Essential Skills and Capabilities – Create a Winning Sales Culture   

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.” Jack Welch 

Today I’d like to chat briefly about the different roles required in a winning sales culture, and what makes them so important.

There are essentially three key roles that need to be filled to set business up for success:

• The Technician
• The Manager
• The Entrepreneur

All of these roles need to be played simultaneously by different people with the right talents. Moreover, activities of these people must be aligned, synchronized and integrated to achieve optimal results.  It’s all about balance and focus.

The Technician

This role represents all that needs to be done for the fundamental support of effective sales operations activities: CRM tools, training, sales enablement, technical support, documentation of best practices etc. They are the “doer”.

The Manager

This function ensures the integrity of accountability, visibility, and consequences for execution of the sales process.

Sales management will consistently reinforce high expectations (a standard of excellence) for the execution of daily sales activities, inspecting what is expected. This role will provide coaching, development, and support for each employee in the attainment of goals.

Furthermore, the manager role includes business leadership exercising oversight of sales management, conducting full operations reviews on a regular basis, with weekly/daily inspections in the interim. This is to assure disciplined execution of the right sales activities, in the right way to achieve sustained revenue growth.

The Entrepreneur

This role represents the future and the vision for the business, and must always be challenging the team to enhance the customer experience, improve products/service offerings, build a stronger business image, and more.

Putting it All Together

All three of these functions are essential to creating a winning sales culture. And thus, it is essential to find the right people to put in these roles, consistent with their skills and talents. Of course, you personally may fill one of these, but be honest with yourself and make sure that you surround yourself with the right skills and talent that is necessary to be successful.

Once the right folks are identified and selected, your work is far from complete, as the objective is to have these discrete functions work together as a coherent unit. To that end, it is essential to instill trust in your team, provide clear direction, allow them to do their jobs and hold them accountable. You must build and promote an atmosphere of open two-way communications, mutual respect, collaboration, and teamwork.

This type of organization takes time to build properly and will start with you selecting the right people. Next, you must be very visible, providing transparent leadership, along with support for open, two-way communication with you and among team members.

Of course, this is all easier said than done; however, when executed well, followed by discipline in hiring capable front line sales people, good things will happen!

If you are looking guidance on building a team with a winning sales culture, please contact me at (281) 817-7391
adam.vital@avbgs.com