Build a Results-Driven

Sales Culture
The Action Trap

Let’s look at a common issue for sales teams. You’re the leader and you
notice your team is not using CRM — or using it inaccurately. You’ve held
meetings and maybe even worked one-on-one: communicating clearly
about your expectations. In fact, you’re about to communicate again and
wondering how to communicate more effectively with the team about this
issue in the hope of getting them to change. You feel stuck.

You are trying to think about the best action to take and
feeling at a loss.

This is the Action Trap.

And the way out of the Action Trap is to stop strategizing. Stop considering different actions to
take to solve a problem. The way out of the Action Trap is to look deeply at what is driving this
problem. The way out is to look at the problem through the lens of culture.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 2

What is Culture?

Whether your organization is aware of it or not, you are, right now,

creating a workplace culture. And the easiest way to define “culture”
is to first define what it is not. In the evolving hybrid and remote work
world, the media tends to define workplace “culture” as the perks
that might lure people back to the pre-pandemic office. Think
ping-pong tables or the “fun” office that includes a masseuse and
bean bag chairs. Some CEOs think of culture purely along these lines:
let’s get ping-pong tables and craft beer and they will all come back.

But culture is not perks. Culture is the experiences that you have, day to day, with
everyone you interact with in your organization, and the beliefs that form through these
experiences. The beliefs then lead to the actions you take in teams — as well as with
prospects and clients. The beliefs you act on lead directly to results.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 3

Accidental vs. Intentional Culture
When leaders don’t get intentional about
culture, they can develop an “accidental”
culture that evolves in an unconscious way.
Letting culture evolve on its own can create a
widening disconnection between leadership’s
intentions and aspirations and a team’s
execution on expected results. Sales
organizations are not immune.
We have a model for this: The Results
Pyramid®. When organizations clarify
results and begin to build the framework
of positive experiences based on defined
cultural beliefs that in turn drive the right
actions, results can be achieved. You can
call your goal before you kick the ball.

A recent study by the Sales

Management Association found
that only 50% of participants
felt their sales organization
motivated the right behaviors.

The right behaviors can only be determined by

understanding culture and its connection to
behavior. Creating intentional culture means
clarifying results with your sales leaders and
activating your culture to achieve those results.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 4

The Results Pyramid

Results

Actions

Beliefs

Experiences

Our experiences lead us, always, to form beliefs. Our beliefs

lead to our actions, and all of our actions lead to results.
This is a cycle that continues and it creates your culture.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 5

Sales and the Action Trap

But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Let’s take a moment and talk about a
common problem in sales culture,
specifically: the Action Trap.

The Action Trap can be found within an action

mentality in workplace culture. “Lunch is for
wimps,” quipped the fictional financier Gordon
Gekko in the 1987 film classic Wall Street.
The phrase is something we laugh at because
we recognize it as all too true: that’s the action
mentality. Skip lunch and keep hustling.

In sales cultures we see it constantly: go, go,

go. But to survive as sustainable
organizations, we must stop equating
business and busyness, notes author Adam
Waytz, quoting Gekko as a cautionary figure.
Jessica Kriegel, Culture Partners’ Chief
Scientist of Workplace Culture, agrees. She
notes that “hustle culture” leads to “burnout
and stress, and a rise in presenteeism — the
need to be seen doing, which creates a focus
on ‘busy’ and not a focus on ‘productive.’”

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 6

Action isn’t bad, of course:
an action mentality in sales
is necessary. But beware
of the Action Trap.
To understand the Action Trap, let’s look
again at our core model, The Results Pyramid.
The Action Trap happens when we treat
“action” as the foundation of the pyramid,
ignoring the experiences and beliefs that are
gathering force and determination below our
actions and strategies.
As sales leaders, it is easy to get trapped in
action. You identify or are given results and
goals and targets. It’s logical to then create
actions that will move you toward your results.
However:
When you think only about the actions
that will drive you to sales goals or
targets: you are action trapped.
BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE
In order to create the right behaviors (actions),
it is necessary to dive deeper than actions
and connect with the experiences and beliefs
that lead you to see the right path toward the
right results.The Results Pyramid may look
simple, but it indicates a deeper psychological
process that requires thought, clarity, and a
pause in the action:
Clarifying results.
Defining and creating
cultural beliefs.
Understanding how
experiences are the
foundation of culture.
These are the ways out of the Action Trap, the
way toward activating an intentional culture
that achieves results.
/ 7
Intentional Culture:
the Future of Sales
Another reason to focus on activating your
intentional culture versus riding with your
accidental one: the hybrid and remote work
movement is demanding it. Remote advocacy
is on the rise and sales cultures and workers
are driving the movement.
At Amazon, we’ve seen employees immediately
push back against a return-to-office mandate,
using Slack as their platform calling for their
leaders to listen. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy
implemented the return-to-work policy, which
BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE
resulted in 5,000 Amazon employees signing
a petition rejecting it and advocating for a
release of the data that drove Jassy’s move.
That data is not on Jassy’s side.
We know that sales cultures have shifted to
embrace digital and did so rapidly during the
pandemic. We also know from research in B2B
sales that remote engagement supports selling
and prospecting. The digital future is here, and
sellers are adapting and moving with it.
/ 8
CRM is a Tool: not the Heart
of Sales Success

