 And we're live! Hello and welcome everyone to this webinar. Today we will talk about how to supercharge your sales strategy and seven ways to build a winning sales culture. So we'll just give a few minutes for everyone to join. And also I have two guests with me today and I have Eric with me in the chat. And just to get everyone started, can you tell me where you're joining from? And also what's your role? Are you sales manager, CEO, sales rep? It would be nice to know. So just leave a comment in the chat. And we'll start in a few minutes. Some is from Stockholm, Gothenburg, Sweden. Hallsburg, Denmark, South Africa. Croatia. Okay. Denmark, so the Nordics and Northern Europe. Great. Okay. So welcome everyone. Nice to see that we have different representation all over Europe and South Africa. So in this webinar we will or you will learn how to use sales strategy and CRM to create a winning sales culture, how to cultivate it over time and how to improve your team's performance. And by the end you will leave with some actionable tips to implement in your CRM system and also achieve better results for your business. My name is Jeanette. I work with Superfists and the product marketing team. And also we're joined by two guests, Camilla Hayden-Rashbouman from Superfist Norway and Sindra Horlan from Salescreen. And Camilla, she is the country or commercial country director of Superfist Norway. And one of her favorite models is culture eats strategy for breakfast. And her passion is to build high performance teams with a winning culture, shared goals and a lot of laughter. And I've had the pleasure of having Camilla as my nurse leader for many years. So I can vouch for her passion and her focus on employee growth. Also, Sindra Horlan, founder and CEO of Salescreen. Salescreen believes every company's success is a result of a combined talent and that even the leading products and services fall short if the people behind them can't perform the very best. And his favorite icebreaker for new employees, it's hugs. Group hugs. And we will ask why that is in just a minute. And for those of you who don't know Superfist, it's a CRM platform for European B2Bs based on 30 or over 30 years of experience. And it's a serum suite that combines all of your customer-facing processes, sales, marketing and customer service into one tech stack. So it helps you build strong and loyal customer relationships. And Salescreen is a global sales platform that combines gamification with data visualization to keep sales team motivated, rewarded and engaged. And the platform also integrates with existing CRM like Superfist. And it makes work more collaborative through a range of peer-to-peer recognition and competitions. Just switching some slides here. And today we will talk about what's a good sales culture and why it's so important and we'll touch on how to build winning sales culture and also what steps you need to take. And we will also give you seven practical tips on how you can use your CRM system. And we will be approximately or use approximately 60 minutes and we will have a Q&A at the end if you have any questions. And also we have my colleague Eric in the chat that will help and moderate. And he will also mark and highlight some questions that we will save till the end. So Cindra and Camilla, welcome to the webinar. I'm very excited to have you. Thank you. Great. And I wanted to ask, because you both have interesting backgrounds both in terms of your company and how you started there. And also your experiences as leaders. So I wanted to ask you, Camilla, can you tell me a little bit about your experiences with having our good culture in a company? Yeah, my first job was with a telecom vendor. And we were 10 people fresh out of school that have been hired and went through a training program and it was an experience that really, I mean, we were just soaking up the culture for many months before we started selling. I was a sales rep. And that was my first job I stayed there for two, three years. And ever since I was looking for that same feeling. And I got it when I started in Superfis. And I was wondering what's the common denominator here. And it was the culture. It was the fact that everyone was passionate about what we're doing. It was more than just a job. It was a company with values that we could identify with. And so after having had different jobs for 15, 18 years, I sort of came back to a company with the strong culture and I felt myself what it meant. So I have personal experience with working in companies with and without strong culture. Yeah, having a bad culture might be worse than having one at all. And Cindy, you have an interesting story with your with starting sales screen. We want to share a little bit about that. Sure. Yeah, of course, happy to be here. And sales culture is something that's very near and dear to our hearts. It's a bit of a foundational element to everything that we do. And I guess, you know, for me, it was also part of the reason that I started the company initially. So I founded the company. Not what a brilliant idea. I didn't even think about anything close to sales screen at the time. I just wanted to create an environment where we could kind of try together and be really like a good group of people that have fun at work. And I think that assumption ultimately led through different coincidence to the creation of sales screen where everything is about making fun more work so that you can perform better. But that element of like getting together as a team and kind of like drive towards common goals and like the goal that like you have a question up here and I think the goal at least for me when we're talking about the good sales culture. It's really about like creating that winning environment where people are self determined to kind of put in the work that is required to go to extra mile and do that consistently over time. And that's not something that is done in a day and it's something that it's ultimately it's going to define your culture and come how you are as a leader and how you are as a company. So it's it's super important. I think it's more important than ever especially given economic downturns and we have a new one now at the steps. So I think we will definitely see what organizations and people are built off because it's when things kind of like go against you a bit. That's really when you'll see the true nature of people and the company and the culture and if they're able to kind of put in that twice the amount of work to really get the same output that they did before. So love this topic. Very happy to be here. Right. Very interesting. So like to sum up like a company culture good or bad is an all inclusive element that you develop and