Is the problem your Sales Team or your Sales Culture?

Is the problem your Sales Team or your Sales Culture?

On many occasions, I have been asked about “Commercial Excellence” and what are some ways to improve Commercial Excellence within a large corporate sales organization. I have held several roles in my career where I have either been asked to turnaround sales / revenue organizations or, in the case of a couple of startups, quickly build high performance teams to drive revenue.

Fundamentally, I believe that a strong enterprise sales organization begins with Culture, and while Sales Culture can be a vague term, I roughly define it as “the Operating System that enables salespeople to be successful in a specific organization.” Ultimately, I include the below items as things that impact Sales Culture, though I am sure you could include many other things.

· Fair quotas & comp plans

· Ongoing education

· Respect & recognition

· Strong sales process and sales methodology

· Tools including CRM and analytics tools

· An environment of friendly competition

· Teamwork

· Open communication

· An understood strategy

What’s funny about this list is that the items seem very basic, straightforward, and commonsensical but in my experience, they aren’t commonly found. Instead, there is often mistrust, lack of communication and comp plans that penalize or demotivate the very salespeople who are tasked with bringing in revenue!

Where this gets even more interesting is that in companies with poor sales cultures, the sales teams are often very underperforming, and these companies wonder why they have poor sales, “C” level salespeople, and high turnover! Often, these companies attribute a poor hiring process rather than a poor culture when the newly hired salespeople “don’t work out,” become frustrated and leave.

The reality is that companies need great salespeople more than great salespeople need their employers. Great salespeople always have job offers and are unafraid to leave jobs in companies with poor sales culture.

So, if you have an underperforming team, your first step is to really take a deep dive look at your sales leaders and your sales culture.

Remember, a strong sales culture both attracts and retains “A” level salespeople. Anything less will negatively impact your team and your revenue.

Read about our Sales Assessment Process here or contact Thriv Ventures to discuss your enterprise sales organization and how to improve your sales culture.

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