It should mesh with the overall company culture – and then some.
Does your company have a distinct sales culture? If so, do you believe it has an impact on your performance in the field – for better or worse? If you’re having a difficult time defining sales culture, a good place to start hunting for it is your company’s corporate culture.
In any company, corporate culture and sales culture should complement each other, says CME Chief Strategy Officer Cindy Juhas. Corporate culture is the “overriding guiding light” of a firm, she says. At CME, that guiding light is that family always comes first. The Warwick, Rhode Island-based medical equipment distributor was recently recognized as a 2021 Top Work Place in Rhode Island by Energage, a company that helps client firms recruit and retain outstanding performers.
“With the utmost gratitude to our valued employees who made this happen, we are proud to have a culture that values its people and amplifies talents,” said CME President and CEO Normand Chevrette on LinkedIn at the time.
Says Juhas, “We also have a strong overall strategy and mission which everyone in the company – sales and operations – recognizes, and we establish specific strategic goals to support it. Our mission is to help healthcare facilities nationwide reduce the total cost of the equipment they purchase and make their equipment specification, purchase, installation and maintenance processes more efficient.
“Our sales culture includes all the elements of the corporate culture plus some.”
Brian Vierra, senior director of sales for Midmark, believes that corporate culture, vision and direction set the tone for the entire enterprise. Sales is an important part of it, because “today the sales function is more intertwined with other departments working together to deliver exceptional customer experiences.”
Sales consultant (and former medical distribution salesperson) Nigel Green believes corporate culture needs to be closely tied to the voice and the face of the customer. “You can have nuances of values that you look for in people you want to invite onto your sales team, and you can have certain tenets and behavioral requirements that every person must maintain in order to remain on that team. But the undeniable element is that companies that get it right are those whose corporate culture embraces a sales culture.”
So, what exactly is a sales culture?
Fundamentals
“The most important aspect of our sales culture that distinguishes us from others is the fact that our account managers are encouraged to run their territories as their own business,” says Juhas. “We give them guidelines and direction, but they have autonomy to do what needs to be done to run their business successfully. Our other big differentiator is an easy-to-understand, straightforward commission structure.”
In addition to those three characteristics, a strong sales culture has the right metrics in place to help the salesforce perform optimally, she says. “Measuring the right things and sharing that information across the company encourages healthy competition.” Each week CME shares entered sales and profit leaders, YTD to budget, and manufacturer leads by account manager. “Our budgets are done from the ground up. Each account manager sets specific annual budgets by customer, which I think is unique. It enhances that cultural aspect of running their territories as their own business.”
According to Vierra, “sales teams are driven, measured and directly incentivized on performance. Elements of competitiveness, teamwork, learning, creativity, resourcefulness and grit are taken to the next level to fuel a professional sales team.”
But the most fundamental component of a successful sales culture is the character of its people, he says. Healthy competition, collaboration, continual learning, goal alignment, trust and communication are outputs of a high-character team. Elite dynastic teams that succeed over and over again exemplify an unwavering commitment to values, especially in the face of adversity; a high level of personal accountability; and a consistent focus on effort instead of results.
Accountability is essential to a healthy sales culture, says Green. “Accountability means autonomy and a sense of contributing to something bigger than oneself,” he says. That spirit can be challenging to maintain, given the fact that many sales reps seldom gather regularly with teammates in an office. “You miss some camaraderie, despite email or Slack. So the sales leader has to trust that reps in the field care about the company’s mission as much as their own success.” In a strong sales culture, it is each rep’s belief in the nobility of that mission that drives them forward day after day.
A strong sales culture encourages inquisitiveness among team members, he adds. “The whole purpose of any business is to create a customer. But you can’t do that if you’re not spending time with your customers and helping them anticipate problems. In the past, people believed the good reps would ask their customer, ‘What keeps you up at night?’ Today, that’s not good enough. Today, they need to say, ‘Doctor, this is what should be keeping you up at night,’ and then help that customer address that problem.
“A lot of customers are having a hard time making sense of what tomorrow might be like for them.”
The sales leader
Cindy Juhas believes that any sales leader who wants to build a strong sales culture must “collaborate with their salespeople to help them achieve their goals, resolve issues that may impede their success, and support, educate and encourage them 100%. A leader’s job is to develop their associates to be as successful as they can be, always keeping the company’s overall strategy in mind,” she says.
Brian Vierra believes that a healthy sales culture is cultivated by a leader’s ability to drive results through others. “The best sales leaders are consistently connected with their teams at the right cadence and in the right moments. They work to improve process while providing tailored coaching to each teammate to help them achieve their individual goals and the goals of the salesforce.”
Sales leaders can promote character in three ways, he says: 1) Prioritizing integrity above all else when bringing talent into the organization, 2) publicly celebrating examples of the effort that leads to results, and 3) most important, leading from in front by modeling the behavior that is expected.
Nigel Green says that effective sales leaders must make a conscious effort to stay in touch with the current sales culture of the organization. “Time dilutes awareness,” he says. “The longer you’ve been in an organization, the less likely you are to be aware of its current realities. And the longer you’ve been the sales leader, the more likely you are to characterize the sales culture as it was when you started, not how it is today.” So, the leader may tell prospective reps, “This company is built for the salesperson.” But if it takes two weeks for the new hire to get a laptop, and Salesforce doesn’t work, that doesn’t ring true. “The leader has to have vulnerable conversations with the team to stay in touch with the culture as it is today.”
The average tenure of a sales leader across industries is about 18 months, often because they didn’t understand the day in the life of their reps, he adds. “The way to beat that statistic is to remember your job isn’t to be a dashboard, firing off sales reports and inventory management reports from your office. If you’re asking your reps to be in the marketplace, you have to be there too.”