To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow.
– Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Does your sales team have rhythm?
One of the most effective ways to support high performance from your sales makers is to establish – and maintain – a regular cadence of communication between the sales team and leadership.
Many of us are so busy it seems difficult to stick to a schedule. Sales team meetings get pushed back and rescheduled. Check-ins with sales team members happen sporadically. Management doesn’t have a consistent view of each seller’s pipeline, which makes forecasting difficult. There’s not a high level of accountability, and things fall through the cracks.
Why Does A Cadence Help?
Forward progress is very hard to make in jumps and starts. If you try to hike up a mountain by hopping on one foot, then switching to the other and taking a giant stride, then pausing for a moment, clicking your heels together and hopping again, you might win a grant to attend to the Ministry of Silly Walks, but you’re not going to get up the hill in a hurry. You’re also likely to get worn out; all those sporadic, jerky movements actually end up taking more energy than they’re worth.
On the other hand, if you keep your eyes level and move one foot steadily after the other, like a machine, taking even, smooth, regular, moderate strides, you’ll reach the summit with surprising speed and ease.
If you don’t have a cadence, you don’t have smooth progress. Trying to keep up with meetings that don’t happen regularly, collecting people when nobody has room in their schedule, and surprising sales makers with sporadic pipeline check-ins has a similar draining effect to jump-and-hop mountain climbing. It’s ineffective, inefficient, and more trouble than it’s worth.
On the other hand, if everyone knows exactly what meetings and calls are happening on an expected schedule, everyone is prepared. Information flows consistently and steadily between management and the sales team. A culture of teamwork and mutual accountability is fostered. And once established, it actually takes less effort to maintain a cadence than it does to do jump-and-hop sales management.
What Should A Cadence Involve?
You can keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in your sales organization by implementing a regular schedule for team meetings, coaching calls, pipeline check-ins, planning, reviewing, and forecasting.
Depending on the needs of your organization, your cadence might include weekly sales meetings with the entire team, monthly or quarterly one-on-one coaching sessions with individual sales makers, periodic planning sessions, and team and individual performance reviews.
Devise a schedule that makes sense for your team, and set a specific list of attendees and an agenda for each meeting. How long will you spend sharing best practices? When will you do a pipeline update? Does the VP of Sales executive need to be looped into the planning sessions?
You might want to let team members present on topics, or schedule time into the team meeting for celebrating wins. Just make sure that within the meeting cadence itself, each meeting has its own consistent internal rhythm as well.
Do’s and Don’ts
Do take your organization’s specific needs into account when planning a cadence.
Baker Communications offers leading-edge sales training solutions for sales makers and sales managers that will help you address the goals and achieve the outcomes addressed in this article. For more information about how your organization can achieve immediate and lasting behavior change that will uncover new opportunities, drive revenue, and boost your bottom line, click here.
