Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Your Sales Team's Beliefs About Their Job Effect Their Actions And Results

I recently attended a leadership workshop hosted by the Oz Principle that was focused on the topic of accountability on a personal and organizational level.

In this post I am not going to explore all the concepts that we discussed, primarily because I am still working on digesting all of the information we covered during the workshop.

That said, one idea they shared regarding the actions people take every day in their job and how those actions are influenced is something that resonated with me and I think anyone who manages an inside team or is responsible for results should be in touch with.  The Oz Principle uses their “Results Pyramid” to visually diagram what they have found to be the drivers behind the actions we take. 

The concept is not rocket science so I do not believe this is something that we are not aware of but rather something that we should all be reminded of as managers of people. The speaker introduced us to the pyramid by explaining that every result is driven by an action taken, as I said not earth shaking information!  They went on to explain that the beliefs we hold are what influence those actions and that our experiences are what create our beliefs.  Again, not earthshaking but an important concept to be conscience of as we manage people, design incentive plans, and look to target specific results as a team and organization.

After this introduction, I took a step back and realized how accurate this is.  The primary concept I took from this explanation was that, as leaders, we often focus on the day to day management of the actions our team members are taking as we hope to have those actions lead to the results we are striving for.  While it is very important to understand what actions are being taken, for example number of outbound activities, conversion rates, etc., we must also have an understanding of employee's beliefs about their role, their job, the company that our team members have and the experiences that have shaped those beliefs.  I am not talking about life experiences but rather experiences on the job, for example making calls, conversation tracks, company interaction, etc.

Again not rocket science but something that I believe that all of us who manage people should make sure that we are thinking about as we drive our teams to the results we want.