Having discussed the internal drivers of sales culture, the next step is to explore what leaders can do to establish a culture of performance. Since culture is largely defined by human behavior and decision making, it’s important to understand there is no one size fits all approach. The variability within the three internal drivers makes that clear. Companies have unique sales strategies, leadership styles, and team compositions. So if there is no one right answer, then how does a company establish a culture of performance versus a culture of adequacy? I believe the key for leaders to build a culture of performance primarily relies on three factors; clarity, communication, and consistency. Clarity Every company has a culture; the question is whether that culture has a clear purpose. This clear purpose is largely defined by executive management and gives their team a roadmap on what is desirable behavior. By not providing clarity, the culture is much more vulnerable to counterproductive or even destructive behavior. Strong leaders understand this threat and respond by providing a clear purpose for their team to embrace and rally around. In the business community the most well established approach for providing a clarity of purpose is the … Read More
What Drives Your Sales Culture?
In the last blog article, I discussed how the Global Workforce Study on workforce culture reported the highest level of employee dissatisfaction in the study’s 23 year history. Employee dissatisfaction can be especially damaging to a company’s sales culture, threatening client relationships and overall company growth. There are many companies that have compelling products and services and good people to sell them, but have a weak culture that undermines performance. Understanding your sales culture is required in order to determine what changes are needed to make a team more effective. The first step is to determine the drivers of a company sales culture, and the threats to its effectiveness. What is Culture? Before we dive too far into the drivers of a sales culture it’s important to understand what culture is and how it impacts team productivity. Company culture can be described as a set of unwritten rules that determine employee behavior and decision making. Culture determines what is appropriate and inappropriate for interactions between employees, their managers, and clients. Measuring the impact of an effective culture is very difficult, but anyone who has witnessed both high performance and low performance organizations understands its impact on company effectiveness. Internal Drivers … Read More