During the latest episode of The Office on NBC, Dwight Schrute expressed a sentiment shared – but, thankfully, rarely spoken – by sales reps everywhere. In response to Andy’s whining that salespeople are supposed to help each other out and be a team, Dwight proclaimed, “We're no more a team than the people staying in the same hotel are a team."
Well, that’s certainly a brutal, cynical assessment of a sales team’s dynamics.
But let’s face it: If a sales rep’s compensation and performance review are based solely on his individual sales performance, then how invested is he in helping out his fellow “teammates?” Sure, the sales manager’s success depends on the entire team’s performance – so the manager wants them to cooperate to the extent such cooperation results in better overall performance – but that doesn’t make a stitch of difference to each individual rep.
Want your reps to behave like team members and not just cohabitants in a hotel? Here are 4 suggestions that might help:
1. Comp them on team performance. Not all managers have the authority to adjust compensation plans, but those who do could create a more cooperative team environment by adding a team performance metric to their reps’ compensation plans.
Special Considerations:
· You’ll have to give considerable thought to how this compensation might be structured: What percentage of compensation is attributed to team success? What metric will you target – total team revenue? performance against plan? minimum performance among all reps? Will there be any subjective or anecdotal data that will factor in? If so, might this cause resentment and accusations of favoritism?
· Also, you’ll need to keep in mind that such comp plan alterations might have some undesirable, unintended consequences. For example, your very best performers might bristle at the thought of having even a small part of their compensation dependent on the performance of other reps. Your effort to create a cohesive sales team might result in your super stud walking out the door.
2. Get them together often and outside of work. A much less costly method of driving sales team cohesion is to foster an environment in which your reps can get to know and like each other informally. Provided your team is not comprised of social spazzes, you can probably let social inertia take care of itself. (If the social spaz factor is high, you might need to more assertively stir the pot to initiate mingling. And if that’s the case, then you might have even bigger issues than lack of cooperation, as socially spazzy salespeople aren’t often great at making sales.)
Your teammates’ familiarity with each other will invariably lead to genuine concern among the members of the team, and a greater willingness to help each other out. You can repeatedly fuel the pump by reinforcing cooperative behavior by publicly and privately praising those who engage in such behavior meaningfully.
Special Considerations:
· Sure, it’s easier to implement than overhauling your comp plan, but it might not work. Let’s face it – time outside of work is a precious commodity, and not all people, particularly hard-working and/or familied ones want to mix it up with colleagues during their free time.
· How are you going to characterize these socials when you organize them? Are they optional or mandatory? Do you risk pissing off your studs by making them partake in these events – if so, is team cohesion worth it? Are you treating for them during these gatherings, or will the reps have to pay their own way?
3. Create Team Interdependence through Expertise. There’s nothing that spurs cooperation more than true team interdependence. Sales Rep A will certainly get the help he needs from Sales Rep B if Rep B knows that he’ll eventually need help from Rep A. Managers can create interdependence by requiring subject-matter expertise in each rep. Requiring reps to take classes or present at conferences or become fluent in a certain vertical can all build expertise that other reps might leverage as they require that expertise to close certain sales.
Special Considerations:
· Are the areas of expertise deemed equally important by the sales reps? If not, then those with the perceived “high value” areas of expertise might be more inclined to figure things out “low value” areas of expertise for themselves rather than reach out to another team member for help.
· Can reps easily acquire expertise in one or more area relatively easily on their own? If so, some of your more ambitious reps might acquire this expertise and therefore reduce their dependence on their fellow reps.
4. Challenge a Rival Team within the Company. Even if the only thing at stake is lunch and bragging rights, you can marshall the competitive spirit that hopefully exists on your team by challenging your arch rival sales manager to a team battle.
Special Considerations:
· How can you set the contest up to encourage cooperation? Simply competing on total productivity might drive your high performers to simply sell more on their own and become even less cooperative. One way might be to require everyone on the winning team to submit a certain minimum amount of business, or insist that deals need to come from a variety of territories in order for a team to claim victory.
· Losing always sucks, so are you prepared to pick up the pieces if the team feels down in the (unlikely, of course) event of defeat?
I’m sure there are skeptics among you who are thinking (admirably, I might add) that failing to cooperate with one’s peers is a completely unprofessional way to behave and that they would have no place as sales reps in a team or company such as yours. You’re wondering if “normal” sales environments (Dunder Mifflin, of course, is as fictional as it is dysfunctional) need such interventions at all.
Ok…fair enough. But how do you monitor and discourage non-cooperative behavior? It’s easy when their rudeness in Dwight-like and in-your-face. But what about keeping in check passively uncooperative behavior? - The rep doesn’t return phone calls to a peer in need until long after the need has passed (“hey, I was busy…sorry!”). Or one rep withholds a valuable piece of market data that might have sealed a deal for a fellow rep (“look, who knew you’d actually need that in your territory?!”).
Look, Dwight Schrute is clearly crazy, but he isn’t dumb – he says what perhaps others are thinking. Creating a sense of team in most sales environments is extremely challenging – and often not worth the effort to achieve it! But if you firmly believe that cooperative behavior will enhance your team’s overall effectiveness (and therefore improve your performance), then give one of the suggestions above a try.
About Sean O'Neil
Sean O’Neil is Principal and CEO of One to One Leadership (www.one2oneleadership.com), a sales and management training firm with clients that include the National Basketball Association, Major League Soccer, News Corporation, First Data, ADP, Xerox, the Oakland Raiders and the New York Knicks. Sean and John Kulisek co-authored Bare Knuckle People Management: Creating Success with the Team You Have – Winners, Losers, Misfits and All, which is due to be published in May 2011. Sean has contributed to or been featured in, among others, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Selling Power Magazine and Incentive Magazine.
