Do you have the right sales culture to support transformation?

Before the Coronavirus pandemic, the problems lurking inside sales organizations that lacked a clear sales culture were hidden by two things: a booming economy and large sales teams with lots of sellers adding to results.

Now that a strong market and a huge sales force are no longer masking sales organizations’ shortcomings, sales leaders can better appreciate the gaps in how they hire, assess, train and coach sellers.

That’s likely why more than a third cited inefficiencies in their sales organization as a key problem to solve in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Korn Ferry Research 2020-2021 Sales Performance Study.

What causes ineffective sales processes?

Ineffective sales processes and sales systems make it difficult for sellers to succeed.

When organizations do not have a clear sales methodology or consistent sales processes across their marketing, sales, and service teams, it impacts productivity. This creates a vicious cycle, as inefficiencies resulting from a lack of clear process is what keeps sellers from spending more time selling.

Sellers often get bogged down in complex sales processes, so they spend less than a third of their time actually building customer relationships and closing deals.

Sales managers end up spending twice as much time on internal work as they do on coaching sellers. When sellers aren’t coached, they have to figure out how to close more deals and build stronger customer relationships without the guidance of experienced sellers.

That inefficiency perpetuates the cycle of both groups — sellers and their managers — spending too much time on administrative tasks.

Why a strong sales culture matters

Your sales culture should reinforce your sales methodology throughout the sales organization from top to bottom through training, coaching and technology.

This is especially important now, when the pandemic has disrupted regular buying cycles and processes.

Many sales organizations have cobbled together new ways to deal with this changing environment, but it’s likely that many of these adaptations will be here to stay indefinitely.

What’s clear so far is that organizations with a sales culture that promotes alignment between their sales processes, sales methodology and their customers are better positioned to recover from the pandemic and differentiate themselves from the pack.

How to evaluate your organization’s sales culture

To better understand how well your organization’s sales culture is functioning, you should ask questions such as these:

• How do you hire sellers? Do you look at prospective hires based on their industry expertise using subjective criteria and hiring manager instinct? Or do you use a data-driven hiring strategy that focuses on the competencies and skills needed to succeed in a role?
• Do you assess your top performers to learn what makes them successful?
• How well do you customize the development journey to each seller, addressing their particular skill gaps and learning styles?
• What sales methodology do your sellers follow, and how do you reinforce that methodology?
• Do you have a coaching process that is formally defined, taught, reinforced, adopted, and tied directly to sales enablement activities?
• Does your team operate individually or as a single, aligned organization?
• How strong is your adoption of your sales technology stack and other sales operations tools?

As you consider your sales culture, we’ve developed a tool that will help you assess where you can improve. We call it the Sales Performance Meter.

What you’ll learn about your sales culture from the Korn Ferry Sales Performance Meter

Our Sales Performance Meter evaluates how well your sales management, operations and enablement align around your sales methodology. In 10 minutes, you’ll get immediate insights into your sales organization’s sales culture. You’ll learn whether you have the training, tools, and technology necessary to support the continuous development of your sales professionals.

The more value you deliver to your sales team, the greater value they’ll return to you in terms of higher engagement, increased sales competency and lower attrition. And those benefits pay dividends when it comes to growing your relationships with buyers as well.

When you take the time to assess and thoughtfully fill the gaps in your sales organization, you’ll start to build a much stronger sales culture — one that pursues sales using the same proven, consistent methodology. An organization with a unified sales culture is better positioned to achieve its sales targets, weather the storm and compete in the market.

There’s no better time than now to assess what you need to develop a winning sales culture to rebound from the pandemic. If you’re ready to start preparing for the future by transforming your sales organization, start by analyzing your sales culture with the Sales Performance Meter.

Take the diagnostic today