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Selling is a premeditated sport. It is a process of
planned, calculated steps. When managed correctly, these steps help minimize
failure and increase your sales quota success. But selling is a structured
approach that has humanistic influences.
To maximize your success, you need to balance your firm’s cultural
and business environment with your sales strategy implementation.
"Sales" is not a silo process focused on capturing revenue by itself.
Revenue capture is a team sport requiring the alignment of the operations,
marketing, strategy, and accounting departments to help the sales team sell
more. Even more so, it is critical that the corporate business progression
is aligned with the cultural progression of your team. Having a business process
that ignores the cultural process will ultimately affect your company’s
ability to hit their revenue goals.
Take the Sales Cultural Audit
- Are your sales account managers asked for input to their annual sales
calculation before they are assigned a quota?
Yes • No
- Has your sales team been given a written sales process on how they should
sell prospects?
Yes • No
- Has your sales team been supplied a buyer prototype that identifies
the ideal prospect they should approach and sell?
Yes • No
- Does your sales team receive monthly financial incentives such as management
by objectives (commonly called MBO’s)
to induce them into specific sales steps (cold calls, demo’s, etc.)?
Yes • No
- Does your sales team meet at least quarterly to create a team esprit
de corps?
Yes • No
- Does your sales team role-play with their sales peers at least once a month
and evaluate each other’s performance?
Yes • No
- Do you have a centralized sales information repository (employee portal,
web site, etc.) where all sales team members can deposit or collect sales
and marketing support materials, post request for help from their sales peers
and competitive information to help them close more business?
Yes • No
- Do you have detailed job descriptions for your sales team members (signed
by the respective person) outlining management’s expectations of their
performance on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis?
Yes • No
- Does your sales team receive quarterly written performance reviews with
recommendations for improvements?
Yes • No
- Are the sales team members asked annually what their financial and career
goals are?
Yes • No
Correct Answers
All answers are yes and each correct answer
is worth 10%. How did you score?
Sales culture is just as important as sales skills and sales strategy. A sales
team's business expectations and management's expectations must match to maximize
your company's revenue capture opportunities. When a team's cultural environment
is not aligned with management's business expectations, sales team members
become disenchanted and ultimately low performers.
To maximize sales success, make sure your sales team has the business values
and expected behavior needed for revenue success. Just a small change in your
team’s cultural behavior can have a dramatic effect in sales.
"In baseball, the difference between a .350 hitter and a .250
hitter is only a quarter-inch up or down on the bat." Mortimer
R. Feinberg
Writers Resource Box
| Paul DiModica is the author of the best-selling
books: Value Forward Selling, Value Forward Marketing, and Sales Management Power Strategies.
He is founder of Value Forward Group and addresses
thousands of executives each year on the subjects
of sales, marketing and strategy, including
executives and staff of Wells Fargo, Lanier Corporate, Adobe, IBM, Tyco/American Dynamics, Navitaire and many others. His content-rich
workshops and strategy sessions on leadership, sales, management
and marketing bring about immediate changes
and long-term results. For more information, visit http://www.valueforward.com |
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