Chances are that you’ve seen the classic Saturday Night Live skit “More Cowbell,” starring Will Farrell and Christopher Walken. It’s been rated one of the Top 10 best skits of all time on SNL. The skit originally aired on April 8, 2000.

The skit was a spoof of a mythical recording session of the song “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. Christopher Walken played the actual music producer/manager (“The Bruce Dickinson”). Will Ferrell is a fictional cowbell player named Gene Frenkle. Jimmy Fallon is in it, too.

The band starts out, but soon stops playing because Ferrell’s cowbell part is too loud and distracting. Walken then surprises the band by saying, “I need a little more cowbell.”

Ferrell goes wild with the cowbell, dancing around and bumping into other band members. Again, the band stops playing in frustration. But Walken keeps yelling “More cowbell!” Ferrell then makes a speech to the team telling them he would be doing the team a disservice if he didn’t “perform the hell out of this.” Walken, in support of Ferrell’s speech, says, “Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!”

There are more than a few leadership principles in the skit for anybody leading a sales team. Imagine that the Walken/Dickinson character is a sales manager and Ferrell/Frenkle is an enthusiastic newbie on the team.

The manager recognizes that something new on the team—the cowbell—is a great addition. At that point it is up them to support that best practice and bring it to the attention of everybody on the team. Repeatedly. Because a new best practice is often shunned by the team, simply because it is different. Most experienced salespeople hate change. (Notice how Ferrell’s ringing of the cowbell originally causes stress and strife among the other band members.)

How does this relate to sales? At some point in time, every sales manager is going to want to introduce something new to their team—perhaps a new CRM system, a new skill development theme (connecting with C-level decision makers, perhaps), new techniques for selling based on market changes (such as dealing with customers who are “informed,” so to speak, because of doing internet research).

When that time comes, you’ll want to have a player on your team willing to play the cowbell, willing to take on and champion the new idea, whatever is it. And for that role, choose any rep who is enthusiastic to try new things, as long as they have at least a moderate level of experience. A newbie will likely be making too many mistakes for you to adequately test something new; a highly experienced reps are more likely be comfortable doing what they have always done. Pick your new cowbell, support them as they learn and apply the new technique, and use their experience to demonstrate the benefit to your team.

There’s another key sales management lesson we can learn from Walken’s character. In the skit, the band ultimately accepts Ferrell’s manic cowbell playing after Walken tells them they “will all be wearing gold-plated diapers” because of how popular the band will become. Note that he doesn’t say, “We’ll all have lots of money.” He talks about something that the money can do for the band. The obvious message for sales managers is to appeal to your team’s money motivation. Make the connection between the successful new best practice and more income for each member of the team. Then take it the next step further and for each rep link “more money” to something that person could use more money for (new cars, house payments, college, vacations, etc.).

No doubt, you’re starting to think about what you can do to make the second half of 2016 even better than the first half. Why not consider a “More cowbell!” initiative for the second half? Make “More cowbell!” a metaphor for whatever you need more of to exceed team goals. Does your team need to get better at making appointments with C-level decision-makers? Better at converting leads into meetings? Better at learning how to out-compete other vendors? Do you need more enthusiasm and better attitudes? Whatever it is that will help your team, make that theme your cowbell for the next few months.

Do you see anything in the “More cowbell” skit that I missed? What additional leadership principles do you see?