Is your sales culture working?

Developing a Professional Sales Culture through Coaching

Is the sales ethos high on your agenda throughout the whole organisation? Are your staff aware of the company sales goals? Are they interested? Do you and your management team share information about how well or not the company is doing in selling your services or products? Every person in your organisation is an ambassador and represents the company. Are all of your employees fulfilling this role?

Sales it can be seen as a dirty word by some and yet it is at the heart of almost every successful business in any industry sector. Thinking about your own organisation, do your non sales people often shy away from wanting to be seen as ‘sales people’ and prefer to avoid selling to existing clients or potential clients? This approach and lack of positivity can seriously influence the development of your sales and relationships with customers. This could eventually impact on your income generation stream as well as the individuals own knowledge and confidence in their career progression.

What the coaching involves;

I would firstly work with you to determine the culture of your company/team to decide how to break down any barriers and tackle the internal view of sales within your own organisation; this is an important first step and key factor to success before going any further.

Internal communication – before you simply put people through a series of sales focused workshops consider;

•   internal perception of sales needs to be part of the culture and certainly valued by all staff
•   a sales culture or ethos needs to be embraced as a professional part of the company values
•   for an organisation to be effective in sales there needs to be a clear, and understood, sales strategy
•   sales is a set of skills that most people can learn and in fact often do without thinking

Outcomes of the coaching – implementing the changes required needs to be delivered by a Director or senior sales person, together we would agree on specific actions and I would provide the support needed to make sure every member of staff, at whatever level, represents the company whether they believe they do or not. Typically we would work through the following; 

• everyone would have a good basic knowledge about the company, its aims, its objectives, it’s products and services and who is who and who does what
• everyone will recognise that there are benefits for company, individual and customer alike
• the sales culture would be built top down and be reinforced at every opportunity, staff meetings, management meetings, reports, visibility etc
• employees would more easily be able to spot opportunities; we would enable them to do this. They would feel confident in going to the right part of their company and the right individual

it helps enormously if they value and believe in their company, its values and its client offer. We can work together to decide how to do this and decide on an action plan to implement change

• an essential process in monitoring and measuring the cross selling/up selling  must be a high priority and communicated well
• relationship building and changing perceptions of clients is key, they soon realise that the member of staff (whatever their position) is professional, has credibility, is trustworthy, dependable and has empathy
• with this sales culture and ethos in place, individuals will be more comfortable and confident in proving this

If you need to look at your sales culture contact me; Neil Williams, NVW Solutions, Tel: 01892 521871 

Mobile: 07970 225058 e-mail: neil@nvwsolutions.co.uk   www.nvwsolutions.co.uk