It is the Sales Leader’s challenge to create the circumstances that stimulate improved sales performance and strategy execution from their sales force.
Of course having the right sales and customer service people is critical, but once “on the bus” how does a sales leader create a sales environment that improves the performance of the sales force? That is the sales leader’s challenge and, when it is not done, it will matter little if you have the right people or not. An ineffective sales leader can greatly hinder sales employee retention. Like a great coach improves the performance of an athlete, effective leadership can improve the performance of the sales force.
Research has indicated that 46% of organizations cite creating a high performance sales culture as one of their top 3 talent management priorities and yet 61% of executives do not feel that the talent and management training processes they have today are driving greater performance from the business.
So the question is not whether you should do it but rather HOW.
How do sales leaders drive improved execution and individual contribution? How can sales leaders consistently make the right move to stimulate performance improvement? How can sales leaders ensure that performance improvement scales throughout an entire sales organization? The answer is to create and maintain a High Performance Sales Environment.
People Change When Their Environment Changes
It has long being held that people will adapt to their environment. Physically, mentally, emotionally people will make subtle and sometimes significant shifts in their behavior based upon the environmental circumstances. Driven by this presupposition our research project has been investigating the specific environmental circumstances that stimulate improved performance in people.
Through a process of interviews and analysis, we have spent the last 16 years researching human high performance and the factors that shape a high performance environment. Research subjects include: Nelson Mandela, Carl Lewis, Sir Edmund Hilary, military generals, leaders of NASA, MIT, Harvard Business School, the Juilliard School of Music, and CEOs of leading corporations among a bank of over 7,500 research participants.
Every performance population has a primary comparison. Leaders need to ensure that this comparison drives performance.
The Key to Building a High Performance Sales Environment
The key to implementing high performance in a sales organization is:
- Clarity,
- Effectiveness
Many sales environments have goals and objectives that are not stimulating performance. Equally many sales forces have consequence systems that don’t motivate the population to perform or appraisal systems that are viewed as a bureaucratic process not a tool for performance exposure. Each concept has a set of “effectiveness criteria” that need to be met in order to stimulate improved performance in a sales force. This issue, a lack of clarity and effectiveness in one, some, or all of the nine components of the High Performance Environmental Structure®, is the cause of many of the problems with driving improved execution and enhanced productivity in sales forces today. Sales Leaders believe they have provided goals and training measurement and rewards and have engaged employees, but they are merely ticking the boxes not making those concepts “clear and effective” in stimulating sales performance.
