Last year, I was at an extended leadership team meeting for one of my best clients. We introduced a quick concept to his sales managers around account management and proper account planning.
After the meeting, I approached them and said, “Do you think we should do some more training with this? We work with a bigger team so should we customize this to meet your needs to make sure that it really resonates with the team?”
And he said, “No, absolutely not, Colleen. We need to treat my team like adults. I want them to take this, embrace it, and roll with it in the field right away because the best and the brightest will adopt it perfectly to our needs. The best value you can add is to go in 90 days or 120 days later and assess the results, pick out what’s working, and find the pinch point. We’ll go from there to improve.”
This is a great sales acceleration tool and I was so excited to be working with them on that project. I encourage you to do the same thing. What key concepts could you introduce to your team and just let them run with it, wait 60, 90, or 120 days, and then measure the results? Gather the best practices, correct the pinch points, and refine as you go.
Doing that kind of learning by doing with your team will accelerate sales results in 2018.