The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

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.

Highly engaged employees describe their company as authentic because they are who they say they are. They live their core values, rewarding those who demonstrate them and not tolerating those who don’t.  

It’s no secret that when your employees are engaged, they are emotionally committed and willing to give their best at work. That’s because engaged employees feel as though they have a stake in the game and a sense of purpose which makes them willing to give it everything they’ve got to achieve success. Employee engagement has a major impact on business success, proving to reduce turnover, increase performance, and retain key customers. 

Equipped with hotspots and Wi-Fi, laptops, and mobile phones, most professionals can now do their jobs from anywhere. However, the physical distance between remote workers quickly leads to loneliness and isolation for those not accustomed to the lifestyle. And, when employees feel left out, their comfort levels decrease when it comes to working with their team.

“Those organizations that will thrive right now are the ones that really, truly, care about their people — and show it every day, even when they can’t be in the office together,” explains Beth Sunshine, Partner at Up Your Culture.

Virtual team building is essential for helping your team feel like they’re part of a community while working from home. It’s the ongoing process of bringing your remote teams together to help them connect and provide more human interaction. As employee engagement and happiness increase, so does performance, communication, and retention. Below are five activities that can bring more human interaction to virtual work.

Researchers have learned that companies with the highest levels of engagement have four things in common: Shared Mission, People Development, Valued Voice, and Earned Trust. When a company commits to improving in these areas, they simultaneously lift—or elevate—their levels of employee engagement.  

When your people are engaged, they fully activate their talents and give their very best. Consistent employee engagement leads to increased revenue, employee retention, and customer success. In previous posts, we discussed two Engagement Elevators, Shared Mission and People Development. This post digs into the power of Valued Voice.

Whether you’re a veteran in your career or just starting out, one of the most helpful things you can do is continue your professional growth. Our team enjoys many forms of professional development, and we find one of the quickest ways to grow is by reading.  At The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), you’ll find a book in our hands most of the time. 

Reading helps you develop empathy, gain valuable exposure to other perspectives, and increases verbal intelligence—all of which make you a better leader. Some of the most influential leaders make reading a top priority and understand the importance reading has on their success. Bill Gates reads at least 50 books a year! He is instrumental in getting other business leaders to jump on the “reading bandwagon.” If you’re ready to broaden your mind and expand your professional development, take a look at these books that our team recommends.

The first Engagement Elevator, Shared Mission, taught us that organizations with highly engaged employees have a clear sense of where they’re going as a company and why. Leaders communicate their purpose and vision well enough, and with enough frequency, that each employee, in turn, can clearly articulate the details with others.  

The second Engagement Elevator, People Development, focuses on how managers can show that they care about their people, build individualized relationships, transparently share information, coach both strengths and weaknesses, and provide meaningful feedback.  Are you investing in your people?

As 2020 unfolds, we see that Glassdoor’s prediction of a culture-first decade is upon us. Company culture and employee engagement are differentiators for organizations. This rise in popularity is largely due to a long string of well-respected experts, with studies in hand, pointing to a solid link between employee engagement and company productivity, revenue, and key customer retention. More than ever before, leaders understand that to grow the bottom line, they must start by creating a culture of engagement.

Telecommuting, flexible work environments—both fancier terms for working remotely—is the new normal for many of us. By now, you’ve gotten a taste for what working from home entails. And whether you choose to admit it or not, some of you have decided that remote work isn’t as great as it sounded just a few weeks ago.

At first, working quietly in your pajamas seemed enticing—even productive—then the silence set in, and you missed all the chaos. Most people do! Knowing how important socializing is, how do you keep that feeling intact with your team in a time of social distancing?

Do Millennials simply have less sales talent than prior generations?

After conducting tens of thousands of sales talent assessments, we here at The Center for Sales Strategy can assure you that’s not the case.

In part one of this two-part series, we shared four key differences in how the Millennial generation was raised, insight that was gained from Brad Karsh in an never-ending quest to learn more about how to activate Millennials. These differences explain much of the enormous disconnect between many Millennial workers and their managers today.

According to the most recent Gallup State of the Global Workplace, 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. The numbers don’t lie; this kind of disengagement has a tremendous negative impact on overall company performance and employee retention.

Employee engagement is important to every sales organization because it has a major impact on business success. The data confirms what many expert talent managers, coaches, and leaders have known all along—unengaged employees who see little or no overall purpose in their work aren’t as productive and are more likely to jump ship.