you grow and maintain over time. But you have to have certain standards and practices in place. And it's kind of the sum of the attitudes and the values and the habits that cross your team. So I wanted to kind of ask what is a good sales culture to you on like why is it so important. Oh that's a big question. First of all, if you if you as a company compete on price you know how vulnerable you are because the minute someone reduces their price you're sort of gone. It's the same with culture. If you compete on salary for people. Anyone can offer your people a higher salary and you lose them. But if you have a strong culture, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, then it's much easier to keep your your employees and your winners. And so it's definitely important from that standpoint. But as you said, the culture is to sort of mystify it. It's a shared gut instinct. It's the shared perception of what's the right thing to do. How should we treat customers? How should we treat each other? And the big thing about culture is that it starts with the smallest things. It starts with routines, right? It starts with everyone knowing what to do and being measured on it. So culture is not something that just happens. You as a leader have to have a very clear idea of what you need to do in order to succeed. And so it starts with routines and you measure them and over time routines when they're repeated they become behavior. And behavior done over time becomes an attitude and an attitude shared by people is a culture. So it's important to start with the mundane stuff with, okay, so what is good customer service? How should we treat each other and all the small stuff? And that's why I think operational leadership is so important because if all you want is up here, then how are you going to get your people on board to understand what makes up a good culture? Yeah, it's very interesting. So where do you have, what's the differentiator between a good and a great sales team, you think, Sindra? That's a good question. I think I wanted to build a bit on what was said here because I can agree more. Ultimately you need to have a foundation in place, you need to have processes, you need to have ability to train new people with the skills that's required to do the job and feel mastery. And I think the next element is really to have autonomy to go out there and execute and feel that you can really do that. But the third element and I think this is extremely important when we're talking about culture is connectedness or a sense of purpose. And if you have all those three elements, that's what we, it's actually the foundation behind self-determination theory and that's when people become intrinsically motivated to push the extra mile. And the opposite effect of course is extrinsic motivation where you have people who meet to work and they're going to do the minimum that's required of them to kind of get their paycheck and leave because they're motivated through the money or extrinsic factors. So like how do you get people to really feel that self or be self-determined and really push that extra mile? And I think that is those three elements is really important. If you have those present in the organization, you will see a team that's not only able to put in the mundane and repetitive tasks that's required to be consistent at their work. But they're going to be so excited about it and engaged and like motivated that that's going to come through the camera. That's going to come through the phone. Like everyone can notice if they're talking to a person who hates their life or they're actually passionate about what they're doing. If you can create that, that's going to have an extreme impact on the result of the business. And when that happens within enough people, that's when it starts sort of feeding itself. That's when you start having culture as a competitive advantage. Back to your question, I mean the difference between hitting your targets, not hitting your targets is good processes and good culture. Because we all have to sort of, in Norwegian we say blö for drakta. You sort of have to fight for the team and you have to take one on the chin and you have to bend over backwards in order to hit your numbers. And if people should do that, for people to do that over time, they have to feel that it's worth it. This is good for me, good for the company. We're working towards a common goal there. So what do you think is the most important element in creating that good culture? On one side is the routine stuff, but the routines and the behaviour attitude that becomes culture. I mean you mentioned Peter Dricke in your opening and I'm a big fan of his. He was like the first management consultant or management thinker maybe. And he said things 50, 60 years ago, that's so valid today. And he did an empirical testing of what creates high performers over time. High performers being consultant salespeople hitting their targets. And he found that across industries, across size of companies, maybe even across countries I would think, there are five things that we all need in order to be high performers. First of all, we need to know what's expected of us. So what's my mandate? What's my purpose here in this company? What should I do? What do you expect of me? And then you need to be given the opportunity to succeed. Meaning the training, the tools, everything. You need to be given feedback underway to adjust your course. You need to get help if and when you need it. And finally, you need to feel that you're being evaluated fairly. And just think about those five things for yourself. Because to me at least they resonate. If I feel that I have those five things in the company, I will be loyal. I will be on board. Because that's sort of the manifestation of my individual goals being the same as the companies. I feel that I go in the right direction. So to have a system where you're able to put those five things at the center and delivering it to your employees. That's a big part of creating a good sales culture. And that's maybe where I would start. Yeah. Yes, I like that one. Actually, it's obviously they put a lot of effort into that model. And it resonated for many business leaders over the decades now. So it makes sense. It's undisputable. I guess we usually have a bit different take on it. But it's aligned in the same elements. But we like to kind of say that if you're going to create like a winning sales atmosphere or a great sales culture, you kind of like, you need to have four key pillars. So you need to be able to identify as we've already spoken about, like, how are we doing? What should I do? You know, our goals? Where do I need to improve? I don't need to be better. You also