Culture. It seems like every week there’s a new management “buzzword” that is making its way around the blogosphere, and according to authors Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor, culture is one that actually matters.
More importantly, a strong culture fosters high performance, loyalty, and a better customer experience. With that said, here are five ways to cultivate a killer sales culture in your organization:
Have you ever delivered an incredible sales training to your team, only to have them go back to their seats and promptly forget every word? Learning something new takes time and practice. If you want your sales team to perform at their best, start with the fundamentals of sales. Don’t give an hour-long lecture on what they should be doing, instead, tell them what the new behavior is that you’d like to see, and then make them practice it with you. Practice really does make perfect.
Salespeople who set goals, often achieve them. Salespeople who break their goals into daily actions and then stick to those daily actions achieve them more often. When it comes to performance, it’s okay to hold your team to a high standard, as long as you actually hold them to it.
Help your people set realistic goals along with realistic daily actions, and then check in with them regularly to make sure they’re achieving their targets. It’s much easier to help someone achieve success every day on the small stuff than it is to scold them at the end of every month or quarter for not hitting their targets.
In his groundbreaking book, Start With Why, Author Simon Sinek makes the case that what makes big brands stand out is their commitment to their “why;” their reason for being. Does your company have a “why”? If it does, share it with your team. Shout it from the rooftops (or desktops) so that every person in the organization knows what you’re trying to accomplish. Frame successes and failures in the workplace around your "why" and share with people why it matters. If you show that you care about the vision, they will too. Make it clear to staff that they’re helping the company move towards a vision so they feel like they're apart of something much bigger than just themselves.
Salespeople who are passionate about what they do because they believe its part of a greater goal are more likely to pass that passion through to their customers - it’s contagious.
According to a study done at MIT, the more diverse a team is, the better they perform. I’m not advocating for affirmative action or anything political like that, but this is science. The more viewpoints, opinions, personalities, and belief systems you can put in a room - the better.
So if you want to make sure your team is performing at their best, make sure that you take diversity into account when you’re deciding who to hire and what their contribution would bring. A team full of the same personalities is likely to become an echo chamber that can’t innovate or produce novel solutions to difficult problems.
What’s a salesperson’s most valuable resource? That’s right, their time! Although, these days, with so many different programs for pipeline management, quoting, invoicing, payment processing, and everything else required to do business, a salesperson ends up spending a large majority of their time doing mindless admin work. That’s kind of like buying a Ferrari to be an Uber driver. Not only does the gas mileage kill you, but you can only fit one person in at a time! It sure does look cool though.
Thankfully, you can solve these issues and give your salespeople their time back with automation. They shouldn’t have to think about who to call next; it should be automatic based on the best practices for your company. It also shouldn’t take more than five minutes to put together a statement of work and send it to a customer, yet some salespeople are spending upwards of 1-2 hours doing so due to double entry and lack of automation.
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