As the pace of change increases so do the demands we put on our salespeople. Our path to full funnel freedom will require new processes, systems and technology, but if we don’t slow down we may wear out our team.
One of David Sandler’s rules was, “slow down to speed up the sale,” for leaders let’s adjust that to “slow down to speed up your salespeople.”
Slowing down doesn’t mean we avoid making decisions or skip implementing a process because “we’ve got a lot going on.” We’ll have a lot going on forever. If the process, system or technology will support our salespeople in achieving their goals, and by extension helping us realize full funnel freedom, then it behooves us as leaders to make time to implement.
We slow down when we make time to properly implement a new system instead of having a 30-minute all-hands meeting, showing a few slides, sharing the link to an FAQ document on our company’s shared drive and thinking, “that’s done! Next!” Blocking off time in our calendars, in my experience 50% more than we feel we need, to support our sales team individually and as a group tells our salespeople that this implementation isn’t a “flavor of the month,” but a core part of our business going forward.
Even though we are “slowing down” we might choose to implement a process and a technology at the same time to reduce the pain of change. It’s a common mistake to plan a technology implementation (e.g. a CRM) then plan a process or system implementation. Implementing simultaneously allows our salespeople to figure out how the process will work within the technology they are adopting, instead of figuring out how to use the new tech then hearing “throw out what you know because this new thing is happening!” That’s probably not what we’re saying, but that’s not what’s most important.
Slowing down to speed up also requires us to set aside time during and after implementation to review progress and adjust to unexpected challenges that popped up after implementation like team members paying lip service to our process or not actively using the new tech. Without this review time we and our team members will likely end up frustrated and disappointed and our implementation will be seriously delayed or possibly die.
We may feel that we have to “keep pace,” but with our head constantly down we’ll miss opportunities to accelerate and that does us and our team a disservice.
Until next time… go lead.
You might also be interested in:
