Leading the Change to a Sales & Service Culture

In today’s competitive environment company leaders know that they cannot be complacent when it comes to building a company culture that supports a sales and service focus.

There are some industries that are working hard and fast to pivot and turn to meet the realities of the market today. There was a time where businesses could have ‘order takers’ as sales professionals and have ‘reactive customer care professionals’ rather than responsive and proactive.

There are so many options for customers, and demands for customized service and sales are increasing as customer expectations continue to increase.

I just recently facilitated a sales/service culture focus  with the executive team for a large technology company in the Midwest in the US. The brand of the company was still operating from the ‘habits’ of origination and long time success from a singular product. Now the company has expanded to multiple products which required increased sophistication from both their sales team and their customer service team.

When looking at leading the change of a sales/service culture we need to evaluate the pivot that needs to happen in regards to the executive teams ability to adapt to the changes of speed, technology and customer sophistication. In the executive retreat we worked through each of the executive members candid thoughts about the SWOT (strengths, opportunities, threats, weaknesses) of the company. From there we created accountability for going with the culture change to sales/service.

We created a project management Smartsheet to list the top priorities in shifting to a sales/service culture which included a company wide launch of direction,comprehensive training plan for the employees that included scripts, change management coaching, sales training and customer service training.

We also created a positioning statement to be used internally and externally and that positioning statement just like Zappos core values shown above was an ‘energy potent’ statement that created excitement and energy as an impetus to drive the culture change forward.

Leading a change to a sales/service culture requires the courage of the executive leadership to assess his or her own ability to adapt a culture mind shift that is 180 degrees different than that of a culture that has enjoyed past success with out much of a focus on sales and service. It must come from the top and then be meticulously planned and executed to bring the employees and customers along with the change.