments, doesn't have anything, they don't have any unsold quotes to call, they don't have any after delivery phone calls that they're planning as a sales call, that stuff's gonna show up pretty quickly. That all they're relying on is a turn at the door. That stuff starts to show up pretty quickly. And you wanna allow the peer pressure of the group because that group right now is carrying that person.

Like, they're not they're not proactively engaging in the process. So that stuff really does start to show up pretty quickly. Alright? So anyone need any help today? Because these are your notes.

Anyone need any help today? They say yes, and that's what, you know, what do they need, and you'll set time for that. And then, again, what's the skill to practice? What are we working on today? And I really encourage you to have that part of your conversation so that whether you pick someone up to do it or you encourage a couple of people who are scrolling on their phones, it's like, okay.

The skill we're practicing today is the initiating actions to start a sketch. Why don't the two of you do that? I'll be the observer. I'll observe.

Who wants to go first? Like, I know that I mean, I can I can just feel the eye rolls about that? However, we gotta practice. We've gotta make practice part of what we do. Right? We can't keep practicing on the customer.

And then lastly, what's the inspirational quote? Especially if it relates to a selling skill or to success itself. So that's the first document. The next document is similar in celebrations to success to celebrate, one minute, and the monthly performance. This one is down to three minutes though.

So it's pretty much the same what the goals are. But the next one is is that like, these are what some of the what the contributions are going to be because this one has it with the current close ratio is, current average sale, current traffic, and what you need for the sale. But now you might say, alright. So, Chris, what are you gonna do from the door today? What are you gonna do from appointments?

What are you gonna do from Outreach? Bringing Chris's total to whatever it's gonna be. So now you can start to look at this, and this is a great way to go back around the floor and say, like, how is your how are you doing with your Outreach? You're gonna get that from two unsold quotes and one after delivery call. Which of those have you made and what came out of them.

Right? Because I really am a firm believer that Saturday and Sunday are days to be closing opportunities that walk in the door that can close today and scheduling opportunities that walk in the door that cannot close today and scheduling appointments Monday through Friday. So that your Monday through Friday business really should be a lot of outreach and a lot of appointments because it's quieter. Right? So that's what this is now you can really see. Now this is really now you can see when you have people's names down and where they're gonna how much they're gonna get from each of them, it really is gonna give start to show patterns, especially when you have several days of this kind of data.

And then again on this and that's ten minutes. I'd allow ten minutes for that. And then this is going to be again ending on a motivational quote, spiritual quote, whatever motivational, inspirational quote that is going to align with the culture of the company and what we're out to accomplish today. So does anyone have a question about either of these documents?

So what given that and this might be more sort of organized than what you have been doing. Yeah. It might be more structured. It it definitely requires a little bit more work. But all of that data, you you should have readily available.

And some of it, you're just writing down. Like, you you probably do know where everyone already is for the month. You you know, you've got access easily to their current close ratio and average sale for the month. So you have that data available. So I would say that as a sales manager, it's probably fifteen minutes of time to do that to get it prepared.

I would say that. If it's not if it's more structured than you're used to, that's okay. It's just more structured than you're used to. But it's not a lot of work, especially if you're using a structure to manage the information and what you wanna get out of it.

And I would say that if you're doing events in the showroom or events in the building, like, how are you gonna be what kind of preparation should be happening for those events? Because those when those events happen, I don't know that we give the the amount of preparation necessary to make an event a really good event, especially if you have targets for the event. Like, you know, we're expecting 25 people. We wanna build, you know, five we wanna walk away with five new appointments, like that. To to start, I think that we need to sharpen our intentionality around making events more meaningful and and get more business from them. Let me ask it this way.

Either to start doing them or to amend what you're doing, What can you imagine based on what what I've shared with you? What would you like to do with your huddles to make them more effective? Huddles with this kind of structure and information really are a conversation of intention intentionality and accountability that I know makes a lot of people squirm. Mhmm. People that have been doing this a long time.

