Turn “Okay” Sales People into Superstars

I believe that most people really want to do a good job.

In this session, I’ll show you how to help your “okay” performers focus on what matters so they can create far better sales results than they ever dreamed possible.

If you’ve got great accountability already, you’ll love this episode because I’ll show you how to get lenders to quickly up the ante on their performance.

If you feel like you struggle to get accountability in your workplace and people all “look” busy but they just can’t unleash true high levels of performance, you’ll love what’s coming because it will show you how you can get some nice loan growth on good accounts in just a few weeks.

If you have accountability in place but feel you could better optimize what your people are accountable to, and that could be your big breakthrough, brace yourself, because your breakthrough is in sight.

There are three challenges that get in the way of optimized accountability.

First, most people don’t want to be held accountable, because then it is clear how well they’re doing. They fear they won’t succeed, so they play games and pretend to “not get it” or don’t turn in reports, hoping you’ll give up.

Second, people who have not evolved themselves and grown enough on a personal level can, when accountability is introduced, start game-playing. That gets really weird really fast, as they put forth every excuse in the book for why they don’t quite “understand” what you want or when you want it.

Third, gravity exists. Even if you get accountability for a while, there are forces working against you to bring you back to “no accountability.”

If you’re like hundreds of bank CEOs I’ve talked with, you have seen all of these at one time or another.

I’m now going to give you three steps to get some accountability traction within a few short weeks.

Step 1:

So many experts put forth initiatives where they suggest that if you set goals and change incentive pay, results will happen, but the reality is that hundreds of bank CEOs nod when I mention that it doesn’t work. In spite of this, other bank execs keep introducing the same plans, hoping for different results. Instead, you need to understand that you don’t have a sales training issue—you have a confidence issue. Until you get the right system in place to normalize winning, accountability will always blow up.

Step 2:

Unlike so many approaches that start out setting a target that is too high, realize that you want some quick wins on the basics. By bringing visibility to the basics and celebrating those, you can then slowly raise the bar. By going slow, you end up going really fast.

Step 3:

Raise the bar every week from the week before. By celebrating progress weekly, you can enjoy the buy-in. Follow that by building the “franchise system” of reporting, celebrating, visibility, and coaching. By doing that, you’ll avoid the “this too shall pass” attitude that is otherwise almost guaranteed.

Just three steps. First, build confidence, then create the “raise the bar” system, and then build the “stickiness” system.

By following this process you can not only get accountability for the right things in place quickly, you can sleep well at night knowing that you won’t have to repeat this in a few years with people doing the “slow walk” thinking they’ll win again in their fight against accountability.

Don’t miss the next episode, when I’ll show you how to help your sales managers get better results growing your loans.