One of the biggest keys to success in any setting is communication. While this certainly holds true in business and sales, it can also sometimes be hard to get a sales team to cooperate. For various reasons, salespeople can sometimes be quite adverse to sharing their successes and failures with others.
Do you have a group who envies others’ successes, or do they look for ways to match their success? If your people are hoping others within their team fail, your team is unhealthy. Strong sales teams share best practices – things like what’s working for them now, what changes they have been able to identify, and what isn’t working now – so their peers don’t run into the same challenges. When a team is able to share lessons learned on calls or appointments, it reduces the number of future mistakes by others.
Again, this includes what a salesperson is doing right as well as what she’s doing wrong. It takes someone with a high level of responsibility and humility to admit fault and share it with others. In today’s fast-paced business climate some managers can be ‘hard’ to reach. It is times like this where the group lifts as they climb. When your people know they have peers who they trust and respect, it allows for more and different paths to success within your organization.
Are your people always referencing outside influences that caused them to lose a sale? Is it a struggle to receive the information you need to help analyze data and opportunities within your company? When a sales force has high responsibility they look to themselves first as an area that needs improved. They won’t blame your company’s pricing structure as a reason they are too expensive. Instead they will know they failed to help the prospective client discover why they are worth the extra investment. Accountability can be a dirty word in some organizations. It does not mean micromanaging with high pressure. It simply means helping your people achieve the goals and tasks necessary to help everyone win in the end.
Communication is crucial to sales success, and secret-keeping can be a massive drag on growth. Both when they have success and when they fail, it’s crucial for salespeople to share their experiences with peers and managers, to learn from them and grow. If your sales team’s culture isn’t naturally geared toward openness and communication, changing that can make a huge difference when it comes to the success of your business.