need to fire up the competitive spirit of salespeople. We are competitive by nature. We like to push ourselves. We like to push the team. We like to push the organization to new heights. So to spark that competitive spirit. While you kind of like motivate them and help them to understand their purpose and why their work matters, not only for themselves and the company, but like motivate them also through incentives from time to time, when they have to do a task that doesn't necessarily align with their own personal objectives and goals. Because we're going to have those as well, right? So it's something about that motivation and using different types of motivation, depending on what outcome that we're trying to drive. But ultimately it's all about coaching as well. Like being there for the employees as manager, as leaders and seeing what they're doing, identifying what they're doing and help them improve those skills and kind of drive, I would say, development in the team. Because nothing kills a good sales culture more than a team that's stuck. So you kind of need to feel that you're developing either as individuals or as the company. So you kind of see that you're on a trajectory to something larger than where you were yesterday. So that's tend to self-progress. I think that's important as well. Just to add to that, because I completely agree. And it's also about, I mean, one thing is knowing where we're going, but for people to know why we're doing the things we're doing. Because for me, if someone asks me to do something, I want to know why. Why is this important? Why should I do this? And I think that's sometimes forgotten when it comes to sort of getting people to go along. You have to explain the why, because then people will understand and take ownership. But if they don't understand why, it will always, it will never be a complete ownership. So that's an important task for a manager, I think. Yeah, I agree. I actually love, there's a comment here from Guy. I think he was the one from South Africa. And key rituals with the team is important in the sales culture. It's like that level of consistency. And again, I would say this kind of plays into the connectedness part of having people who are self-determined and intrinsically motivated. And it's like meeting on a Monday and getting your goals out there. What are you going to drive towards this week? And motivating each other and kind of creating that energy up. I think that's always an important element in creating a good sales culture. So yeah, there's a lot to this. I think in explaining the why, that is super important. And we can't emphasize that enough. Ultimately, and since I'm here with super office and you guys are CRM, there's going to be some tasks that's just very hard to explain to rep why they need to do it. Like update your forecast regularly. Well, why can't I just wait to Friday? No, do it straight away. Or clean up your contacts on the account. Those types of tasks are not always like aligning with my goals as a sales rep to close that next deal. That's only thing that I'm thinking about. But you need to do that for the organization. Yeah, exactly. Because it's easy to explain why it's important to the organization. Yeah, I mean, too bad news early is good news, right? So to be able to seize to see changes when they happen instead of a week later and so forth. So and also, I think to get people to use everyone's brains to the fullest capacity when it comes to how we should get to or achieve our goals. So every year we start with, I mean, we have, we have the English word for the group management. They have some goals for us. The board might have some goals for us that we go into new year with. And then I sort of or the management group in Norway explain a little, we write a little bit about them. And then we send them to all employees and we say we're going to have a group exercise might take a whole day. Please read through this and brainstorm and come up with ideas on how you, someone in the company can help us get to these goals. And then we get all the ideas from the people. The brown paper and lots of notes and the poor guy documenting everything is creating sort of lists or or a treasure bank of ideas that we can draw from throughout the year, which is very powerful and and also the ownership is is part of this. So. I think it's, it's important to also ask them about the how because we know we're going to go there will tell you why how, how will we get there. Let's get your input as well. So everything is not just sort of delivered or forced. If you're able to do that. And I think this is very common in the OCR framework of setting a goal, you kind of like have some organizational top level goals and, and you try to engage with the individual contributors to kind of build the team goals button up but as long as they're aligned with the organization's goal. So I think that builds autonomy for each individual which is again is one of the three key items to you need to kind of feel self determined and be intrinsically motivated so it's super important but it's not always easy, especially when you kind of grow on scale to kind of include everyone so we're probably better than most in Norway of doing these kind of things. You know, having a large chunk of my team in the US and working more with American companies and American leaders like it's not necessarily the norm there. So it might be different from region to region but it's absolutely something that helps. There are some very good comments here as well. Guys on fire here. It says here personal discipline as well because we talk a lot about getting people on board and sort of creating enthusiasm, which is super important. But at the end of the day, there are some demands. I mean, when it starts with the routines there at the bottom. You have to follow them. I mean, you can't have, you can't have, well, usually there, I mean, there's an expression called, you know, sales people that don't follow the rules but they managed to sort of outperform everyone they're called eagles right or something different words for them. Usually the ones where you can sort of see between the fingers when it comes to following, following all the routines, but the 90% they have to do it. So it's not sort of help yourselves. This is culture is not it's not it's not letting people decide for themselves. It's about getting them to understand why we do things a certain way and to sort of want to to want to do it that way because they see it works, which is the same processes comes in right. Yeah, I would say like, if you're able to align individual schools with what you just said the organization wants to do. But at the same time, they feel autonomous in