September 29, 2022

Culture is the sum of beliefs, knowledge, experiences, and values obtained by a set of groups of people over a specific period of time through interaction, living, or working together – Millman (2007). Ti chy (1982) stated that organizational culture means a normative glue that holds the overall organization together. In Kotter’s book, they examined 200 companies’ cultures and how that culture, in turn, affected performance. Deloitte Insights (2018) stated that with the increase of millennia’s being in the workforce, there are a range of programs aimed at not only protecting employees’ health but actively boosting performance as well as social and emotional well-being. When an organization promotes a culture of transparency, has clear expectations, provides continuous feedback, and offers the right recognition, employees can easily understand what is expected of them. A culture that does not allow employees to be open, honest, and independent nurtures inefficiency and lack of cooperation within teams. It becomes expedient for organizations that are intentional about performance to implement a performance-oriented culture. Recommended articles: How To Attract And Retain Top Talents In Your Organization and Reasons Why Your Sales Team Keep Underperforming Below is how to implement a performance oriented culture in an organization; 1. Reframe the mindsets of your employees: The mindsets of employees of an organization have a way of shaping the way they behave and tend to drive what they do and should do in a company. Reshaping their mindsets to be positive helps to produce the right behaviors in the workplace. The workplace tends to have a major impact on the values and belief systems that employees have. Reshaping employees’ mindsets can be achieved through the following: By articulating a compelling change story, formal changes to processes, leadership, role modeling, and skill building. 2. Openness and trust Organizations must run a transparent and open system such that everyone has a sense of belonging, feels secure and trusts the system. 3.  Responsibility and accountability framework. Expectations from employees must be well defined in terms of what their deliverables are and expected outcomes. They must hold themselves accountable to high standards. 4. Provide measurement to drive high performance. In other words, there must be well-defined key performance indicators. The KPIs must be objective, realistic, and unambiguous. 5.  Promote Learning and development An organization must actively promote learning, development and encourage its employees to grow. 6. Specific behavioral changes like promptness of responding to mails, dress code etc. 7. Create a robust performance management system Good reward and compensation systems for employees who are performing well. This can be an unexpected bonus, a small gift, a paid vacation trip, etc. Also, there must be sanctions for those who are not ready or fail to embrace the organization’s culture. 8.  Feedback and assessment of the impact of culture  John Kotter discovered companies that empowered their people to live their culture. significantly outperformed those that did not. It was found “Strong corporate cultures that facilitate adaptation to a changing world are associated with strong financial results.” Recommended article: How To Attract And Retain Top Talents In Your Organization The impact of company culture extends far beyond the happiness of employees. A good company culture will improve productivity, performance and customer experience. Categories: Sales Performance

Sales cycle defined The sales cycle is the amount of contact and time salespeople spend on moving a lead (not having knowledge of what you offer) to a prospect (having knowledge of your product) and finally to an actual buyer of your product or services.  During this time, a potential buyer is made to understand the expected outcome or satisfaction they can expect when they pop in for any of your offerings. These calls are targeted at keeping your product and services in their minds. Since the advent of the internet, the need to always be in front of customers has become more paramount than ever before.  Irrespective of the position of a buyer in the journey to purchase, strategic marketers have learnt to develop content targeted to individuals. And modern-day marketing tools and technology have fostered this, though they have created a number of other challenges. The biggest challenge for sales and marketing people is to find a way to shorten the sales process. Why shorten your sales cycle? A short sales cycle means you and your salespeople will focus on qualified leads, individuals, and businesses ready to buy. Understanding how to accelerate your sales process saves them a ton of time engaging with leads who are not ready to make a purchase.  Shorter sales cycle improves the morale of sales professionals because the buy-in time is reduced, thereby saving costs for the business. How to shorten your sales cycle? Understand your product or service thoroughly Selling is fun, but the chances of getting frustrated are high if the prospect does not understand what has been sold to them. Today, the selling focus has shifted from the seller to the buyer. The value should be communicated at every point of contact with the prospect. An extensive understanding of your salespeople about the product will help them communicate effectively. So train your sales representative very well. Clearly understand your buyer (prospective client or customer). Time is the most valuable asset. Your potential buyers are very busy, so also be your business representative. In addition to a detailed understanding of the products you sell, a detailed understanding of the buyer is vital to selling effectively and effortlessly. Periodically and during onboarding, train your salespeople to understand your ideal customers