Understand Your Sales Team Culture - Unlock Potential!

Do you really know your sales organization?

Most people don't realize that the sales culture created in the organization is actually built upon bits and pieces of the sales profession. By that I mean, each person that has had a critical decision to make has uniquely crafted the organization based upon their own understanding of the profession. With that understanding, they have infused both good and bad practices. These practices can be traced to several distinct sales eras. Each era, can leave a lasting impression on your organization -- thanks to the people who infused the sales culture from the beginning, until today.

Here are each of the eras:

The Time Period Era of...

Late 1800's -1920 Sales Science

1920 - 1945 Sales Process

1945 - 1985 Sales Relationship

1985 - 2005 Sales Technology

2005 - ?? Sales Competency

For each of these eras, please read my other articles.

The sales eras are important for historical reasons, but there is a practical reason for understanding that they survive until this day. Much of the knowledge new salespeople attain is grounded in the Era of Process. Much of the knowledge on client decision making comes from the Era of Relationship, and much of the advances in managing information flow appeared in the Era of  Technology. It's interesting to note that each selling era precedes the other. If you're just starting to analyze a sales team, you can start with the work required to accomplish a single transaction while Identifying how the sales team is organized, how quotas are assigned, and who reports to whom (Era of Science).

From there, move into identifying the processes, systems, and tools in place that support the sales team as they attempt drive multiple transactions (Era of Process). Next, move into understanding how the sales team supports client decision-makers as well as how they help clients justify purchase decisions (Era of Relationship). After that, you can analyze the technology in place designed to support and align the sales team (Era of Technology).

Finally, you can move into understanding the individual and organizational competencies required of the various levels within the sales team (Era of Performance). Think about it! Entering the Era of Sales Performance requires all other eras to exist first. Therefore, identifying theses eras can be accomplished even if you have a new sales team that lacks the history, but needs processes, tools, and systems to align to the client.

Brian Lambert is the Director of Sales Development and Performance at the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). In this role, he is responsible for meeting the unique challenges of performance professionals focused on the sales profession. He is responsible for conducting primary research and creating resources, articles, and other custom content that helps individuals design and deliver sales training, manage and develop high performing sales talent, and improve salesperson performance. Brian has fifteen years of experience in sales, sales management, sales training, and sales consulting and is an internationally recognized expert on the state of the sales profession as well as current trends in transforming sales team systems, processes, and people.

Brian is a highly sought after world-wide speaker, author, and trainer on sales competency, sales performance, sales process, sales professionalism, sales ethics, and sales process.

Find out about Brian at http://www.salestrainingdrivers.com Visit ASTD's Sales Training Initiative at: http://www.astd.org/communities/salestraining

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The Sales Training Series - How to Develop a Strong Sales Culture

In every other business function (accounting, engineering, operations) there are documented processes, common cultures, and established vocabularies with terms that are clearly understood-everywhere except in sales.

It is a rare company that has a strong and distinct sales culture, complete with a common language for discussing, conducting, and improving the sales process. The few companies that have built such sales cultures are easy to recognize-they're a lot more successful.

Everyone who makes contact with customers should understand your sales language.

It isn't only salespeople who should be indoctrinated into your sales culture. Every time a customer contacts your company, that customer becomes more or less sold on your products. If your employees all know how your sales process works, they can be far more effective at influencing customers in your favor.

Here are some tips to help you begin building a common sales culture.

o Document the way your sales process works, and identify the important milestones in the process. What are the major steps that lead to a sale? Everyone in the organization who comes into contact with customers should know what the next logical step would be.

o Teach employees how to ask better questions-what Action Selling calls The Best Questions. This allows your people to do a better job of building rapport and identifying how best to proceed with particular customers.

o Teach employees how and when to make Positive Company Statements. Nobody should miss an opportunity to pass along good news about your company, whether it involves a new product, favorable financial performance, a joint venture, or whatever the case may be.

o Within the sales force itself, a common language is especially important. For instance, terms unique to Action Selling (such as Commitment Objective, TFBR, and Universal Stall Breaker) allow a sales team to communicate clearly and precisely about how to improve performance in specific areas of the sales process.

Develop a strong sales culture, based on a common language and built upon a well-defined sales process. You will create a powerful orchestra, with all the musicians playing from the same score for your customer audience.

In The Field:

When companies see the results of Action Selling on the performance of individual sales teams, they often decide to use the system as a catalyst for building or improving their entire "sales culture."

"Our goal in implementing Action Selling was to develop a common selling language for our 300-unit franchise network," says Terry Huber, director of training at Signs Now. "We wanted a solid sales standard that could drive sales productivity in the field."

Now Action Selling Sales Training is delivering results across the whole network. Roger Watkins, owner of the Signs Now franchise in Bloomington, Ind., sums it up this way: "Before starting my franchise, I was a police officer. Gaining commitment as a police officer was relatively easy. In sales, it's a different challenge. Action Selling has given me the ammunition I needed. I'm now ahead of my aggressive goal of 26 percent sales growth."

