There is a lot of pressure in the real world, especially in commissioned sales. As coaches and managers, not only do we aim to impart best practices and develop skills, but also create a friendly, fun learning oasis and have a good time together while we grow. We need to find ways to let our hair down with the team and become open to change and improvement.
Studies show that companies that keep employees happy outperform their competitors, improving productivity and employee retention and fostering a sense of connection with colleagues. According to research from the Universities of Oxford and Warwick, happy workers are 12-13 percent more productive than their dissatisfied counterparts, accomplishing more in the same amount of time. Gallup, Harvard Business Review and IBM Smarter Workforce Institute all agree that engaged employees outpace their competition in innovation. Happiness at work also leads to greater retention of top talent. On the other hand, a stressful and negative workplace leads to lower results and higher employee turnover.
To get the most out of our front-line sales thoroughbreds, we must cultivate a harmonious culture of appreciation. Salespeople thrive when they have a fun workplace, where they all look forward to coming into their sales offices, whether onsite or virtual.
This blog will discuss holistic tips for a happy and productive culture and then several New Home Sales training tips and game suggestions to coach your salespeople and have fun at the same time.
Salespeople accept coaching and feel comfortable asking for help when they know that their manager has their best interest at heart. Take the time to truly know your salespeople and learn about their family, their interests and what motivates them. Recently I had coaching sessions with two managers who had temporary health issues with their children. A devoted parent myself, I understand how important our loved ones are to us. We spent time talking about their kids before discussing any business; I was genuinely concerned and wanted to make sure they were on the road to recovery. As a manager, make sure you to build trust through empathy and your team will respect and appreciate your help.
Kim Scott, in her excellent book Radical Candor, talks about being honest and direct with your team. They will accept this when they know you care. The opposite is what she calls “ruinous empathy,” which in sales management means allowing bad performance to continue due to fears of conflict or not being liked. This may result in underperformance and job loss (the salesperson’s and possibly even yours). Also avoid manipulation or aggressive demands; the perfect balance is being frank and giving objective direction in a private setting.
For example, we were doing a role play with my friend Scott Baughman an excellent sales manager in Pueblo, Colorado, and his team. One of his salespeople, Debbie, hadn’t had a sale in a few months. While she understood the facts, she lacked benefits and involvement, failing to ask enough questions to draw me, the potential buyer, out. I stopped the role play and asked her to try again. It still wasn’t good enough so I stopped and asked her to try a third time.
Debbie became extremely upset. For the record, nothing distresses me more than being responsible for making someone unhappy; however, as a coach, at times I am forced to be unreasonable, and find a way to productively help salespeople and managers perform at their highest potential. Remember we are not criticizing the person, just improving their process. Later, after she’d processed our feedback, Debbie tried again and did much better.
Two weeks later, I received an email from Debbie:
“…when I role played with you a few weeks ago, I truly hated your guts! However, since you have left, Scott and I practiced what you taught. Guess what, I have made 7 sales. In the last 10 days! Thank you so much, I am so grateful that you pushed me to help me fulfill my potential.”
As the saying goes, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
“One size fits one”
Will Guidara
In his fantastic book, Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara talks about the power of adapting. In sales, this can mean that just because something worked well for one client or colleague, it may not be effective for another. This is where being flexible and adapting comes in. For example, I love the idea of team building and having a fun dinner or outing with my salespeople. However, what if a salesperson would rather spend their limited spare time at home with their family? When my son Max was a toddler and I was a roving sales director, I would race home just to give him a bath, tuck him in bed, read him a story and say prayers. This was our sacred time; it would break my heart if I arrived home late. So when having fun and team building, be flexible and find out what is important to each of your salespeople, rather than pressuring them to attend an afterhours company shindig. In my case, leaving an hour early to beat the traffic and spend time with the “wee lad” was my perfect treat.
Also, be flexible in how you coach. Adapting for personality style, some people thrive on directness, while others are far more sensitive. So you will have to spend more time complimenting before getting to the areas to improve.
For a while I bought rubber chickens to training programs. The intention was to use them as metaphor to illustrate “Not being a closing chicken” and being courageous by asking for the sale. Everyone loved those goofy toy birds. One of my favorite memories was in Calgary, AB with the award-winning Jayman team, when 50 salespeople simultaneously discovered that they (the chickens) made a loud squeaking noise, resulting in everyone “squeezing the bird” in unison for about two minutes. Did we learn anything from it? I am not sure. Did we have fun and make great memories? Hell, yeah! Coupled with structured process-driven training that works, the ability to relax and have fun may be one of the reasons I have been invited back to this same wonderful builder more than 10 times.
Winston Churchill famously said that he loved to learn but hates to be taught. That’s because teaching can be boring or condescending. Especially for us salespeople who often have short attention spans but love to have a good time and are highly competitive. That’s why I created games for various elements of the sales process to allow the salesperson to have fun while they are refining their pitch and improving their skills. Here are some of my “greatest hits.”
These little foam balls can reinforce correct sales language. During training or role playing, if anyone uses the wrong word, such as “lot” not “homesite;” “unit” not “home;” or “contract” not “agreement”, the team pelts the offender with the red foam fruit. It usually creates a lot of laughter and works as the perfect gentle aversion therapy to help us use the most effective verbiage with each other and our customers.
Salespeople often spend too much telling and not enough asking. Would you agree? See, I am practicing what I preach. Originally, I tried a basketball shot clock to impart the concept that we should involve our clients more frequently in the discovery process. However, that didn’t catch on, so I decide to try discovery flags instead.
