Easy.Repeatable.Processes.Period.

OK, what should I have my Sales org do today? Admit it, we’ve all had this thought at some point in our careers. Truthfully, you can demand things to just fill the day and make yourself feel good but you are only sabotaging your own GTM engine. So what’s the answer?

You want to align everyone on an easy repeatable process to get everyone rowing in the same direction. Ideally, the goal is that every meeting and activity is building on top of the next for an outcome you are striving for. That outcome of course being able to hit and go past revenue goals.

The first thing you’ll want to do is to structure your work week. Remember, your single goal is to hit your number… use that as the source of truth when thinking about your meetings. Here is an example of what I try to do:

My goal as frontline manager was to know my pipeline, where were the deals and what were the gaps in our pipeline that I needed to get ahead of. Every morning I would get the teams together and go through a redlight/greenlight process. What I wanted to accomplish was a clear understanding of where the deals stood with a simple “Green, this is coming in” or “Red, this is going to push.” No emotion, no storytelling.. Purely a clinical call on where the individual deal stood. This also allowed me to get a rollup number to compare the reps forecast against.

This practice is fantastic and I learned it from some of the best leaders that I got to work with while at Duo Security. I marveled at how effective it was and how it allowed for reps to get together and just talk about deals. I basically took this into my own strategy and applied it to a daily standup across multiple companies as an executive.

Next, getting the forecast in first on Monday set up my work week. I can see how the sellers were thinking about their pipeline. This would become the foundation for my 1:1s. I would spend this time validating their forecast and CRM hygiene. Are we thinking about the deals the same way? Can I count on this commit number or is it shaky? Getting the rep’s idea about their commit then reviewing it 1:1 started to give me an idea of 1) What my leadership forecast will be and 2) if there are any common gaps that I see which I need to address in my team meeting.

My team meetings would be structured around a common theme that I would see in 1:1s as well as how we were pacing against the number. My goal was to make sure that the team meeting was actually INFORMATIVE and USEFUL for the teams. I wanted them to understand what we needed to work on and why it was important. Getting reps to buy into a focused goal is challenging… you have to make it compelling. If you are just mailing in your team meeting then the time is wasted. Your credibility as a leader also takes a hit. Put in the effort and it will pay dividends later.

I would have tiger team reviews to get my senior AEs to take on an initiative. This was a great leadership exercise to get them acquainted with how to fix broken processes. It was a perfect opportunity for them to grow as a future leader. Selfishly, this would also allow for revenue to flow in more freely. By having your best people work on issues you were freeing up obstacles in your org.

By Friday I wanted to wrap my week up to make sure we’ve hit all our KPIs, that our pipeline is scrubbed and opps are up to date. When I would have my forecast call with the CEO I wanted to make sure that my house was in order. More importantly, I wanted to be able to give them confidence in the commit number for when they had update calls with the Board.

Don’t think you are limited to just a work week as well. You should do it for the month and break it down by weeks. See below for an example:

You can also apply this for the quarter to keep everyone focused over 90 days. The themes I wanted to drive towards were 1) are we focused on our key deals 2) do we have consistent enablement around gaps and 3) is our pipeline constantly clean so we can insure we know where we are at against our number.

Being prescriptive about how you manage your team's time can seem over the top or like you are a micromanager. It actually does the opposite… it allows for a ton of creativity on what needs to be done and the freedom to do it. It encourages people to focus on what is the most important thing, the quota. How you solve that problem is an opportunity to show me creativity and original thinking. Life gets easier when everyone knows which direction we are rowing.

Everyone wants to be good at what they do. By providing your teams with an easy repeatable process allows them the opportunity to be great. They know what to anticipate is needed from them and provides a mutual respect that we are using our time together effectively.