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As sales leaders, sometimes we need to push our teams to new levels to achieve the hockey-stick growth we all dream about, right?
You know that end of the quarter, right before the holiday revenue push, when battening down the hatches, slamming 27 red bulls, and screaming, this is SPARTA sounds like a great idea.
While these revenue sprints are fun, they come with a people cost.
Stress, high fatigue, and burnout are all possible side-effects of the last two weeks of the quarter when trying to hit that big goal.
But is it possible to both reduce stress and increase performance simultaneously?
Or is high-performance and high-stress just part of the game?
Sure it's possible. But it takes intelligent planning and an understanding that those 27 red bulls and that all-out mindset to smash new records is a finite resource, which has a high negative cost when depleted.
We're here to discuss today a better way to drive high-performance.
We're here to discuss a Playbook Playlist taken from the world of professional sports called Undulated Planning.
A Playlist that you can use when your team needs to go all out to hit that big, hairy, audacious goal.
Undulated Planning is a type of planning where stress and recovery go up and down, either weekly or daily, within a given period.
In undulated planning, you have different intentions for different weeks or quarters. For example, week one would be an intensity week in a month-long revenue push. On the other hand, you could focus on recovery and goal setting, week two could be a coaching and feedback-focused week, and week three could be centered around recovery and team building.
However you decide to structure your month or quarter, the intention is to help your team perform at a high level while reducing fatigue and the risk of burnout.
Looking at the image above, notice how we change the amount of stress applied to your team and the week's focus. This change allows for some semblance of recovery weekly, but it also reduces monotony - which is a huge factor in employee burnout!
This focus on undulating both stress and recovery can help you intelligently hit that big goal while supporting your team to recover for the next quarter.
In this model type, you have different intentions for different weeks. So, for example:
The team at LEON built this Playbook Playlist on the idea that high-performance is something that should be planned and structured.
This Playlist can support you as a manager by giving you a series of Playbooks (ten in all) that you can use in succession to improve team performance.
The structure of this Playlist is built much like a fitness training plan, where we do from "light to heavy" or, in more general terms, "simple to complex."
So if possible, try to use this Playlist in order.
This Playbook will run for the next 30 days and will include both manager and team-based activities for you to implement.
This week is your high-intensity and high-volume week: calls, meetings, and straight closing.
Rack up the caffeine, get plenty of sleep the night before, and be ready for a go for broke type of week.
Look at this as an MVP week - minimal viable performance - and scrap everything that doesn't involve the goal - even coaching and one on ones with your people can wait. Instead, you want to make sure that the focus is on output and output only as a team. Don't worry; in sprint week three, you will be able to coach up your people using that sweet Gong plan you have. 😉
Below are three Playbooks you can use to plan for this upcoming week.
Week two is where we drop intensity down a bit. We're going to implement something we call "High-low" days where we alternate hard, very stressful days with easy, recovery-focused days.
This week, the goal is to make sure our team is still pushing for revenue while taking into account recovery and mental health, and as a manager, you want to make sure that you are supportive while keeping your foot on the pedal.
Take a look at the Playbooks below, using the "high-low" Playbook, along with two recovery-focused Playbooks.
Now that we've recovered from week one, we want to make sure to hit it hard again, replicating some of the Playbooks we used previously.
That said, we will pivot a bit by adding in coaching and L&D best practices, using this coaching focus to make sure our people are prepared and coached up to close deals - fast.
Role-playing and coaching here should be a Playbook you use as a sales leader. This focus on coaching and the added pipeline will give your people ample opportunity to peak in performance.
Too often in the world of sales, we sprint toward a finish line, giving it the old college try, without any planned recovery time for our team.
Month after month, quarter after quarter, we rage on as sales leaders expecting our people to bounce back with the help of a fat commission check and maybe a team happy hour.
Those days are long gone, my friend.
The new wave is about understanding that recovery is part of the high-growth equation.
This week, we will focus on helping the team align on how the month finished, some planning for the following month, and a much-needed recovery Playbook to help the team get ready to do it again.
Try out this Playlist with your team, or find an even better Playbook in the Playbook Library that works best for your team.
You can search, start, set due dates, customize and send it to your team right through LEON.
And even better, you can use our weekly check-in feature to understand which teams need help and how best to support them.
Get started with LEON today.
