The Ingredients of a High-Performance Sales Culture
GROWTH PLAYBOOKS
As we have shared previously, we are doing a series of posts of what we have observed superior sales organizations do to shape a High-Performance Sales Culture. Each post will feature one ingredient, followed by a few questions to challenge your thinking.
The fourth ingredient of a High-Performance Sales Culture is Growth Playbooks.
When organizations set ‘budgets’ or ‘quotas’ for the sales force, it typically assigns a number to each individual sales manager, who in turn allocates the appropriate financial targets to members of the sales team. While that approach seems reasonable since a manager likely knows the character of his or her team best, we have found that most sales teams are not clear in communicating growth strategies or in defining territory growth playbooks at the individual salesperson level.
Here are a variety of observations of sales teams where a growth bias exists:
- The sales force has a captivating, big-picture story about the value they bring to the customer.
- The sales force is laser-focused. Prospecting for GROWTH is a daily discipline and expectation.
- A Sales Results Leaderboard is front and center. Everyone knows their numbers.
- Each sales professional prepares a Territory Growth Playbook twice a year to guide execution and focus. The objective is to translate the growth strategies of the organization into viable tactics to implement at the territory level. This promotes salesperson entrepreneurship and initiative.
- Salespeople use a pipeline tool to track and advance opportunities.
- Sales professionals own the RESULTS expected. Accountability is embraced and not feared.
Questions to Consider:
- How do you build accountability at the individual territory level?
- What do salespeople go through every year to define how they will make their numbers?
- What are your agreed-to expectations around new customer prospecting?
- Do you have a Sales Results Leaderboard that is publicly displayed?
Think about it.
Next Up: Sales Process