Building Strong Team Culture as a Sales Leader

Last week we discussed The 4 Pillars of Sales Leadership. Today’s post is a deep dive into the first pillar, “Build a team culture where your team members are motivated and empowered to perform their best”.

Although I’m a camp counselor at heart and love a good icebreaker as much as the next person, trivia games alone won’t be enough to build a team that is motivated to go out, pick up the phone, and close deals with your customers.

To build a team culture where your team is motivated and empowered to perform their best focus on the following four items as a Sales Leader:

1. Identity

2. Recognition

3. Compensation

4. Mobility

“I want you to WANT to do the dishes.” - Jennifer Aniston, The Break Up

Identity

There are a variety of definitions for the word Identity, but the one that always sticks out to me when thinking of leading teams is, “a close similarity or affinity”. As a Sales Leader it is our job to cultivate that affinity among our team members.

When thinking about cultivating identity as a leader I’m often reminded of the kitchen fight scene in the Jennifer Anniston, Vince Vaughn romantic comedy The Break Up. In the movie, Jennifer and Vince argue about doing the dishes and she hits him with the classic line, “I want you to WANT to do the dishes.” Cultivating an identity for your sales team is a lot like creating a culture where your team wants to do the dishes.

Anyone can tell a sales team to make 200 Cold Calls per week, send a post-call summary email after every meeting, and document their identified opportunities in Salesforce, but getting the team to WANT to do those things can only be accomplished when your team has an identity which values discipline and excellence. When you, as a leader, create an identity where they will do those items consistently without having to be told to do so. (For the record, I’m with Jen on this one. A tidy kitchen = a tidy mind).

Tactically, defining an identity as a team comes down to being clear on the purpose, values, and core competencies of the team. The key here is to let your team develop these items from the bottom up, write them down, and reference them often. If you’re leading a sales team and haven’t yet gone through this exercise as a group do so in your next team meeting.

Before the meeting begins take time as a leader to define the purpose statement on your own and share it with your team. Let them know you’ll then define the values and core competencies needed to be a member of the team together. Ultimately your goal is to instill that “close affinity” among your team which breeds a culture of excellence. An example for an Enterprise SDR team could look something like:

• Purpose

  • We are the growth engine for the Enterprise business, booking high quality meetings with qualified prospects to feed our team’s pipeline.

• Values

  • Consistency - We recognize the success of a quarter never hinges on a single interaction, but the consistent execution of the basics every day.

  • Optimism - We are part of a team with challenging targets that grow with our business. We see those challenges as an opportunity to raise the bar and fulfill our potential, not something to grumble or complain about.

  • Curiosity - We approach our potential customers with a beginner’s mind, open to learning about their business and the ways in which our product can solve problems they face.

  • Competency - We value excellence in all that we do, we are committed to the craft of sales, and take our own development seriously.

  • Action - Action begets action, the best way to build pipeline is to pick up the phone.

• Core Competencies

  • Prospecting - competently be able to identify prospective buyers of our product using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, and other applicable tools.

  • Outbound - competently be able to execute outbound cadences using email, video, phone (Cold Call), and LinkedIn as various mediums to schedule meetings with prospective customers.

  • Discovery - consistently engage with prospective buyers in a way that builds trust, allows us to learn more about their business, and progresses them to a scheduled meeting with an AE from our team.

  • Qualification - confidently be able to identify whether or not the person you are speaking with meets the criteria needed in order to be a buyer of our product.

“Give me enough medals and I’ll win you any war.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

Recognition

It’s safe to say, maybe minus the ego, that Napoleon would have been as formidable a CRO as he was a general because he understood the importance of recognition.

Whether we want to believe it about ourselves or not everyone, yes you too, appreciates being recognized for their good work. The key for a sales leader is to ensure they recognize their team systematically, but not in an “everyone get’s a trophy” sort of way.

3 schools of thought on recognition, all of which are useful to put in your recognition toolkit:

1. Monetary 🤑 (we are in sales after all)

2. Nominal 🏆 (think a silly award you give out to your #1 team member each quarter)

3. Added Responsibility 📚(the age old stretch opportunity)

While there are pros and cons of each of the above, the point is to be intentional with the way you recognize your team. If you don’t have a recognition plan in place with your team yet start this week. Create a simple contest and give the winner a physical trophy (I recommend something humorous) which they either retain or have to give to the next winner on the team. This type of recognition builds camaraderie among your team, particularly if the award brings a bit of humor to your group. Remember, humor is a leadership superpower 🦸‍♀️

Compensation

Chances are your sales team shares a similar sentiment to Mr. Krabs, but is compensation really that important when it comes to building a strong team culture? Yes, yes it is. I enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school so I understand why people choose to make a career working on a cause they believe in even if they don’t get paid much to do it. People in sales do not fall in that bucket.

If you expect your sales team to come to work and consistently put forth great effort you need to pay them for the results they generate from that effort. Nothing breads discontent in a sales person more than an opaque compensation plan where they do not understand the amount of money they are going to make from closing a deal. This discontent will erode all of the other work you do to build a strong culture.

When it comes to compensation, simple and transparent are the name of the game. If your company’s compensation structure is complicated the best thing you can do for your team is to bust out the ol’ spreadsheet 🪄and build a commission calculator. If you’re a Director or above and you have a complicated compensation plan, advocate to fix it and do so quickly.

Mobility

I love making 🧊 calls as much as the next person (seriously they actually give me so much joy) but I’ve yet to meet the sales person who wants to be an SDR forever. After compensation, one of the biggest ways to erode the culture of your team is to not be transparent about the career paths available to them.

This is another easy one that you can make yourself if the infrastructure doesn’t currently exist at your company. Build a simple process flow document (I like to use Lucidchart) which highlights some of the most common career paths members of your team can take when they’re looking to move to their next role.

A simple framework I like to use for most sales people currently in individual contributor positions has the following decisions:

• Quota bearing or non-quota bearing

• Leadership or individual contributor

• Enterprise or SMB

Your mileage may vary with the above framework but use each of those bullets as a way to guide the conversation with your team member and have a specific role which you can suggest to them that fits each bucket. Use this to have a monthly career development conversation with your team and help them chart a path to make their move.

After your team member decides the route they want to take help them find a “mentor” internally that is either in the role they’re looking for or manages the team they’re looking to join. This mentorship doesn’t need to be formal, but it will help your team member build a bridge toward their next opportunity.

That’s it! Simple, right? Well yes, but not easy (cough, cough the name of the newsletter). Looking to build a culture where your team is motivated and empowered to perform their best? Stick the landing when it comes to identity, recognition, compensation, and mobility. Watch your quota manage itself if you do.

P.S.

As much as the Marine in me is hesitant to admit it, the US Army’s Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences has some great research on this topic if you’re looking for more.