or prospects. This eliminates the possibility of guessing and saves a lot of time selling to the wrong people repeatedly. Clearly understand your buyer’s behavioral patterns No two individuals are the same, even twice. But the behavioral buying patterns can be determined. It is essential to examine the behavior of your buyers to understand how to effectively engage them. Understanding how your buyers act will help you move conversations with clients forward and close deals. Recommended article: Reasons Why Your Sales Team Keep Underperforming Automate your sales process Gone are the days of manually sending emails to leads and prospects. Personalized emails and calls can easily be done today. Before now, sales development representatives spent an average of 21% of their time writing emails and 17% of their time prospecting and researching leads. Since the advent of sales automation tools, it has reduced the time sales reps spend on prospecting, engaging with prospects, emailing every prospect and following up. With sales automation tools, follow-up and calls can be made automatically to prospects, as these tools are usually integrated with your calendar and can schedule meetings between you and prospects based on your availability on your calendar. Make your message crystal clear Your message is the way your leads and prospects consume your content, and this determines if they will buy in or not. Humans have a short memory span in today’s marketing space, and they are bombarded with a lot of information. Getting the attention of your potential customer and keeping them engaged is a great challenge. Making your content clear and unique will make you stand out from the crowd, position yourself as a thought leader and build trust in your personality or brand. Irrespective of whether it’s social media content or your email marketing, make sure to be detailed about your offering and pricing on most occasions. Omnipresence marketing To do marketing right today, you need omnipresence marketing, which means being everywhere or being seen all the time. Your customers are busy on social media, one way or the other. With omnipresence marketing, they can consume your content while they have fun on social media platforms. It is important to make sure not to sound salesy on social media but rather appear as a human brand while you sell. Focus on your most profitable channel (while you grow the others). Omnipresence marketing helps to foster contact with a buyer throughout their buying journey. To ensure the goal of the marketing effort is not lost, caution must be applied. Rather than focusing on metrics that don’t bring money to your business, social media posts likes, followings, and connections. Focus on selling and pay more attention to social media platforms where you sell more. Selling is more important to you than sympathetic engagement. Prepare for every client meeting. As stated earlier, no two individuals are the same. Some clients might need more persuasive discussion before they make their decision. Plan before each meeting how best to engage a prospect, also leaving room for tacky change if need be (buying is not linear and so is selling). This is not the time to make a long speech about your brand, but rather focus on your client and their problem. Ask yourself questions to help you understand where your client is in their buyer journey and whether your offering might be of most help to them. What are the clients’ challenges? Why do they need to solve this problem? Why is the solution you offer the best? Prepare questions for your prospects to ask as well, to help them reason and picture the satisfaction that comes from the solution you offer. Persuasive questioning is the most effective strategy to engage buyers with. Identify and tackle objections

How to Integrate Alignment Between Sales and Marketing Sales and marketing alignment is a shared system of communication, strategy, and goals that enables marketing and sales to operate as a unified entity. Working together, aligned teams can deliver high-impact marketing activities, boost sales effectiveness, and ultimately grow revenue. Sales and marketing team alignment makes a lot of sense, and in most small-sized professional services firms, they go hand-in-hand. But as companies continue to grow, it’s not uncommon for sales and marketing to fall out of sync, and this can lead to significant losses in visibility, profitability, and growth. Sales and marketing teams that are well-aligned and open to sharing data result in 36% higher customer retention. The lack of alignment between sales and marketing has led to business failure across the globe. This has led to wasted budget and resources as up to 60-70% of B2B content is not being used and close to 75% of marketing leads never convert into a sale. By successfully aligning sales and marketing, you can attain the following; Generate 32% higher revenue, Retain 36% more customers, Achieve 38% higher win rates (Aberdeen Group) Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment To help you understand why it’s important to align sales and marketing, imagine that your marketing department is busy creating messages, content, and other materials to make your business more visible to clients who might be interested in it. However, the marketing team hasn’t met with sales to learn about the unique pain points and defining characteristics of the clients who are the most likely to purchase your services. This lack of communication between sales and marketing is a problem because it can lead to marketing efforts that send the wrong message, bring in the wrong leads, and don’t show off the best parts of your brand. Therefore, the importance of sales and marketing synchronization cannot be overestimated across all sectors of small, medium, and enterprise businesses. By having the full sales and marketing teams in alignment, each