The Sales Development Playbook | Trish Bertuzzi | Part 4

I had a manager tell me at a previous job that I should be going to lunch with different people within the company. “Meet someone in the elevator… see if they want to join you for lunch”. It gives you the opportunity to learn about them and what they do for the organization. Sooner or later, I was able to have conversations will all sorts of people because I took the initiative to learn about them.

Phill Keene (@phillkeene) gives me an Ah-Ha Moment that echos my previous managers comment!

“… I also take a ton of coffee meetings with reps that want career advice. This allows me to recognize the best talent out there and be top of mind when they’re thinking about making a career change.”[note]Page 85[/note]

I’m looking at this quote from the view of me being developed. I’m going to take the best rep out for coffee so that I can learn from them. People that have been selling longer than me are usually happy to share their success and sometimes their failures. Also, who doesn’t love talking about themselves? Regardless of what your job title is, try and make it a habit of taking someone out for coffee once in awhile. You could learn something cool about them! It’s a small world and somehow you may need each other in the future.

If you engage with your people, regardless the job you have, the more supported you’ll feel. The more supported you feel, the happier you’ll be. Bertuzzi has some incredible stats in here about retention.

“It’s time to gear up for what can feel like another fulltime job: engaging, developing, and motivating reps. The fourth element for accelerating revenue growth with sales development is retention.”[note]Page 103[/note]

Retention is hard! I see great people leave their companies everyday. Heck, I was one of those people in December of 2015. Obviously, you can never predict when people are going to leave your organization, but if you’re engaged, you should see the red flags. Good culture, good compensation, continuous learning and planned out career path is what’s going to help you keep people. If people are showing up to work everyday not knowing what their future holds, they may look else where.

“Today, reps expect a learning culture, they expect to grow professionally, and they expect you to deliver in those areas.”[note]Page 105[/note]

The day you stop learning is the day you stop growing. If you’re striving to be the best you possibly can, you need to keep learning and keep pushing people to teach you. There are so many websites out there that offer free courses. If you’re the boss and you’re not teaching your people… you may see them looking elsewhere.

We’re in the information age… and we’re getting hit up on LinkedIn weekly about new jobs. It’s exciting to feel wanted by a different company. Richard Bronson said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Your people should know that you care about their success!

“… What about hitting my number? … hitting your number is important. But I believe two things to be true. One, if you build up your people, they will overachieve. Two, hitting goals for any fiscal year is a marker of a job well done. But changing the career trajectory for dozens and dozens of people is the measure of a professional life well lived.”[note]Page 107[/note]

It doesn’t get any more selfless than that. If you really care about the success of your people and strive to make them better everyday, their numbers will come. Don’t forget; people are all at different walks in their careers. Can you think back to a manager that changes your career? Take a second and think about it! Where are they now? Maybe send them a thank you email!

“Making sales coaching a priority is a business decision. Coaching improves retention and performance.”[note]Page 119[/note]

What better outcome can you ask for? Retention and performance is huge! You’re not losing your people and your people are performing well. #Boom

There’s more to come from me about:

The Sales Development Playbook | Trish Bertuzzi

Get “The Sales Development Playbook” on Amazon.