Sales Culture: Building High Performance Sales Teams.
Sales culture is an abstract. You can’t measure its quality in the same manner you measure revenue, engagement level, average tenure, or quota attainment.? How much your salespeople sell, how productive they are, and how long they stay with your company are all functions of your sales culture's quality.
Here, I will outline best practices I have instituted in some of the world’s largest tech companies and consultancies.? We'll explore what sales culture is, what a solid one looks like, some best practices to refine yours, and how to scale yours as your company grows.
What is sales culture?
The culture of your organization defines not only what you do, but also the who, where, when, how, and why of it all. Understanding sales culture is the first step to figuring out how to define yours. A company culture, good or bad, is an all-inclusive element that you develop, grow, and maintain over time with certain standards and practices in place. It is effectively the sum of the attitudes, values, and habits that characterize your team.
What makes a good sales culture?
Developing a sales culture that creates positive outcomes for your organization will take work on all levels. Each facet and team needs to not only understand the nature of the culture they are participating in but also agree with it. It needs to be universally beneficial or else it won’t stick. A successful sales culture brings out the best in your salespeople.
What does a toxic sales culture look like?
A negative culture will result in the opposite of everything that is positive about good sales culture. Some common toxic elements could be high turnover, mistrust, individualism, low motivation, and other factors that contribute to an unhealthy work environment. A toxic sales culture will also be very difficult to change once it has been established, as new employees are unfortunately likely to assimilate instead of work against it.
Sales is often a fast-paced, competitive environment. It’s important that your reps can keep up. A high performance sales culture will demand the effort, execution, and growth required to be successful. It focuses on clear goals, researched strategies, concise actions, and impactful feedback. This type of culture also features trust and respect that prevents competition and authority from becoming toxic or judgmental.
Foster friendly competition.
Most good salespeople thrive on the competition. The key is keeping it directed as a team pursuit and not one that encourages individualism where members withhold information or are willing to undercut one another for individual gain
You can foster a healthy competition by following a few measures aimed at the collective rather than the individual.? ?
Give your team an external rival. Having a common target causes them to work together and grow closer. As the competition is with the rival team or company not one another.?
Encourage them to beat their own records. Direct their competitive energy toward outdoing last month's or quarter’s results — by shifting their competitive energy to their own numbers, you'll make them less likely to resent their peers.
Pair newer reps with more experienced ones. Having a mentor will accelerate the ramp period and give your new hires a sense of security and belonging.
Vary the focus of your incentive and rewards events.? You can’t and don’t want the same people winning every time against the same metrics.? As there are many kpi’s that govern a high performing sales org switch your focus.? This gives different skillsets within your sales org the opportunity to grab the top spot.? ?
Combat attrition.
Constant staffing losses are a red flag for prospective candidates while finding and training new ones is extremely expensive.? It also makes it difficult for teams to gel when they are too dynamic in role changes.
Your sales team should have access to coaching support from their managers throughout their tenure. Implement a structured coaching routine and consistently poll your salespeople to see if they’re getting the training and management they need.
Although comp isn’t the sole reason reps leave, paying a below market rate is bound to take a toll on your retention. Keep your on-target earnings (OTE) in line with typical pay for the role, industry, and region and keep it at a number that is reachable.? Far too often you lose good salespeople because your quotas are not realistic to market conditions.
Finally, feeling stuck is a huge factor in sales turnover. Ensure you have a defined promotion path in place. For example, you might want to have a clearly articulated career trajectory from BDR to AE to Senior AE. That way salespeople can move up as they gain more experience and skills.
Commit to agility
In sales, a team's ability to move fast is crucial. If the team is agile, it can make the pivots necessary to manage various economic and business changes as they occur. If the team cannot experiment, learn from their mistakes and adapt, it's bound to fail.
Borrow the?agile philosophy, such as holding a daily 10-minute stand-ups
Have every member answer the same three questions and nothing else:
Be transparent about quota performance; individual and team performance should be available to all. Lead from and by the data.
Finally, encourage a fail fast culture. Salespeople should take risks — from trying a new prospecting technique to using different negotiation strategies. As long as they document their results and share them widely. The results will help everyone learn and improve.
Collaborate and share knowledge.
Creating a sales culture where salespeople collaborate and freely pass along tips and strategies is essential but that's easier said than done. Communication roadblocks are one of the more common obstacles obstructing successful sales cultures.
You need to create an environment that's conducive to open communication. Ask yourself, are there easy, convenient ways for reps to talk? And those lines of contact need to extend beyond casual conversations.? Add everyone to Teams or another chat platform to share findings in real time and reward that knowledge sharing. Consider giving rewards for contributing information. For instance, if an AE comes up with a new strategy that makes prospects less likely to cancel their demo at the last minute, they receive the commensurate recognition, and the team track downstream the effect of that idea over the course of a month. This builds trust amongst the team.? Reps rarely thrive in an environment without trust, and it falls on sales managers to establish it. There are three main steps to making that happen:
Accept and incorporate feedback.
