How to Improve Sales Team Culture with Digital Signage

Sales teams are often the lifeblood of business; they contribute directly to revenue growth, build long-term customer relationships, and in many cases, drive profitability. Countless resources have been dedicated to improving sales professionals' performance and making sure that they deliver the highest potential.

One way companies can rapidly and reliably build a sales dream team is by improving the company and sales culture. A dynamic sales culture can lead to higher engagement, increased retention rate, and of course, better performance, in everyone from sales managers to individual sales representatives. (Hubspot)

But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's backtrack for a minute and first talk about what a positive sales culture looks like.

We'll also consider why it's so important to sales reps, and some effective – and a little bit radical – strategies your company can implement to build a successful sales culture. Finally, we'll show how you can take your sales team to the next level with digital signage.

What is a good sales team culture?

A sales team’s culture is the shared beliefs, values, and attitudes of each sales team member. You can think of it as organizational culture but streamlined to the sales team. So while the general culture might revolve around shared values and innovation, a successful sales culture is more likely to be focused on collaboration, healthy competition, and a focus on customer success. 

A good sales culture usually means employees have these healthy values in good doses, and you’re likely to find each team member feeling motivated, engaged, and empowered to achieve their sales targets.

Sales culture varies between organizations, but here are some features you’ll find across most. These are also known as the pillars of good sales culture.

• Open communication
• Focus on customer success
• Supportive leadership
• Recognition and rewards
• Healthy competition
• Results-oriented mindset
• Collaboration
• Data-driven decision making
• Ethical sales practices 

When building a sales team, it's a good idea to pick these pillars as starting points. 

Read More: How to identify company culture

Why is sales culture so important to a sales team?

So why can’t a sales team just hit the ground running and start driving the entire company forward? Why do we have to focus on the complex and resource-consuming task of building a culture?

Well because the culture of your sales team will go on to determine how they perform overall. Forget that 47% of organizations with a successful culture see significant revenue increases, compared to 9% with unsuccessful cultures (Arbinger Institute). Your sales team’s culture will influence everything from how quickly they can adapt and innovate to how well they handle competition.

Here are some of the biggest reasons why your organization needs a strong sales culture.

More motivation and engagement

A positive sales culture will keep everyone motivated and eager to perform because they share a sense of ownership and commitment to the team’s success. This is why organizations with a strong culture are more likely to see their employees go the extra mile. (Harvard Business Review)

Satisfied customers

Have you ever been served by a grumpy sales rep? You get the impression that they can’t wait to leave the interaction, and are perfectly okay with not making the sales. The reverse is also true for salespeople who have a strong corporate culture. They provide exceptional customer service and demonstrate a strong understanding of customer needs, leading to increased loyalty, repeat business, and positive word of mouth.

Revenue growth

More sales equals more results and greater revenue growth. Whether they use a sales funnel or speak directly to prospects, team members who are supported by a strong culture tend to hit and even surpass their sales targets and drive overall business success.

Greater employee dedication

A sales culture doesn't just inspire the entire team to perform better, it also reduces turnover rates. A study by Columbia University found a 13.9% turnover rate at companies with a good sales culture, compared to 548.4% at companies with a poor culture. It’s not hard to see why; once you’ve worked on a few teams with mediocre cultures, you leap at the chance to stick with an organization that focuses on supporting its team with a sound culture. 

Better response to change

Organizations need to be agile and capable of responding to change if they hope to stay competitive and relevant. According to MIT Sloan, teams with a strong culture are more likely to adapt to shifting markets, quickly recognize and hop on new trends, and create effective strategies. 

Read More: How to change corporate culture

How to build a successful sales team culture

Building a sales team requires more than just assembling a group with strong resumes and a passion to succeed. Even the best talent needs the right tools and environment to thrive, especially in high pressure and goal oriented positions such as sales roles.

Whether managing new hires, or improving the performance of your current top salespeople, these tips should help you with building a successful sales team.

