Turning a Sales Team around...Yin and Yang

I recently had my 12 sales reps come in from around the country for one of those proverbial "sales summits".  You know the ones I'm talking about...you bring people in from out of the field, you talk about the numbers, you talk about year end goals, you talk about new products...blah...blah...blah...

These people invariably leave these meetings thinking it has been a colossal waste of time, and often provide feedback that says so.  That has certainly been the case with my team, over the years.  You can hardly blame them.  Two years ago, our VP of Sales opened up the meeting by showing these people a picture of a burning oil platform and told them that this is what their future was!  Last year, our new (different VP of Sales) put a bunch of spreadsheets up on the screen and walked through them cell by cell, column by column...and...his numbers were wrong.

This year, we tried to change it up.  Our year is a struggle and its going to go right down to the wire as to whether we will make the number or not.  Much of this is not my team's fault.  Market conditions, franchise agreements, corporate restructures, and a variety of other issues have conspired against my squad.  They've heard all the bad news already.

While the "burning oil platform" might have been a good fit...I decided to go the other way.  I prepared one slide of content for the whole 2 day session.  It was the famous representation of yin and yang.  You know the one...a circle with one black and white swoosh and one white a black swoosh?

My team know I'm a surfer and into yoga, but this was a business meeting.  They all thought "surely he's got something else"?

Not really.  I spoke of the need for them to go through this conference with yin and yang as their guide.  I asked them to think in terms of balance, and relate them to:

~ Work and home life
~ Print advertising and Digital Advertising
~ Time spent on existing accounts and time spent prospecting new accounts
~ Sales and Marketing
~ Corporate Sales and Franchisee Sales

After asking them to focus on this balance, I got out of the way and let a bunch of smarter people deliver the real content.  The feedback has been amazing.  This crew went out in the first week after and put $500k of new sales on the board.  It's represented our best collective week in a long time.  More is coming.  What was truly amazing was how much specific feedback I got about how much they appreciated the message.

Moral of the story...sometimes you have to throw the numbers out.  Sometimes it's good to refocus on balance.  It certainly was with this team, and it'll be a message I consistently preach from now on...