Another facet of your sales culture that can CRM is not a way to manage culture.
contribute to the Action Trap is CRM itself.
Customer relationship management is a tool Tools evolve and CRM needs to evolve, too.
and like any tool, it can be used and misused. According to a survey at Oracle, we know that
A tool is only as smart and as accountable
as the user.

Some sales cultures develop around CRM, 28 % wish it would automate

lead qualification
vaulting it as the be- and end-all of sales
culture. CRM is a system where transparency,
collaboration, and competition — all the 46 % wish it automatically
recommended content
experiences and beliefs of your sales culture to share with buyers
— can play out in healthy or more toxic ways.
For example, a sales leader falling short of a
target might withhold information to avoid
41 % would like to see their
CRM automate manual
accountability — or withhold information data entry processes.
about an opportunity to others.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 9

Look to CRM to tell you
about your organization:

How are sales leaders

using CRM?

How is the way your sales

leaders are using CRM
reflective of your culture?

Do you have a culture

of accountability?

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 10

Accountability is more than responsibility. It goes to belief, that layer underneath actions
and strategies. When individuals see and own what is believed and the experiences they
are creating — whether positive, neutral, or negative — they are empowered to be
accountable. When sales teams take ownership, culture changes.

Do It®
Solve It®
Own It®
See It®

ABOVE THE LINE®

BELOW THE LINE®
WAIT AND
SEE
COVER YOUR TELL ME WHAT
TAIL TO DO

FINGER NOT MY
POINTING JOB

IGNORE OR
DENY

Accountable individuals see an issue, own that issue, solve the issue, and then do.
They avoid the Action Trap by taking the steps necessary to think and take the issue
on before they move forward.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 11

Accountability Clarifies the View
for One Retail Eyewear Giant
Partnering with this global retailer, their
leadership engaged us to work with
their sales region. At the time, the team
was performing at 147% to quota, and the
internal sales culture could be most politely
described by the adjectives successful
and supremely confident.
Sometimes confidence is its own action
trap in sales: leading to a “Why should I
aim higher than my goal” mindset.
Within months of working on accountability
BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE
with this team where they saw and owned
that their own confidence was actually a
negative belief holding them back, they
began to solve for the problem by creating
new beliefs. Morale shifted. And performance
rose to 314% over objectives. As a result,
the organization rolled out the Culture
Equation Journey to all their retail stores.
Accountability empowered this team to
step out of their too-comfortable zone
and embrace a new challenge. The culture
shift in sales shifted the entire company.
/ 12
Understanding
Workplace Culture

Workplace culture isn’t the perks an organization might use to pad the office. Workplace
culture is the experiences, evolving every day, that inform the beliefs you and your team
carry about your organization. Understanding this is key to unleashing the power of culture.
Let’s revise Gordon Gekko’s quip. Lunch isn’t for wimps. Lunch is for the strong, intentional
sales culture that knows it can enjoy lunch and drive with purpose toward results.

BUILD A RESULTS-DRIVEN SALES CULTURE / 13

For 30 years and counting, we have empowered clients across the globe to
harness the power of culture. Our human industrial-organizational
psychological methods activate organizations to achieve results, year after year,
by connecting experiences, beliefs, and actions. Our purpose is to unleash the
power of culture to inspire businesses and people to reach their full potential.

Unleash the power of your culture.

WWW.CULTURE.IO

©2023 Culture Partners. All Rights Reserved.