Are You Building a Genuine Sales Team? Or Just a Group of Individuals Who Sell?

Sales leaders, I want to ask you a tough question:

Are you building a genuine sales team? Or do you just employ a collection of individual salespeople?

Don’t kid yourself here. The answer is not as obvious as you might think.

There is an inherent problem built into most sales organizations; it is called “competition.” Sure, it might be a friendly and good-natured kind of thing, but competitive environments can lead to a subtle (and often not-so-subtle) sense of exceptionalism and egotism.

Salespeople are, by and large, more competitive than the average Jill or Joe on the street. But the competitive traits that make them effective can also make them somewhat self-centered, to the detriment of the team (I speak from my own experience here — not as a sales leader but as a sometimes patently obnoxious salesperson!).

Sales organizations that enable and empower this type of culture soon discover that authority slowly begins to migrate from leadership to sales staff. The “star performers” start calling the shots, if only in subtle ways.

Those at the top of the chart get the props, the perks, and the choice assignments. Those at the bottom get ignored.

If you are a leader who feels fine about all of that, well then, no worries (I suppose). Feel free to move on to the next blog.

However, if you want to change things, you might look for ways to recognize and reward contributions at every level — not just the contributions of this month’s superstar. Consider this excerpt from a Harvard Business Review article written by Michael Schrage:

“A recent ESPN documentary celebrating Dean Smith, the late North Carolina basketball coach whose teams won two national championships and an Olympic gold medal, highlighted the simple but powerful techniques he used to cultivate team esprit. Players who scored were expected to explicitly point to the last player who passed them the ball. Some scorers took it upon themselves to point to the last two teammates who assisted.”

It’s a simple gesture that speaks volumes. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The assist leads to the score.

Multiple heroes, right?

Does that describe your team? Or did it make you cringe?

Sales leaders: you’ll get a whole lot more out of your team if you stop treating them like just a group of individuals who sell.

Sales professionals: you’ll enjoy your success a great deal more if you help others around you achieve more success.

We’re going to spend more time focusing on the topic of building a high-performance sales culture at my annual Sales Leadership Summit: Level Up 2015.

I hope that you will join us in Chicago on September 10-11 as we take a journey into the future – your future – to define what excellence and success look like when you take your sales culture to the next level.

Change your paradigm …and change your world!