7 Best Practices for Building a Great Sales Culture in Your Practice

Sales are important. But to meet your sales goals, you need to first focus on creating a good sales culture. After all, sales don’t happen in a vacuum. The services your practice offers, your marketing efforts, and your sales professionals all work cohesively — even with each other — to help you reach success.

What exactly is a sales culture? What are the best practices to ensure you have a good one? And is there anything you and your team should be avoiding? 

What Is a Sales Culture? 

A sales culture is the environment that’s fostered within your sales team. It includes the attitudes, habits, and values your salespeople bring to the table on a daily basis. In a nutshell, it’s how you would describe your sales team — competitive, effective, cohesive. Or, in the case of a less ideal culture, using terms like unfocused, lackluster, or “needs constant hand-holding.”

Regardless of where your company’s sales culture stands today, there is always room for improvement. And you, as the leader of your practice’s sales efforts, are tasked with the responsibility of setting the tone.

Toxic Sales Cultures: Aspects You Need to Avoid

Your sales team is composed of professionals. When you hire the right people, it’s important to trust that they know what to do. Taking a paternalistic approach will often backfire and create a toxic environment. This means avoiding all of the following:

• Micromanaging
• Abusing your power
• Discouraging honest feedback
• A high turnover being treated as part and parcel of doing business
• A 24/7 pressure to overperform
• Inconsistent processes

Toxicity doesn’t happen by chance. While there isn’t a single medical practice that actively seeks to put this kind of pressure on their sales team, taking an honest look at what’s going on within is the first step to turning things around and creating a thriving sales culture — one where people are happy to be there and that drives revenue for your business. 

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7 Best Practices for Creating a High Performing Sales Culture in Your Medical Practice

1. Set Tangible Goals

Start by giving your team direction. Give them specific goals — with numbers or percentages — of what you wish to accomplish for the month and for the quarter. Then create a roadmap on how to get there. For example, if you want to increase sales by 30% by the end of the quarter, what are the steps needed to hit that target? This can include building an online presence, renegotiating contracts, or focusing your marketing efforts on a specific geographical area. 

2. Make Sure Everyone Uses the Same Terms

Every industry has its own jargon, and it can get even more esoteric within each department. Include the definitions of common internal and external terms in your employee handbook and host training sessions to ensure everyone understands what each of them means. This will ensure smoother communications and allow your sales team to use their time more efficiently instead of constantly trying to interpret what someone else said. 

3. Foster Collaboration

Your sales and marketing team should meet periodically to discuss upcoming marketing campaigns. They should be clear on specific qualities prospects should have and feel comfortable enough reaching out to each other as often as necessary to close those deals. Working together will also ensure that both teams can play to each other’s strengths. 

4. Track Key Performance Indicators 

If your goal is to indeed increase sales by 30% by the end of the quarter, you need to measure your progress regularly to check whether your strategies are working. You can do this with tracking software and analytics. If a strategy is working, you can keep going ahead full steam. If it isn’t, you’ll know early enough when it’s time to pivot and have both of your teams reassess on how to move forward. 

5. Align Efforts

The sales and marketing departments must be aligned with your goals. The sales team needs to know exactly where the rest of the departments in your practice are rowing towards and create processes in concert. Otherwise, they’re going to become frustrated with each other — and prospects may become confused when they realize that one team is saying one thing, and the other team is saying something else.

6. Communicate

You can have the best set of guidelines in place, but for them to be effective, everyone on your team needs to communicate effectively. Don’t just have a staff meeting once a month and forget about upcoming goals. Make sure that everyone knows on a daily basis, what their roles for the day are, how they are going to achieve them, and how they fit in with what everyone else on the team is doing. Also, provide a good HIPAA-compliant customer relationships management (CRM) software to ensure everyone has access to all relevant information at all times. 

7. Continue Educating

As with everything in life, the best sales practices evolve with time. What worked two years ago won’t necessarily work today; especially when every day, new cutting-edge medical technologies are changing the healthcare landscape. To stay competitive, it’s crucial to provide your team with the skills that work in a modern world — such as understanding buyer’s behavior, which technologies best suit your prospects’ needs, and which tools of the trade can ensure they can modify their strategies accordingly.

If You Need Skilled Sales Reps, Axxelus Can Help

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your practice is to outsource your sales team. Having one that works exclusively within the healthcare industry can give you a competitive advantage.

You can even narrow down your focus by specifically requesting full-time or part-time sales representatives who specialize in pharmaceuticals, medical technology, healthcare services, and physicians and clinics, among others.