{"id":11906,"date":"2019-09-17T18:33:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T18:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandler.dsstaging2.com\/case-study\/how-to-implement-a-culture-of-growth\/"},"modified":"2022-10-24T22:28:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T22:28:22","slug":"how-to-implement-a-culture-of-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandler.com\/blog\/how-to-implement-a-culture-of-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Steps to Implement a Culture of Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In our book\u00a0<strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandler.com\/shop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">THE SUCCESS CADENCE<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, Tom Schodorf, Bart Fanelli and I ask these questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>How can leaders scale aggressive sales growth consistently?<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>How can they achieve rapid, dramatic growth in their company?<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>How can they sustain that growth over time?<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The aggressive, sustainable growth so many company leaders seek, but few can actually point to, lies in moving yourself and your organization into a growth-driven sales culture. The following three steps are essential preliminaries to that shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>STEP ONE: MOVE BEYOND A PRODUCT MENTALITY.&nbsp;<\/strong>Moving into a sales culture means doing a special kind of reality check. It means acknowledging that no matter how great our product or service is, no matter how wonderful its design, no matter how far ahead of&nbsp; the curve we may believe it to be, it is not great enough to sell itself. (Or if it does now, it won&#8217;t forever.) While some companies have attempted product-led growth with decent results, the reality remains that anything that is sold needs a sales team and any sales team needs both a clear leader and a clear process. We\u2019ve worked with many people over the years who came up through the sales ranks and who have held a variety of positions in different functions in their career, including R&amp;D. The pattern we\u2019ve noticed is that they\u2019ve come to the same conclusion that we have:&nbsp;<em>In the end, if we want to be successful, we all \u201cwork\u201d for sales.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>STEP TWO: UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR&nbsp;<em>TRUE&nbsp;<\/em>PRODUCT IS.<\/strong>&nbsp;We sales leaders sometimes need to change the way we think about our product. For instance: If our company sells software, we may be used to thinking of our product as software. If our company sells engineering services, we may be used to thinking of our product as engineering. If our company sells consulting, we may be used to thinking of our product as consulting. But if we are going to establish true leadership of the sales team, if we are going to scale our company\u2019s growth over time, we need to understand that the physical objects and the services we ask salespeople to sell&nbsp;<em>aren\u2019t really our product.<\/em>&nbsp;Our people are our product. As sales leaders, we must understand that our product is actually&nbsp;<em>salespeople who are both&nbsp;<strong>willing<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>able<\/strong>&nbsp; to do their job.&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;That\u2019s what we are really being paid to find, develop, and bring into the organization. That\u2019s what we are paid to hold onto. That\u2019s what will determine whether or not our growth curve is scalable. Salespeople who are both&nbsp;<strong>willing<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>able<\/strong>&nbsp;are the ultimate competitive advantage\u2014and finding them, hiring them, and holding onto them must be our top priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>STEP THREE: COACH SALESPEOPLE TO MOVE &#8220;UP AND TO THE RIGHT.&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0To make what we\u2019re talking about here just a little clearer, consider a fundamental element of the job description of a salesperson who\u2019s responsible for generating new client relationships: prospecting. How many sales leaders have faced the challenge of having a salesperson on staff who clearly understood the problems their product or service solved, who understood how to add value to someone&#8217;s day, who was technically\u00a0<strong><em>able<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to do the behaviors that would allow them\u00a0 to develop a base of new business opportunities\u2014but who was, for some reason, consistently\u00a0<strong><em>unwilling<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to prospect for business at the level the role required? Anyone who has ever led a sales team has had that experience. The big question with such a salesperson is whether we can coach them from the\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/sandler.uberflip.com\/i\/1120288-q2-2019-sandler-advisor\/0?m4=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">lower-right quadrant to the upper-right quadrant of the Willing and Able Matrix<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we can\u2019t coach, support, and lead such salespeople in a way that inspires them to move their daily and weekly routine toward \u201cwilling and able,\u201d not just in terms of prospecting but in every critical area, then guess what? We&#8217;re not supporting an \u201cup and to the right\u201d culture of growth\u2026 and we&#8217;re not doing our organization, your team, or our own career any favors by keeping the person in a sales role. Not only that\u2014we&#8217;re also failing to deliver the product that makes sustainable, scalable growth possible: salespeople who are both&nbsp;<strong>willing<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>able<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandler.com\/shop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">For more on the Willing and Able Matrix, see our book THE SUCCESS CADENCE.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our book\u00a0THE SUCCESS CADENCE, Tom Schodorf, Bart Fanelli and I ask these questions: How can leaders scale aggressive sales growth consistently? How can they achieve rapid, dramatic growth in their company? How can they sustain that growth over time? The aggressive, sustainable growth so many company leaders seek, but few can actually point to,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":11907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1120],"tags":[1181,1038,1033,1035,1057],"class_list":["post-11906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-business-growth","tag-coaching","tag-leadership","tag-management","tag-professional-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Three Steps to Implement a Culture of Growth | Sandler Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The aggressive, sustainable growth so many company leaders seek, but few can actually point to, lies in moving yourself and your organization into a growth-driven sales culture. The following three steps are essential preliminaries to that shift.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sandler.com\/blog\/how-to-implement-a-culture-of-growth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three Steps to Implement a Culture of Growth | Sandler Training\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The aggressive, sustainable growth so many company leaders seek, but few can actually point to, lies in moving yourself and your organization into a growth-driven sales culture. 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