their process to get to those goals. That's a great sales culture. It's like just by, I don't know, like if the individuals path towards goals is the same as the organization and they kind of get to that realization themselves like that's amazing sales culture. Then we're talking a team that really is going to perform well. It's great insights. So we have to move on a little bit. This is very interesting and we'll talk more into the kind of the details and kind of the practical side of things as well how you start. But I wanted to ask the audience as well, what they think is the key to building a top sales culture. And we actually asked this question on LinkedIn as well and I will show this results a little bit later. So I will just set up a poll right now and ask the audience to vote for the ones that or the alternatives they think is the correct one for them. What's the key to building a top sales culture? Is it recognition of achievements, hiring the right people, company values or defined goals and quality training and feedback. There's a lot more options here as well. We could add, but this is like the top four that we added in the LinkedIn poll. So I'm very excited to see what you choose. So people are actually answering now. Could you kind of jump in here? What's your take on this and these options? Oh, between those four, I can't have all of them. But obviously to me it's sort of split into obviously you have to get the right people and the right people with the right attitudes can also then be trained. So it doesn't have to be that they think everything. But I can say something about what's the most difficult things when it comes to hiring, especially salespeople. We often have a case and we have a thorough hiring process, but what we can't test there is sort of the capacity, the proactiveness. I call it the engine. How big is the engine? How fast is the acceleration? To what extent does the salesperson take responsibility for their own success? That's extremely difficult to figure out in the sales hiring process. So if you crack that, not the syndrome for some advice from you. Yeah, I mean, my first impression was the same. Like, can we have all of the above? Because it's like the question is what was the key to building a top sales culture. I think you need a little bit of everything. Honestly, what is like the most important thing here? Well, I guess you could say in a way that it starts with the type of people that you attract and hire, right? So it's like hiring the right people is kind of like cheating, in my opinion, if you're creating a top sales culture, but it's like a prerequisite. So you need to have the right type of people who's open to coaching and wants to kind of like move the needle of the organization. So it kind of starts there. But then again, if you have unrealistic goals that you're never going to meet, and it's not clear what the expectations is of you as an individual, like, what are you going to do? Like, it's hard to do anything. So that comes back into the quality training and feedback. If you don't have the skills or you feel mastery of the work that you're doing, you don't get feedback on are you on the right track? How can I improve? How can it become better? You know, that again, it kind of falls true. So the last one that I haven't talked about is probably the closest one to a lot of the things that we do in sales cream as well. So I'm not going to dive too much into that, but I think if I have to pick one, I think I have to start with hiring the right people because that's where it starts. And as I said, you kind of build elements on top of that. Another way of answering this question is that if you lack any of these four, you'll probably not succeed. That is very true, actually. Yeah. So maybe it doesn't matter, which is the most important because you need all of them. That's true. And the audience actually said a little bit differently. They chose company values and defined goal as the first one. But of course, it's a tie. It's a very close tie and all four. And the same goes with the one we had on LinkedIn, which is the same question, same options, but they're kind of the majority chose hiring the right people as you were talking about that. That's kind of the first step, like how do you find the right people and the ones with the yes hat and the engine, right? So I think that's another way of framing it like you need all four. So let's talk a little bit more about like where practical side of things like where do you start? Like if you're a new sales leader or you're in a new organization, you kind of have to turn around something like kind of looking more like a bad culture. How do you start? Yeah, I think you have a good list still on the poll, right? So you kind of need to start with the goals, like where is it that we're headed? So what is the company values and kind of like what are we doing as a business and what are the goals that we want to succeed with? And once that is clear, like do you have what is required, you know, in the team to actually meet those goals and expectations? If not, you need to hire the right people. And if you have the people, but you need to turn it around, what is the struggles, right? Is it that you're just plain demotivated because they've lost track of the purpose, the connectedness? They feel like they're a cog in a machine instead of actually, you know, being a vital part in defining the machine. They feel autonomous. Don't they have what is required to actually master the work? Do they have tools to process? Is that in place? You know, I think, yeah, you do need to do several things, but you kind of define your strategy first. And once that is defined and you know the process, you know what is required of you, I think it all is going to come down to motivation. You know, you need to get people on board with what you're doing here. And I guess that is why most people have answered company values and defined goals as well. Because if they are on board with the new plan, the new strategy and they feel excited about what this can actually mean for them individually and the business that they're a part of, they're going to step it up and you're going to see more work being done. And they're going to be more happy, which is also going to come true through the screens or in customer-interfacing meetings. And that's going to have the ultimate impact and to kind of succeed in turning it around into a winning sales culture. Especially when you hire new people, the value of having well-defined processes and sales methods is extremely important. Because otherwise it's like reinventing the wheel every time, trying to get all the information into the heads. I mean, we're in the business of