I learned as a youth soccer coach (football to us Brits) to involve as many kids as possible to keep them engaged. For example, with kids’ soccer that means running three lines of children to take shots on the goal, not one long boring line where the other kids are watching and feeling left out. This way, they are always doing something fun and beneficial. The “Roly” playing version goes as follows:
“Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.
As a coach, your goal is to practice perfectly.”
Tips:
Role play each segment of the sales process. As a manager, help the actors create buyer profile scenarios that are realistic for the salespersons community and also could be entertaining, and please allow everyone to laugh if things go off the rails. This, in turn, will increase team satisfaction and sales.
It is amazing how many salespeople, by role playing in a comfortable setting with their peers, realize as they count the flags, that they could be involving and connecting so much more.
Is this game a little goofy and eccentric? Sure. Does it work, is fun and help salespeople forget they are even being coached? Absolutely! I have been playing this discovery and involvement game for over five years, with all of the builders I work with, so have played this literally hundreds of times.
Here are some pictures from across North America, of our fun flag throwing ceremony, to celebrate emptying the two belts, signifying sufficient questions, which leads to connection, consistency and increased sales.
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I might remember, Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin
When I started selling new homes on a large sales floor in South Florida, I loved it when my managers would host a sales competition. Every other week, we met for our sales meeting and our manager would review appointments and sales. At the end of the meeting we were awarded smaller prizes, such as gift certificates and sales books, with a large prize, usually a paid vacation, being given out at the end of the competition. I won two cruises during my tenure and always appreciated not just the prizes, but the time my managers went to create a fun atmosphere. It also helped me to feel seen and appreciated for my hard work and accomplishments.
In 2023, we created the SALT RACE 500 (Sales Activities that Lead to Transformation Real Accountability Leading to Excellence) to reward activities resulting in more sales. When the race is over we will hopefully have turned the correct activities into habits, that will sustain the salesperson through their career.
So far, a dozen sales teams have participated and found it a fun way to reinforce best practices. Cassie Smith, sales manager for Chesapeake Homes in VA, NC and SC, tried the game last December, when business is typically slower. Here is what she found:
“We started in December and had three weeks of the game and then sales started to roll. [It] definitely improved what [salespeople] needed to do, they got back into the CRM and dug into old leads. They got two sales [this way]…. Our first quarter was incredible, so this got us in the right mindset to kick start sales and created much needed momentum.
Malia was our star, she rocked it, she called [on] aged leads and got a lot of sales. She had great social media posts on her own, trying to procure…business and drive her own qualified traffic. Malia and [another team member] Raleah were neck and neck, and the team loved to see visually on the board who was doing what and who was winning the week and how they could work on catching up next week. Incredibly, they both crossed the finish line in the same week, but Malia was three spaces ahead, so that was the tie-breaker and she won the whole game.
Click here or email me to download and access the SALT race game.
Kahoot is a wonderful app which helps you turn your content into fun and competitive games that salespeople can play on their phones. Seven years ago, I discovered Kahoot through my friends at Eagle Construction and have used it ever since. Regardless of the topic – and I have developed 40 which I teach via Zoom - playing a Kahoot game at the end of each session helps lighten the intensity and makes the training much more interactive. Plus it is a creative way to reinforce what we just covered and learned.
I suggest no more than 10 questions to keep the team interested and engaged. Since it is multiple choice, some wrong answers can be slightly goofy. I typically will throw in a complete non sequitur and am extremely partial to Will Ferrell movie quotes, which usually illicit a laugh. I often end with questions that have nothing to do with sales training to make it more unexpected. These may include local trivia, like the state bird or tree.
Recently for my friends at Forbes Capretto Homes in Buffalo, NY the question was what year and where were buffalo wings created? It turns out buffalo wings were created the same year I was born, making us both very old (no, I’m not telling you)!
The picture at the beginning of this blog was of Tammy Sauls, Director of Sales and Marketing for Keystone Homes in NC with her spa-loving pumpkin. Although a lot of fun, Tammy is also focused, firm and fair with her team. Every Halloween, she purchases pumpkins, passes them out during sales meetings and has her team decorate their models, with the one accumulating the most points being the winner. She writes:
“The agents send a photo [of the decorated pumpkin] to Courtney [who] uploads the photo to Facebook… people vote on the best pumpkin. If someone shares the post they get extra points. I then award a gift card to the winner at the November sales meeting. I also do [a decorating] contest at Christmas.”
Think about how clever Tammy’s idea is. Not only does she have her sales team taking ownership and pride in their models, but they are also having fun. Best of all, the community and homes look warm and inviting during the holiday seasons. It’s a win-win on so many levels. Congratulations, Dustin Green for winning this year’s pumpkin competition!
Training and role-playing can be handled in a pleasurable way, not only helping improve sales habits and maximize conversion ratios but also allowing salespeople to see you, their manager, in an informal and more human light. Rather than enforcing extracurricular after-hours activities, try some of the suggestions in this blog during sales meetings and other work times in in which the team gathers. These activities offer a way to work together and grow, have fun while we learn (even during mistakes) and genuinely connect with our teammates.
I hope these actionable tips will not only increase team satisfaction and retention but also develop skills and level up sales! Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Roland Nairnsey, Author of Mastery of Selling for New Homes & President of New Home Sales Plus Roland@newhomesalesplus.com.