A great manager listens to their reps and more importantly, reacts to their feedback.
Do they want less interference with their deals? A good manager takes a step back by default and takes a step forward when necessary. Would they like more transparency with upper management? A good manager works to provide that.
Don’t micromanage.
Building trust is reciprocal. If you can prove to your team that you trust them, they'll be inclined to reciprocate. Unless a specific rep is struggling and needs more attention, sales managers should steer clear of micromanaging.
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That means managing results instead of activities, letting reps work from wherever they’re most successful instead of requiring them to be at the office, and not asking them to spend precious hours filling out pointless reports.
You would be surprised at the level of micromanagement in some of the worlds best sales organizations- Don’t rule by force.
Keep your word.
When you as a manager, commit to doing something, always keep your word. Reliability is a pillar of trust and once your reps know you're dependable, they’ll become more loyal.
Share a common vision.
Salespeople are looking for a bigger reason to show up and work hard every day beyond simply making money. Although a common vision isn’t a prerequisite for success, it keeps reps motivated when times are tough and encourages them to work together.
If possible, it should be measurable so everyone knows where they stand. You also want a vision that the team is excited about, so consider including them in the planning process.
Regularly bring up your team’s progress and reference individual contributors. Doing so reinforces the vision and keeps it top-of-mind for your reps. Not only will this make the people you recognize feel good, it’ll also inspire the others to follow suit.
Require ongoing learning and development.
Salespeople should always be picking up fresh skills and strategies. Not only does buyer behavior change, but technology enables new tactics and makes old ones obsolete.
Unfortunately, many training programs are:
To fix this, make your training:
Maintain accountability.
Keeping people accountable is an important aspect of a healthy team. If reps see poor performance go unchecked, quotas will start feeling more like suggested targets than hard ones.
To address this, clearly define your expectations. Each salesperson should know exactly what they’re supposed to do. That might be a certain number of calls per day, meetings per week, or demos per month, or quota attainment.? Having objective standards and making sure everyone is aware of them helps you avoid any nasty surprises.
If someone is struggling, don’t wait to see if things will get better. Utilize a performance improvement plan PIP but an effective one- not those disguised as help when they are just invitations out of your company.
An effective PIP diagnoses the issue (where the rep is falling short), what they’ll do to address the issue, any support or tools they’ll need, and how much time they’ll receive.
Highlight individual accomplishments and talents.
A positive sales culture should reward being a team player and focus on working together for a common goal, but rewarding individuals is an important motivator. Take notice whenever someone reaches a big goal, comes up with an impactful idea, or is strongly excelling in a certain area. Those are moments to make reps feel valued and seen.
How to Scale Sales Culture as Your Brand Grows
It's one thing to establish a sales culture, it's another to ensure that you sustain those values as your business grows.
Have leadership set the tone.
Scaling a sales culture starts with commitment from company leadership. Executives and upper management at your business need to commit to and project the values that define your organization's sales culture. A brand's culture comes from the top, and you can't lose sight of that premise as your business grows.
Communicate effectively.
If you want to successfully scale your sales culture as your brand expands, you need to keep communication clear and accessible throughout your organization. Make sure your employees can easily connect with one another to create and sustain a cohesive, communicative culture that abides by the values you embody.
Maintain a base of accessible, company-specific content.
Your ability to scale your sales culture as you grow rests, in large part, on your ability to convey your values and brand identity to members of your organization.
One way is to keep a centralized base of company-specific content. A resource like a company wiki can provide a forum for you to collect and display customer testimonials, mission statements, exemplary employees' stories, accounts of company history, and other valuable reference points for bolstering your sales culture.
Bring the right people with you.
As your business continues to grow, accept that not everyone is meant to come along for the journey. As things change and the sales culture evolves, some may no longer align with it. If someone is consistently showing that they are not on board with participating in the sales culture, then it’s likely that they won’t be a positive asset as you scale it.
Building Your Sales Team with Culture in Mind
As you begin forming your sales dream team, consider the culture you want it to embody. This is especially relevant as you are recruiting salespeople. Skill set and experience are important, but how is their attitude? Are they passionate? A team player or an inspiring leader? Presenting your team as one with a positive, healthy culture will also attract the best of the best in sales.
Building and maintaining a strong sales culture isn’t easy, but it can have a tremendous impact on your employee satisfaction and bottom line. You’ll be able to recruit and train great reps, get your desired results, and make everyone on the team happy to work for your company.
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Assistant Vice President of Card Services | Revenue Growth, Member Satisfaction
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