Community: Salespeople Sell Better When They’re Part of a “Tribe”
By Michael Boyette
Use words like “community” and “tribe” with salespeople, and be prepared for some serious eye rolling.
They may enjoy hanging out with their colleagues, but don’t expect them to start hugging and singing Kumbaya. When it comes to sales, they’re not working for the good of the team. They’re working for themselves. They’re focused on their own results: their numbers, their customers, their deals.
However, it turns out that community plays a significant role in achieving those individual results, according to research from the Aberdeen Group. It really does take a village to make more sales.
Specifically, the Aberdeen research found that one of the most powerful drivers of sales results is a culture that promotes sharing of “tribal knowledge.”
Sharing is good for sales
Tribal knowledge is the stuff that’s known within a group, but not outside of it. So, for example, your sales team may have a unique approach to customer conversations, based on your particular mix of product offerings, customer insight, past experience and personalities on the team. It will be different from how your competitors interact with customers, and even from how other departments in your own organization do it.
Every sales organization has tribal knowledge, of course. But, the Aberdeen research suggests, this knowledge can only help if it’s in wide circulation.
When collective wisdom is shared freely within the team, all of your salespeople benefit. They’re not just relying on their own skill and experience; they’re able to tap into the knowledge of others who are facing exactly the same situation as them — selling the exact same products and services to the same kinds of customers.
Hypercompetitive reps may be tempted to hoard their knowledge, believing it gives them an edge over their colleagues. That might be so if sales were a zero-sum game — if their success had to come at the expense of other reps on the team. But that’s not how sales works. The best outcome for a sales rep isn’t to be the top rep on the team. It’s to maximize his or her own sales. Tribal knowledge helps them do it.
Tribal knowledge helps boost sales in another way, I believe. It establishes a unique identity for your organization in the marketplace — and that can help put a bit of a halo around every salesperson who sells for the organization. We’re all familiar with powerful “tribal” cultures in business — think of companies like GE or Enterprise-Rent-A-Car. Think of the “HP Way” and how it defined Hewlett-Packard to generations of salespeople, employees and buyers. Sales organizations that pay attention to their own culture put the wind at the back of their salespeople. Reps aren’t out there all on their own. They have the tribe behind them.
About the Author
Michael Boyette is the Executive Editor of Rapid Learning Institute. You can connect with him via Twitter at @TopSalesDog or read his sales blog, the Top Sales Dog.
Want to learn more about how to enable your employees to sell better with a community? Download the free Salesforce e-book:
