Creating the right culture - 5 Top Tips

There are 2 key and generally accepted rules within business.

• Sales teams are vital to a business’ success.
• A great culture will help improve sales performance.

Here’s the tricky bit….what actually is a great sales culture and how do you build it?

They often say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that is the same here. Every culture is different, reflecting a company’s values and business requirements. There are however some key consistencies and fundamentals to ensure a sales culture will thrive. Here are the top 5 recurring points that our clients said were key:

• Hire Correctly
  • People power performance. Direct costs associated with poor hires and empty seats are relatively straight forward to work out and track. What is more difficult but arguably has a much bigger impact on revenue performance is poor hires, especially behaviourally led and the impact they have on the environment within a sales team. It can lead to drops in moral, activity levels, quality levels, resignations and ultimately significant drops in revenue. There is often pressure to hire quickly to reduce the cost of an empty seat but hiring correctly is vital to enhancing a culture and driving a greater group performance.

• Foster Healthy Competition
  • Sales is competitive and by default a sales team will be filled by competitive individuals. To get the most out of your sales team encouraging competition and thus motivating them to produce an extra few percent is key. However, the trick is keeping it healthy. Unhealthy competition can lead to negative behaviours such as withholding key information that would benefit the team, or even stealing opportunities. Great ideas to keep competition healthy include:
    • Working towards beating an external rival; perhaps a different division in the company, or direct competitor.
    • Hosting regular and different styles of incentives. This will naturally drive competition and by mixing it up means there should be different winners to drive engagement.
    • Focus the individuals’ efforts towards beating their own targets.

• Foster continual learning and development.
  • A thriving sales culture will have learning and development at its core. Driven by employers, if employees are striving to get better, there becomes real engagement with the company and strong results normally follow. Personalised training plans, mentoring and training days / sessions are great ways to do this.

• Celebrate Success
  • People thrive off praise and no more so than salespeople. Regardless of level a sales role is tough gig. Celebrating successes is key to ensure a positive mindset is held throughout the day and in the face of rejections. The obvious celebrations are for deals, targets being hit or achieving incentives, but the best organisations also celebrate the smaller more personal wins; perhaps having overcome an objection they’ve been struggling with, booking a meeting with a key prospect, or trying a new skill for the first time.

• Be Consistent
  • Most narratives evidence that professionals need to feel secure in their environment to maximise performance. To create a trusted, empowered workforce, it’s key that management are really consistent with day-to-day actions: praise, promotions, disciplinaries, PIP’s and other aspects which could influence how an employee feels. If employees feel people are being treated differently or aren’t sure what “manager” is going to turn up day to day, it is highly unlikely they are in fear of acting in their natural way and not happy. Feeling confident in their environment and empowered to be themselves will most often exude positivity and produce maximum performance.  

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