Because because it is a level of accountability that you're asking someone, you're say saying what the facts are, and if you're off goal, that you're not on track to make goal, that in and of itself is not a great conversation. It's great to celebrate when you are tracking or ahead of goal, but when you're behind, it's not as comfortable a conversation. However, if we at some point take on that we want to teach our team how to come from behind, because they're always going to be behind at some point. They're always gonna be behind. Stuff happens.

You get sick or you had a cancellation or something is gonna happen that puts you behind staying on track to make goal. It's always gonna happen. So our ability to help our team build the skills because coming from behind actions are not the same, are not the same as staying on track actions. And so that whole area of accountability and speaking in the real terms of what's really happening versus what we wish was happening, and to teach our people the skill to actually turn that ship around and what and to push themselves to take action to do things that they might not do. I mentioned before that manager that who called the people, the quotes in the system, and closed them all.

Now that salesperson might have done done that too, but I thought, well, now that's kind of fascinating. What would it be like if a sales manager were to go and sit with a salesperson when they called their unsold quotes and put it on speaker? So or so that they could hear it and say, say this. Do this. Ask now. Don't say another word.

Like, if the sales manager actually coached that salesperson in a calling an unsold quote call, what would happen with that? But I and I think that that with the very best of intentions, we often are get caught up in the sort of tender soul nest of our salespeople. We don't want them to feel uncomfortable, But a sales job has a lot of discomfort in it.

It just does. And if we teach them that a relationship with discomfort is really critical to be a good salesperson because you're gonna have a lot of it. And if you don't have a good relationship with discomfort, usually means movement forward or being able to use something that didn't work, a failure, to build on and learn from so it doesn't happen again is extraordinary. And when we want to only make them feel good, and I know that's not what you're saying, Sean, but when we focus a lot on making them feel good so that we're not talking about the realities of something and putting them in a position to state what they're gonna do and to be accountable, we're actually robbing of the robbing them of the ability to learn that skill. Because as Ed Sheeran says, we only learn from failure. We don't learn from success.

Right? And it's kinda it's pretty true. So, like, my little phrase of commission tuition is that either you wrote it up and made money or you didn't write it up and you learned something. But if you didn't write it up and you didn't learn something, that's a huge waste of time.

So I encourage you, you can have that. Tuition or commission. Like, what's it what is it this one? So what did you learn? Okay. So we won't do that again.

How are you gonna anticipate and avoid that happening in the future? Okay. Great. So however you start your huddles doesn't mean you'll keep them that way. You might just start your huddles meeting in the morning.

You might do do that. I would encourage you to do it when the door opens. Like, if it's if the door opens at 09:00, do it at 09:00. I would not have them come in for an 08:45 meeting for fifteen minutes. All it does is piss them off.

Right? And so you know that there's one person there may be one person at the door when it opens. That the person who's always in first knows that that's gonna happen. Let them go write them up cause that person always gets written up. And they, you know, they'll come back.

Right? But I would just I would just say that if you start it right then rather than make them come in early and start it with, we're gonna do this every morning. This is what our goal for the day is. You might just do the goal for the day.

Anyone have any appointments? And then leave it at that. And then build up to getting accountability from the group as they get used to the huddle. The way you start it doesn't have to you don't have to start it with everything I'm giving you. You can start slowly and work your way up. As they get more comfortable with huddles and talking about accountability, now you can dial up the level of intentional and articulated accountability. How many of you run contests regularly with your team?

You know, I love them. And but, you know, as a dominant influencer, I would. But I just I think that they really spark things around. And if you tease people with them or bring them up or if there are contests that people have a chance to win, it's not always the same person who wins, just think about it. And you can let them know that in the huddle in the morning.

In the successes you open the meeting with a success with successes, it just is a different it's different from getting into the numbers right away, especially if there's a contest to give a success for from yesterday or something so that it it it gets us on an upbeat to the start of the meeting, which is really sort of important. So I hope this was helpful to you. You know how to reach me. You've got my contact information, and anything that you challenge with or struggle with, please reach out to me.

And, also, share your successes. I would love to hear what you're doing with this and what it's changed for you, what you've gotten out of it as a sales manager in organizing your day, and what it's done for your team to help them to organize their day and predictably produce results. So thank you for your engagement. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for being present on this, and I look forward to hearing from you.

So thanks.

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