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

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

LSA Global rocks! Thank you for helping our executive team get aligned by creating a powerful and clear strategic direction and go to market sales growth plan that we could all fully commit to.

From a sales growth perspective, I am really energized about the outcome and grateful for what I have learned throughout the strategic clarity facilitation process.

Stacey Wong
VP Sales

ServiceSource has relied on LSA Global’s expertise for a variety of core initiatives, from strategy design and implementation, to business sales skills, to sales coaching. We recently engaged LSA Global to create a competency matrix for our inside sales team that will serve as our roadmap for employee on-boarding, development, succession planning, and retention.

This critical project had a tight timeline with high visibility. LSA Global completed the deliverable ahead of schedule and surpassed our expectations.

PMO and Outside Sales Operations
Senior Vice President

We recently hired LSA Global to help take our sales team to the next level. Specifically we focused on targeting the ideal client, differentiating our solutions, getting more qualified leads, and closing a higher percentage of our pipeline through a proven referral selling methodology.

So far, the results from the business sales training have been great. We were pleasantly surprised with the results-oriented approach and thoughtful follow-through plan to ensure that the new sales practices “stick.”

We look forward to a long-term relationship, and I would recommend LSA to anyone looking to increase the effectiveness of their sales force.

Patrick Arnold
President

LSA custom designed and delivered the best sales training session that I have ever attended.

They focused on our industry, our customers, and our competitors. The materials and facilitators were world class.

They were passionate about helping our global sales force understand the fundamentals necessary to be successful and not leave money on the table.

I recommend them to any sales force looking to drive profitable revenue and beat the competition.

Carl Dickenson
Director of Sales

In an effort to establish a solid foundation of consultative selling skills for our client-facing teams that can be built on over time, we engaged with LSA Global. By understanding our business and our markets, LSA Global was able to design and deliver the relevant sales skills, tools, and processes that have established the foundation for our future success.

We are extremely satisfied with our decision to work with LSA. Thank you!.”

Kevin Wiley
Chief Operating Officer

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

We engaged with LSA Global to deliver a highly customized sales territory planning and management workshop. They have a unique ability to quickly understand our business and needs. This keen understanding allowed for a sales solution that was specific and impactful.

Their sales consultants and facilitators were well prepared and ingrained themselves to become one of us. We’ve come to see LSA Global as a true sales partner.

Pratiksha Patel
Assistant Vice President Talent

LSA has consistently delivered top notch value to Seagate’s Corporate University Program. The level of facilitator involvement and continuous program evolution has kept the sales negotiation training engaging, relevant, and impactful.

We look forward to working with LSA in the future.

Geoff Purnell
Sales Executive, Seagate Data Recovery Services

We evaluated 6 well known sales development partners in the market. We ended up selecting LSA global because of their unique ability to get results selling solutions. They also had the strongest assessment, implementation, measurement, coaching, and global capabilities .

We’ve had such strong feedback from the executive selling program that there are requests to roll it out within the Marketing, Product Management, and our Leadership teams. Thank you LSA!

Stephanie Lucey
HR Manager

LSA is a great and high quality training and consulting resource. In less than a week turnaround time, they were able to design and deliver a ‘best in class’ inside sales solution to meet my team’s unique needs.

They definitely met my high expectations and were very responsive to my specific objectives. Thank you!

Olivia Flach
Americas Retail Sales

LSA’s customized Effective Presentation Skills program has helped us elevate our presentation skills to the next level. I personally now have a much greater self-awareness of my presentation skills and can leverage my strengths while working to improve upon other areas.

I definitely recommend LSA Global to anyone for whom presentations are an integral part of their job.

Jim Elliott
Senior Marketing Manager

At the onset of our engagement with LSA, I was skeptical that an outside firm would be able to understand and dissect our organization’s highly complex and technical business challenges.

However, through the leadership team interview and strategy retreat processes that LSA utilized, they provided a fresh, innovative, and practical perspective that created tremendous strategic value and focus for our executive leadership team.

As a result, I would highly recommend LSA Global to any leader struggling with building the strategic alignment and high performance teams necessary to generate sales growth, in a way that fits their unique corporate culture.

Robert Laudati
Managing Director

We value the relationship we have with LSA Global. They customize and deliver top quality sales solutions when we needed them. They pay special attention to ensuring the solution fits our unique needs, business, and culture.

I would recommend them to anyone looking to greatly improve the skills of their sales force.

Carol M. Harbin
Manager, Worldwide Sales L&D