Reuniting Your Salesforce: 3 Ways to Make Realtime Count



Sales teams are ready to make it real again. Whether your teams are reuniting for a face-to-face sales kickoff event or to resume daily office life — or a hybrid option in-between — leadership will be able to take advantage of benefits beyond the virtual screen. Here are some of the greatest opportunities in-person provides that can help boost your organization’s revenue performance.

CAPITALIZE ON OPPORTUNITIES TO REINFORCE — AND REMIND

When you have your team back in-person, you gain greater flexibility and more chance moments to reinforce key training skills and behaviors you expect from your team. You have better oversight to their performance. You also have more opportunity for casual, no-meeting-required moments to provide meaningful feedback with your team.

An effective leader knows how to pick the most important behaviors or skills to reinforce. Thought leader Paul Stansik and I discussed this in a recent expert Q&A on the Chief Reminding Officer. How and when a leader reminds varies, though.

Accountability often is a struggle for leaders. According to a Harvard Business Review report, one out of every two managers fails at accountability. But for those worried about crossing the line of reminding into nagging, Stansik offers this advice:

First, leaders must set clear, targeted standards. Then they need to support their team to meet those standards. With that, leaders will have earned the right to provide targeted and thoughtful reminding when their people fall short of the standards.

BRIDGE GAPS BETWEEN OPERATING DISCIPLINES

Face-to-face allows your selling organization to bridge its operational gaps — literally. This is important because alignment between sales, marketing and product teams remains a pressing issue for selling organizations. HubSpot research found one in four companies believe their sales and marketing teams are “misaligned” or “rarely aligned.” A research study by Allego even found that sales reps lack answers to 40% of buyer questions about the solution they are selling.

Large gains come from alignment. Marketo and Reachforce found that organizations are 67% better at closing deals with aligned teams. While virtual allows members of your essential operational teams to come together in strategy meetings and otherwise, in-person allows for greater rapport, collaboration and engagement where essential insights and tools can be openly shared.

Encourage your team to work together by setting the right expectations and priorities. Schedule monthly or quarterly informal cross-departmental meetings where sales can share feet-on-the-ground stories that would benefit marketing and product to hear. Let product and marketing teams share market pulse insights. Encourage others to ask questions or provide feedback. When you bridge the gaps, your organization’s goals come together.

STRENGTHEN COMPANY CULTURE AND MORALE

More and more, company culture matters to employees. According to the recent McKinsey Employee Experience survey, employees who have regular positive experiences at work are 16 times more engaged and 8 times more likely to stay with an organization than those who do not. Beyond that, employees will put in their all for a company they believe in, feel valued by and want to be part of.

In-person, leadership can foster an inspiring and motivating company culture and help boost their team’s morale through:

  • GREATER MEANING AND PURPOSE: Texas A&M psychologist Anthony Klotz has found previous high turnover has been a response born from the great disruptive experience of the pandemic. Consider how you can Seek to Serve™ your employees beyond the dollar and foster a meaningful culture beyond selling.
  • EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE: An employee experience management strategy can help provide your employees — and leadership — the purpose, growth opportunities and drive to best serve your business and its buyers, while your people feel like your organization is best serving them. Learn more here.
  • GRATITUDE: According to a survey by Glassdoor, 81% of professionals said they would be willing to work harder for an appreciative leader. Learn how to incorporate this skillset into your leadership style.

Many businesses have already gotten back together or on the verge of getting back together in-person. If your organization is one of them, how are your teams going to make the most of this roll-back? Share with your fellow business leaders in a comment on LinkedIn.