What sort of business do you want?
What do you want your sales culture to be?
We ask these questions of many businesses and as you’d expect we get a wide variety of answers. Most will be concerned with growth in revenues and profitability. Some will use terms like high performing and market leading, others will say they want to be customer-focussed, while others still will say they want to build a strong sales culture based around their people.
Most will say they want a strong and vibrant sales and service culture which drives profitability and growth.
So, what is sales and what is service and how do they relate to each other?
We often find that businesses that provide great levels of service can be diverted away from the sales opportunities that are being created by their focus on service. It is common to see that the service providers have basically become order takers, due primarily to their desire to provide great service.
This can create an organisational challenge to move the customer-facing people to where you want them to be:
| FROM | ORDER TAKERS | ‘Thank you’ |
| AVOIDING | PRODUCT PUSHING | ‘Would you like another product with that?’ |
| TO | RELATIONSHIP BUILDERS | ‘Tell me about your business’ |
This can be challenging for your people as they may believe they are being pushy in proactively uncovering the needs of your customers and following up on new business opportunities.
In a vibrant culture, everybody is focussed on the customer and on looking for new customers!
That’s easy to say but how do we achieve it?
We’d say it’s all down to your Managers at all levels:
- Board and Senior Management have a clear vision of where they want the organisation to go and are committed to driving this culture through the business.
- There are high levels of collaboration with staff with regard to this vision.
- Staff at all levels are clear on what they are required to do.
- Managers at all levels role model the required behaviours.
- There is a consistent and disciplined approach to the activities that comprise high performance.
- Continuous focus on understanding the business of your customers and prospects, uncovering their individual needs and presenting solutions to meet those needs.
- All staff are dedicated to sales and service – ‘around customers everybody sells’.
- In a vibrant sales culture, rather than pockets of high performance we see a consistent and disciplined approach to sales and service. ‘Your best is your best everywhere’.
- Agreement on a set of disciplined sales and service and sales management behaviours to sustain high levels of sales and service across the business.
The end result of this is every person in your business driving your vision consistently and enthusiastically.
None of this will happen by accident, or even because you’ve communicated a clear vision. And certainly not because you’ve told your people what to do.