The Method Is Not The Metric

“Good habits lead to good results.” This is good advice, if somewhat generic and un-actionable. But too often it gets carved in stone to the point where the habits become more important than the results.

Here is when you should focus on method over outcomes: When you don’t have any outcomes yet. When you aren’t experienced and need to build a solid foundation. When previously good outcomes have slipped. When you’re trying to pass foundational knowledge onto others.

Here is when you should focus on outcomes over method: When the outcomes are solid. When the outcomes are actually improving as different methods are being tried. When changes in conditions are making existing methods outdated or untenable.

When I trained salespeople on a regular basis, we would always start with the basics. I wouldn’t start by putting a quota in front of them, I would start by training them in their daily activities – the habits and methods that led to closed deals. I did this because inexperienced salespeople needed structure to guide their activities and a foundation to learn from. The smart ones could have figured it out via trial and error, but why put them through the pain? Instead, I laid it out for them: make this many calls, do this much research, create this many proposals, etc. Quickly these habits would begin producing results, but skipping steps or cutting corners would have a big negative impact. So during training, I focused entirely on habits, regardless of outcomes. Someone with bad habits could luck into an early, easy sale and someone developing good habits might still have an unlucky week, so I didn’t let outcomes cloud the process when there were still too few of them to be reliable data.

Now, when I managed salespeople, experienced salespeople, I had an entirely different mindset. After all, I wasn’t paying them to make calls, I was paying them to close deals. That was important to remember. I knew that generally, “more calls = more deals,” but I also know that the world isn’t so perfectly arranged. One of my people might have been doing something different that week because of unexpected circumstances and closed a lot of revenue. Did I care if they only made half as many calls? Of course not. I cared about outcomes. I only even addressed method with my experienced people in two circumstances:

1. Their outcomes had started to slip. If they weren’t producing results, we explored why and went back to basics if they weren’t using the foundations. If they were, then it was something else, and I’m glad to know that.
2. If their outcomes were unusually good, and they weren’t using the traditional methods, then I wanted to know what they were doing! It might have been something unique to their style that couldn’t be duplicated, but it might have been a new method that could supplement or even replace our old one and improve outcomes for everyone.

Those two situations both tremendously benefited my entire team. They allowed me to essentially always have little experiments running, evolving my whole team’s process while each individual member still contributed to the group outcome and got to do their best work.

I saw far too many other sales managers in my organization be incredibly strict about things like number of calls, number of visits, and other metrics – even with their best reps who were producing like crazy. And those reps quickly got frustrated with the micromanagement and found other teams. Sometimes they found my team, but too often they found teams at other companies.

It’s a tricky balance to strike, I know. As a manager, trusting in outcomes can feel like you aren’t managing. But one of the most essential lessons of leadership is exactly that: Not everything needs to be “managed.” Some things need to be encouraged, trusted, and rewarded instead.