Creating a High Performance Sales Culture

A High Performance Sales Culture Matters

“Thank you for a unique and great approach to building a high performance sales culture. The facilitator was brilliant. It will help us to create even higher sales performance now that we all know what matters most.

It really opened our eyes about a different way to lead.”
Simon Jefferson | Managing Director | AKQA

“The high performance sales culture approach combined with the sales strategy and executive sales coaching work helped us to grow revenue by 48%, increase profits by 10%, and close more than 50% of our deals over the last 12 months.

Aligning our sales strategy, culture, and talent is making all the difference. Thank you LSA!”
Laurie Sewell | President & CEO | Servicon Systems

Given your unique sales strategy and competition, how can you get the most out of your sales force in a way that makes sense for your business and for your sales team?

According to the McKinsey Quarterly, a top quartile performing salesperson is 14 times more productive than an average performer.

Unfortunately, many still mistake sales culture as soft or abstract. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our organizational alignment research found that sales culture accounts for 40% of the difference between high and low performing sales teams in terms of:

Revenue growth and profitability
Sales leadership effectiveness and sales team engagement
Customer satisfaction and loyalty

We define sales culture as how and why things truly get done in an organization to attract, win, and serve target clients.

The good news is that sales culture can be measured and shaped by understanding the way people think, behave, and work. The bad news is that if your sales culture is unhealthy or misaligned with your people or business strategies, you will not perform at your peak. Experienced sales leaders know that their sales strategy must go through sales culture to be successfully implemented.

Sales culture exists by design or by default. Regardless of origin, strong sales cultures can help leaders perform, or strong sales cultures can hurt performance. With so many options for sales leaders who want to improve the performance of their sales teams, it is not surprising that so many get lost in and frustrated by impractical theories and expensive consultants trying to make sense of it all.

Our clients tell us that our research-backed, practical, and action-oriented approach to assessing and aligning sales culture provides clarity, structure, and measurable results for leaders who want to significantly lift sales performance.

Typically clients turn to High Performance Sales Culture Assessment, Consulting, and Training to:

Ensure that their sales culture is healthy enough to raise, clarify, and align sales performance expectations
Remove cultural barriers that are hindering sales strategy execution
Design a sales culture that aligns with their business and talent strategies
Identify how sales leaders can reach aggressive targets without creating resentment or disengagement
Increase accountability for sales improvement
Motivate their sales teams to perform at their peak

Once your sales strategy is clear enough to act, our approach typically involves four main steps customized to each unique situation:

1. Assess Your Current Sales Culture
Assessing your current culture allows sales leaders to accurately pinpoint strengths to leverage and weaknesses to address regarding how and why work currently gets done. Typical outcomes include identifying:

Levels of sales health
Strengths and weaknesses of the current sales culture
Areas of cultural alignment and misalignment vis-à-vis your sales strategy
Likely accelerators and inhibitors to sales performance
Benchmark comparisons

2. Identify the Key Cultural Actions to Improve Sales Performance
Review the assessment results and agree on the critical few cultural actions required to create a healthy, high performing, and aligned sales culture.

3. Execute the Key Cultural Actions
Implement the top cultural shifts in a way that makes sense for your sales strategy and unique marketplace circumstances.

4. Measure Improvement and Agree Upon Next Steps
Monitor progress and continuously improve.

If you would like to learn how building a high performance sales culture at work has helped leading sales organizations perform at their peak, please contact us.

Related Information

From beginning to end, LSA was as invested in making sure the program succeeded as we were. They not only met the needs of our sales organization, but they helped us meet our very tight launch deadline.

The consultant operated with the sense of urgency necessary to ensure that we were ready to roll the business sales training program in a way that made sense.

Without their dedication and sales expertise we would not have been able to launch the program with the success that we did. Thank you LSA for being a valued business partner!

Erin Surprise
PHR, Manager - L & D

Originally, we launched a RFP to partner with a sales training provider to improve the sales skills of our global distributor network.

LSA Global challenged our thinking by suggesting we focus on the systemic sales strategy, culture, and talent factors that create sales success before we invested in the more symptomatic needs of sales skills and knowledge.

LSA Global identified the critical strategic actions to improve overall sales performance and then designed and delivered world class business sales training across the globe to help increase revenue and margin.

I’m so happy we took a more strategic approach to sales performance with LSA. Thank you for making this fit our culture.

Kim Benson
Director Human Resources

LSA Global has been a great partner in helping us move toward being “the leading developer of talent in the service performance management industry.”

I have engaged LSA to help develop best-in-class programs in the areas of: Executive On-boarding, Manager Training, Sales Training and Coaching, Employee Engagement, and Instructional Design.

