How are great sales cultures built?
Brian Trautschold is the Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer at Ambition and has a pretty impressive track record of building great cultures at numerous organizations. He shares the key indicators of strong and struggling company cultures and how it all boils down to alignment, accountability, and authenticity.
Brian and Jeremey discuss tips on effective coaching, employee retention, and leading one-on-one meetings in this episode of the Hey Salespeople podcast.
Listen here, and keep reading for some of the highlights from this episode below.
Jeremey: As you reflect on the sales culture you’re building inside the company, were you intentional at that time about the type of culture you wanted to build there? Or did that come later?
Brian: I think we were a little bit, innately. I don’t think we were cognizant enough to be talking about our values. We weren’t talking about alignment enough. We weren’t sharing and being transparent enough.
I think that we were also naïve enough that some of that stuff was happening implicitly. We had a small team and was a very product-oriented company just like Ambition is today.
I think that’s really the DNA of us as three founders. It’s all about the product, and the people who are building and delivering that.
I think that we could do a lot, we learned a lot, but we definitely really honed in on, “hey, it’s us in this room, this foxhole together. Let’s build something really cool.” Did it have an incredible exit or did it have an incredible story?
Not really.
But did we build something pretty valuable used by a lot of people?
Definitely.
Authenticity in Sales
Jeremey: I think the thing that people fear in B2B sales is you wake up some morning, and it just tells you precisely everything to do in a very rote fashion.
We know we have a sales workflow tool, and we’d still desperately want people to take the time to use their brains and personalize and research so that they can make genuine connections with people.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the authentic part of sales.
How do you use this tool to be more productive and effective? To do that, you’re going to have to be authentic with the conversations and authentic with how you represent yourself in the company.
Did you take the time to do research before a call or before sending an email? It’s just like you would want to do with a coaching session or a management touchpoint.
Those things need to be organic and they need to be real. Just because it says, Brian is trending down, or Brian has some type of issue to address, I don’t think when we’re in a place where the machine is saying, this person needs to be docked thousand dollars from their paycheck. It’s all about how do we get together and come to a call-to-action plan to change that behavior, change the effect.
We’re having to ultimately get the results we want.
The Secret to a Healthy Sales Culture
Jeremey: As you reflect internally on the sales cultures you’ve built, what do you think is the most important thing that you can do in building a healthy team?
Brian: I think you have to create a sense of alignment and a sense of value for everyone.
They are contributing, and they’re part of the success. They’re a part of a bigger story.
So, you want to make sure that everyone can see here’s where we’re going. Here are all of the things that have to happen for us to be able to get there. Here are the things that you have to do to help us go to that.
I’m not only going to be really transparent with that, but I’m also going to hold you accountable for it. I’m going to try to have some fun with us getting through that journey as a team.
I think those are things you can do, whether you use the Ambition or whether you use a spreadsheet. It’s a lot harder work, but it can happen.
Jeremey: Yeah, that’s brilliant. I think it’s also so important in the recruiting process as well to let people know what that story is and, and they will self-select in or self-select out based on whether they believe that story.
THERE’S A LOT MORE AFTER THIS! Listen to the full podcast for more.
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