The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Much is written every year about corporate culture. And yes, every corporation has a culture—they may not have built it purposefully, they may not be proud of it, it may hold the organization back rather than propel it to success—but there’s always a culture and it always impacts performance.

Don’t look to a mission or vision statement hanging on the wall to discern the culture of a given organization. Just watch what the people do. Despite what the pretty prose might say, the actual culture is revealed in how the company’s people interact with each other and with the outside world, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day.

Say it either way: The culture—values, attitudes, beliefs, priorities, expectations, attitudes, taboos, unwritten rules—is demonstrated by the aggregate behaviors of its people. Or the people define the culture by how they act.

Whether you call it cold calling, prospecting, or new business development, lead generation is critical piece for the sales success formula. In many current sales structures, the salesperson in charge of lead generation also oversees setting appointments, finding needs, selling solutions, and ensuring contracts are fulfilled.

Sales managers are great at tracking pending business and placing accountability on the average number of new accounts. While these are important metrics to track, they’re also narrowly focused on the middle and end of the sales process. What if we placed greater accountability at the beginning of the sales process as well? Imagine placing more focus on lead generation efforts, whether through a specialist role or an inbound marketing agency, where qualified leads are regularly handed off to Account Executives.

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” — Henry David Thoreau

As children, we’re told many stories, some of which were created and passed down to help teach life lessons. Storytelling has been around for thousands of years, and there are many parables, fables, and legends that we share as a collective society.

Stories bring us together, bond groups emotionally, and connect them to their purpose. The use of stories also has an immense impact in the business world, increasing workplace empathy, strengthening leadership, and as a team-building strategy.

Culture is powerful, and you’re going to have one whether you like it or not.

Your company culture is the personality of your organization. It’s the vibe people feel when they work there and the way they describe your company to others. How is your company culture weathering the COVID-19 storm?

Sales structures look different for all organizations depending on the industry, size of the team, product, and the sales process. As your company and people evolve or as things change in your business sector, your sales structure should change as well in order to maintain a competitive advantage.

Companies that identify the need to change sales structure continue to grow, while those who ignore it find themselves struggling to meet sales goals and stay competitive. According to the recent Media Sales report, 60% of sales managers don’t feel they have the right number of salespeople on their team. This leads to a couple important questions:

• Is it the number of people on your team that needs adjustment?
• Or is it the sales structure and expectations aren’t in line with sellers’ true talents?

Distractions, emails, and meetings are known to be leading factors in loss of productivity, but studies find that as temperatures rise, productivity drops by 4% per degree. In fact, 25% of workers feel less productive during June, July and August than in the rest of the year.

A summer sales slump happens in many industries, but the slowed pace of business doesn’t mean your sales team can’t be productive. Below are seven ways to motivate your sales team this summer – as told by GIFs.

You hear it every day, “these challenging times,” “the new normal,” “the pandemic.” It’s no surprise that we are all facing adversity and uncertainty, but it doesn’t mean all doom and gloom. In fact, you can crush adversity and come out on the other side stronger, successful, and more skilled than ever. What is the secret to weathering the storm? Start with your sales culture as your foundation and proactively instill and foster resilience.

The market's uncertainty has left many companies with an uncomfortable and frustrating bloated feeling in their sales pipeline.

Even before the pandemic, you could have easily convinced me that compensation plans changed radically and that people in sales were getting paid based on pending business. Every time I asked a salesperson how they were doing, I received the same response: "I’ve got a lot pending!”

Pre-pandemic, I reviewed over 500 proposals from various B2B sales organizations over the course of six months. These were all legitimate proposals, actually presented to a prospect or client. Based on those proposals, and the bloated pipeline many of you are experiencing today,  here's some valuable insight on how to close more business.

Last week, we discussed why the sales industry needed a Henry Ford assembly line. We determined that while the technology that we use has changed over time, our sales structure’s foundation has not.

Before Ford's assembly line, auto manufacturers built cars one-at-a-time. They hired a skilled artisan who would build the vehicle from the ground up, which meant that Ford had to hire people who knew every aspect of the vehicle.  From connecting an engine to a frame, steering to the chassis, installing seats, builders had to know how to do it all.

It’s what we expect salespeople to do with radio and television stations. Don't we still expect salespeople to also do it all? 

How fast does your team move when a lead comes in? A lead response study of 2,241 US companies showed that the average first response time of B2B companies to their leads was 42 hours.

A quality lead degrades over time. Every aspect, from the channel you select to the amount of time you take to respond, impacts your prospect’s decision. Whether you conduct your sales outreach by phone, email, or social media, timing is crucial — and here’s the data to back it up.

History is fascinating! You can learn so much from the past. The History channel offers some amazing documentaries that can enlightening for those of us that want to learn from the past to improve our future. One of the most popular series on History is the "The Men Who Built America".  These epic documentaries tell the story of how great men and women shaped our country through their entrepreneurial spirits and built companies and brands that built America.

The latest series, "The Cars that Built America," obviously highlight stories of American auto manufacturers. And, you can’t talk about automobile history without telling Henry Ford's story. As a visionary, Ford was an entrepreneur that developed many of the best practices that companies still use today. The most famous of his designs was the assembly line.

Have you ever participated in a trust building exercise?  They have been the craze for years.  There have been a few fun ones, like Escape Rooms, but there have also been a few you wish to forget, like “trust fall.” Seriously, who enjoys blindly falling backwards hoping someone will catch us?!   

Team building exercises are a great way to form relationships and build reciprocity. But developing trust takes time—much longer than one afternoon—and activities alone are not how a foundation of trust is established. Building an effective team starts by asking thoughtful questions. Those questions spark conversation, providing team members an opportunity to share bits of information about themselves, and over time, leading to more trust and engagement—improving team productivity along the way.

How do you know if you have a sales structure problem? Too often, sales organizations are evaluated single-handily by their results. If your company isn’t hitting targets and sale goals aren’t being achieved, the blame falls on not having the right salespeople. But, is the source of lost revenue really a “people” problem?

Underperformance is easily blamed on salespeople because data often helps support the claims. However, while we always seek to improve the performance of sales teams, there are a few indicators that show you may have more than a people problem.