Why is Culture King? Part 2

Two in a Series of Three Articles Promoting the Value of an Efficient Sales Culture

In this installment we will examine some of the tools needed to establish an efficient sales culture. We will also examine some fundamental realities about what type of, and how much, activity it takes to get the job done. Before we talk about the elements, we need to define the goal of the tools and action which we will examine. The goal is to empower the person or persons who make up the culture to sell better, therefore more. It’s that simple.

Resistance is the enemy of an efficient culture. There are always so many reasons sales associates resist change and the most predominant one is the freedom, which a lack of structure provides. Sales professionals who are not innately driven to be top performers enjoy a melancholy "cruise control” environment, one where the owner doesn’t really have their finger on the pulse, and they can go to work and see how the world will treat them and work, but not “kill themselves or get challenged” too much. Resistance to the effort it takes to be a top performer is identified early on by most new sales associates. They justify a lack of passion toward sales techniques, arm themselves with a good handle on product knowledge, and let the world come to them for the most part. It is a common character type in retail sales and service, 80/20 rule invoked, and frankly a blight on the honorable profession of selling.

Why am I so harsh? Because if you want to be an “order taker”. find a POP (point of purchase) position, give good advice, top out at a third of what a good “eat what you kill” sales person makes, live on “cruise control”, and enjoy your life choice. Just do us serious sales technicians a favor: find that position, get the hell out of the way and quit poisoning the culture with your apathy! Some of us study and want to be the best version of our “sales self” and that happens best in a “creative team environment”, so do yourself and those of us with high aspirations a favor and go find that place. I assure you it’s NOT in the big leagues of the luxury marketing space. If you do yourself that solid and be where order takers belong, you won’t have to deal with education, reading sales materials, CRM’s, role playing, and monitoring your activity to see how close you are to hitting your goals. You’ll be where you need to be.

So at the end of that rant of a paragraph I segued into some of the components needed to equip a healthy sales culture. Here is an important list to peruse, you’ll need a quality one of these tools to build an efficient sales culture. I’ll hit the highlights and main elements:

A Mission: Something that everyone inside your organization understands is the identity of the company that ties into its reason for being.

Branding: The stimulus that tells the world, customers old and new, who you are. It should be vivid, consistent, and concise. This includes social media platforms, email service providers, your website and any old school print materials you may use. Everything you do, down to the sign off on your email signature, needs to tell the story of your identity. I am a HUGE fan of incorporating a slogan into a logo. We have two: “We know who you need to know” is a part of the slogan which speaks to our ability to find the right target. The second one under the main title on our home page is: “The company with the most friends wins” which is in reference to the fact that our lead generation can introduce you to, guess who? “Who you need to know.” Whether you like them or not, they do tie into the mission and the benefit we provide our clients.   

Organizational Tools: Tech tools such as a CRM (customer relationship management) system and any spreadsheets and any software needed to create estimates, strategies and business communications, both internal and external.

                          On Target Activities Using the Tools

Let’s depart from the things needed to have an efficient sales culture to address the activities needed to act like a successful sales organization. 

First we’ll tie it back to the mission. We’ll encourage you to have a story to tell. A story that will paint a picture of your company's contribution to society. Great sales people are engaging and tell stories. What is your company or your personal reason behind what you sell? If you don’t constantly reinforce it, it can become that powerful engagement tool that never comes out of your pouch. I had a Jewish business client whose last name was Freidman. We got into a discussion which is the perfect segue into item #2, branding.

Frank and I were talking about why people bought from him; he had an Army-Navy store which did great until the internet and box stores left him behind the eight ball. Frank never embraced the technology or e-commerce space and it became his undoing. On the topic of why, back then when floor traffic was plentiful (remember that?), he said that it was fulfilling to him that folks who were outdoor enthusiasts loved finding things there for their outdoor hobbies. The great outdoors gave them a break from the rigors of work and the city etc.,etc. And he enjoyed seeing them light up when they envisioned being on the water, in the woods or at the campground. After more conversation, I uttered an observation: "Well Frank, sounds like you don’t sell backpacks and tents and kayaks and things… you sell fun!” That slogan, ”We Sell Fun!” became a branding statement, went on the iconic signage, and consumers all over town knew and often said they were going to Friedman’s Army-Navy Store to “buy some fun!” 

