An Accountability Manifesto
Beyond Excuses: Crafting a Culture of Accountability
Here’s the definition of Accountability from Merriam-Webster:
Accountability: the quality or state of being accountable especially : an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions
Here’s the use of the word accountability since 1950, per Google. Might be a bit of an eye opener that the use of the word has been decreasing since 2007.
Lack of accountability and follow up is one of the biggest killers of sales team culture and performance. It appears to be more common now than in the past few years.
You can have brilliant sales leadership from a technique and process standpoint, but if it lacks accountability and follow through you falter.
4 Keys to Accountability
Depending on what you read, there are four components of accountability when you look at accountability within organizations (courtesy of One World Trust):
Participation - This is the goal setting part where we agree on what the results we want are and the actions we’ll take to get there.
Evaluation - Goal validation - just because the goal is set doesn’t mean it’s the right goal and is in alignment where the team needs to be. This is the refining process of goal setting.
Transparency - Once it’s set and validated, who knows what the goal is? This is where a sales leader or accountability partner or mentor can help. You can also make these goals public so everyone knows.
Feedback - Measure against how you are doing AND follow up to help, if needed, often in the form of coaching, or acknowledge that they are on track!
Individual Accountability
And there are two types of accountability when you look at an individual (think sales rep):
Internal – To oneself
External —To someone else and To the community or team
An amazing leader helps define the external accountability requirements and inspires internal accountability in their reps.
External accountability comes down to the discipline of the sales leader.
I’ve known sales leaders that are great at running meetings, inspiring their team, and are amazing individual sales people, but they fall down in one area; discipline around holding their reps accountable and following up.
What gets in the way?
Here’s what some sales managers have told me over the years…
They don’t want to bug their reps. “Hey, I have an experienced team, they know what they are doing, my job is just to support them.”
Not really my job. “It’s up to them to hold themselves accountable. Sink or swim, I don’t have time to babysit – you can make it or you can’t.”
Lack of structure. “We don’t really have anything to hold them accountable to, except their quota.”
It’s true that there’s a balance between nagging reps about activities and connecting with them to make sure they’re doing what’s needed to win in the marketplace. I’ve spoken to plenty of sales leaders that are nags and bug the crap out of their senior reps. You hear the, “they are a micromanager” feedback.
Accountability is most powerful when everyone:
Knows what is expected. (Participation and Evaluation)
Knows where they and others stand compared to what is expected. (Transparency)
Sees the sales leader take action about those who are underperforming; in the form of helping through coaching or performance managing them. (Feedback)
Sees the leader acknowledge hitting or exceeding performance expectations (Feedback)
Notice that the first two are fairly easy to do.
For example, everyone on our team is expected to generate 3-5 new clients a month. We talk about that expectation every month.
We also have a publicly shared daily tally that shows where everyone stands on new clients. We have taken it a step further and in the same table show where everyone stands on closed deals, revenue, and pipeline – so both the leading indicators (commitments/pipeline) and lagging indicators (closed deals and revenue) for new clients.
The second two are where great sales leaders really differentiate themselves. They see and take steps to actively help or correct teammates that are starting to fall behind. This is not a one size fits all management formula. You have to understand and deconstruct what’s happening with the rep that is slipping and engage them where they are at to help level them up.
In my home growing up, my Mom said, “Not every kid gets the same thing, but every kid gets what they need.” That’s wisdom.
The same can be said with your reps. Every rep is different and it may be that they are going through a rough patch at home, or they are fearful about success, or they are doing all of the activity but it’s not clicking with clients.
It also could be that they are just not willing to do the work to be successful.
This is where you can step in to guide and coach them, but you cannot fix things for them – ultimately they have to be successful on their own merits.
Your job as a sales leader is to give reps enough space and freedom to be successful while at the same time providing just enough support to make sure they have the tools and training to succeed.
This takes work and discernment.
Accountability is just that – helping reps map out what THEY need to do to be successful then FOLLOWING UP to make sure they are doing the things they need to do and are gaining the skills to be successful.
I look at this by asking two questions:
Are you doing the work?
Do you have the skills?
Will (action) and Skill (ability).
If a rep puts in the work, I have a lot more patience and will go above and beyond to help train and put them in a position to gain the skills to be successful.
If you don’t put in the work, you won’t last and I can’t teach desire. It this is the case, they are lacking their own internal accountability. The accountability to oneself.
The hardest scenario for a sales leader is having someone that is willing to do the work, shows up every day, puts in the time, but ultimately doesn’t have the skills or capacity to be successful at the level we need them to be. Those are my saddest days.
Summary
In summary, first, make sure that you have the four components of accountability alive and well in your team. Then make sure you, as a leader, have your own self discipline to follow up and follow through with your reps.
This is the way.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Ryan Holiday since there are many obstacles in the way of having a culture of accountability on your team:
“No one is coming to save you. And if we’d like to go where we claim we want to go – to accomplish what we claim are our goals – there is only one way. And that’s to meet our problems with the right action. Therefore we can always (and only) greet our obstacles;
with energy
with persistence
with a coherent and deliberate process
with iteration and resilience
with pragmatism
with strategic vision
with craftiness and savvy
and an eye for opportunity and pivotal moments
Are you ready to get to work?”
-Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way
Hope you enjoyed my Manifesto - Lead well,
-Joe