What does a thriving sales culture look like, feel like, sound like, when your team is working remotely?
Let’s firstly think about what a sales success culture is and how having that culture in your business contributes to successful outcomes. A sales success culture is an environment which brings out the best in your team and contributes to and develops sales focussed attitudes, values and habits in each individual.
When you bring out the best in your team, you encourage healthy competition, collaboration and knowledge sharing. You foster trust and communication, work towards a common vision, enable continuous learning and development, celebrate success, and most of all – cultivate a structure of goal setting, action planning and accountability to results.
So – what’s the difference between doing all that when you’re in the office, compared to having your team working remotely? Well, not much except being ‘in-person’ versus being ‘online’ changes the way you communicate those critical values that the organisation and the people in it, strive for.
The question is – was there a sales success culture in your company pre-COVID i.e. pre-working remotely? If the answer is yes, then your goal should be to maintain that momentum and adapt to delivering feedback, driving motivation, conducting coaching sessions and upholding accountability, and fostering team cohesiveness…all via an online platform.
If not, right now is a great time to build or improve sales culture in your organisation to ensure that the team is being as productive as possible while working remotely. A culture that supports sales success will ensure that the team is perfectly poised to thrive during challenging times and ready to accelerate action, reignite enthusiasm and passion and drive results and prosperity during the months ahead.
The Gallup Organisation broadly defines culture as: “The way work gets done around here”. If left to individual interpretation, your culture could be disparate, incongruent and behaviours could fall short of the type of activity and accountability that drives sales success.
What practical steps can you take to create a sales success culture?
With a very clear understanding of your sales targets and your ideal customer profile, you need to reverse engineer a cadence of the right activities amongst your sales team that will drive the outcomes required to fill pipeline (3-5x) and convert sales. There are a few questions you need to answer, before determining the appropriate activities required of your sales team. The answers to these questions will guide you in creating and maintaining a sales culture which is aligned across the organisation and drives success.
Is Marketing producing enough qualified leads, or should there be targeted outreach to create opportunities? Are previous customers followed up and nurtured for repeat business? Does the team come together to share and collaborate best practise and celebrate success? When an opportunity is lost, do you conduct a ‘loss review’? Do you have regular ‘check ins’ with each of your salespeople? Do you provide feedback and coach them to drive motivation and accountability? Engage in practise sessions and role-plays to drive behaviour change? Do you lead by example, accept feedback and do what you say you will do?
“Out of sight, does not have to mean ‘out of mind”. Having a sales success culture – whether it is in a diverse, remote environment, or close quarters within the office – if it’s built on a solid foundation of trust in your team, and their trust and confidence in your leadership, results will speak for themselves, even in tough times.