complex sales because it's software with a lot of opportunities. It's changing the way companies do their most important things, the sales, the service and the marketing. So you have to be quite knowledgeable when it comes to business processes, technical consultancy because you're selling a project as well. So when you've decided where you're going to then sit down and create best practice processes that's supported in the solution somewhere. So it's not just on paper, it's actual work or work support. That's extremely important to get new salespeople, new consultants, new everything up and running. And it comes down to how do we sell here? What's the first thing you do? What's the presentation for the first meeting? How do you summarize? What do you send to the customer? What's the next activity? How do you book that? What templates do you use? And obviously train them in all of this. So that's when you start seeing what's behind the word culture, right? Because in order to have these self-performing salespeople living the brand, they have to have all this knowledge in their suitcases and being up to speed on how we do things. You have some sales fundamentals that needs to be there. And that is something that I've definitely seen from being a first-time calendar and not having any idea what I was doing to hiring some pretty exceptional people who has been through this run several times. There's a drastic difference between having leadership which knows what you're talking about and defining that fundamental basis of these are the skills that you need to master. This is what the process is going to look like. These are the steps that you're going to take to go from a prospecting work to actually closing a deal. And if you kind of understand what's required of you and you have goal-setting theory goals that are realistic to meet, that's not like overwhelm people and never get that sense of winning because we need that as human beings. But I think ultimately we need to tap into the currencies of a sales team. And there are four of them. We're most familiar with money or things. That is definitely one that is as big, but there are three others. Fun is one of them. We need to create this culture of engagement. You need to have fun at work. You need to have fun with what you're doing. If not, you're going to wear yourself down to the state where you kind of feel a burnout and you leave or you quit and you can't be going on anymore. But two other currencies that we can also tap into is actually self-esteem and social capital. And I guess that's where recognition of achievements kind of comes into play. Not only recognizing that biggest deal of the year, but like recognizing the tinier wins that happens along the way. Hey, you made a new all-time record in cold calls this week. I know that's incredibly hard and you now pushed it north of 50. Maybe you have someone in the organizations hammering out over 100, but that's a personal win and we need to recognize it. We need to celebrate it. We need to elevate it and give them like, hey, a self-esteem boost and some social capital. This person is now leveling up and kind of like at that next stage and it's going to very soon, you know, propel towards their goals and get north of them. So there's so much to talk about. I mean, I hope you kind of feel it, but obviously this is super exciting stuff. It's very important that you have to kind of celebrate the small wins and achievements as well and not just the top performers. Yeah, because the fun thing and this celebration doesn't have to be sort of, oh, we have to do the big party. We have to know it's more about the everyday. It's how we talk to each other, how we're able to, if you're able to laugh at yourself, then you're able to laugh at and with others and to sort of create the banter and the high ceilings and the everyday fun with the cahoots and the ice creams. I mean, the small stuff and with, as you say, showing the small wins, the good results so that you're celebrating good performance and it becomes something that people want to have and or to achieve. Yes, exactly. That's a culture of engagement and that's ultimately going to drive a winning sales culture. So I think it's super important to realize that, especially as leaders, it just gets harder and harder as we kind of grows the companies and we get more people to recognize the individuals. So obviously the sales managers is going to play a very important role here in identifying these wins and elevating them up so that we can talk about it on the next town hall or when we're all together as personal wins that we want to celebrate as a part of the company culture. Like this matters for us. We see progress and we see individuals and how they do better and that is going to create winning sales teams. So absolutely. Yeah, you're kind of touching in on my second question, which is kind of hiring superstars versus like the process-based culture. Because many says that like starting start with hiring the right people. But there's often a misconception that having superstars or high performers on the sales team will contribute to winning culture. Like do you have any insights on that? Do you think that's correct or is it? Yeah, I can start. So I mean superstars are always important. Unfortunately, the Pareto law and 80-20 rule also applies for most sales teams. It's the top 10 to 20% of performers who's going to do most of the carrying in any sales team. And we work with several hundreds, if not thousands now. And it's always the same. But when you look behind the numbers, it's the middle of the pack, you know, the 80% in the middle, 60 to 80%. That is where the true results are being created. Like if you can elevate the middle of the pack just a tiny bit, that is going to move the needle for the organization. So you're not going to avoid having top performers. It's always going to be a part of any sales team. It's just someone who just nailed it. But it's really, I think, you know, winning sales culture and creating that next level of results for the business is all about, you know, the normal people. The middle of the pack, the ones who get at work and kind of like put in their work and they feel it. And if you can move their feelings and they can be a bit more engaged or have a bit more fun or become a bit better, like that is certainly going to drive much more of the results. Definitely. If those 10, 100 people improve 20%, it will have a bigger effect than if the superstar does it, right? And also, if it were possible to only hire superstars, I think we would all do it, but they're scarce, right? They're difficult to find. And by superstars, that's the same as I mentioned earlier, the Eagles, right? I mean, it's