Sales cultures vary from workplace to workplace. The strongest and most successful of these cultures tend to be those that have committed time and energy to establish a consumer-centric, service-oriented sales environment. In fact, a recent Deloitte study[1] reports organizations that have not adopted this type of sales culture – of which there are many – are more likely to experience higher attrition, lower morale, and fewer overall sales.
Consider the type of experience you want when you engage with a sales person. Would you rather sit down with a salesperson who uses stock language and obvious selling techniques to build their not-so-hidden sales quota? Or do you want to sit with someone who is taking time to learn more about your needs and connect with you on a personal level?
Watch the Webinar: The Secret to Effective Sales Coaching: Focus on People, Not Products
So what is it you need to do to improve your sales environment?
Sales Culture
When consumers engage with a sales representative they want an individualized, valuable experience that they are at the center of. Such an experience should include:
- New ideas and perspectives
- Collaboration
- Active, engaged listening
- Acknowledgment of their concerns and needs
- Solution offers that address their needs
- Clarity, warmth, and respect throughout the purchasing process
Think about the sales culture of your company. What is it like? Do you have a culture of sales, a culture of service, or neither? In other words, which of the following would you say your employees are likely asking themselves when working with your consumers?
- Transaction Focused: “How can I get this over with more quickly?”
- Product Focused: “What do I need to say to make a sale?”
- Relation Focused: “How can I understand and fulfill this individual’s needs?”
The hope, of course, is that your employees have a relationship focused kind of mindset when interacting with consumers. However, the unfortunate truth is that transaction and product focused thought processes tend to be more of the norm.
So how can you help your employees become more service oriented?
Service vs. Selling
Let’s take a step back and think about it for a second – every single person in this world has wants and needs, especially when it comes to purchasing behaviors. And even though these wants or needs differ vastly from consumer to consumer, they still exist. You just need to figure out what they are.
Knowing how to adapt communication styles to better mesh with consumers is an important quality for your sales staff to have. However, asking the right questions and actively listening to the answers to these questions is even more essential to uncovering and fulfilling the needs of each individual. Once sales staff are able to understand and master this approach, only then will they begin to consistently make more sales with relative confidence and ease.
This relationship-centric sales style has to become the standard experience vs. the exception. It can’t just be a poster on the wall; it needs to be a permanent mantra tattooed onto the skin of your organization. To consistently generate sales, it is imperative that employees throughout your organization adopt this service-first approach to communication.
So how can you build and sustain this type of sales culture, enterprise wide?
Watch our on-demand webinar “The Secret to Effective Sales Coaching: Focus on People, Not Products” to hear how to adopt a culture of coaching built to improve sales and service interactions.
Read our blog “How Your Sales Revenue Could Benefit from an Updated Coaching Strategy” to learn more about building a strong sales coaching strategy.
Contact us to learn how we can help you take your organization’s sales culture to the next level with integrity and confidence.
[1] Kaplan, Marc, et al. “Shape Culture.” Deloitte United States, 29 Feb. 2016, www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2016/impact-of-culture-on-business-strategy.html.