06 Aug Start Selling
Creating a sales culture takes discipline, commitment and focus but that should be no surprise—because excellence is never an accident.
Are your sales numbers down? In today’s economic climate it’s more critical than ever to consistently produce sales results. As I talk to organizations that are struggling to grow, one area that they need to look hard at is their current sales culture. During the boom times there were lots of leads coming in and sales people were essentially order takers. They took an order and they didn’t have to sell on the differentiators of their company or their product offering. With the market down you need skilled sales people, not order takers. You must have a sales culture that knows how to drive results from your sales team if you are going to compete in today’s demanding market.
I read an article called “10 Steps to Creating a Top-Selling Sales Culture” by Rory Vaden that had some good advice. It said that excellence is never an accident. Transforming a marginally performing sales team into a well-oiled sales machine doesn’t happen by luck either.
Yet many companies try to grow sales by simply putting more pressure on the sales team, reminding them of their increasing quotas and adding up how much they’re behind. Oftentimes well intentioned leadership teams think increasing pay will be the magic anecdote, only to find that paying salespeople more money doesn’t make them any better at generating sales. Many times, it creates more complacency to do just enough to not get fired.
Companies invest a lot of time and money into better products or more marketing, which doesn’t hurt, but only further masks your true underlying sales problem. And it’s astounding how many companies know they need to increase sales, yet they spend 70 to 90 percent of their training time teaching their sales force more product knowledge and almost no time teaching them how to actually sell. Read more