Here’s an idea for all of you planning your sales kickoffs or big sales meetings with all of your team present: rather than just having a number of outsiders come in and talk about their motivational, sales, or consulting principles, have somebody come in and interview your top performers.
I just recently participated in an event like this where we interviewed a top performer from the stage. We then interviewed the executive team. Afterwards, in a series of breakouts, we had two top performers in every breakout sharing how they bring bestselling practices to life. This was accomplished in an interview format.
These sessions received rave reviews from the participants. And the participants were incredibly engaged in these breakouts—the most engagement I’ve seen in any sales kickoff. Why? Because they all wanted to raise their hand and ask a question to those top performers to ensure they truly understood what they were doing in the field so that they could replicate it.
Peer-to-Peer Learning Is Essential
There is no better way of learning, for salespeople, than peer-to-peer learning. When we highlight the success of what is working in your market, people will take hold of that. They will say, “If they can do it, I can do it too.” As a result, they will implement right away.
If you’re planning any sorts of sales kickoff, training event, or meeting in the next few months, I highly encourage you to use this approach of interviewing your best performers and providing peer-to-peer skill development.
[…] seen a lot of very high performing sales managers that come through our program. And one thing I noticed was that most of them were […]
[…] Top performers trust other people in the organization to help them manage and sell to customers. Bottom performers, on the other hand, tend to hold on to all of their contacts and typically say, “No one can contact this customer,” “I’m the only one who can go in there,” or “I’m the only one they can talk to.” The best sellers understand that their role is centered around relationship management. While they own responsibility for the customer, they require expertise other than their own to help bring customers onboard and to keep the customers happy. Those team members might be engineers, implementation specialists, outsiders, accounts payable coordinators, customer service reps, delivery people, or it could be the president of the company. Whoever it is, they form these teams to help bring customers onboard. […]