Dan Brockwell1:1s with your rep are arguably the most important thing you can do as a manager to influence rep performance and retention. But so often, 1:1s fall to the wayside when things get busy, or aren’t used effectively.
That’s why we’ve built a guide on running better 1:1s based on patterns in good and bad 1:1s we’ve seen across 100+ of our reps in the industry.
🗓️ 1:1 Goals & Cadence
Our general recommendation is ideally, a manager should have one to two 30-minute 1:1s with each rep per week:
- One core 1:1 as a more general overview of performance, discussing key challenges and sharing feedback two-way
- One optional deep dive into a specific challenge the rep is facing. This could be:
- A call review of a challenging call to understand areas for improvement
- An email review to understand reasons for rejection or ghosting
- Roleplaying specific, challenging customer scenarios
- Learning how to use a certain sales tool better
Earlier in the SDR’s journey, you may have two a week by default when they need more support, and as they become more confident, scale back to one a week.
✋ Ownership
The 1:1 is ultimately there for the rep’s benefit, and they should be the primary driver of the content discussed, not the manager.
Create a culture where your rep fills out their follow-ups on prior 1:1s, reflections on the week’s sales performance and key challenges prior to your 1:1, so you can come in with context to discuss.
That said, you should still be coming to 1:1s having looked through their numbers prior, with structured positive and constructive feedback to share + questions to ask.
📚 Core 1:1 Sections
❤️ Mood Pulse Check
Before diving into salesland, start by checking in with the rep and see how they’re generally feeling. Create an environment where you set clear scope and boundaries about what you’re comfortable supporting the rep on.
Sometimes, there may be challenges at work you don’t know about, or even difficult things outside of work (health, family, relationships, etc.) that are affecting their performance and mindset.
If helpful, you can use a numerical scale or emoji system as a benchmark to understand how they’re feeling relative to other weeks.
⬅️ Followup on Last Week’s Actions
In case there were any action items identified in the past week’s 1:1, you’ll want to ensure you tackle these early in the sync, be it things you needed to do or things the rep was meant to do. This creates an accountable culture around any action items from 1:1s.
📊 Sales Metrics Review
Review the quantitative data together on the activity, meetings booked and opportunities qualified by that rep, comparing them to benchmarks for expected performance. Discuss how they’ve felt the week has gone and any challenges they’ve faced.
⬇️ Feedback from Manager
You should ensure that in giving feedback, you openly share praise for things they’ve done well to make their efforts feel valued and keep motivation high. Equally, you should also give clear, specific feedback on things they can improve in from their performance this week
To help the rep focus on these improvements, we recommend restricting feedback items to 1-2 for each type of feedback, as they may get overwhelmed and lose track of priorities if you dump too many items on them.
Essentially, you should come prepared with answers for:
- What are the 1-2 key things that you’ve been impressed by this week?
- What are the 1-2 key things for the rep to improve on next week?
⬆️ Feedback from Rep
Feedback is a two-way street. Always prompt your rep with the question: “What are the 1-2 key things I could do to support you better?”. Assume by default that you can improve, rather than just asking if they have any feedback. This makes them feel safer sharing their thoughts and feelings.
📝 1:1 Template
Here’s a running document template you can duplicate and use to conduct loveable, useful 1:1s with your reps
🧡 Additional Support Outside Core 1:1s
📞 Call Reviews
Call reviews from managers can be an incredible way for reps to get detailed feedback on areas of their calls they may not even realise have issues. Here’s a breakdown of the key steps in a call review.
- Listen to The Call(s) and Take Notes: These can be done during a live call or by listening to a recorded call before meeting with a rep. What do you observe about their tone, language, intro, qualifying questions, personalisation, rapport building, pitching, and objection handling?
- Encourage Self-Reflection First: Before sharing feedback, first prompt the SDR to reflect on their own performance. Ask open-ended questions such as, "What do you think went well in this call?" and "How do you think you could improve in handling objections?" Encouraging self-assessment fosters accountability and ownership of their development.
- Positive Feedback: When you give feedback, start with positive feedback. Begin the review on a positive note by highlighting what the SDR did well. Acknowledge their strengths, successful strategies, and improvements since the last review. Positive reinforcement motivates and encourages continued growth.
- Constructive Criticism: Address areas where the SDR can improve based on the predetermined criteria. Be specific in your feedback, citing examples from the calls reviewed. Focus on actionable steps they can take to enhance their performance.
- Roleplay: If you have synchronous time with the rep, practice particular areas where the rep may be struggling, first by you pretending to be the seller, then swapping roles and letting them be the seller. This gives them a safe environment to improve on weak points and a fast feedback loop.
- Provide Next Steps: Set clear goals, actions or additional resources for the rep to use to improve in weaker points of their call.
💌 Email Reviews
The steps involved in an email review are fairly similar to a call. However, you’ll want to also look at the overall stats for email open rates, reply rates and conversion to meetings to contextualise feedback. In reviewing emails, here are a few things to look out for:
- Contact Choice: Are they choosing the right contact at an account?
- Subject Line: Good subject lines often use one or more of the following principles: short, personalised, offering novel information, driving urgency, or focus on outcomes.
- Personalisation & Positioning: Have they given the prospect a feeling that they’ve done some basic research on their situation and understand their industry vertical, company context, individual pains and goals?
- CTA: Is there are specific, compelling call to action for the prospect to respond to?
🌱 On Scaling Call & Email Reviews
To scale call reviews, first consider transitioning from reviewing live calls to reviewing recorded calls. From there you, can batch the work with call reviews for other reps, then share feedback asynchronously or if more complex/detailed, in your next 1:1. Likewise, email reviews can be run asynchronously and batched.
For calls, tools like Gong and Fathom provide AI analysis of call recordings as well to help you synthesise key insights faster.
And for both review formats, you can also lean into senior SDRs or AEs as mentors/buddies to support with call and email reviews, if your bandwidth is more limited.
✨ Professional Development Chat
This isn’t something that needs to be reviewed in every 1:1, but we recommend having a regular cadence of revisiting broader professional development goals every 1-3 months.
You want to ensure you’re putting your rep on the right track to achieve the next milestone in their career. This may be an extension of an existing 1:1, or a separate meeting altogether.
Creating dedicated space from this helps you get clarity on what sort of role they want to progress into, help them identify skill and knowledge gaps in getting there, and set expectations around the timeline to progress.