Creating a Winning Sales Culture: 7 Ways to Get Started TODAY

Changing Your Sales Culture, Everybody Sells

Are your customers being supported company-wide? Salespeople today need to be so much more engaged with customers and prospects and more than ever need the support of their entire company.

Have you ever heard someone at a company say, “Oh, no, I am not in sales.”  Everyone who comes in contact with the customer has the opportunity to make or break that relationship.  Ask yourself, do you have a “Sales Prevention Department” at your company? Everyone needs to understand their role in the sales process.

What is the single most important thing a CEO can do for sales? Create a culture of sales, one that supports every sales effort. Without sales the company will go out of business.  There are no sales without customers, so everyone needs to be focused on the customer experience. If salespeople don’t have the support they need from marketing, accounting, customer service, manufacturing, etc. it will be difficult for them to keep their customers happy. We need to enable sales, not prevent it.

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If everyone in a company understands their role in the sales process, the culture will begin to change and sales will increase.  Repeat business is critical, so every customer touch has to be satisfactory – if not outstanding – so that not only do you retain that customer but that customer becomes a source of referrals. To have high customer retention rates, it takes participation from many departments. The culture has to be focused on customer retention.

It Starts With the Hiring Process

How do you hire the right people? No matter what position they are applying for ask them some questions about sales.

Here are some examples:

• In your past positions, how have you been involved or interacted with sales?
• How would you promote this company to your friends and family?
• When networking, how would you promote this company?
• Take a look at this product. What would be some of your ideas for selling it?
• How do you see your role as ______ supporting sales and interacting with the sales team?

You might find some incredible and unique ideas.  By asking those questions, you are setting the expectation that they will be doing their job with some focus on sales and that you expect them to support the sales team and represent your company in the community.

I wonder what would happen if all of your employees understood their role in the sales process.  If they were well versed in what your company does so they could discuss it.  What if each employee, each year just brought in one additional sale because they talked about your company with those they met?

Here are some things to get you started:

1. Make sure that every employee understands the goals of your company along with some general understanding of your products and services and who your target audience is.  Review all of that information with them periodically.
2. Start hiring with sales in mind.  Use the questions above or ask your sales team to give you some questions to use.
3. Have volunteers from all departments shadow your salespeople to learn more about sales.
4. Have your salespeople give your employees a presentation on what they do and how they do it.
5. Have employees participate on support teams for sales.
6. Reward employees for sales leads.
7. Send employees from all different departments to networking events with your salespeople.

If you already have a great sales culture remember to appreciate that and give kudos and rewards to acknowledge it.

Building a sales culture will definitely increase your company’s sales.  Try one or two ideas and see what happens.  I would love to hear your stories about building a sales culture at your company.  Leave a comment below.

Need help building a sales culture at your company? Click here to set up your free strategy session with Alice.