Celebrating Individual Wins Without Creating Team Divisions

In sales, we love our leaderboards, special recognition and victory dances – and for good reason. That dopamine hit when closing a big deal is delicious, and make us feel like we did it all on our own and deserve just rewards.

But it begs the question: How do we celebrate Susan's record-breaking month without making everyone else feel like they're starring in your business’s version of "The Hunger Games"?

Personally, I’ve been fueled by intrinsic competition (comparing my past performance with my vision of achieving new records). But that is because I believe that Sales is not a solo sport; where a single victor emerges from a pack of contenders. We’re not here to compete with our colleagues, but build a business. The truly more sustainable and satisfying path requires us to learn from each other to best contribute toward a shared goal.

This pedagogy can be found in yoga studios. When announcing accomplishments, the yogis will highlight the achievement of an individual in the context of how it impacted the group. For sales purposes, this can sound like "Susan didn't just hit 150% of her quota; she helped us get 27% closer to our division’s quarterly target!"

This can more easily foster a culture where veterans regularly share their winning strategies and express their appreciation for those that helped them. The top performer who guards their tactics and doesn’t acknowledge the assists, is just hoarding the goods and discouraging others from participating at all.

As an antidote, consider instituting modules that fall on certain days of every week:

Success Story Mondays can be when the previous week's wins get broken down into learnable moments. The winner gets their spotlight, and everyone else gets a blueprint. Shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.

Technique Tuesdays allow top performers to demonstrate their most effective approaches. This would also only need to have 10-minute roleplays (break out rooms on Zoom) with a 10 minute group wrap up.

Win-Win Wednesdays, can pair high performers with developing team members for joint calls where both get commission splits – suddenly your shark becomes a swim coach and your guppy becomes a higher performer.

The power of Celebration Circle Thursdays, is not to be underestimated. This is where those who’ve been awarded with big deals, MUST acknowledge team members who contributed to their success – creating a beautiful web of interconnection.

Fridays are for Process Mapping Parties (complete with actual party snacks) can be surprisingly effective for the analytically-minded. Have your star closer map their sales journey step-by-step while the team identifies specific, adoptable tactics. The "secret sauce" is often hiding in plain sight within small, replicable actions.