3 Ways to Create a More Autonomous Sales Team

I’ve spoken with many sales leaders who say they often get in the weeds to help their team close specific deals. It’s one thing to review deals with your team… but it’s another thing to start working on deals and in deals instead of supporting your team to have those wins.

You know the old saying about teaching someone to fish… We’re all familiar with the concept, but putting it into practice can be tougher than it seems at first glance. How do you support your team to go out there and do the fishing for themselves?

As a frontline manager, once you find yourself working on the deals, you struggle to find the time for one-on-ones with other team members. And you realize you’re in the trenches more than you should be as their leader.

That’s why I’m sharing three specific things you can do to help your team become more autonomous, so that everyone wins.

Why frontline managers get pulled into deals

Before we look at how to address the issue, let’s quickly review three reasons why it’s so common:

1.     Many frontline managers were previously top-performing individual contributors. Their performance is what got them the promotion. So it’s only natural for those new leaders to default to what they know best: rolling up their sleeves and getting directly involved to help close those deals.

2.     Most sales organizations lack an actual sales framework or methodology. Without a framework that can be taught and reinforced, it’s easier for a leader to just do the selling because they know by doing. Knowing by doing is tough to replicate and teach.

3.     CRMs aren’t used consistently or thoroughly. The details about any specific deal are scarce and superficial in the CRM. Plus, information is gathered without any particular framework (see point number

2). So during deal reviews, there isn’t a lot of substance to coach to. Hence, the manager just gets directly involved in the deal to help close it.

Now, let’s look at what to do about these issues.

Guiding your team to more autonomy - Here it is - 3 Ways to Create a More Autonomous Sales Team

To cultivate a confident, autonomous team who can close their own deals without pulling you in, I recommend taking these three key steps. 

1.     Before each new quarter, guide each team member to use a tool created by A Sales Growth company called a G.S.I.T. (Goals, Strategies, Initiatives, and Tactics). This worksheet is a powerful way for your team members to become clear on what they want to achieve, and how they will achieve it. Review their G.S.I.T. and then empower them to execute it. Keep a copy for yourself as a reminder that you’re here to support them – not to do the work for them. (If you’d like a copy of this template, just ask me in a DM and I’ll send it over!) 

2. Coach them on their discovery with prospective clients – don’t do the discovery for them. (Watch their call recordings or attend live meetings with them – as their coach, not as a seller.) In Gap Selling, we use a three-step framework for coaching:

a. Observe them in discovery

b. Describe to them what you observed in discovery

c. Prescribe the change you’d like to see

From here, your team member should:

d. Absorb what you’ve recommended

e. Apply what you’ve recommended in their next discovery

3.     Establish more rigor around the use of your CRM. Granted, there’s never anything sexy or exciting about using a CRM. No one on your team is going to thank you for bringing this up. But your team must gather quantifiable and qualifiable information about the business case for why the prospective customer should buy. Once this information is consistently captured in your CRM, you can coach to this information in proper deal reviews. This is how you support your team to go close those deals themselves, rather than doing it for them.

The greatest thing you can do for your team is to support them and allow them to amaze themselves by what they’re capable of achieving.

#salesleadership #salestraining #gapselling

"3 Ways to Create a More Autonomous Sales Team"