Many sales leaders are still discussing how to get the highest-level performance of their teams. Sales culture efficiency and effectiveness stand at the heart of the matter. Great sales leaders strive to create a positive sales culture that promotes, learning, growth, development, sustained high-performance, and execution as well as internal harmony.

What is a sales culture?

Sales culture have been a buzzword in the corporate space for decades. Many define it as a mix of values, beliefs and behaviors developed internally over a period, some states it’s the personality of the organization or its core DNA.

Sales culture reflects how teams are built and developed and how business gets accomplished, it’s the set of behaviors that drive daily operations. It comprises, but not limited to, how people interact with one another, how decisions and expectations get communicated, what gets rewarded, and how rewards are disseminated.

Sales culture drives the organization behaviors and results. Ultimately, it’s the system that connects people and resources to create sustained value. People are wired differently, and they get motivated differently. Money motivates some people, others, are driven by recognition and opportunities. Sales leader understanding of what motivates their salespeople is vital to performance, as unmotivated sales reps often generate dreadful performances.

According to The Gallup organization’s research. 80% of salespeople perception of a company is influenced by the salesperson direct sales manager. The Sales VP or even the CEO has little impact on the sales culture because salespeople views their impact only through the prism of their direct sales manager. When a salesperson joins a sales organization, he will report to a single manager.

Gallup has found that 70% of the top producer who left their company did so because of a breakdown in their relationship with their direct sales manager. And conversely, behind every single sales star, you find a great sales manager in the shadows.

A Columbia University study demonstrated that organizations with healthy sales culture experience a mere 13.9% employees job turnover, while job turnover in companies with poor sales culture averages 48.4%.

Another study conducted by The Department of Economics at the University of Warwick found that happy employees are 12% more productive than average workers, and unhappy workers are 10% less productive, costing the American business more than 300 billion each year.

A statistic from New Century Financial Corporation reflects that non-engaged, unhappy account executives at a banking company produced 28% less than those who were engaged. Conversely, happy employees outperform the competition by 20%, earn 2.1% above industry benchmarks and manage to solve difficult problems much faster.

Sales Culture and Organizational Strategy Disconnect

A favorable sales culture enhances the sales organization opportunity cost, improves sales reps’ effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right) as clarified by Peter Drucker.

Sales efficiency initiatives, like CRM, training, and KPI dashboards empowers salespeople to do their job better. While, sales effectiveness optimizes decisions, such as customer selection, high-value customers targeting and alignment of sales tasks with organizational strategy, It’s a trajectory or roadmap to progress.

Executive management can develop the foundation upon which the sales culture can flourish. According to a survey of 1800 executives, 53% of the respondents said their employees don’t understand their company’s strategy. The reality, corporate strategic goals are the aggregate results of multiple individual business units’ goals. Most work independently and hope that the results will fit within the organization go-to-market strategy.

“Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

Furthermore, corporate strategic planning is often disconnected from front-line decision-making, as well as customer buying processes which creates constant friction and frustration at all levels. Executive management feels they are not understood, while, frontline management feel alienated from the decision process.

Fundamentally, all opportunities are not equal, and smart sales organizations target specific verticals within specific market niches. They take into consideration the cost to serve, order volume, profit margin, delivery logistics and other critical driving KPIs.

 

Companies who do not specialize force their sales reps to suppress margin to compete and score even unprofitable wins. It’s naïve to expect salespeople to follow company strategy without a deliberate effort from the executive management to clarify and align effective selling with company strategic goals rather than business unit benchmarks.

Positive sales culture can make the difference between having a successful business or a struggling operation. Vibrant sales culture are like magnets, which attract talented individuals that elevate the performance of the company.

Negative sales culture are toxic environments, that lack structure, disciplined leadership and operational flexibility. Some of the signs of negative sales culture include low employee morale, high turnover, lack of trust and resentment towards sales leadership, and low levels of energy, excitement, enthusiasm, and absence of interest in camaraderie between employees.

Here is how you can build a positive sales culture!

