by Paul DiModica

Selling is a premeditated sport. It is a process of planned, calculated steps. When managed correctly, these steps help minimize failure and increase your sales quota success. But selling is a structured approach that has humanistic influences.

To maximize your success, you need to balance your firm’s cultural and business environment with your sales strategy implementation.

"Sales" is not a silo process focused on capturing revenue by itself. Revenue capture is a team sport requiring the alignment of the operations, marketing, strategy, and accounting departments to help the sales team sell more. Even more so, it is critical that the corporate business progression is aligned with the cultural progression of your team. Having a business process that ignores the cultural process will ultimately affect your company’s ability to hit their revenue goals.

Take the Sales Cultural Audit

1. Are your sales account managers asked for input to their annual sales calculation before they are assigned a quota?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
2. Has your sales team been given a written sales process on how they should sell prospects?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
3. Has your sales team been supplied a buyer prototype that identifies the ideal prospect they should approach and sell?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
4. Does your sales team receive monthly financial incentives such as management by objectives (commonly called MBO’s) to induce them into specific sales steps (cold calls, demo’s, etc.)?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
5. Does your sales team meet at least quarterly to create a team esprit de corps?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
6. Does your sales team role-play with their sales peers at least once a month and evaluate each other’s performance?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
7. Do you have a centralized sales information repository (employee portal, web site, etc.) where all sales team members can deposit or collect sales and marketing support materials, post request for help from their sales peers and competitive information to help them close more business?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
8. Do you have detailed job descriptions for your sales team members (signed by the respective person) outlining management’s expectations of their performance on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
9. Does your sales team receive quarterly written performance reviews with recommendations for improvements?
   
   Yes • No
   
   
10. Are the sales team members asked annually what their financial and career goals are?
    
    Yes • No

Correct Answers

All answers are yes and each correct answer is worth 10%. How did you score?

Sales culture is just as important as sales skills and sales strategy. A sales team's business expectations and management's expectations must match to maximize your company's revenue capture opportunities. When a team's cultural environment is not aligned with management's business expectations, sales team members become disenchanted and ultimately low performers.

To maximize sales success, make sure your sales team has the business values and expected behavior needed for revenue success. Just a small change in your team’s cultural behavior can have a dramatic effect in sales.

"In baseball, the difference between a .350 hitter and a .250 hitter is only a quarter-inch up or down on the bat." Mortimer R. Feinberg

Writers Resource Box

Paul DiModica is the author of the best-selling books: Value Forward Selling, Value Forward Marketing, and Sales Management Power Strategies. He is founder of Value Forward Group and addresses thousands of executives each year on the subjects of sales, marketing and strategy, including executives and staff of Wells Fargo, Lanier Corporate, Adobe, IBM, Tyco/American Dynamics, Navitaire and many others. His content-rich workshops and strategy sessions on leadership, sales, management and marketing bring about immediate changes and long-term results. For more information, visit http://www.valueforward.com