The upshot and the lowdown on accountability

How (and why) leaders need to support their salespeople to win

You want results, but some of your salespeople aren’t doing what it takes. You’ve invested your hard-earned cash, made the career change to leadership, and their lack of activity is frustrating. I get it.

One thing I often hear from leaders who are frustrated with their teams’ sales results but have no real strategy is the catch cry: “We need to hold our salespeople accountable.”

The only problem with this sentiment is that it doesn’t work. At least not when it’s accompanied by a resentful energy and without any strategy for ‘how’.

Often, trying to hold people ‘accountable’ without an adequate understanding of the psychology of leadership leads to issues with culture, retention and reputation in the marketplace. Unless those salespeople have proven to be prohibitively high-maintenance (in time and energy) and low-value, they represent potential. That potential is worth harnessing.

In this article, I’ll share three things:

1. The brain science that clearly explains why accountability doesn’t work;

2. The fundamental realities that make “accountability” risky; and

3. An alternative for lifting activity and sales that works.

What the brain science has to say about accountability

If you want to hold your salespeople accountable, there are two key things you need to understand about the brain. The first is the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ phenomenon. The second is about the specific rewards the brain needs and risks if it doesn’t get it.

You’ve likely heard of the fight, flight or freeze tendency of humans under threat. We all have a hard-wired, primitive part of our brains (called the limbic system) designed to keep us alive. When our limbic system is activated, we will perceive a threat and immediately and unconsciously work on resolving it — through fight, flight or freezing.

When managers attempt to ‘hold salespeople accountable’ without understanding the psychology or taking care about how they approach it, they risk a significant likelihood of activating the limbic system within their salesperson’s brain, causing them to perceive threat.

The second thing to understand, which is connected to the first, is what the brain needs.

In his best-selling book, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day Long, Dr David Rock shares five things our brains fundamentally need to work well.

According to science, Rock explains that our brains need Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. In other words, people want to:

• Have and maintain positive status (in their own and others’ minds)

• Feel certain and safe about where they are

• Experience autonomy

• Feel related to the people around them (or at the very least, not in conflict)

• Be fairly treated (according to how they perceive fair treatment).

If any of these are not present, our brains go into fight, flight, or freeze mode — and our behaviour gets hijacked.

Promoting accountability isn’t wrong in and of itself. However, if not done well, you risk threatening the critical needs of the brain — which is not conducive to changing behaviour. Nor is it helpful for your salespeople’s mindset or performance, and they will move away from whatever you’re trying to achieve.

Six fundamental realities that make accountability risky

1. When people are underperforming — particularly when they know they are — and feel financially threatened as a result, they tend to be already beating themselves up. Piling on them is likely to make it worse.

2. Salespeople are self-employed contractors. If you treat them in ways they don’t like, there are plenty of competing offices that will snap them up.

3. People like to be treated well and be well thought of, even if they’re underperforming.

4. People are in real estate to achieve their goals. Even if they aren’t clear on their goals, they don’t care about your goals (and you could argue that they shouldn’t).

5. People don’t like being held accountable unless they are clear on their goal and have invited or welcomed accountability to help them achieve it.

6. If they leave, you can bet your last dollar they will make it about you and tell others. You risk getting a poor reputation for being a poor leader (even though it may seem an entirely unfair reflection).

An alternative to accountability

You want your salespeople to win. After all, when they win, you win. Further, it’s your job to help them succeed.

Here are five tips to help your salespeople to win:

1. Stop thinking about accountability — and start thinking about support.

2. Realise that lack of activity is often the by-product of lack of confidence, which is the by-product of a lack of competence or clarity. Leadership is the critical ingredient for building competence and clarity.

3. Get to know your people as human beings. (What are their goals? What matters to them?)

4. Build a development program that supports, trains and coaches salespeople in the critical skills and phases where salespeople fall down (i.e., listing presentations, negotiation, objection handling, etc.).

5. With the above four points in mind, build a well-considered, step-by-step process that starts from the very first conversation you ever have with them and continues till the moment they walk out the door on their final day.

The common assumption of business owners in real estate, and any other sales-driven industry, is this: “Just recruit some people and tell them what to do.” That assumption leads to an ‘abandon and hope’ style of leadership.

‘Abandon and hope’ doesn’t work — but neither does ‘accountability without support’

Accountability in our industry tends to be a reactive measure, reserved typically for under-performers, rather than part of a broader and well-thought-out people strategy.

If you want your salespeople to win, think of accountability more in terms of support — a supportive process that includes coaching, training and mentoring to help them win at achieving their goals, and you have a recipe for success.

Is it easier said than done? Yes, but it can be done!

Jasmine Platt

Founder, Real Estate Leaders