Hire right the first time

Despite high turnover, it is wise to take your time to hire the best talent you can afford. Great talent attracts similar likeminded individuals. Do not settle for average performers, think long term, you can contribute to the betterment of your sales culture, or you can undermine your intent.

All new hires need to have the required characteristics that will allow them to succeed within the company. Nothing is more destructive than hiring under-performers that do not fit the job description or requirement.

Proper sales culture maintenance requires hiring only top talent individuals on a consistent basis. Great performers love to work with peers that are just as good to stretch and push performance boundaries. A-players like to work and compete alongside similar competent peers.

Celebrate successes and learn from failures

Healthy sales culture requires celebrating wins and defeats. When a team works hard and achieve specific goals, you got to recognize the collective effort and celebrate their victory. Success attainment propels salespeople to strive to recreate the same emotions by winning frequently.

Never shy away from celebrating joint victories. Never berate the team when they miss their goals. Look at it objectively, it’s a learning moment, extract a lesson from it, discuss it, and move on.

You will experience new challenges, and you need a team that is cohesive, supportive and dependent on one another positive feedback and encouragement. Keep your salespeople enthusiastically focused on goal attainment, rewards, and helping one another, remove obstacles, simplify the process and enhance people creativity and core strengths.

“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.” — Dale Carnegie

Manage activity and results

Managing both actions and results is imperative. Activity drive results, the latter creates momentum, revenue, and employee harmony.

We all know that sales are a numbers game. The outcome of the game changes according to the exerted intensity, and the deliberate effort that goes into finding qualified prospects and turning them from unsold to sold.

Focus and intensity create results. No amount of activity or hard work can predict an exact outcome. But, there is a definite correlation between effort equity and results. Proper sales process can create predictable wins.

Enhance morale and self-esteem

The sales profession is hard, the number of rejections that a salesperson receives daily will erode the confidence even of the most robust player in the game. The sales manager can create a counterbalance by uplifting morale, motivating and energizing the team with words, and incentives.

Your salespeople should understand that they creators of revenue, and the pioneers of all relationships. Hence, the importance of their position should be glorified and appreciated. The organization derives significant value from its salespeople. Therefore, top sales producer should be put on a higher pedestal to entice others to emulate their behaviors and achieve similar success.

Recognition is everything

People work for money, recognition, and being part of something greater than themselves. Most sales organization reward their salespeople with bonuses and prizes for the attainment of lofty objectives. Conversely, many fail to create smaller and attainable incentives that promote morale in pursuit of more significant awards and bonuses.

Based on progress, most salespeople can mentally calculate the probability of attainment of quotas. Many give up the quest when the likelihood of realization is low. Having smaller, attainable incentives along the way will keep everyone excited to move beyond current statues and toward loftier goals.

“Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined.” – Peter F. Drucker

Empowering your salespeople with the right level of training and coaching can prepare your sales team to win the sales battle. Healthy sales cultures have processes and systems that encourage learning, growth, development and on-the-job multi-functional educational exposure. These growth platforms, build employee loyalty and create a culture of on-going integrated education.

Training can take shape online, in a class setting, or in a one-on-one environment. However, the best training courses is when you get your sales team to collaborate, share ideas and proven best practices with one another. Education in the workplace matters and an ongoing employee development process is vital to meet innovation acceleration and increasingly complex customer demand.

Fostering an environment that promotes continued learning will improve business growth, reduce turnover, promote internal job satisfaction and will ultimately cascade down to enhance customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Positive sales culture is like an invisible magnetic field that attracts everyone towards it. It’s almost like a hidden glue that bonds people marching in the same direction. At its core, the DNA of the organization. Where people are engaged in fulfilling the company vision, mission and core values. Through a system that encourages performance, transparency, accountability, and where intelligent performance is rewarded accordingly. And, where people are promoted based on capabilities, merits, and competency.

Healthy sales culture promotes learning; mistakes are accepted as part of a learning process. Great company culture can encourage creative minds, inventions and innovations that might not have surfaced in an oppressive environment. When employees felt, valued and respected their productivity skyrocket, and naturally, company financial success ensues.

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