been said that in a company, usually have 10% Eagles, they're able to do what they want. You have the 80% in the middle and then you have 10% of the transfer list. That's maybe in America where it's a bit more harsh, but that's usually the way it is in a sales team. So if you're then able to work with the 80% then I agree. That's where the highest potential for improvement lies. It is, and it's hard to kind of like single out those superstars as well, like how do you hire them? Because, you know, to come in as a point, super office and sales screens, highly complex types of deals where we need to know a lot of things to succeed. That might not be the case if you're working, let's say from a contact center or a call center and you're selling insurance to private consumers. You know, there's a different set of skills that you is required to win at that game. So there is like the right individuals in the right company makes a superstar. So it's like, does the superstar in a super office necessarily become a superstar in sales cream as well? I don't know. That might not always be the case. So it's hard to kind of single out and identify and kind of like hire only superstars. So I think that's like an impossible thing to do. Would be fun to kind of learn that recruiter's point of view here though. Another interesting point is that, at least to me, the ones you think will become the superstars, not always do. And the ones that you did not imagine would become the superstars, they do. It's a sort of combination of what makes that person tick and how they're able to capitalize on their personal traits and their experience and then somehow make a winning cocktail or a winning recipe. Yeah. So you need to define the strategy. You know what and how and why you sell. You need to have the right people. You need to train those people and continuous feedback. Any other steps in that of building that good sales culture? Camilla? Everything else we've been talking about today. It's a big area because it's sort of leadership. It's process focus. But one thing that I think is more important today when it comes to being the superstar or succeeding is that compared to a few years back, you need a new set of skills today to be a good salesperson. First of all, you need to have deep knowledge about the market. Your customers is operating in so you have to understand the vertical, what's happening in the market, the megatrends, what kind of pressure are your potential customers under in order to sort of come to them with a 70-80% finished idea of how you can improve their lives. The customers are no longer willing to go through the solution selling method of 200 questions and sort of let's take our time and meeting of the meeting to get to your pain and find your possible value. So that's a new skill set that sales all salespeople need. And especially those working on collecting new customers, they also need to be good at social selling or campaign selling. Because at least in our world, the cold calling doesn't really work anymore. It's really difficult to get new customers. And also trying to invite someone to be in your network on LinkedIn and then when they say yes, you ask for a meeting, that's like asking for a marriage on the first date. So sort of that whole skill set is also needed for salespeople. So it's a more complex job and job toss than ever for a salesperson. So how do you kind of navigate that micromanagement versus the process? Because if you have a well-defined sales process and it's documented, it's implemented, where does that sit in this building and winning sales culture? Because a lot of people say that freedom or independence is a very key thing of having that winning team. Do you have any? Yeah, I mean, obviously, we are a gamification platform. So I would say gamified. And by that, I mean that you have some business objectives that you're running towards, and you're breaking it into smaller goals and aligning with the individuals. And those smaller goals needs to be celebrated. It needs to matter. So we need to tap into self-esteem and social capital as two currencies that we kind of reward them with. But once they kind of like start to collect these achievements or like they see progress towards these smaller goals that ultimately is going to drive towards organizational goals, that's going to give a lot of like a big boost to the team. But the fact that you have so many, and I'm not talking hundreds, but 20, 30 maybe smaller goals, they can select between them what they want to work on next. And by that, they feel autonomous, but all goals have been carefully curated and aligned with organizational business objectives that you're driving towards. So that's one way to kind of like retain the feeling of autonomy and individual's ability to kind of select what's important for them, but make sure that they do it in an environment that kind of ultimately aligns with the company. And once they collect them or achieve them, celebrate it, you know, make a big fuss about it, talk about it, like recognize it from top down and from peer to peer. Like, yeah, then it matters more than cash. Cash out if you want. Cash out ourselves. And then obviously can't be, you can't have freedom when it comes to, oh, to me this case is in the negotiate phase. It's very difficult as management to sort of evaluate the pipeline if we don't have a common agreement on what makes something go from one phase to the next, and what makes the probability go up. So that's never, that's non-negotiable, that you have to follow sort of the method. And for that you need verifiable outcomes that you definitely can say has this moved from here to here. Yes, because we have sent or we have sent the proposal we have and so forth. So yes, freedom on how to, because you've been given the skill sets to sort of pick and choose from best practices, but not freedom when it comes to doing your core. The core elements, they have to be done, but you can choose how you get there. And if you're the kind of sales person that somehow, very, very rare, but somehow you're able to skip three phases and get the customer to decide without going through all the different phases and verifiable outcomes, then fine. If the customer is ready to decide, it's not micro management, but it's a best practice for a reason, right? It's the way we usually win. It is. So I think that is extremely important to kind of like have freedom within set constraints. And I think that kind of aligns with what the consensus is in the chat as well, like Kathy pointed out originally like leadership is super important. And leadership is all about setting those constraints and we do it not by chance and not by random, I hope, like we do it