Accountability – 2nd of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions

This is the 2nd in the series of the Top 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions.

#1 – ACCOUNTABILITY

In its simplest form, sales accountability consists of the following:

• Holding salespeople accountable to something measurable – metrics – on a daily basis
• Being more demanding – being firmer and tougher
• Eliminating Excuse Making – people take responsibility for their results
• No more under achieving – everyone achieves and over achieves or else…

Here’s a video of me discussing Excuse Making…

Accountability is an ongoing function and takes place on the following time line:

• in a daily huddle
• no more than 5-10 minutes
• with your entire team (in person or by teleconference)
• using the power of peer pressure
• everyone reports on the metrics on which they are being held accountable (it isn’t necessary for everyone to be reporting on the same metrics)

Yesterday, on this week’s edition of Meet the Sales Experts, my guest, Bob Waks, not only talked about passion and commitment, but his theme throughout the show was on building strong processes and systems and using them to hold people accountable. Click here to contact Bob.

I have written on accountability before.

Read this article to learn how you can quickly change sales behaviors by using my four-step accountability method.

Read this article for a case history of a client using accountability to change sales performance.

This article illustrates where accountabilty must be used in the sales process.

Read this article for an example of executive excuse-making for not using accountability.

Read this article to see how much time sales managers spend on holding salespeople accountable (hint – not enough!).

This article discusses the role of accountability in why new salespeople fail.

And finally, read this article to understand the importance of accountability in the context of sales training, coaching and development.

If you are going to focus on just one of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions and hope to realize an improvement in sales, Accountability is the single function that will help you accomplish it.

(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan