How to Grow a New Sales Culture

Warning: this article refers to your organization as a “business” and asks you to think critically about your “sales culture.”  Do not read it if at any time in the last 30 days you have said, “We serve our families; we don’t sell anybody,” or if you think that everyone on straight commission has to be of questionable character, or if you think your non-profit status gives you license to employ the operating principles of the early 1960’s—you’ll just be wasting your time.  However, if you have become even mildly aware of the change happening around you and if you’ve stopped to think, “Man, it’s time we caught up and began to accelerate along the path to sales effectiveness,” read on; this article is for you.

Too many businesses—and I believe it to be especially true in our profession—fail to adapt to changing market conditions because key people are unwilling to or unable to become part of a new sales culture.  Implicit in the introduction of a new sales culture is that dreaded word, “change”.  Well, dreaded or not, most thinking people clearly understand and agree that change is necessary for the long-term growth and development of any business because the world we work in today is a different place than it was just yesterday.

Someone once said, “Unless something changes, nothing ever will!” I like that.  It illustrates the necessity of change and underscores the reality that says if we don’t manage change, it can definitely manage us!  Sure, resisting change can hold it off for a while, maybe even place it to rest on the shoulders of someone else for a year or two, but change, like a tsunami, will ultimately overwhelm even the best of us.

You’ve seen it for yourself even with eyes wide shut—especially with respect to infrastructure; the transformation we’ve witnessed over the past few years in the way we sell services and property and merchandise has been unbelievable.  It wasn’t that long ago when your company probably used inventory cards, dot matrix printers, floppy disk computers, and sent out stacks of printed literature.  You remember, don’t you?  Believe it or not (you can’t tell by looking at me), but I’m old enough to remember when every sales team in our profession was 99.9% male!  That ratio has been turned upside down and no one can argue that we aren’t the better for it.  Well, you made it through all those changes; but how did it go?  Did you come into the 21st century kicking and screaming or did you come strolling into the new millennium with a smile on your face?

Let’s take a moment to define the word “culture;” I’ve used it five times already and you will encounter it 72 times before you finish reading.  With respect to organizations, Webster defines culture as “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.”  A good friend of mine friend has a better working definition.  “Culture is who we are and how we act,” he says.  So as I share these words about creating a new sales culture in your organization, I’m asking you to think about “who you are and how you act with respect to selling services, property and merchandise to your customers.”  There; we’re on the same page now.

Your company’s ability to adapt, to change, is dependent upon its culture.  It’s the difference between working for Google® and the Department of Justice.  Whose culture is more creative, more flexible, and more adaptable?  Your ability to create long-term profitability in the new millennium depends upon how well your sales culture is able to adapt and respond to profound, ever-changing market conditions.  And, how well your sales culture responds to changing market conditions depends in large part upon your coaching style, which defines your ability to impact your sales team and key people in each department in the company.

The theoretical part of preparing yourself, your sales team, and key people to create a new sales culture is simple and relatively painless; you just gather the troops together and cheer each other on as you jointly develop a workable plan, allocate responsibilities, and establish benchmarks for achieving objectives.  It’s the action part that so often falls apart.  As I said earlier, people don’t like change, so you may find people on your team who refuse to support the new sales culture because they live by Newton’s law which says that a body at rest tends to stay at rest.  You are likely to discover that your proposed new sales culture creates anger, paranoia, resistance, suspicion, and even sabotage.

The truth is that change is OK—in theory.  In fact; the theoretical part can even be fun and exciting.  You get to come up with great ideas, you get approval from your colleagues and your boards, and you get to bask in those warm, fuzzy feelings that come from thinking about what a terrific team player you are.  But, that’s not good enough.

The best way to avoid action-failure is to present an honest, balanced, and pragmatic view of the new sales culture to everyone involved.  Be up front about your expectations for the new sales culture; ask top management to stand up in front of every group in your organization and express their determination to support you and the new sales culture all the way.

Don’t swing too far too soon with too much change. If you expect too much too soon, you risk forcing a sales culture so impatient and so focused on change it fails to do what it was ostensibly designed to do: enable your company to sell more services and property and merchandise more often, more profitably!

How do you define the term, sales culture?  Good question.  Sales culture is the attitude that motivates us, individually and collectively, to work for the best interests of our customers.  Every company, good or bad, rich or poor, has an operating sales culture and the strength or weakness of that culture directly impacts employee productivity and retention and customer loyalty and profitability.

Not surprisingly, sales players who make the commitment to actively support the sales culture typically sell more than those who don’t.  Sales players who contribute to the sales culture tend to stay in their jobs for longer periods of time and are more effective at developing and maintaining long term customer and community relationships.  Sales players who do not actively participate in the sales culture do generate some business but they typically do not develop solid, long-term relationships with customers—and forget the community.  Turnover in this group is significantly higher because these sales players are consistently less productive and therefore are less satisfied than their active colleagues.

And, what makes the crucial difference between these two groups?  After nearly 25 years in our profession, I have seen it time and time again; the difference is the sales coach!  Planned or not, the sales coach (sales manager, VP of Sales, Sales Director—whatever you call them) establishes a sales culture and as I said before, the strength or weakness of that culture determines the strength or weakness of the company’s position in its markets.

A winning sales team depends upon the abilities, motivation, and enthusiasm of its sales coach.  The sales coach plays a key role in motivating and directing the performance of sales players, individually and collectively.  So the sales coach becomes a very important driving force in creating a strong, productive, and consistently profitable sales culture!

Don’t kid yourself; developing and implementing a new sales culture in your company will not be an easy task and it certainly will not happen overnight.  It may take months or even years before you are able to integrate a fully functioning, profitable sales culture in your company (especially if the guys who have “position power” in your organization are among those who stopped reading this article after the warning issued in the first two sentences).

Is it worth it?

Considering the alternative, you bet your bottom dollar it is!

So, prepare yourself, your team, your key people, and especially, prepare upper management to invest in a comprehensive sales culture until you achieve your long-term sales and profit goals.  One thing is for sure; no matter how long it takes, you’ll ultimately agree it was well worth the wait!

6 Ways to Introduce a New Sales Culture

If you’re serious about introducing a vibrant, consistently productive new sales culture to your company, you’ll have to put the following critical strategies and tactics to work:

1/Create a Clear Vision of Your New Sales Culture – Complete the process - from vision to action - by involving senior management, sales players, key personnel, selected customers, and critical vendors.  Once your sales culture vision has form and function, be sure to clarify details so everyone understands and, more importantly, embraces it.

• The Vision – What should the vision of your new sales culture be?  Start by determining just how effective – or not - your current sales culture is.  Is your marketing effort effective or just one unmeasured shot gun blast after another when sales are inexplicably down?  Do you have a clearly defined process for building sales teams that includes a commitment to continuously developing sales players?  Have you measured the time it takes to get from complaint to resolution with customer service opportunities?  Do family service personnel follow up with “every family, every time?”  Will your grass cutters chase down that Styrofoam cup that’s blowing across the section of your property they’re working on this morning?  Does your Board understand that cutting costs is not a growth strategy?  When was the last time you actually listened for the quality of the messages being conveyed to customers when the phone rings in your office?  Is everyone—from Regent to runner—capable of reciting your organization’s mission and unique selling proposition in a 60-second elevator speech?  The best answers to these questions are directly related to the clarity of vision you have for your sales culture.  Everyone has to sing from the same hymnal and that means everyone has to incorporate the vision of the new sales culture into a sense of purpose for their role in the organization
• Lead Change Before Change Leads You – Effective change requires effective leadership because leadership is all about staying ahead of change, mastering change, and benefiting from the opportunities change brings.  Remember, the challenge is to always stay at least a step ahead of changing market conditions so you sell more, more often, more profitably
• Key Personnel Defined – Key personnel includes everyone who interacts with a product or service to sell, expedite, prepare, and deliver it to a customer.  In the typical cemetery company, this includes lots of people (credit, billing, sales players, sales coordinators/administrators, superintendents, backhoe operators, et al).  Senior management buy-in is indispensable.  It is absolutely essential to secure the agreement, understanding, and support of General Managers, Presidents, and Directors (whatever you call them).  Without support at the highest levels, the chances of your new sales culture fading after an initial honeymoon are greatly increased
• Selected Customers – You have to be willing to let your customers tell you where they would like to see you go or they will not follow you where you are going.  How long has it been or when have you ever focused on a process of listening to a representative cross-section of prospective customers responding to the question, “What would you like to see this cemetery do next?”
• Critical Vendors/Suppliers – Your sales culture depends on high-quality, high-eye appeal products and the dependability and service commitments of your key vendors.  They must mean more to you than a free lunch every other month.  They, too, must understand the vision you have for your new sales culture and it’s their obligation to bring proposals that are perfectly aligned with it.  However, it’s your responsibility, whether it’s a pricing strategy or value-added services, to get the most out of these relationships and to only associate your company with the very best in the market 

OK—this is where someone usually says, “Whoa, hoss!  Can you please give me an example; what is your definition of an ideal sales culture?”  Simply stated, the ideal sales culture means that every employee does everything in their power to expedite delivery and to give the best possible value to every customer while retaining the maximum profits for the company—period.

2/Align Talent and Resources to Create the New Sales Culture – Encourage honest and open (candid) discussions, one-on-one, and as a group, regarding necessary changes and essential resources.

• Measure Talent for What It Really Is – You know the people you work with; put detail people in charge of processing documents through the system as quickly and efficiently as possible; place technical people in charge of applications and systems; and most important, put people-people in charge of customer relations
• Motivating the Culture – motivating the culture means moving people forward to accomplish specific goals.  To motivate people, you must provide an environment which allows each person in the process to reach his or her full potential.  You must also understand what motivates each person to become the best they can be - recognition, security, money, position or power - and provide the appropriate motivators
• Dump the Bureaucracy – Simplify access to your business.  Simple business is efficient business and efficient business is profitable business.  Simple messages are faster to send and easier to understand and simplification makes for better, quicker decisions.  Somewhere in almost every organization of any significant size there is an individual who habitually – whether consciously or unconsciously – slows things down just so they get to feel important when you finally have to beg them for a decision.  You’re going to have to deal with that individual, even if they are the CEO or the Founding Father or Mother of your business, if you are going to keep pace with change in your markets
• Confront Resistance -- There are six main reasons why people resist change. Your job is to understand and work with each person to help them overcome:

•  Fear of Failure – The new sales culture demands new abilities and skills from everyone involved.  Resistance surfaces when people fear they won’t be able to make a meaningful contribution to the new culture
• Inertia – People labor under the stress of making changes that interfere with comfortable ways they’ve always done their jobs.  Watch for signs of stress and burnout as your new sales culture evolve
• Fear of The Unknown – Change causes uncertainty which causes discomfort.  Uncertainty about the future creates anxiety and one common reaction to anxiety is to resist change
• Belief That Change is Unnecessary – Many people around the company, especially those with seniority, folks who’ve survived ups and downs over the years, may believe there’s no need to complicate their jobs for a new sales order that really isn’t necessary
• Losing Anything of Value – Every person in the company will be dying to know how the new sales culture will affect them and anyone who perceives a loss (security, position, power, freedom, income) will resist
• Misunderstandings – People the world over resist change when they don’t understand its implications, so be clear with your expectations and desired results

• Breaking Bad Habits – As every human being on the planet knows, breaking bad habits is tough to do.  Nevertheless, in order to ensure that the new sales culture is viable, key people in your company will have to ditch those habits that will inevitably get in the way.  How to do this?

• Peer Pressure – If most of the key people in your company support the new sales culture, peer pressure will work to cause people to drop bad habits so they can conform to the majority

• Objective Measurement and Rewards – We human beings respond to two basic things in life: 1) we want to know exactly what is expected of us and, 2) we want to be rewarded for our accomplishments.  When we understand what specific objectives have been defined and when we know that performance is reinforced by positive motivation (recognition, security, money, position, or power), we suddenly discover uncanny abilities to overcome old habits and negative attitudes

3/Confront sales culture change proactively – Don’t hold back.  Face the depth and breadth of change your company will undergo as you and the team build a dynamic, new sales culture.  Prepare key personnel, sales players, and upper management to sustain the investment required for the long haul.

• Lead by Example – Don’t insult the intelligence of team members by force-feeding step-by-step instructions.  If you are truly a good leader, work with your team to select the best ideas and articulate a vision that inspires colleagues to implement those ideas
• Invest in Prevention, Not Repairs – anticipating and preventing the problems you will face in creating and implementing your new sales culture will require significantly less time and energy than you’ll spend on after-the-fact fixes
• Change your Sales Culture NOW – invest in and manage this change proactively.  It may not be a comfortable experience, but who said success in business has to be comfortable?  Wisdom lies in changing the existing sales culture before it’s too late to generate a solid return on investment

4/Utilize Your Collective Wisdom to Develop and Sustain a Strategic Plan – Stay focused on the methods that will drive your company toward the ideal sales culture.

• Identify and Involve Every Stakeholder to Increase Understanding and Commitment – Make sure that every employee is aware of how he or she brings value to the new sales culture.  Let them know how their job responsibilities can move the company forward to increase sales volume, profitability, and build long-term prosperity
• Don’t Micromanage – Your primary responsibility as sales coach is to oversee the big picture.  Stay out of the minutiae; invest your time and energy in motivating your team to execute your new strategies.  If you have surrounded yourself with the best people in your company, trust them to do their jobs and free them to contribute their best efforts to the mission

5/Create a Diverse Sales Culture Leadership Group – encourage and include representative points of view – from accounting, marketing, sales, family service, grounds, etc. – and assign responsibility for plan management to as many who are willing and able to make a positive contribution to the overall effort

• Don’t Even Think About Flying Solo on This Mission – developing your Sales Culture, by its very nature, is a team effort.  Every link in your sales culture must be as strong as every other link and that means the backhoe guy is as important as the General Manager; the sales coordinator is as important as the controller, and the sales players are no more important than any other group
• Involve Everyone and Invite Ideas from Everywhere – Anyone who contributes to the new sales culture is a leader.  Every successful business thrives on a constant flow of the best new ideas from every source, from every department, from every job description

6/Communicate Aggressively and Effectively – It is critical to the expeditious development of a new sales culture to make certain everyone knows where the process is and where it is going; otherwise, it is becomes difficult for people to make positive contributions to the company’s overall mission and frustration and resistance will follow

• Maintain Momentum and Morale by Focusing on Small Victories – No matter how much change your company will experience as you implement a new sales culture, chances for success increase dramatically if you take it in small steps.  As the team accomplishes each goal, momentum is maintained, and everyone experiences the common good feeling that comes with success.  As I said earlier, change is tough and everyone involved in developing and living with the new sales culture will need all the positive reinforcement they can get
• Build-In Accountability – Consistent follow-up gives you a heads-up when problems loom and also gives you the ability to provide positive feedback for each victory.  Follow up on everything.  Follow-up is the one key measure of success for any winning company.  Maintain open lines of communication with key players so they are aware of which tasks must be done and you build in risk managing accountability for every sales campaign

Summary

You have a sales culture whether you acknowledge it or not; it’s somewhere between excellent and totally dysfunctional.  You have customers (this author assumes you want more) and those customers exchange money for the services, property, and merchandise you provide; you’re in business—deal with it. 

Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saying, “Sales Managers muddle, sales coaches inspire.”  Whether or not you agree, you simply cannot manage to create and implement a new sales culture on your own; it takes the entire team.  You can, however, coach to inspire the implementation of a new sales culture.  The secret to your success is you.  As Sales Coach, your job is to shape the future of your company and guide the new sales culture through every stage of development to achieve maximum sales and profits.  You will create a powerful sense of purpose and direction; you will align every key player with the company’s mission; you will develop yourself and your team; and you will motivate and communicate clearly to create a work environment that empowers people to achieve extraordinary results.  That’s not managing; it is sales coaching and it is LEADERSHIP at its finest!