The 4 Best Sources Of Feedback For Salespeople
In our experience, the ability to receive and implement feedback is, by far, the #1 most effective approach to getting better at sales.
Another tale of two salespeople.
If you take two salespeople, one with several years of sales experience and the other with none, who do you think will be the top performer?
The one with more experience, of course.
In the short term, the salesperson with more experience will outperform simply because they’re bound to have picked up a few tips and tricks over the course of their tenure in sales.
The same can be said of talent. In the short term, the salesperson with more talent will outperform the salesperson with less.
But what about the long run?
Whichever salesperson is better at implementing feedback is going to outperform in the long run.
It doesn’t matter if one starts with more experience or more talent.
If the salesperson with no experience and/or no talent has a knack for asking smart questions, taking notes, implementing feedback, testing results, and repeating this process over and over—then the salesperson with more experience and/or more talent won’t be on top for long.
Having a growth mindset is step one.
Feedback won’t do much good if the recipient isn’t open to receiving it, or doesn’t believe it will help.
There’s a certain type of person that thrives when receiving feedback. They are curious, eager to learn, humble in their failures, and excited to get better. This is the mindset that succeeds in sales.
On the other hand, some people have trouble putting their ego aside, take feedback as an affront, and think they’ve already got it all figured out. This mindset fails in sales.
There are plenty of reasons for this difference in mindsets. One possible explanation comes from Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on fixed versus growth mindsets in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
There are two basic mindsets:
- Fixed mindset: belief that your qualities are “carved in stone.”
- Growth mindset: “belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.”
Talent isn’t fixed. Skill isn’t fixed. Intelligence isn’t fixed. Ability to close deals isn’t fixed.
If you start out being bad at something, you can get better.
But only if you have a growth mindset.
There is an abundance of feedback in sales.
Okay, so you’ve re-wired your brain into a growth mindset.
Now what?
Time to get some feedback.
Luckily, you won’t have to look far in a sales role.
You’re constantly getting feedback on every phone call. Most calls have a binary outcome. One outcome is associated with success, and the other with failure.
For an SDR, the goal of the call is to set an appointment. You either set the appointment (success) or you don’t (failure).
For an AE, the goal of the call is to close the deal. You either close the deal (success) or you don’t (failure).
If you’re planning on having a long career in sales, it really doesn’t matter whether you succeed or fail in the very beginning. Let me say that again: in the beginning of your sales career, it doesn’t matter whether you succeed or fail.
What matters is how you learn from your successes and failures.
After your failed calls, take note of what didn’t work.
After your successful calls, take note of what did work.
Get rid of what doesn’t work. Keep what does. Rinse and repeat. This is how to continually get better at sales.
Secondary feedback from managers and mentors.
In addition to the primary feedback from your sales encounters themselves, you’ll also be getting secondary feedback from multiple sources.
Especially if you’re taking calls in an office with an open floor plan, your work is constantly being displayed for everyone around you.
Your manager can hear you. Your peers can hear you. And your prospect can definitely hear you. Even if you’re not hearing feedback, people around you are thinking it constantly.
If you get in the habit of asking for feedback from top-performers and managers, this is the second best way to get better at sales (real-time feedback from your prospects being the first).
Here are the best sources of feedback in sales, in order:
- Customers and prospects
- Managers and mentors
- Yourself
- Books and videos
1. Feedback from customers and prospects:
After you close a deal, take time to reflect.
- Why did that deal close?
- What did I do right?
- Did my customer explicitly say why they enjoyed working with me?
- What was the piece of value that pushed them over the line?
Every customer is different, so you can’t do exactly the same thing for every sales encounter, but you can take what you learned from your previous wins and apply what worked well to your next encounter. Then you will start to see the tactics that repeatedly lead to closing the deal.
It’s the same thing for deals that you lose. Do the same type of reflection.
- Why did I lose that deal?
- What did I do wrong?
- Did my prospect explicitly say why they didn’t buy?
- Was there a specific objection that I couldn’t overcome?
- Have I had trouble with this same objection before?
And document! The reflections do you no good if you don’t have a system for taking notes and implementing the feedback. We highly recommend Evernote.
2. Feedback from managers and mentors:
Notice that feedback from peers isn’t on the list.
Getting feedback from a veteran at the company that consistently outperforms their sales targets is one thing. That’s a mentor.
A peer that started at the same time as you and actually performs worse than you is not a good source of feedback. That’s more of a pretentious acquaintance.
And getting feedback from your direct manager should be a given.
At the very least, your company will have performance reviews. Great companies will have monthly or quarterly 1:1s between managers and team members. If you’re working at a startup that doesn’t have any of this, take initiative and ask your manager for permission to add time to their calendar.
Take these opportunities to ask,
“How can I get better at my job?”
3. Feedback from yourself:
Think of feedback from yourself like shopping at a discount department store, like Ross or Marshalls.
Tons of quantity, but not always the best quality.
Feedback from yourself is good because you know yourself better than anyone else. You’re also always in your own head and therefore can give yourself feedback all the time.
But it might also be bad because you haven’t yet mastered the thing that you’re trying to learn.
The best strategy for giving yourself feedback is to keep in mind what you learned from #1 and #2 and apply it to appropriate situations.
You won’t always have your manager with you, but you can remember and take note of what they have told you in the past and apply it to situations that continue to recur.
4. Feedback from books and videos:
This is the lowest on the list because it’s not unique to you. Books and videos are made for thousands if not millions of people. Therefore, the advice is not specific to your situation.
Still, you can learn a ton from brilliant minds that you wouldn’t normally have access to. Just make sure that this doesn’t become your only source of feedback.
A few final notes about feedback:
Not all feedback is created equal.
For example, feedback from your bottom-performing peer is probably less valuable than feedback from your manager.
It won’t be easy.
Getting constant feedback can hurt your ego. But if you can remove emotion from the equation and take a scientific approach, you’ll be a top closer in no time.
Professional feedback can apply to your personal life too.
It’s hard to give feedback to your friends. It’s one of Dale Carnegie’s rules: don’t criticize. For the same reason, your friends don’t usually give you feedback.
But then how do you recognize your own faults and get better? It’s hard to accurately assess what we need to work on in our personal lives without a third-party view from the outside.
That’s exactly why feedback at work is so valuable. It’s a professional environment. People show up to do work and get better. It’s the perfect environment for feedback.
Especially in sales (a profession with a lot of human-to-human interaction), there are tons of opportunities to learn about how to improve your relationships, communication style, social life, etc.