FEATURE | SALES BEHAVIOURS
YES, YOU CAN!
Gavin Ingham explains how to create a can-do sales culture (and why you won’t)
H
ow important is creating a winning sales culture for you and your business? If you are like most of the sales and business leaders I speak to, it is critical. Everyone wants their sales teams to be chock full of salespeople who are self-motivated and proactive, constantly sharpen their skills, display consistent behaviours and work well both individually and as a team. Few achieve this, however, citing difficulties recruiting, having the wrong people on board, lack of time, lack of money, external forces and many more. Surprisingly, developing high-performing teams is not that difficult – there are three core building blocks required for nurturing superstar salespeople and world-class sales teams.
you can learn them or thinking that it will make little difference is entirely another.
CLARITY Salespeople need clarity – clarity in their understanding of their market, in who their clients are, in how to approach them, in how to spend their time, in how not to spend their time, and so on. Life and business are more complicated today than ever. There are so many options for how to spend your time. Where once prospecting was either cold calling on foot or cold calling on the phone, now you have LinkedIn, blogs, videos, funnels, branding… salespeople need absolute clarity about where to spend time and where not to. I see sales teams every day, full of skilled salespeople but working on the wrong requirements, doing the wrong things and CONVICTION generally working very hard to “I see sales teams every All salespeople need conviction get nowhere. And, to make day, full of skilled – conviction in their business, matters worse, without clarity salespeople but working their products/services, their it is very hard for them to skills, the marketplace, the maintain conviction. very hard to get nowhere” price, their management, their Sales leaders needs total territories… you get the idea. clarity too – over what they If you want to succeed, you have to believe, and are trying to achieve, how they are going to develop whether you believe that you can or you cannot, you individuals, how they add value to their teams, what are probably right either way. the critical moments are in their day-to-day Likewise, leaders need the conviction that they leadership function, and more. can and should develop their teams, that time Conviction and clarity are vital for success, but invested will pay off, and that there is a better way. you also need something else… Without conviction, you will not even get out of CONSISTENCY the starting gates when it comes to sales. Conviction is at the core of everything. Even learning. Not The third essential building block is consistency. having the skills is one thing, but not believing that We have all employed salespeople who can do
32 WINNING EDGE
