Four Ways to Get Sales Accountability Right

“Accountability”

Did you just tense up? I feel it the minute the words leave my mouth in leadership workshops – and some of it may be PTSD from leaders I’ve worked for before.

There’s a vibe around the concept of driving accountability into sales and revenue teams – it feels like grounds for discipline and punishment, doesn’t it?

There’s a big difference between “holding your team accountable” and “coaching your team to self-accountability”.

I vote for the latter.

“Holding your team accountable” often takes the form of “commits”:

Commits – the petri dish for lies in your organization, where top performers with full pipelines undercommit, and low performers with empty pipelines overcommit; where deal-level commits cause reps to come to their managers last instead of first when something goes wrong. “You committed that deal!”

Holding reps accountable to things they truly cannot control isn’t accountability.

On the other hand, “coaching your team to self-accountability” is where engagement and intrinsic inspiration thrives:

The data: Have you taught your reps how to use metrics and data? I’m not talking “volume” metrics like, ”Make 50 calls!”. I’m talking about ratios and trends in their numbers. Win rates over time. Cycle lengths over time for wins…and losses. Teach them to spot the holes before they form.

The culture around wins & losses: What’s the culture you drive when a deal is lost? A “you got outsold” culture? A “better luck next time, Sport!” culture? Or, do you celebrate the losses for the effort – and encourage TRUE self-diagnosis to celebrate the lessons learned, too?

An unquenchable thirst for learning: While organizations and leaders must invest in the professional development of their teams, performance is optimized when those individuals read, listen, and put in

 discretionary effort to improve. You can drive that!

Transparent leadership: Do you share your goals and targets with your teams? Do you share how & what you measure? Do you share the framework you use to drive revenue capacity?

Accountability doesn’t have to cause uncontrollable shaking.

Accountability isn’t about forced commitments – especially to things out of a rep’s control. It’s about fostering environments and relationships where self-accountability grows and thrives.

(header picture: A 1927 picture of the sales contest board used to intrinsically drive the team at the United States Rubber Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

I speak and teach revenue organizations on how to leverage transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity. It’s what I do…teach sellers, their leaders, and really entire revenue organizations the how we as human beings make decisions, then how to use that knowledge for good (not evil) in their messaging (informal and formal), negotiations and revenue leadership. I wrote a 3x award-winning book (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦), and have a newish book out (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳) now that just won its first award!

Reach out if you want to discuss The Transparency Sale sales methodology, or really…anything else (sales kickoffs, workshops, keynotes, the economy, history, etc.)! Email info@toddcaponi.com or call 847-999-0420.

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