Create a Winning Sales Culture | Maximize Team Performance | Promote Collaboration and Sharing Best Practices

Maximize Team Performance – Promote Collaboration and Sharing Best Practices

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan

Maximize Team Performance

This is the second of five articles reviewing proven strategies for driving business growth. In the previous discussion, we covered the “Make People First” strategy. Herein we’ll review a strategy to “Maximize Overall Team Performance”.

According to research published by CEB (a subsidiary of Gartner), the performance gap between average salespersons and star performers can be as much as 59 % for transactional sales to almost 200 percent for complex solution sales.  Furthermore, since average performers typically represent 60-70 percent of the sales team, you can see that closing this gap by even a modest amount represents a significant opportunity for improvement in growth for the enterprise.

I am a proponent of sales cultures characterized by an atmosphere with a high degree of teamwork and collaboration, where the sharing of best practices is the norm. In this environment, those who share best practices are recognized for their contributions (and even considered heroes).  Moreover, these folks are candidates for sales leadership roles. Obviously, this kind of environment does not just occur on its own.  That is, creating such an environment requires passionate and unrelenting support from business leadership to acknowledge the contributions of top performers who share best practices. And finally, it requires a commitment to continuous, systematic employee development; a laser-like focus on performance improvement; and appropriate incentives.

Here’s a quick summary of the advantages of this strategy and what it takes to make it work:

Key Advantages:           

  • Significantly improves sales performance for the organization as a whole through a focus on collective learning, fostered by collaboration in the sharing of best practices
  • The process provides for continuous improvement, which is essential for maximizing sales growth in both the near and long-term
  • Enhances employee engagement and ownership
  • Identifies and grooms potential future sales leaders

Critical Success Factors:

  • Commitment and Partnership (business leadership and top salespersons)
  • Quality and Thorough Assessment and Debrief(s) for a full delineation of best practices
  • Sales Leader Ownership and Accountability of plans for best practice skill development for middle performers. This is where the most upside exists in terms of the total number of people, ability, and desire for improvement.
  • Flawless Execution – Skill/knowledge transfer through disciplined coaching and effective role play
  • Recognition of Key Contributors – Folks who demonstrate leadership in the sharing of best practices must be acknowledged and shown appreciation by business leaders in the presence of their peers.

In summary, a proven strategy for maximizing overall team performance in both the near and long-term is to build a culture centered on collaboration and teamwork which fosters continuous organic improvement and growth.

Is your business stalled and you need help in implementing proven strategies for driving growth? Or, perhaps you simply want to enhance operational execution to increase your current momentum? In either case, we can help you with that, and we guarantee results! Take advantage of our free growth strategy sessions; we’re offering ten of these for the month of September. Should you have an interest in one of these sessions, or need assistance in developing and implementing a plan to Maximize Team Performance, please contact me at (281) 817-7391 or adam.vital@avbgs.com.

 

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