side can learn so much about what works and what doesn’t. You get deep insights into your key buying personas, your target audience, their buyer journey, and the things they want to hear. Recommended article: How To Crush H2 Revenue Goals In 2021 7 Strategies to Integrate Alignment Between Sales and Marketing It is almost impossible for teams that don’t work together to align. Sales and marketing leaders, alongside their teams, should meet regularly to track shared goals and communicate freely about workflow, obstacles, and wins. This in turn will foster a collaborative environment rather than a fragmented atmosphere. Deliverables must be clearly stated and the role of each Smarketing (sales and marketing) team member should be clearly spelt out. Recommended article: Sales Training: Definition, Importance & How To Train Your Team Implement a revenue operations strategy that serves all teams equally. This can be initiated by creating a cross-functional department and exploring the possibilities of successful work synchronization. Marketing and sales must have the same definition of quality leads. What marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), Prospects, and Deals are must be clearly stated, and the role of each Smarketing(sales and marketing) team member should be clearly spelt out. Both teams need to have the same knowledge of the target market. Putting their heads together to make an “ideal buyer profile” (IBP) helps marketing teams create content and come up with strategies for converting digital media into leads that are more likely to buy. Design KPIs stating clearly the expected deliverable from both sides of the equation so that marketing knows how many marketing qualified leads sales expects per time and sales know what actions must be immediately taken once a MQL comes down the funnel. Apply the use of one or more sales tools to track your leads and facilitate controlled and visible movement through the entire funnel. Examples of such solutions include; Recommended articles: Reasons Why Your Sales Team Keep Underperforming Once you have all the communication and workflow tools defined and in place, build a dashboard for real-time reporting on all levels of marketing and sales activity. A transparent look into your funnel lets you make data-backed decisions across the entire sales process, leading to an increase in sales and achieving long-term success. Conclusion The importance of sales and marketing alignment cannot be overemphasized by any forward-thinking organization that desires revenue growth. Would you or your company need help with aligning your sales and marketing teams or/and equipping them with the right tools and solutions to effectively execute their deliverables? Speak to us today.

What is organizational inertia? Organizational inertia is the tendency of an organization to react negatively to a strategic internal change by continuing in its previous state of business and approach to matters. Organizational culture and structure are the main determinant factors of resistance to change in an organization.  With the advent of the internet, the need for organizations to swiftly adapt to internal or external change is imminent. 46% of CIOs report culture being the biggest barrier to success, while 42% of CEOs at companies undergoing digital transformations expect their firms to undergo deep culture changes. (Gartner, 2018). And since the 2019 pandemic, the need for these changes has kept increasing. Either by adopting remote work, returning to the office, changing how they sell or adopting modern video conferencing and sales tools. Types of organizational inertia Poor mindset and unstructured organization or company hierarchy are the major causes of organizational inertia.  Cultural Inertia To stop cultural inertia, a company needs to make the complicated processes and routines that its employees have grown accustomed to easier. Waste and inefficiency are often the results of complexity. This means cutting down on administrative costs, shutting down or outsourcing tasks that aren’t essential, and getting rid of projects that aren’t needed. Recommended article: How To Implement A Performance Oriented Culture In An Organization Insight inertia Reluctance to change one’s mind based on new information. Insight inertia occurs when leaders fail to adapt to shifts in their organization’s external environment. When an organization’s leadership is ill-equipped to read, adapt to, and respond to the need for change from its internal and external environments due to inadequate information.  However, most of the time, organizations may find themselves unprepared to meet these challenges- Hedberg and Ericson, 1997. Psychological inertia As important as it may be, members of the organization often fight change. The psychological inertia results from people in an organization resisting change, wanting to remain in BAU. “Change” is something difficult and threatening. That is why some employees try to defend their independence and resist those who have the authority to control their actions. (Godkin & Allcorn, 2008). Recruiting talents with the right mindsets is the first step to fighting organizational inertia resulting from habits and psychology. Recommended article: How To Attract And Retain Top Talent In Your Organization Action or execution  inertia Action inertia is the other part of organizational inertia. It occurs when management takes too long to respond to external events or when there is insufficient information to take a conscious action for the organization. Action inertia, on the other hand, happens after the environment has been analyzed and a survey of the environment has been conducted- Hedberg & Ericson, 1997. Execution is the major challenge in action inertia. Structural inertia Structural inertia has to do with how an organization is structured and how it works. This kind of organizational