1. Be deliberate about the sales rep hiring process

Everybody who joins your sales team will contribute to the culture one way or another. That’s why the recruiting and hiring process is so crucial. You want to onboard top talent with sales skills, but also look for new sales reps who understand what it means to be part of a good sales culture. 

Overall, you want candidates with the following qualities on your successful sales team:

• A proven track record of meeting and exceeding sales targets
• Excellent relationship-building skills
• Strong understanding of your industry or target market
• Great communication skills
• Ability to collaborate and work well in a team
• Goal orientation and self-motivation

2. Make storytelling integral to the sales process

Storytelling is a powerful tool for salespeople when trying to close a prospect and working it into your overall culture can lead to remarkable results. Besides just encouraging team members to use storytelling actively, you can also provide training on effective techniques that empower inexperienced team members, and help seasoned pros level up. 

Additionally, sharing success stories can inspire and motivate sales reps, get them working as a team, and lead to positive outcomes.

3. Even expert sales leaders need training

Investing in comprehensive training programs ensures that your sales team is equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed. As the Objective Management Group found, training can improve aspects of salespeople’s performance including:

• Qualifying prospects
• Selling value to customers
• Reaching decision-makers in a B2B setting
• Closing prospects

Your business can provide initial onboarding training, continuous sales coaching, and development opportunities to help team members improve everything from their sales techniques and negotiation skills to product knowledge.

You can also empower the sales leader to provide ongoing guidance to newer sales reps as they observe their performance.

4. Give your sales reps something to aim for

Setting clear and measurable sales goals is essential for motivating and directing your sales team. You want your goals to be specific, attainable, and aligned with the overall sales strategy and company’s objectives. 

It’s also helpful to keep your performance metrics few so your sales team doesn't get overwhelmed. The sweet spot is between 6 and 10, as a study has found. Any more and it becomes difficult for the sales team to keep up. 

5. Incorporate deep discovery questions

Some of the most effective sales cultures revolve around understanding the customer and providing tailored solutions. That’s why incorporating deep discovery questions into the sales process can help your sales team members perform better. 

It encourages a customer-centric approach that emphasizes building long-lasting relationships with customers, raising their lifetime value. You can encourage sales team members to ask open-ended questions that encourage customers to share their pain points and identify solutions that meet their unique needs. 

6. Launch a reverse mentoring program

A reverse mentoring program is an out-of-the-box mentoring strategy where junior team members help senior team members get up to date on the latest sales techniques, technology, and trends.

Programs like these require a great deal of trust and communication between members of the sales team, and a willingness to learn from anyone and everyone. A modern sales team can benefit from reverse mentoring programs in many ways because the program creates a culture of continuous learning and improvement, where each team member is valued for their unique skills and experiences. 

7. Provide the right tools and watch the magic

If you want your sales organization to be agile and quick to respond to change, it’s critical to streamline sales processes. Focus on providing the resources they need, helping them leverage technology tools, and eliminating bottlenecks along their path. 

Some ideas to implement here include:

• Introduce customer relationship management (CRM) software to optimize efficiency
• Automate administrative tasks
• Track customer interactions
• Use data to provide insights that improve sales effectiveness

8. Make sure learning never stops

It’s also important to encourage ongoing personal and professional development if you want a successful sales team. There are tons of ways to do this, including providing access to industry conferences, and online training platforms, and promoting knowledge-sharing sessions among team members.

Here are some other radical ideas you can try:

• A podcast club where team members listen to and discuss relevant podcasts
• Book roulette initiative where members select random books and share insights
• Role reversal workshops where team members temporarily switch roles and develop an understanding of each others’ jobs
• Learning retreats featuring industry experts and successful sales leaders
• Collaborative sales contests where team members solve industry-related problems with innovative solutions

Building a successful sales culture with digital signage

If your business already uses office digital signage, you know that it can make almost every aspect of the business better, from training and communication to customer service.

