Essential Actions

If you want to get your new sales recruits off to a flying start, first teach them the essential actions – those necessary to succeed – and then help them formulate a plan loaded with those essential actions. Then follow up and ensure they are being done.

Essential actions are non-negotiable. Do the actions, or leave. Never allow your salesperson to negotiate the actions downwards.

This is exactly what happened with one of our leaders recently. She believed her recruit showed promise. But I wondered if he was just making the ‘right noises’. Until you see the essential actions being performed regularly, you can’t say the recruit is showing promise.

The leader had taken shortcuts with the recruit’s induction. I advised going back to square one, beginning with six essential actions to be carried out in the coming six weeks.

Those actions were:

• Speak to 80 potential sellers each working day. This number is non-negotiable
• Study Pittard’s Winning Ways sales program
• Pass a theory examination on Winning Ways
• Study two listing presentation videos on iTrain® (Pittard’s on-demand streaming portal)
• Lay out a listing presentation as suggested in Winning Ways and the video programs
• Complete a listing presentation role play with the leader

You might think those actions are tough. Paying for mediocrity is tougher.

But the leader compromised, allowing the recruit to fall short of the prospecting numbers. The highest he got was 68 prospecting calls in one day.

The recruit told the leader it was too hard. He wanted to go into Sales where he ‘guaranteed’ that he would do well.

I told this recruit and the leader that under no circumstances should he be trusted with live leads. If he quit making calls because it was too hard, he would do the same at listing presentations, when the client told him that his fee was too high. He’d lower the fee immediately.

My reasoning? If you fold once when the going is tough, you’ll fold again and again.

This guy didn’t have what it took to be a salesperson, yet. Perhaps further down the track, but not today.

His leader was worried about being on her own. This was the only person coming onto her sales team. I told her this: Financially and for peace of mind…

No people is better than the wrong people.

The moment you compromise on the essential action with your salespeople, you doom them to failure.

• What are the non-negotiable essential actions you expect your sales team to perform?
• And what are the consequences if they don’t do those actions?

You need to answer both questions if you want to build a great team.