Your best rep doesn’t care about a mass email blast. They don’t want a generic “great job team” on a Monday morning conference call. They want to know their leader actually sees them and fights for them.
For 39 years, I have kept a simple box of note cards on my desk. Every single week, I wrote them out by hand. When a rep earned it, they didn’t get a digital notification—they got a physical card placed directly in their hand or mailed to their home.
But the advocacy didn’t stop at their desk. I also regularly sent “Quick Hitters” directly to the company leadership team. These were short, precise notes designed for one purpose: to get my top performers on the executive radar and help them get promoted.
That is Relationship Equity in its purest form.
Here is what most modern sales leaders miss: You cannot build Influence and Relationship Equity with your people through a screen. You cannot automate it. And you absolutely cannot fake it.
The rep who just closed your biggest deal of the quarter is running a scorecard on you, whether you know it or not.
Silence is a signal in leadership, exactly the same way it is a signal in a sales deal. When your best people stop hearing from you directly, they do not wait around to find out why. They answer the recruiter’s call.
The leaders who keep their best people operate from a simple, old-school operating system:
- Help them grow and get promoted.
- Serve their development.
- Influence their belief in what is possible.
A handwritten note to a rep or a Quick Hitter to the brass does all three in under five minutes.
Pick up a pen!
WIN THE DAY!
Silence is a signal with buyers, too. The Silent NO is one of the Seven NOs. Learn how to diagnose all seven in Selling Against NO! Explore the Seven NOs →
Bring this to your sales team. Jon speaks at national sales meetings, sales kickoffs and industry events. See speaking topics →