Name the manager behaviours that shape how your team sells and how it treats clients.
At the end of the quarter, the top seller on a sales team closes a big deal. Everyone on the team knows the deal involved an unauthorised discount, a delivery-date promise 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 the manager congratulates him in front of everyone. Nobody comments, and every person in the room now knows what the team really values.
Culture is often described as something you build with values posters, team outings and a kick-off speech. The real team culture is the set of rules people actually live by, and it comes mostly from what the manager rewards and what the manager lets slide. People work out those rules by watching what happens, and they pay much less attention to what is said.
So if you tell the team client outcomes matter and then spend every team meeting on the leaderboard, they will conclude the leaderboard is what matters. If you tell them the CRM must be updated and never check it, they will conclude it does not matter whether they update it.
Money is only one kind of reward. A reward in the broad sense is any signal of approval or advantage: money, public praise, your attention in one-to-ones, the best leads, the interesting accounts, and being asked for an opinion. Your team keeps track of who gets each of these and why. They also keep track of what you ignore. If a forecast deadline is missed and you say nothing, the whole team takes the deadline as optional from then on.
Wei Ming (an invented example) found this out in his first quarter as a sales manager. He had been praising the biggest deal of each week in the Monday meeting, and he saw that he had been telling the team, without intending to, that size was what counted. Mei Ling (an invented example) on his team closes smaller deals that are almost never cancelled, and he did not mention her once in a Monday meeting that quarter.
A top performer who breaks the rules is the hardest situation to handle. Top performers bring in a large share of team revenue, so you will be tempted to look away because the deal closed and the client seems happy for now. Lesson 7.3, "Pay plans that backfire", covered how pay plans can push people towards corner-cutting. The culture you set is the other part of the problem.
If you tolerate corner-cutting from your top seller, everyone sees that the rules only apply to people who are not bringing in enough money. Reps who follow the process start to feel foolish for doing so. Some of them begin cutting corners as well. Others, often the careful reps you most want to keep, start looking for a team where the rules mean something.
The client carries risk as well. An unauthorised discount, a delivery promise nobody can keep, or a contract signed before review can come back as complaints, cancellations or legal problems, and these often surface long after the rep has been paid.
Deal with a top performer's corner-cutting exactly as you would deal with anyone else's: privately, specifically, and with a clear consequence. Talk to them on their own. Name what happened, explain why it matters, and tell them what you expect next time. If the pay plan has a rule that applies, such as a clawback, apply it. If the behaviour carries on, follow the approach lesson 3.3, "When a new hire falls behind", uses for slipping milestones: a written plan, support, and a check date.
When only big deals get celebrated, the team chases big deals at the expense of everything else. Widen what you notice. Behaviour worth celebrating besides big deals includes:
a rep walking away from a deal that would not have suited the client (Sales foundations, lesson 7.1, "Sell what the buyer needs, even when it pays you less", describes this) a renewal that took three months of careful work a forecast that was accurate three months running discovery notes clear enough that a colleague could take over the account without asking a single question
After that first quarter, Wei Ming changed his Monday meeting. He kept mentioning the biggest deal, and each week he added one other item: a client outcome, a well-run deal, or a piece of process done well. You can do the same. Mention the biggest deal if you want to, and call out one other thing alongside it every week.
Keep the praise specific: who did what, with what result, and why. Generic praise such as "great work this week" tells people very little. Specific praise shows the whole team what good work looks like. For Mei Ling, it would sound like this: her client from last year renewed for three years and added two more outlets, because she checked in every month even when there was nothing to sell.
Some competition helps. Leaderboards, contests and the chance to top the list motivate many salespeople. The risk is hoarding, where reps stop sharing what works in case a colleague uses it to overtake them.
The simplest way to prevent hoarding is to build sharing into the routine. In each team meeting, give one rep five minutes to explain something that worked for them. It might be a question that opened up a buyer, a way of handling a price objection, or a follow-up email that got a reply. Thank whoever shares, every time. Over time sharing becomes normal team behaviour, and helping a colleague becomes a way to earn status on the team.
Wei Ming started his sharing slot with Aisha (an invented example), who explained her habit of asking about the client's other sites before writing a proposal. Two weeks later, Daniel (an invented example) tried the same question 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 something your team already knows about.
Write down three behaviours you want in your team and one thing you currently put up with that works against them.
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