inertia happens when an organization’s processes can’t be changed, getting approval is usually difficult, and the execution process is not properly structured. Economic inertia Economic inertia is predominant in small companies. The budget to execute the needed changes is minimal. Usually, organizations resist new systems or new solutions regarding the economy (Haag, 2014). Causes of organizational inertia Inability of organizations to react to the changes from the environments can be as a result of; Poor organizational structure Organizational structure is the major cause of organizational inertia. Management’s failure to manage their affairs leaves the employees working disorderly. Organizational hierarchy and reporting lines should be clearly highlighted during onboarding, periodically, and anytime there is a change in that regard. Poor attitude to work The mindset of staff is another reason why organizations as a whole appear stagnant. As a manager, it can be hard to figure out how to confront people who approach work with a “half glass empty” attitude. Employees might have bad days, but if this happens every day, you as a manager need to start dealing with it. Negative attitudes at work include when an employee is always late, does their work carelessly, is lazy, is rude to other employees or the boss, spreads rumors, or does anything else that you think is bad for a positive workplace culture or environment. Poor deadline culture Deadlines help us work together toward a common goal and keep complicated projects with many steps on track. To tell what to expect. Deadlines make it clear what we need to do and when we need to do it. This means that we can get our work done without being confused. Slow turn-around time Effects of Organizational Inertia Reputational damage Poor time-to-market Low level of productivity Poor capacity to compete Poor market positioning and return How to overcome organizational inertia Just like a body at rest tends to continue at rest. Organizations with poor culture and more find it difficult to move from an inertia position to a position of activity. Positive Mindset Workers should be trained to adopt a positive work mindset and work culture. The right work mindset to take more than just ownership but extreme ownership both for the outcome directly dependent on them and others.  Reward great performers. Expectational talents are always target smashers. They aspire to stand out in the environment and are disappointed when they are not appreciated or get the kind of competition they expected. They move to a new environment that will aid their career growth. Rewarding great performers stirs up healthy competition, which is needed for individuals to continue exceeding expectations. Performance management and KPIs Getting your employees to make a change is the most important step in overcoming organizational inertia. Explore the services of trainers in performance management. These industries and companies will help you set key performance metrics (KPIs) and hold individuals accountable.  Properly structure your organizational hierarchy. Another organizational performance crusher is poor structure. Just like a house with a poor structure can barely stand, an organization with a poor structure can hardly make progress.  Properly structuring an organization’s hierarchy will help the employees to understand their line

What Is A Sales Academy? Sales academy is a structured process set up by an organization to improve its sales team’s capabilities. This is done through sales training. This sales training helps your salespeople improve their ability to prospect, connect with clients, and handle objections. In addition, it will improve their product knowledge, their selling skills, their mindset, and their emotional and functional selling skills. What Sales Academy Entails? To clearly understand what a sales academy involves, let’s take the SalesRuby’s Sales Excellence Academy Partnership (SEAP) as a case study. At SEAP, the SalesRuby learning and development consultants work with your sales team to access individual and sales team. We build capabilities, design the courses and modules, and deploy the training, facilitators, tools, and interventions. Since 26% of sales representatives claim that their sales training has little to no effect, our trainers and facilitators make sure the training is engaging by sharing relevant insights and knowledge that are tailored to the needs of the organization or the individual. The final phase of our sales excellence academy strategy is an ongoing measurement of impact and capabilities within the sales function. This is to evaluate the outcome of our intervention and identify further strategies to ensure the function and performance deficiencies are addressed. The most outstanding aspect of SEAP is that we deliver unique content specifically for your business and market. Why You Need A Sales Excellence Academy Partner? The selling landscape has continued to transform, and to stay ahead in the market, organizations like yours need a sales academy; an approach of continuously training and retraining your sales personnel to scale and exceed their targets. Setting up a sales academy thus provides enormous advantages in terms of closing the knowledge gaps your salespeople. Increasing your revenue is only possible when your sales representatives are well trained. The Return on Investment for training salespeople stands at 353% for most organizations. Training your team makes them stand out from their contemporaries. Their product knowledge, ability to prospect, engagement, and close deals will all greatly improve. A well-structured academy means the trainers and facilitation will first understudy your business, the market you play in, and the challenges your sales teams are facing. Here at SalesRuby, we follow your field men to the trade and evaluate their capabilities. This