The 12 Building Blocks of a World-Class Sales Culture Adapted from Service Guru Ron Kaufman

By Michael J Griffin

6 Minute Read

Up Your Service guru, Ron Kaufman has created “The 12 Building Blocks of Service Culture” that shape the environment, experience, and enthusiasm of a world-class service team. Service and sales teams are linked and have many synergies in common to inspire customer loyalty and increase sales revenue.  

I have adapted Ron’s 12 blocks on how they apply to leading world-class sales teams that are a competitive advantage. Thank you, Ron, for your excellent insights on service. I do recommend his firm to “Up Your Service” for creating a world-class service culture in your organization.  Here are the 12 Building Blocks for sales.

1. Common Sales Culture Language

Widely understood and frequently used throughout the organization, a Common Sales Language enables clear communication and supports the coaching and delivery of superior sales that navigates customers to mutually beneficial decisions to move a sale forward. The ELAvate Consultative Selling Skills workshop teaches the foundational selling language and skills.

2. Engaging Sales Vision

Eagerly embraced and supported, an Engaging Sales Vision energizes everyone. Each person takes action to make the vision real. This vision should be articulated and visual on your organizational wall. At ELAvate, we have our vision of “being the training partner of choice by our customers” and we post the quarterly sales goal as well. To connect vision to results, we conduct Bridging Sales Strategies to Sales Results for sales managers.

3. Sales Recruitment

Effective Sales Recruitment attracts people who support your service vision and keeps out those who not aligned with your vision, spirit, and values. This is a crucial building block as B2B salespeople are very costly if they do not work out! ELAvate has select sales skill assessments and a “Get to Know You Sales Hiring Process” as well as Focused Interviewing Skills for hiring salespeople and sales managers.

4. Sales Knowledge, Skill, Process Orientation

Your Sales Orientation must be welcoming and realistic. New team members feel informed, inspired, and encouraged to contribute to your sales culture. ELAvate has a well-defined B2B Sales Orientation process that lasts six months with measurable and observable KPI’s. This can be adapted for our customers to have a realistic onboarding sales process.

5. Sales Communications

Consistent Sales Communications inform and educate everyone on the B2B sales team with relevant information and objectives, timely customer feedback, and inspiring sales stories. ELAvate does this daily, weekly, and monthly. Verne Harnish of Gazelles taught us how to conduct the “Daily Kick-Off Meeting.” All team members produce a Monday Memo on the previous week’s activities, and we employ Sales Scorecards and SOP checklists to review sales team monthly progress.

6. Sales Recognition and Rewards

Sales Recognition and Rewards motivate your sales team, celebrate sales improvements and deals. Recognition keeps everyone focused on achieving greater results as individuals and as a team. The foundational skill for this is ensuring all team members practice the skill of Giving Recognition. This inspires team members to appreciate each other and to celebrate others’ successes. ELAvate can also work with your organization to design and construct compensation and rewards for sales teams.

7. Voice of the Customer

Voice of the Customer captures your customers’ comments, compliments, and complaints, sharing these vital voices throughout your organization. At ELAvate we collect both customer feedback and collate participant feedback for every training workshop. This supports world-class training delivery by our support team and trainers. Elements of our Key Account Strategies workshop also teach salespeople how to collect information on the voice of existing and potential customers. 

8. Sales Measures and Metrics

Measuring what matters focuses attention, action, and creates positive sales results. Your salespeople understand what is being measured, and why. ELAvate has been employing and teaching Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard for over 25 years. Our most popular scorecards are those we help our customers create for Sales Coaching and Sales Team Productivity Scorecards.

9. Sales Improvement Process

Continuous sales improvement is everyone’s ongoing project. Your methods must be vibrant and varied to keep participation levels high. Besides helping customers identify and create SOP’s, we train sales teams in Analysing Sales Processes and Creative Problem Solving and Decision Making to improve both process and KPI’s that lead to more motivated sales teams that shorten sales cycles.

10. Sales & Service Recovery and Guarantees

When things go wrong, bounce back! Effective Sales& Service Recovery turns upset customers into loyal advocates and team members into true believers. Recent research shows that customers who are satisfied with sales and service recovery are more likely to remain loyal customers. Many salespeople who farm, must also service. The ELAvate Sales Service Skills workshop gives salespeople strong sales and service skills. Or better yet, employ Ron Kaufman’s service workshops! Finally, ELAvate is the only Asian training company I am aware of that gives a 100% money-back guarantee on our workshops.

11. Sales Benchmarking

Discover best sales practices inside and outside your industry. Sales Benchmarking points to new ways you can upgrade your sales processes and team productivity. We have also found that ELAvate can also learn from our customers! Don’t forget to employ your search engine to explore new practices and benchmarking.

12. Sales Role Models

Everyone is a Sales Role Model. Leaders, managers, and frontline staff must walk-the-talk with powerful personal actions every day. Sales is business communication. Sales is the skill and art of persuasion. Sales is customer focused. Make sure you employ sales managers/coaches who “walk the talk” to inspire both sales and service people to communicate well to serve the customer. ELAvate has a legally defensible Sales Coach Competency model that identifies a sales coach that is a role model that gets sales results.

Tackling all 12 sales culture building blocks for improvement all at once is hard for an organization to digest. Review these 12 building blocks and identify 2-3 that you believe will increase sales team motivation, skill, and revenue. Then work out a plan of action that has measurable KPI’s and timelines. You may want to employ ELAvate’s Leading Change workshop for managers and Personal Strategies for Navigating Change for your individual salespeople. Contact me for advice or more in-depth information on how ELAvate supports each of these 12 Sales Culture Building Blocks!

Michael J Griffin
Founder CEO Of ELAvate
Sales Productivity Coach
Fan of Ron Kaufman!