Peers, Cheers, and Jeers: How to Enable, Train, and Motivate Sales Millennials

Todd Gracon, VP of Sales, Workato

In today’s market, much of sales teams’ talent is provided by millennials. As with any employee demographic, sales leaders must ask: How can we help those contributors to be the absolute best they can be?

Enter “Peers, Cheers, and Jeers,” our not-so-secret weekly feedback and motivation roundup. Here’s how it works.

On a weekly basis, our SDR and AE teams huddle together to review the good, the bad, and the ugly from the previous week. Sounds pretty standard, right?

Here’s the important difference: This must not be a review from sales leadership. The feedback must be contributed by peers. Leadership is only there to facilitate; everything else is up to the team.

For these meetings to work, it’s crucial to create an environment where vulnerability is not simply acceptable but encouraged. In order to be effective, Peers, Cheers, and Jeers must be done in a safe environment where salespeople are rewarded for exposing bad calls and habits. If there’s any hesitation to share weaknesses and struggles, the exercise won’t work. To cultivate this vulnerability, leadership should get a key rep to buy into this process prior to the initial meeting — and then get that rep to go first.

To keep the meeting on track, here’s a structure we like to follow:

• Prior to the meeting, the sales leader aggregates the calls submitted by the reps
• At the start of the meeting, the leader plays the first rep’s good call
• The leader can pause the recording at key inflection points and ask for feedback about what went well — and what could have gone better
• Rinse and repeat, with each of the reps switching between good and bad calls
• After the meeting, the leader should send an email to the presenters; Thank them for exposing their faults, for having a growth mindset to get better, and for providing positive coaching to the other members on the team

To read the complete article, Peers, Cheers, and Jeers: How to Enable, Train, and Motivate Sales Millennials, visit Quotable.com.