Chapter 8: Creating a Culture for Winning Sales


Overview

“Everything we do, including recruiting, training, and recognition, reinforces our culture. In the end we know that we win sales by having stable, high-flying, high-charged sales reps who are caught up in what they do.”
—Sales Manager

Successful sales strategies depend on the ability of the sales organization to create a culture that supports and reinforces the decisions, activities, goals, and behaviors required to execute the strategy. Moreover, the culture must maintain strategy momentum, transform the vision of the strategy into action, and ensure that everyone is aligned and committed to success.

Although culture is a rather abstract notion, particularly for salespeople who are focused on tactics and bottom-line results, the symbols, expectations, and behaviors that define and reinforce a culture are very real and tangible. This chapter focuses on the importance of a sales culture in executing strategies, and the critical need for thinking about developing the best sales culture as a strategy unto itself. The chapter is not about recommending the best culture to adopt but it’s more about the important components or characteristics that a culture must possess to successfully implement strategies that win sales.

Each of the strategies discussed in this book, such as consultative selling, sales and customer segmentation, and customer resource management (CRM) system implementation, require cultural alignment and support. For example, a consultative selling strategy requires a customer-focused culture, representing a shift, for many organizations, from focusing on selling products to selling solutions that increase customer productivity and value. Similarly, successful CRM strategies require a sales culture that facilitates and supports the adoption of CRM applications by making it a part of everyone’s daily business activities.

A well-defined culture is particularly important for salespeople because they are physically separated from the rest of the organization and therefore require some type of formal structure to guide their behavior in the absence of everyday reinforcement from managers and colleagues. Because salespeople often wear several hats in addition to selling, such as customer service, marketing, and administrative, norms and values are required to help clarify role ambiguities. Moreover, culture defines immediate rewards that are important when tangible sales results take time to materialize. In addition, the sales force presents an important face of the company to customers and the outside world. As such, salespeople must accurately communicate and model the culture in the marketplace so that the company’s reputation and image are properly conveyed. If the culture is not well defined, customers may get mixed signals about what type of company their salesperson represents.

While creating a sales culture is important for guiding behavior and establishing norms and standards for the organization, a culture is only effective when it is aligned with the company’s objectives, strategies, industry, and business environment, which will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. First, we’ll define culture and focus on why it’s important for winning sales.




Strategies That Win Sales. Best Practices of the World's Leading Organizations
Strategies That Win Sales: Best Practices of the Worlds Leading Organizations
ISBN: 0793188601
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 98

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