because we have the data now. You know, we have much more data today than we had 10 years ago, but we can actually correct insights from it. So we know, based on everything that we're seeing in our systems, this is how it should be because that has the highest conversion rate to win. And you want to win, right? So, you know, it kind of you need to have the constraints and that is leadership, in my opinion, and they should be based on insights that is generated by the team. So it becomes like a self learning and improving machinery. So yeah. That's great. So we have to move on because we're a little over time in terms of our agenda. So I wanted to jump to the next slide, which is to talk about the seven practical tips in terms of using your serum system, because that's kind of our source of truth. That's what we want to promote. Of course, you can use Excel sheets, but we don't really promote that. But the best thing is. No, no, we don't recommend that. So this is just a few tips to get started to leverage your serum system. And the first is, of course, to use the serum system to collaborate and share info that has to be the single source of truth to get that value with 360 degree overview. So that it's easy to find information. And that makes the customer experience great. And users are also more productive. And they can also trust the data. So that's a tip. Make routines, implement them. And then you can also reward users. And then you can use sales screens or other incentives to drive that serum adoption. But it's important to kind of use that as a single source or single system of truth. And then you need to define the right activities. And I know this is Camilla, you're a very, you're a big fan of this one. And we talk about that a lot in the super office. But you need to have that. It's a sales methodology or if it's solution, solution selling or whatever it is, you need to kind of track more than just needed. You need to define the right activities. You need to measure level or level of activities and you need to have the quality of activities to not just for the sake of registering an activity, but it needs to drive it to that ultimate goal. And then also you need to define the sales process as we'll be talking about today. Document it and implement it in the serum system so that you have a guide or like a step by step best practice, what to do in different stages to ensure sales success. So this can be best practices that can be a guide, but it's not mandatory steps like you were talking about Camilla. It has to be a little bit of freedom, but in some certain constraints. Another tip is to set sales targets in the system, set goals, because the ability to meet sales targets is key factor that defines how well a team or individuals forming. So targets can be set for the organization. It can be set for the team or per sales rep. So you can measure revenue, number of deals closed. It can be cross sales, but also X number of call calls made or demos or follow ups. Also very important, if a sales rep doesn't meet his or her target, then you can celebrate number of new processes started and so forth. Yeah. You have to be just keep morale up. And also pipeline management. Use your serum system to update the pipeline. I've registered sales and opportunities because when the sales pipeline is full of leads and they're in different stages of the process, you need to make sure that you're managing it effectively. So you need to update the pipeline regularly. You need to monitor the metrics and you need to review it and improve it. So having a defined process or sales guide as we call it in super process also gives you an up to date pipeline. And then like the, the other point is having the KPIs and visualize them use dashboards and track the performance. So you can. So don't manually update spreadsheets and send them via email and back and forth put them in the serum system and keep them up to date. And with dashboards, you can quickly analyze the information. You can determine how you can improve performance and follow through with action. It's also a great way to use in one to one meetings or two meetings. And it's obviously smart to use sales screen for, for visualizing all of the data in the, in the serum system. Yeah. Yeah, because to get it out there to, to share it to create the fun and the focus. We have a big screen outside the here on the. So one thing is that you can, you can have a look at it in your own serum solution. But it's important to have like common sales screens and show, show how it's going. Yeah, that's very important. And that may brings me to the final tip also, which is data. If you use the service system, you put in the sales, you update the sales. You have good data and it's also easy to use that as a single source of truth. You can integrate that with other systems to, to help sell straps. For example, you can see your PRP or financial numbers in the system. You can get credit data or prospecting apps or you can export it to other tools like business. Analyze or sale screen. And we have an app store that makes it easy to extend the functionality with standard apps, modules and integrations. And sales screen is one of them. So that's, it's a great, great thing to have to, to kind of push up the competitions and having it more visualise. Plug and play level up. And then I want to ask you in the audience again with another poll. In terms of these points, like what will you focus on first to improve your sales culture when you're using your service system? So Eric will start the poll just to see what you guys think. What are your preferred, what's like the, the main thing for you to, to work on? Cindy. Yeah. I mean, define the right activities, I think you need to understand what is important to win. And that can be many different things. It doesn't have to be like you have to do a set number of cold calls. It might have to do with, you know, completing the medic review of an opportunity. So you have a lot, but you don't know the economic buyer or you don't know the business metric that you're going to influence in your deal. So, you know, let's define that as an activity to have 100% medic completion in every opportunity and let's hunt for it. So it's also, you know, yeah, I think maybe that is for me the starting point. And then there's a lot to do once you have that in place. So I see people are, or the answers are coming in and everyone's kind of leaning towards the defining the right activities. It starts there. It's very important. This is also like the last one, you need all of them. If you define the right activities, they will turn into a process because activities in a sequence is a process. And when you have a process, you will