Take note of how you feel when walking into a sales office for the first time.  Do you feel electrical charges in the air?  Is the place buzzing and up beat?  Do you feel a positive competitiveness?  Or, as you enter the office does the air have a weight of negativity to it?  Do you recognize a lack of positive vibrations that might lead you to a sense of mediocrity, or even failure? 

I use a term called ‘common language’ to promote recognized themes and common goals.  Although these are always new terms to groups, I have found that they are readily adopted from reps up to executives, and have always assisted in building the right ‘culture’ for vigorous competitors.  Some of these terms are ‘hourly rate’, ‘definition of insanity’, ‘circle back around’, ‘lay the obvious on the table’, ‘soup to nuts’, and ‘who’s got the “R”’.  Don’t know what they mean?  Doesn’t matter, you can develop your own.  I also include all core competency measurements in this common language approach.

If you walked into one of these sales offices, you would initially think you entered into some kind of revolutionary cult.  In fact, while giving an overview of my “Business of Core Competency” infrastructure, one sales executive piped up in the audience and said, ‘This sounds like some kind of crazy cult’.  A few chuckles arose, and I replied to him with a question.  “Do you know the difference between culture and cult?  With culture, you don’t have to drink kool-aid at the end of the day.”

Daily feedback and improvement is all about having the right stuff in reference to culture.  It’s about the right feeling in the atmosphere, the common language buzzwords, the accountability to results, and the lack of finger pointing when results are not there.  It’s sales reps understanding by definition where they are falling short, and executing a verbal plan to get back on track.  Daily feedback and improvement is spending 5 minutes with a manager/leader to define one’s current state with specific strategies and tactics instead of spending 30 minutes with unfocused conversation and fuzzy next steps.  It’s management’s understanding of the strategic use of the office door, to keep it open rather than closed.  Is it used as a symbolic advantage or referenced as a divisional tool?

It’s celebrating ‘wins’ aloud, but coaching through all the bases expected to be covered.

It’s congratulating the close of a sale, but asking if the proper steps were taken at point of sale to leverage more revenue, testimonial letters, referrals, improvements to sales process, etc. 

The power of ‘Daily Feedback and Improvement’ is just that.

Focus on Daily Routines to achieve Weekly Goals to maintain Monthly Results. 

Jeff Hardesty is President of JDH Group, Inc. and the Developer of the X2 Sales System®, a blended training system that teaches sales professionals the competency of setting C-level business appointments. Jeff can be reached at jeff@convertmoresales.com

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