then guides the delivery of the modules and interventions. Recommended article: Strategies For Integrated Alignment Between Sales And Marketing Focus Areas Of The Sales Excellence Academy Partnership (SEAP) Through SEAP, SalesRuby aims to improve your sales team’s mindset and culture; their approach to work, and how they execute their tasks. We also work with your sales managers to improve your teams’ and individuals’ functional, emotional, and leadership capabilities. We target your team’s holistic change beyond just teaching them how to sell skills. Recommended article: Reasons Why Your Sales Team Keep Underperforming SEAP: How To Partner With Us? Building a sales academy for your team shouldn’t be too much of a worry. With SalesRuby consultant, we take an on-the-spot assessment of your organization, the current situation of things, and what you aim to achieve. This can be done over the telephone or via a video conferencing platform. The goal of this meeting is to help us clearly understand how best we can be of help.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about tremendous changes to all industries, there is a huge need for you and your organization to up your game. Bespoke training is one of the major interventions your company needs to plug and play to achieve your revenue target for the year. In this article, we will explain the meaning of bespoke training and what to expect, most importantly, if you are looking for a bespoke training company in Lagos, Nigeria. What Is Bespoke Training? Bespoke training is customized training designed to meet an organization or team’s skills and capability deficiencies. This training is a valuable resource for organizations and their employees because the training is designed to fit the organization’s structure, requirements, and overall objective.  Bespoke training and its modules are tailored to fit the gaps that organizations are willing to address. Its modules can cover mindset, culture, emotional and functional skills development and improvement (NB: This is how SalesRuby Bespoke training is structured). It could be conducted in-house or you can have external trainers, who specialize in training organizations and businesses like yours, develop and administer these modules after an extensive review and discussion with you and your team. Are you looking for a company to train your team within and outside Lagos? Speak with a SalesRuby Consultant. Advantages Of Bespoke Training The advantages of training to an organization and its employees’ performance are enormous and cannot be over-emphasized. SalesRuby bespoke training is structured with the following advantages: 1. Tailored To Your Needs Unlike courses, bespoke training is designed with a problem and an organization in mind. So the contents are put together to address the identified challenges and are very relevant to the industry. That is to say, bespoke training is not one size fits all. For instance: SalesRuby Bespoke training is designed to help companies improve their revenue. To achieve this, our training involves more than role-playing, but also participants receive first-hand feedback from experts. 2. Return On Investment Trainings yield high ROI for companies because the participant are now more energized and equipped to execute their task. Recommended article:Reasons Why Your Sales Team Keep Underperforming 3. Employees Retention Training and retraining staff increases the rate of employee retention. For 87% of HR managers, employee retention is a top priority. If you are in this category, it is crucial to retain and help employees upskill rather than recruiting new people who may not fit into your culture easily.  4. Cost Of Recruitment As stated before, customized training helps businesses retain talent. On the other hand, it helps in saving costs for organizations and reducing recruitment risk. 5. Skills And Capabilities Change is constant in life. As an individual or team, there is a great need to continually make changes. The bespoke training structure makes it almost impossible to have a zero outcome from the participants. 74% of workers are willing to be re-trained to improve their relevance in their workplace (Lorman). 6. External Support: Training is a great way to help out any part of your team that might be struggling. And having an external individual or company as the trainer may be an added advantage because these trainers (like faculty members of SalesRuby) are experts in their various fields and have vast experience in multiple industries. External trainers bring different perspectives, ideas, and approaches to overcoming your organization’s and individual challenges. Recommended article: How To Shorten Your Sales Cycle? Bespoke Training: Why SalesRuby Bespoke Training Having seen the advantages of bespoke training. It is right to state that choosing the right company to train your team or organization can be challenging. Finding and settling on a trainer who understands not only your business and its challenges but also the market and the type of customers you serve, can be difficult. SalesRuby is a training and management company, and the best Bespoke Training company in Lagos Nigeria. We have trained a number of organizations across various verticals: Retail and FMCG Sales Training SaaS and Tech Sales Training Insurance Sales Training Finance Services Sales Training Medical and Pharmaceutical Sales Training etc. Our training modules and content are prepared by our faculty members with over two decades of experience in selling across a wide range of industries and are personalized to your organizational needs. We evaluate the performance of each team member before and after the training sessions to make sure you get the most out of the training.  Reach out to one of our sales consultants today to get aligned on how we can help your organization and business achieve its revenue goals.