You will be able to name the manager behaviours that shape how a team sells and treats clients.
Your top seller closes a big deal at the end of the quarter. The whole team knows how: a discount he was not authorised to give, a promise about delivery dates that operations had already said they could not meet, and a contract signed before the client's legal team had seen it. At the Monday meeting, you congratulate him in front of everyone. Nobody says anything. But every person in the room has just learned what this team really values.
Culture in a sales team is often described as something you build with values posters, team outings and a speech at the kick-off. The culture people actually live in comes from smaller things, mostly from what the manager rewards and what the manager lets slide.
People work out the real rules by watching what happens, and they pay much less attention to what is said. Say that client outcomes matter and then spend every team meeting on the leaderboard, and the team learns that the leaderboard matters. Insist the CRM must be updated and never check it, and they learn that it does not.
Money is only one kind of reward. Public praise, your attention in one-to-ones, the best leads, the interesting accounts and being asked for an opinion all count, and the team keeps track of who gets them and why. They keep track of what you ignore as well. A missed forecast deadline that passes without comment tells the whole team the deadline is optional.
Wei Ming noticed this in his first quarter. He had been praising the biggest deal of each week in the Monday meeting. Without meaning to, he had told the team that size was what counted. Mei Ling, whose deals were smaller but almost never cancelled, had not been mentioned once.
The hardest case is a top performer who breaks the rules. They bring in a large share of the team's revenue, and every manager is tempted to look away, since the deal closed and the client seems happy for now. Why make trouble?
Because the rest of the team is watching. Tolerating corner-cutting by the top seller tells everyone that the rules apply only to people who are not bringing in enough money. Reps who follow the process start to feel foolish for doing so. Some will start cutting corners themselves. Others, often the careful ones you most want to keep, will start looking for a team where the rules mean something.
There is also the client. An unauthorised discount, a delivery promise nobody can keep or a contract signed before review can all come back as complaints, cancellations or legal problems, often long after the rep has been paid. Lesson 7.3, Pay plans that backfire, covered how pay plans can encourage this. Culture is the other half.
Deal with it the way you would with anyone else: privately, specifically, and with a clear consequence. Name what happened, why it matters, and what you expect next time. If your pay plan has a rule that applies, such as a clawback, apply it. If the behaviour continues, treat it the same way lesson 3.3, When a new hire falls behind, treated slipping milestones, with a written plan, support and a check date.
If big deals are the only thing that gets celebrated, the team will chase big deals at the expense of everything else, so widen what you notice.
The rep who walked away from a deal that would not have suited the client deserves a mention, as Sales foundations, lesson 7.1, Sell what the buyer needs, even when it pays you less, described. So does the renewal that took three months of careful work, the forecast that was accurate three months running, and the discovery notes so clear that a colleague could pick up the account without a single question.
Be specific. "Great work this week, Mei Ling" means little. "Mei Ling's client from last year just renewed for three years and added two more outlets, because she checked in every month even when there was nothing to sell" tells the whole team what good looks like.
After his first quarter, Wei Ming changed the Monday meeting. He still mentioned the biggest deal, but he added one other thing each week: a client outcome, a well-run deal or a piece of process done well.
A bit of competition can be good for a sales team. Leaderboards, contests and the chance to be top of the list motivate many salespeople. The risk is that competition turns into hoarding: reps who stop sharing what works because a colleague might use it to overtake them.
The simplest counter is to make sharing part of the routine. Give five minutes in each team meeting to one rep explaining something that worked: a question that opened up a buyer, a way of handling a price objection, a follow-up email that got a reply. Thank whoever shares, every time, and over time sharing becomes something the team does, and helping a colleague becomes a source of status.
Wei Ming started with Aisha, who explained her habit of asking about the client's other sites before writing a proposal. Two weeks later, Daniel tried it and added a second site to a deal.
In the activity below you will list three behaviours you want in your team and one thing you currently tolerate that works against them. Be honest about the second part, because it is usually the thing the team already knows about.
List three behaviours you want in your team and one thing you currently tolerate that works against them.
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