also have target, then you will know how to reach your targets and you will have the KPIs in the solution. Doing that correctly, you will as management have pipeline management and also on the individual level. It's so important in order to drive your cases forward. So, and if you do all this, do you have enough data to collaborate and share? So all of this is sort of intertwined. And you need all of it, indeed, again, all of it to succeed. That's true. Yeah. Hopefully everyone goes home and start defining and updating their service system. But an interesting finding from meeting a lot of customers is that scary many do not do pipeline management properly or do it manually in Excel. Which is madness, because everyone knows that the minute is not part of a CRM solution. It's dead the minute you write it. So, I mean, that's where a lot of companies have improvement potential. Absolutely. To understand and be able to be proactive. Will we manage the targets this month, this quarter? If not, what can we do now in order? What are the actions? What do our salespeople need to know do now in order to get to save next quarter's budget? Yeah. Like Kathy said, if it isn't in the CRM, it didn't happen. I love Kathy. Yeah, but it is the foundation for a lot of insights, right? So when you have good pipeline management, you will also start to understand your sales velocity, which I think is really interesting to look at over time. So it's, of course, you can have everything in your CRM, but you also need to move it, move it out, move it onwards. And that is, I guess, pipeline management or good pipeline management. But once you start to do this regularly, you will start to care more about the velocity as well. How fast do we move through the pipeline? What will that mean for the future, as you say, forecasting? So, it's cool. Yeah, you'll also be able to develop your people because some people lose. Why do you always lose in the negotiate phase? What can we do to help you get past that? Because people have different strengths so they can learn from each other. Which is then again back to number one there, collaborate to share info. Yes. Kathy has a question. Yeah, that's great because we were... Well, it seems that we have paid Kathy today, but we haven't. So this is just a final wrap up because we don't have a lot of time. So, Kathy, just a public question in the chat. We will continue because I know there were one before. Also, there's been a great engagement in the chat. So thank you for that. Guy, may I ask, do you have any passengers and or mavericks in your teams? Can you ask Sindra? Yeah, I guess just to be clear, what do you guy define as a maverick and as a passenger? I'm guessing that's... Let's go back to the chat. Wow, this is cool. Mavericks are the people who initially know how to navigate a sales campaign. So it's like Eagles, right? Is the sales going on? We have different names for everything. I guess that is at least what you're getting at, Guy. And if that's the case, of course we do. We have different types of personalities in the team. And I would say it's not necessary like they're stuck in that forever. There are movements in the team as time goes by as well. And people might go from being a passenger to becoming a maverick if you have a good sales culture. Really interesting question from Kathy at the end here. When you have employees who are not following protocol, why do you think they decide not to? And I think there are many answers to that question. One is that it could be painful because it will make it clear that they're not doing enough. That they're not following the process. That they don't have enough cases in their pipeline. That they're not filling it up sufficiently. So it could be sort of easier not to bother with it because the results in there aren't good. It could also be that they haven't understood the why. Why should Guy do this? Why is this important for me and for management who see the aggregated numbers? And then it could also be if you have personal conflict between a sales manager and a sales rep. It could be that I'm sort of being, I'm mistaking it to him or her because I don't want him or her to succeed. So I won't help them. I won't show my cases. So I think there are several reasons and the thing is to get to the bottom of why and to just start having a talk and trying again to understand or to explain the why and ask why it's not being followed up on. Yeah, I think I would agree with not understanding the why. It's often a big thing there. But it could also be that they have different, let's say, personal goals that have changed. Maybe there's something back home that is taking up all of their mental consciousness and they just don't feel motivated enough anymore to push and then do that work even though they understand why they don't have, like, I understand why I need to go on the treadmill. And I should preferably do that two to three times a week, but I might not do it. Am I motivated enough? Do I see the reward in the end? Is that reward, like, do I have a different reward that is greater for me right now? So it's a bit about motivation as well. Sometimes you know why, but you just don't see how it aligns with your top goals as an individual anymore. That hopefully is something that can be worked on through some coaching sessions and one-on-one times with the manager. In Norwegian, you know the word bingo means maybe not hitting the target, but I think Kathy meant here that she recognized the number one reason. Because, yes, yes. Because in Norwegian it's like completely hitting the mark, that's bingo. Okay, great. I think we don't have any more questions in the chat and we really need to wrap it up because I know Sandra has a flight to catch as well. So I just want to summarize, a winning sales culture takes time of course and effort to build, but hopefully you've got some tips today to start building yours. But it can also help you to grow a productive and loyal sales team. That's kind of the idea. If you want to contact Camilla or Sandra, you can send them an email or reach out on LinkedIn if you want to continue the chat there. Also you can send an email to inflatsupreface.com. I will try to respond or forward that to the right person. And then also I would say, check out our blogs. SalesCreen has a lot of great content on their blog, on this topic as well. Supreface has a lot on sales in particular, so check that out. And also we will follow up with an email so you have all the contact details there. So I just want to say thank you all for joining. Thank you Camilla and Sandra for sharing your experiences and thoughts on the topic. Very interesting to hear. Sure. And I wish you all a super day. Bye guys. Bye.