Similar performance changes are sited by other franchises. "At Signs Now," says Terry Huber, "we have adopted Action Selling as part of our culture with tremendous success."

Action Selling Sales Management Training gives Sales Executives all the tools needed to unlock the full potential of their salespeople and coaches. They'll have sales skills assessments and diagnostic tools to assess skills that need developing, online sales training and reinforcement tools to transfer learning into the field and certification tools to measure learning and insure accountability. Action Selling provides a strategic process to follow and a common selling language that enhances communication. With Action Selling, they'll get a complete selling and coaching process in one great program so that their salespeople will close more sales, reduce sell cycle time and build stronger customer relationships.

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified more than 350,000 salespeople in the system and skills of Action Selling.

In a 30-year career as a salesperson and sales manager, Duane has sold products ranging from office equipment to insurance. He was the top salesperson at every company he ever worked for. He developed Action Selling Sales Training while owner of one of the largest computer marketers in the United States. Even in the roaring computer business of the 1980's, his company grew six times faster than the industry norm, differentiating itself not by the products offered but by the way it sold them. Duane founded The Sales Board in 1990 to teach the skills of Action Selling to others.

Contact The Sales Board for more sales information or sales training that's been documented and research-proven to help you sell more! 1-800-232-3485

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An Outline of History of British Culture and Literature

Every work of literature has a generic context. In addition, every work has a historical context. That is, it belongs to a particular historical period.

1. Old English or Anglo-Saxon period

· It mainly belongs to the period before the Norman Conquest in 1066.

· The language in which it is written is more like German than modern English.

· The greatest single poem is Beowulf (probably written around 700). It is either an epic or tragic poem.

· The other works: the prose Chronicles, Christian poem such as The Dream of the Rood and The Battle of Maldon.

· The major made in Old English is sort of narrative poem and deals with the desire for order in a savage and unruly world

2. Middle English or Medieval period

· It belongs to approximately the 1065 to 1550.

· The outstanding writer is Chaucer who wrote The Canterburg Tales.

· In this period, there are narrative poems, lyric poetry, and drama.

· The most distinctive feature of the literature of this period is that it is markedly Christian. A familiar pattern is the gap between the Christian ideal and the reality of life in this imperfect world.

3. Renaissance period (The seventeenth century)

· Approximately dates are 1550 to 1660.

· It is considered as one of the richest eras in English literature, because society was changing in such a fundamental way; the world was becoming much more complex, with the whole economic and social fabric of society changing.

· Like medieval writers, renaissance writer still recognize God as the only source of order, even though so much of their attention is on how man distracted and tempted by worldly ambition and secular concerns.

· There was attention between a traditional order and disruption of this order. We can see this in Shakespeare's work, Hamlet (1600), and King Lear (1605).

· The central historical event is the civil war of 1642-1651. it embodies a similar conflict between the king's traditional status and authority and new forces who wish to wrest power from the king.

· We can see this in Milton's work, Paradise Lost (1667).

· The outstanding writers such as: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, and Jhonson.

4. Eighteenth Century

· It belongs to about 1660 - 1790.

· The tension is between the desirability and their awareness of the inevitability of social disorder. They deal with the gap between how things could or should be in society and how they really are.

· Outstanding writers: Richardson and Fielding.

5. Romantic period

· About 1800

· It is considered as the great ages of English poetry, with Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Bryan, and Shelley.

· It was no longer pay attention in God as the source at order, nor is order sought in society, but it seeks a harmony in life which is at one with a pattern that can be found in the natural world.

· The outstanding novelists are Jane Austen and George Elliot.

6. Victorian Period

· About 1830

· It develops from romantic literature

· It is the great age of novel because the novel was only form that could expand enough to cope with the scale and complexity of Victorian society as it, too, expanded and changed with the growth of industrialization.

· The great novelists are Charles Dickens and Eliot. They are fully aware of the disorder, injustice, and hand ships of the world they live in.

7. Twentieth Century

· It is a period of extraordinary creative in all the arts.

· The point is the fact that rapid social changes, an alteration in the whole structure of society, almost always stimulate the production of great art.

· The central historical event of the early years of the twentieth century is the First World War (1914-1918).

· There is find an increasing senses that life is overwhelmingly confusing and complicated. E.g.: novels of Hardy, Conrad, Joyee and Lawrence. Poetry of T.S Eliot and Yeats.

Copyright (c) Ahmad Alim Aziz

Alim has been writing articles for nearly 3 years. His newest interest is in coat and boots design. So come visit his latest website that discusses coat products for women and kids and its accessories, such as kid's raincoat and woman's rain boots that every woman and kid need extra protection when winter is coming.

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