February 2024, Vol 3
Time Investment: 3-5 Minutes
THE BOTTOM LINE
If you want to grow revenue, then it's time to double down on execution.
Here’s a thought: If an observer were to poke around your business for a few days, would they be impressed by consistently strong execution? Would this mysterious outsider score your team at 85% or higher for executing on the right things at the right time and in the right way?
When it comes to consistent execution, all sales organizations have pockets of excellence and potholes. Most sales leaders deal with this continuum by leaning heavily on their conscientious team members. The idea is that their reliability and work ethic will be enough to compensate for the gaps. And of course, any avenue to avoid the pain and aggravation of addressing nagging people or process issues is appealing.
It’s the dead of night and whack, you’ve hit a pothole—no doubt it’s going to knock your car out of alignment. The same is true day in and day out with execution-related missteps in your business.
On the flip side, consistent execution unlocks more units of productivity from the same headcount. Leveling up execution requires two things—addressing the disablers and activating the enablers. Start with identifying and removing the disablers and watch as your very same team is converting more activity into measurable growth.
Free Content: 5 Disablers of Execution—Sales Leader Guide
This month’s premium resource will help you quickly identify the issues that get in the way of consistently strong execution. It also includes the specific, corrective actions that will unleash the productivity you need to drive revenue growth. Download here.
Free Coaching: Develop Yourself As a Sales Leader
Intro: If you want to see stronger execution across the sales organization then challenge yourself to set, activate, and reinforce key growth-oriented priorities. Example: Developing personal mastery around internal communication.
Actionable Idea: Create and model a method for putting your own priorities into motion. Share and explain.
Ask Yourself: What’s the one leadership priority that I need to stick with this year? Then do some legwork…
1. Define the priority and the mindset required to drive it.
2. Develop the 3 activities you need to do to drive progress.
3. Include 1 small, behavioral habit you will build to ensure that executing on your priority has staying power when the 💩 hits the fan.
4. Share this method internally starting with your sales managers.
A Little Piece of My Mind...
‘We gotta do a better job.” While NFL coach Andy Reid is riding high these days, I remember the former Philadelphia Eagles head coach uttering that maddening phrase every time the Birds had a crappy game. You could set your watch to it because you knew it was coming—his stoic, yet frustrating way of stating the obvious after a series of unfortunate events.
“We’ve got to do a better job executing inside of the sales organization.” Nearly every leader I talk to will admit this in one form or another. However, when the growth mandate is handed down, too often these same leaders will take on big initiatives like a new methodology, process, or tech in hopes that it becomes the silver bullet that the business needs to reach that next tier of revenue. The problem is that I’ve yet to see any of these things work while day-to-day execution is funky.
I know why leaders don’t necessarily prioritize execution. It seems time-consuming and it doesn’t make for good presentation content to wow the CEO or the board. It may even raise questions as to why execution needs so much attention and clean-up in the first place.
All that said, I think you should take it on anyway, even if you do it stealthy and without a lot of fanfare. No other leadership initiative will make more of an impact on growth than pristine execution across your sales org. I’m rooting for you!
PS: Want to chat? Send me a note at: [email protected]