They have consistently met or exceeded my (very) high expectations and are always responsive to my needs to increase performance, engagement, customer satisfaction, and sales growth.

Mike Normant
Senior Director, Training & Development

We engaged with LSA Global to help our sales team identify opportunities to accelerate our commitment to sales excellence. The facilitator’s shared passion for our goals created a foundation for sales skill adoption, as did LSA’s keen understanding of our unique business environment.

This insight allowed LSA to deliver customized and impactful business sales training workshops which were adapted to reflect our specific business dynamics and provided our employees with the sales models and tools to leverage on every call with customers.

Grant Clarke
Director Client Delivery

The sales negotiations training program was awesome. The facilitator was excellent. We are immediately able to see the relevance and apply it to our specific. The preparation and energy was very apparent. The facilitator did a great job keeping everyone engaged and focused on what mattered most to our success.

I am very pleased with the results and like the very relevant and applicable sales negotiations tools. Great job!

Jack Lord
Vice President of Sales

We partnered with LSA to help custom design, deliver, and measure an advanced new employee on-boarding process. It was well thought out and bought into by sales leadership. The combination of targeted sales tools, technology, coaching, performance plans, training, and reinforcement made all the difference. The solution quantifiably improved new employee and hiring manager satisfaction and increased the speed to sales quota for new hires.

I would highly recommend LSA Global for any sales enablement team looking to increase the engagement and speed to productivity of their sales force. We are excited to implement the program globally as we continue to scale.

Rochana Golani
Director, Global Sales & Technical Field Enablement

We wanted our Channel Managers to get sales strategies and tools that would increase partner revenue and strengthen partner relationships. LSA Global’s ability to quickly understand our business and to bring experienced and proven resources to the table created credibility with both the executive and sales team.

We look forward to continuing our sales partnership with them.

Chip Whitman
Channel Excellence Manager

LSA always delivers the right sales and sales management solutions to meet our unique needs. I especially appreciate their ability to deeply understand our business and our culture so that they can design the most valuable and impactful outcomes for us and our clients.

Sarah Parks
Senior Project Manager

LSA’s introduction and continuous reinforcement of the MEDRAD objectives, vision, and mission were very impressive. The majority now understands and is openly able to verbalize these key items.

LSA did a wonderful job introducing the importance of sales coaching and reinforcement and was able to keep everyone focused.

Cindy Steffen
National Manager, Telesales

The sales strategy and goal setting session was right on target. It was a very valuable process that I highly recommend to any sales team looking to increase performance.

Thank you LSA Global!

Phil Rosenberg
Senior Vice President of Sales

Seagate has always found LSA to be a highly valuable consulting, training, and coaching resource.

The recent business sales training programs they’ve delivered for Seagate University have been the right solution, of highest of quality, and highly customized to our unique business and culture.

I would highly recommend LSA to any company interested in offering top notch learning solutions that make a difference.

Tammy Dujmovich
Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

We hired LSA to help align our sales strategy with our business strategy to sustain our hardware business while driving high growth in software and services. LSA’s ability to measure our level of strategic alignment, pinpoint areas of leverage, and get the entire executive sales team to agree upon what matters most exceeded our expectations.

I would recommend them to any sales leader who wants to drive sales performance.

Dan Dica
SVP Worldwide Sales

We originally engaged with LSA Global to help our subcontract administrators and buyers develop better negotiations skills. As manufacturers of satellites, we have many sole source companies to procure the required parts.

Our teams must be able to interact effectively with international companies. This environment uniquely challenges our team in their ability to create equitable contracts, while preserving and strengthening our supplier relationships.

LSA Global not only provided our team with the skills to negotiate effectively and consistently, but we further expanded our relationship to include consulting around our negotiations’ process, measurement of our negotiations, and one-on-one coaching for our team members. We are very pleased with the result of our partnership with LSA Global.

Vivian Mackintosh
Vice President of Materiel

We turned to LSA Global to help us take our executive selling and solution selling skills to the next level.

Their ability to formally assess our sales situation, identify key sales skill gaps, develop a plan to measure the results, and fully implement a key sales initiative has been outstanding.

LSA delivers the full solution; not just sales training. I recommend them to any organization looking to transform its sales force the “right way” to sell higher and wider.

Daniel Heckman
Director of Sales-Enterprise Accounts

LSA is an excellent sales and leadership outsource partner! They listen to our needs, are responsive, and work at a pace that keeps up with our rapid speed.

We have found LSA to bring strategic, innovative, and practical solutions to meet our business priorities by partnering effectively with our key staff. I consider them to be an important external extension of our team.

Thank you!

Wendy Chinn
Sr. Director, Global Sales Enablement