Now, let’s talk about how you can build a successful sales team by injecting digital signage into the mix.

1. Motivate employees with public recognition

You probably already know that motivation in an office environment is more than just a few Henry Ford quotes up on the wall. Instead, motivation is often tied to recognition and goal-smashing. For example, a study carried out in the USA working with over 200 office workers observed that achievement, recognition, and the work itself were the top three employee motivators. 

Digital signage can be used to show all of these things! Celebrating achievement and giving visual recognition to employees where everyone can see it - right up on the wall. This has much more impact than an email blast alone. 

One idea is to use digital signage to run your company culture program and show dashboards of their team members' victories. 

Or, if a trackable sales plan motivates your employees, why not get this plan up on the wall? A Google Slides deck or dashboard app will allow you to create a rich digital signage display that marks individual goals and the progress toward them. 

2. Keep your team on the pulse of the industry

It’s no longer enough for sales teams to be able to sell; they have to be fully engaged with industry trends and the stories their customers tell. Plus, we already covered how a strong sales culture leads to adaptability and innovation. 

Introducing digital signage when building a sales team can be instrumental here. Digital signage can help keep your sales team on the pulse of the industry, with exciting facts, figures, and stories to share with customers.

This can be through the syndication of an RSS feed, links to the latest news, or visual dashboards of the company's social media channels. The more your team understands about what customers are talking about, the better they’ll be able to sell them solutions.

3. Gamify your sales process

There are tons of great tools that allow you to create visuals of your sales team’s progress, and you can combine these with digital signage for an epic gamified sales process. Zendesk Reports and Microsoft Power BI come to mind.

You can even use a traditional game-style leaderboard when tracking progress and sort by:

• Overall sales
• Total revenue generated
• Number of positive customer reviews
• Most referrals earned

You don’t have to use traditional metrics; think outside the box and pick parameters that are most important to your sales representatives and align with your culture. 

After all, how can any of us resist seeing our point score or picture creep up the charts? The best part is that this great visual motivator can be added to your digital signage display, as easily as adding a link to your CMS.

4. Crowdsource the sales strategy

One great way to strengthen your sales culture, with or without digital signage, is to encourage everyone - not just the sales manager - to chime in on the strategy. Collect ideas and opinions on the best ways to drive sales forward, especially in turbulent market times.

Bring corporate digital signage into the picture and you can get even more out of this strategy. Create a dynamic and interactive digital sales playbook where employees can actively add their ideas for everyone to see. 

This strategy has the added benefit of publicly giving employees the credit they deserve for their great ideas.

5. Supercharge sales training

You can use digital signage to provide sales training to your team. It doesn’t have to be the traditional training either; digital signage allows you to break the material into bite-sized pieces that employees can interact with throughout the day, slowly absorbing information at their own pace.

You can also kick things up a notch and provide tailored training, instead of a cookie-cutter approach. This would involve assessing the team to see where they are weakest and creating training programs around those areas. 

6. Improve communication

A study carried out by Watson and Wyatt found that effective communication keeps employees engaged, resulting in higher productivity. You'll find that in a healthy company culture. The reverse is true in teams with a toxic sales culture; everyone hoards information because there's no collaboration.

As well as being crucial for a successful sales team, communication also ensures that employees are more motivated and take fewer days off, a good reason to invest in your communication systems.

Your business can use digital signage to provide company notices, news, metrics and even to share personal information such as birthdays and employee anniversaries.

Boost your sales team culture with ScreenCloud

Sales teams often work in highly competitive, high-pressure environments where peak performance is always expected. A strong sales culture can empower your team to meet those expectations, and with digital signage, you can build that culture rapidly and effectively.

Plus, digital signage can also optimize other aspects of your business, making it an indispensable tool in today's competitive landscape.

Book a demo to find out how ScreenCloud can improve employee engagement, focus your sales team and keep everyone on the right track.

Sign up for a 14 day free trial, or book a demo today.