Learn the Foundation of Company Culture

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Define company culture.
  
• Explain the elements of a healthy sales culture.
  

What Is Company Culture, Anyway?

In a survey of employees and executives across multiple industries, Deloitte revealed that 94% of executives and 88% of employees feel that a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.

That makes a sound case for culture-building, but what exactly does “culture” mean in this business context? And how do you create an exceptional working culture?

Let’s start with a basic definition:

Culture is the personality of a company—supported by vision statements, beliefs, goals, training, policies, and codes of conduct. All of these elements guide how employees interact with each other, engage customers, handle the ups and downs of day-to-day work, and grow both personally and professionally.

A healthy sales culture is one where the reps are supported and enabled to meet their goals, and employees are happy, productive, and engaged.

Why a Healthy Company Culture Matters

When company culture is grounded in business growth, mutual support, and ongoing improvement, employees are more engaged and, in general, happier. Happy employees not only boost overall morale but also increase productivity. In fact, one Bain study revealed that happy employees are about 125% more productive than their unhappy counterparts.

There are other benefits to fostering a healthy company culture. Here are a few that tie into core cultural components (employee engagement, satisfaction, and vision):

• Retention: Highly engaged business units achieve 59% less turnover (Gallup).
  
• Revenue: Sales reps who say they’re happy on the job sell as much as 37% more than other reps (MDM Analytics).
  
• Reputation: Purpose- and vision-oriented employees are 47% more likely to act as promoters of their employers than those who are not purpose or vision-oriented (Center for Human Capital Innovation).
  

In short, if employees see value in what they do, are encouraged and challenged, are given growth opportunities, and are rewarded for their hard work and dedication, they will do everything they can to exceed their goals.

A negative company culture can have the opposite effect, resulting in high turnover, poor employee performance, and a decline in customer satisfaction. 

Clearly, a healthy culture pays off. But what makes it possible? Let’s take a deeper dive into the healthy culture equation.

Key Elements of a Healthy and Productive Culture

Creating a strong culture isn’t just guesswork. It’s important that companies define the elements of a healthy and productive sales culture, and use those to drive success. At Salesforce, our sales teams have prioritized these elements of a healthy sales culture based on our experience:

• Data-driven decision making
  
• Collaboration and open communication
  
• Continuous improvement
  
• Empathy
  
• A customer-centric focus
  
• Healthy competition
  

Let’s take a closer look at each one in more detail.

Data-driven decision making

Several studies conducted over the last few years point to a common theme: Top-performing sales teams use data to find the best opportunities and close deals quickly. Using real-time customer data and AI-driven insights, sales teams can identify the greatest opportunities for sales using historical information. This results in more deals closed faster, which not only boosts company revenue but makes for engaged reps who regularly experience “sales wins.”

Collaboration and open communication

While sales is sometimes characterized as an individualized profession with little team engagement, great sales teams are fueled by collaboration and open communication. As Pilar Schenk, VP of Global Sales Operations at McAfee explained, camaraderie and connection with team members creates excitement around new deals and projects—as well as the opportunity to share critical information and learn from each other. 

This kind of collaboration requires ongoing communication, coaching, and constructive feedback that fosters internal development, establishes trust, and drives toward ever-greater business success.

Continuous improvement

Business growth isn’t solely dependent on landing more deals. It’s about innovation, driven by those within sales teams who are focused on improving—not just themselves, but the entire company. This includes rethinking quarterly goals and strategies, of course, but also bettering processes, changing tools, and honing individuals’ skills in line with company vision. Professional development is a big part of this improvement—leading to greater retention and more engagement. 

At Salesforce, continuous improvement is shared with a document called V2MOM. Everyone at Salesforce has their own version of this Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures rundown, highlighting both big goals and ways of measuring progress on the road toward goal attainment. Using the same process for defining and tracking improvement across the company isn’t only ideal for employees who want to set clear guideposts for growth, but also for establishing company alignment. From the top down, our V2MOMs reflect overarching company values, vision, and mission.

Empathy

Think of empathy as the bridge to understanding and connection. It requires you to place yourself in another’s shoes and experience a situation from their perspective. This applies to both co-worker relationships and those a sales team fosters with prospects and customers. 

Why is this critical for sales? As the Center for Creative Leadership notes, empathy improves human interactions, builds trust, and supports more effective communication—all of which are important for team collaboration, customer relationships, and ultimately, inked deals.

A customer-centric focus

At Salesforce, we think of the customer first—not just how we can target them for a sale, but how we can help solve their problems and create better (and sustainable) business outcomes. That requires spending time learning about customer struggles, interests, needs, and desires. Ultimately, if a sales team doesn’t understand these key points about each customer, they won’t be able to propose product and service solutions that make their lives better. 

With customers top of mind, their success becomes your success. When you solve their problems with your products or services, they’re satisfied and your revenue grows.

Healthy competition

Competition is central to sales culture. 

Unhealthy competition can sometimes hold sway in sales organizations, but stealing ideas and prospects, sabotaging co-worker deals, and mocking underperforming reps can damage team unity and make collaboration difficult (if not impossible). Even worse, resulting frustration and resentment can bleed over into sales calls, hurting potential deals.

Healthy competition, on the other hand, is one that creates a sense of camaraderie and a push for both individual and team success. Fun contests that target different skills or abilities, callouts for different kinds of sales “wins” and markers of progress, and encouragement and congratulations across the team for done deals are all examples of ways to foster healthy competition. 

Now that you know the foundations of a healthy company culture, you’re ready to foster happy, productive workers and drive company success.

Resources

• PDF: Deloitte: Core beliefs and culture: Chairman’s survey findings
• PDF: Bain & Company, Inc: Time Talent Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag & Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power
• External Site: Gallup: The Right Culture: Not Just About Employee Satisfaction
• Salesforce Blog Post: 4 Sales Trends Changing the Way You Work in 2020 
• Trailhead: Organizational Alignment (V2MOM)