#045: Build a winning sales culture

Read time: 3 minutes

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This week we focused on key account management and shared a couple of resources to both prioritize accounts and build simple account plans that are easy to execute.

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• Driving to Close

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• Account Management

This week’s SalesDNA podcast episode was with Gajen Raj, Head of Direct Sales EMEA for Takara Bio. We talked all about sales leadership and building a winning sales culture.

In this newsletter, I’m going to share some of the key takeaways and show you how you can implement them in your own company.

Why Does Culture Matter?

The culture of your sales team will make or break your success as a company. And yet, it’s completely overlooked by countless companies.

The sales team is often treated as 2nd class citizens or viewed as coin-operated machines.

Unrealistic goals are set and no training or enablement is provided to help them achieve those goals.

When you hear this, it sounds crazy. No company could possibly treat their revenue-generating employees like this.

But I see it every single day.

These sales cultures are toxic and often driven by spreadsheet managers who sit in their ivory towers telling you to do more.

When times get tough, these types of sales teams collapse.

It’s no surprise that sales teams have been struggling the past year.

If you have a strong sales culture where everyone is motivated to succeed, you invest in your team’s growth, and everyone is constantly developing, that team will thrive when the times get tough.

They will use their creativity as a team to figure out what works, share those learnings, and find ways to manufacture success.

If you want to build this type of culture, it has to be intentional.

That’s what Gajen has built with his team at Takara.

Let’s dive into how he’s done this.

Clear Expectations

There are clear expectations set for what each rep needs to accomplish. These are documented and reviewed every week.

Each rep needs to know what’s expected of them on a quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis.

If expectations aren’t clear, it leads to wasted time and resources focused on the wrong activities.

Embrace Creativity

Instead of mandating how to achieve those expectations, he allows each rep the creativity to come up with their own plan to meet them.

Rather than being the manager who knows it all and bestows their wisdom on the team, this freedom to come up with new ideas, leads to innovation on the team.

This leads to the 3rd pillar.

Always Be Learning

Every week they have a dedicated meeting to share wins. They focus on a specific topic/application and someone on the team shares what they are doing to find success.

The rest of the team is more willing to listen to a peer and apply what’s working than to their manager telling them what to do.

This peer-to-peer learning environment allows each rep to show off their creativity and uplifts the entire team.

They also loop in the marketing group so everyone can learn together.

There are so many boring internal meetings the sales team is bogged down with.

The meeting that will drive the greatest impact is the win-sharing meeting.

If you don’t already have one, you should get it added to that calendar right away.

Have Empathy

Every rep hates updating the CRM. But it’s something we have to do.

Sometimes a rep will be out in the field, away from their family for multiple days only to come back and have their manager yell at them for not updating the CRM.

You’re better off remembering what it was like when you were in the field, how busy each of those days are, and how the last thing you wanted to do was update the CRM.

So have some empathy and give the team a break from time to time to let them know you care for them.

Recap

These are a few simple things you can implement on your sales team to ensure you’re building a culture that thrives when times are challenging.

• Set clear expectations and review them weekly

• Embrace the creativity of your team to come up with ways to hit those expectations

• Create a weekly wins meeting to have members of the team show off what’s working best so everyone on the team can learn from them

• Remember what it was like when you were a rep and have empathy for what they’re going through

Apple Podcast | Spotify | YouTube

Episode 37: [Leadership] How to build a winning sales culture where reps can thrive with Gajen Raj

• Biggest challenges starting in management

• Why you should hire newbies

• Leverage on-the-job training

• Empathy and credibility and the top management traits

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