What’s the difference between managing a sales team and managing a sales culture? A sales team starts with managing a process and a sales culture starts with managing yourself. Which do you think is easier? That answer can vary depending on your past experiences, suffice to say that self control isn’t easy for most people. That’s why sales culture is left to chance for many organizations. But what is sales culture and why is it so important? Your sales culture is a beefy stew that has all the ingredients that make your sales team what it is. Your shared values, beliefs, and behaviors. It is seen in your strategies, structure, processes, policies and results. It is demonstrated in teamwork, motivation, customer satisfaction, and so forth. And that’s just to name a few. Let’s open a new paragraph and talk about why it is important.
Sales culture is your DNA. Much like your own self, without you simply don’t exist. So, besides your mere existence, here are the important things a sales culture can, and should, do for you. It should support a cooperative and cohesive sales team. It stays focused on goals. It identifies and corrects problems (often quickly). It builds trust and collaboration. It develops a better customer experience. It produces results. If you are deliberate about your culture, it becomes your competitive advantage in that salespeople are just as excited to sell your company as they are your products. It also becomes a great recruiting tool when you are scouting for new sales talent. That’s all good and well, but where do you get started? By spending 30 minutes a week powering up your sales culture.
- Celebrate a success (5 minutes) – Take the time to acknowledge and praise something for your team or salesperson. This could be hitting a goal, a great customer meeting or simply achieving their KPIs.
- Review the goals (5 minutes) – Make sure everyone knows where they are and where they need to be. If someone is off course, help them by showing them how they can course correct.
- What is working (5 minutes) – Talk with someone on your sales team about what is working. What is creating success? You’ll be surprised what you learn when you start to listen.
- What is not working (5 minutes) – Now, this time, talk to someone about what they feel isn’t working. Stay alert for the trends you might notice. You may find that there is a problem you can fix.
- Fix a problem (10 minutes) – Some problems are easier to fix than others, but when you really devote yourself, you’ll be surprised how simple some solutions are to find and implement. If you only fixed one problem per month, imagine what your sales culture would be like in one year’s time.