Keep in mind when you brand to be accurate but sell the benefit, not how many years you’ve been in business; if you would like some extra years in business, sell the benefits. Here’s a quotable statement I’ll repeat: ”People don’t buy a thing, they buy what a thing does for them.”

The organizational tools are something that many companies have and put a lot of thought into. The issue, which I will cover in detail during the third and final installment of the series, is that the majority of the professionals who spend their lives being provided enough tools in the tech tool box don’t typically enjoy a culture that fully takes advantage of the software they have.  Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a business owner lament that they had purchased Sales Force, or this CRM or that CRM, but their staff only uses a small percentage of its capabilities. Why? Either because they bought a CRM with more capabilities than the needs they had or 

Most sales professionals dabble with a CRM, want to get the “short and skinny” about a lead while on they run “to and fro”, and don’t really use it to its full potential. Most CRM’s that are useful for following up on leads have a lead enrichment that will tell them some information about their lead, their social sites, personal info, sometimes an occupation and a bio. This is ammo for follow up as far as being able to craft messaging that “may hit” home  better. 

The hidden actions of a prospect are troubling to many chasing down leads. Many sales professionals (you understand that just because I call someone professional doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good at something, only that it is how they make a living) don’t know when a prospect “takes an action” unless they return a call, text or email. Think about that. A prospect can listen or read something you send them and because they don’t respond you may think you’re not influencing them at all. In this day and age, your organizational tools should be smart so you can detect if the prospect is taking an action whether or not they engage directly. Some CRM’s like Pipe Drive tell you when someone opens one of your emails. This is helpful because it also gives you a peek into the type of information they are most likely to value. At DSD we are taking a page out of some of the CRM’s that track movement more and building in notifications that will allow the sales professional to see if a prospect liked, shared or read something. Although we aren't primarily a CRM company, we want to provide sales people with the knowledge that they don’t always have the benefit of knowing: that someone is exhibiting interest behind the scenes. Laboring under the misconception that a prospect doesn't care just because they have not engaged directly is detrimental to the psyche of a sales pro. The fact is that the gestation period of a luxury marketing buyer can be long; not just days or weeks but months or years, and your sales protocol has to include encouragement that the information you take time to post and share with your prospects, although it seems behind the scenes, is productive and valuable time spent. As we learned in the 5 Steps to Selling Success Method you can’t underestimate credibility (Step 1) and making a friend (Step 2). The disciplined invisible deposits you make in a relationship are the actions that will one day bring it to visibility and engagement when they get far enough down the sales funnel. The cultures whose habit it is to give up after 4-5 attempts will lose countless sales to those who have faith that giving will eventually mean getting. Each lead, that eventually becomes a sale, has a number of attempts it takes to get the deal done. The larger ones often take more time. Don’t be that person who gives up just before the communication that turns the tide. Keep giving. 

And that my colleagues, that is what a healthy sales culture is all about! Studying, sharing, caring, challenging, finding what dies and doesn’t work as a sales family, and rehearsing your ideas and dialogue exchanges to elevate your game to its highest standard.

Once more, if you are a sales force of one, you still have a personal culture and set of habits which will enable you to perform your best or not. If there are two of you, you have someone to bounce ideas off of and the chance to be teammates. And if you are one of several sales individuals working out of the same facility, SHAME ON YOU for not sharing licks with one another and always trying to find the “next best way” to make a friend with the consumer population. Here’s the naked truth and what needs to change almost everywhere: Egos and selfishness create a cultural barrier that is most often too tall to go over, around or under. What most businesses have are independently operating sales associates who only have in common where they go to work and what they sell. Sad, but true.

In submission number 3, the final one in the series, we’ll take a look at what an efficient sales culture looks like so you can decide if it fits your goals and would become a desirable lifestyle for you. We’ll look at what “a day in the life of a top performer” looks like. You may be surprised to find that you are doing a whole bunch of things right and simply need to adopt a few new habits, revise a few things, and then become your most awesome sales-self. 

A healthy sales culture serves to make your knowledge more impactful, desirable, and accessible to the world. A sales pro becomes their best sales self by constantly sharpening the saw and never settling for mediocrity,” - “Papa Jack” Klinefelter