Building a Thriving Sales Performance Culture
Sales-driven organizations are characterized by an intense and competitive work culture, one which can be leveraged into an empowering, growth-focused environment. Studies cite high levels of burnout in sales functions built over Quarter-on-Quarter performance cycles. The sales leadership at organizations has an important and unique role to play in building a positive work culture in sales-driven organization.
Here are some ways how.
In a highly competitive workplace, it is imperative to put the primary focus on people. Foster a sense of friendly competition among teams. Channel competitive energies towards collective success, where achievements and accomplishments are celebrated by the collective just as much as they are by the individual.
Build trust and confidence among sales teams by keeping the channels of communication open at all times. Encourage your people to speak up and provide honest and constructive feedback on trainings, sales targets and working styles.
Encourage high performers with recognition regularly and generously to reinforce their drive and motivation. Make sure your contributors work in teams of 2-3 and each team has a fair mix of experience and youthful energy. This will create a sense of security among the younger talent, and also bring them under the informal mentorship of seniors peers.
Keep an eye out for pockets of underperformance. Deep dive to understand potential root causes so the team may be robustly supported to overcome this challenge as a collective. As seasoned sales leaders take the lead in addressing this potential impasse, they role model solutioning and help build stronger sales teams.
It helps for competitive workplaces to have maximum levels of transparency. This helps create a sense of fairness among employees with regard to rewards, incentives and promotions. Serve as a role model by demonstrating your faith in your people by avoiding micromanagement. Give them enough room and flexibility to craft their own strategies for success.
Provide ample room for risk-taking among your sales teams. Back them up even if they fail a few times while trying out new tactics. Risk-taking is one of the main ingredients to brew an innovative work culture.
Your sales teams always sit on the shores where the tides of market change hit first. Being at the forefront of change and dynamism requires being agile, flexible and adaptive. Create a culture of learning and sharing new knowledge among your sales professionals. Conduct regular brainstorming sessions and encourage new ideas even from new recruits. Most importantly, never shy away from introducing new technology to your teams. Whether it is a communication tool or a new CRM platform, keep an eye out on innovative technology and encourage their adoption. Technology being the biggest disruptor of businesses in our time, sales-driven organizations can simply not afford to blind-spot it.
Finally, for business leaders in sales, the most serious and unavoidable challenge is dealing with the high level of employee turnover. Having already invested in training and development of sales teams, turnovers can be costly. Also, it can be difficult to find and recruit new talent which understands the market well and fits into the culture organically. Combating employee turnover in a sales-driven organizations is important and sales leaders across the board have to embrace this challenge. Sales turnovers can be addressed by helping team members understand developmental pathways forward and skillsets required to make the upward transition. Regular coaching, mentoring and learning opportunities throughout their tenure can help deliver a highly fulfilling experience for them, one that can motivate them to stay.
Overall, leading a sales-driven organization can be quite an exhilarating experience. But creating the right culture for such an organization requires keeping the human element at the very heart of your strategy, and enabling constructs like knowledge, innovation and technology to enrich it continuously.
Here are some ways how.
In a highly competitive workplace, it is imperative to put the primary focus on people. Foster a sense of friendly competition among teams. Channel competitive energies towards collective success, where achievements and accomplishments are celebrated by the collective just as much as they are by the individual.
Build trust and confidence among sales teams by keeping the channels of communication open at all times. Encourage your people to speak up and provide honest and constructive feedback on trainings, sales targets and working styles.
Encourage high performers with recognition regularly and generously to reinforce their drive and motivation. Make sure your contributors work in teams of 2-3 and each team has a fair mix of experience and youthful energy. This will create a sense of security among the younger talent, and also bring them under the informal mentorship of seniors peers.
Keep an eye out for pockets of underperformance. Deep dive to understand potential root causes so the team may be robustly supported to overcome this challenge as a collective. As seasoned sales leaders take the lead in addressing this potential impasse, they role model solutioning and help build stronger sales teams.
It helps for competitive workplaces to have maximum levels of transparency. This helps create a sense of fairness among employees with regard to rewards, incentives and promotions. Serve as a role model by demonstrating your faith in your people by avoiding micromanagement. Give them enough room and flexibility to craft their own strategies for success.
Provide ample room for risk-taking among your sales teams. Back them up even if they fail a few times while trying out new tactics. Risk-taking is one of the main ingredients to brew an innovative work culture.
Your sales teams always sit on the shores where the tides of market change hit first. Being at the forefront of change and dynamism requires being agile, flexible and adaptive. Create a culture of learning and sharing new knowledge among your sales professionals. Conduct regular brainstorming sessions and encourage new ideas even from new recruits. Most importantly, never shy away from introducing new technology to your teams. Whether it is a communication tool or a new CRM platform, keep an eye out on innovative technology and encourage their adoption. Technology being the biggest disruptor of businesses in our time, sales-driven organizations can simply not afford to blind-spot it.
Finally, for business leaders in sales, the most serious and unavoidable challenge is dealing with the high level of employee turnover. Having already invested in training and development of sales teams, turnovers can be costly. Also, it can be difficult to find and recruit new talent which understands the market well and fits into the culture organically. Combating employee turnover in a sales-driven organizations is important and sales leaders across the board have to embrace this challenge. Sales turnovers can be addressed by helping team members understand developmental pathways forward and skillsets required to make the upward transition. Regular coaching, mentoring and learning opportunities throughout their tenure can help deliver a highly fulfilling experience for them, one that can motivate them to stay.
Overall, leading a sales-driven organization can be quite an exhilarating experience. But creating the right culture for such an organization requires keeping the human element at the very heart of your strategy, and enabling constructs like knowledge, innovation and technology to enrich it continuously.