Try a few of these tactics to unfreeze your team’s best performance:

1. Challenging Yet Attainable Goals – Unattainable impossible goals kill performance faster than almost anything else. Reset your goals for this month, and those of your team, and set them free to give their best.

   • According to the Harvard Business Review, a few salespeople falling short of sales goals is the fault of the individual, but a majority is the fault of the goal itself.

     • HBR – https://hbr.org/2016/07/can-your-sales-team-actually-achieve-their-stretch-goals

     • HBR – https://hbr.org/2012/07/motivating-salespeople-what-really-works

     • Good blog on effective goal setting – https://mailshake.com/blog/sales-goals/

     • Check out this robust guide to goal setting – https://positivepsychology.com/goal-setting/

2. Power Block What Counts – I’m addicted, and you will be too. Train your team to block time to accomplish their most important work before other deliverables take over all their time. Don’t let internal stuff over-power what matters most.

   • Generally referred to as time blocking, I like the name ‘power block’ because it motivates and energizes me to focus, and it peaks the interest of my team to try it themselves

   • The reason time blocking works so well starts with a simple, tragic fact: we are all slaves to our calendars – https://www.roadwarrior.blog/time-blocking/

   • Organizing your schedule instead of making a to-do list takes productivity one step further – https://blog.hubstaff.com/time-blocking-simple-guide/

3. Ask Open-ended Questions and Listen for Opportunity – There is an art to questions, learn it. Use conversations with customers to ask what they need, how they are thinking about their business, and what’s most critical on their priority list in the next 3 months. Listen and take notes. These are the types of questions that will help you focus on where you can drive value. The opportunities in your business will multiply.

   • Asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. These are both critical to consultative success with clients and prospects – https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions

   • Our Portage guide to asking great questions, with intention. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xuzlAh3y0nLXTFmtqNBt-KYgxGeBdHbt/view?usp=sharing

   • I love the magic wand question, and this blog post articulates how to ask it effectively (and how important it is to listen once you ask it) – https://jonathanstark.com/daily/20170928-the-magic-wand-question