The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Have you ever interviewed or hired someone who couldn’t stop raving about their previous company?

Maybe circumstances forced them to leave, or the company was acquired, but they see their previous team as the best.

Now think about your team. Do your Account Executives rave about the culture on the team to anyone who will listen? Do they tell their friends that they should apply for open positions because your company is the best one to work for?

What is the “secret sauce” that beloved leaders of highly successful and happy teams have that everyone else is missing? Let’s find out.

Finding a candidate with top talent to fill an open position is a good feeling. You’ve found someone that possesses the skills and experience necessary to perform the job at hand and do it well. Box checked! 

During the interview process, you focused mainly on their qualifications and professional background, but it was hard to get a sense of who they are and what they are about. You tell yourself that it’s not too much of a concern; with their skills and talent, it should all work out.  

Sometimes it does work out, but many times it doesn’t. Don't overlook this one key factor when hiring a new candidate!

Culture is defined as a way of life for a group of people. When in doubt about what to do, the members will fall back on what they have learned from their culture. They don’t even think about it—they know what their culture would tell them to do.

Business organizations all have a culture, and when you walk into a business and take an instant like or dislike to being there, you are experiencing their culture. Sometimes they don’t even have to say anything—it’s an attitude you can almost feel.

Business-to-business organizations don’t often have potential customers walk into a physical location. Often a salesperson is how the client and prospect experience your organization’s culture. What is your sales culture telling them?

Trust is fundamental in any highly engaged, high-performing team. Without trust and integrity, people question why they want to work for a company or manager who doesn’t have convictions. When asked, highly engaged employees describe their companies and leaders as “authentic” or “genuine.”

Building trust takes time. Whether in person or virtually, it can take months or years to build a solid base of trust, but it takes just minutes to lose it. Trust is ever-evolving and something you need to be mindful of every day.

At our company, our employees crave growth and development. One way we add to this focus is through our quarterly book club. Our business book club is different from most, as we all read a book we are interested in, not one we all read together.

Having a book club where we all read different business books exposes us to a huge library to explore that we may not have thought of before. It also allows us to grow in areas that appeal to us.

Reading is one of the major habits successful people have in common. For instance, Bill Gates reads 50 books per year, Warrant Buffett reads 500 pages every day, and Mark Cuban reads 3+ hours a day.

Companies with highly-engaged employees grow revenue 2.5x as much as those who don't, and engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization. Creating and building a company culture of engagement is vital to a healthy company and business growth.