[Video] Interview with Kevin Dorsey: Start with the (sales) culture you want.

Building great sales cultures is a hit (aka High Intensity Topic: please refrain from reading if you have a heart condition) topic at every conference we go to. In a competitive market, great sales reps are recruited out from their employers’ noses every day, which means that sales managers are in a seemingly endless cycle of recruiting, onboarding, and ramping (and means that we’re spending more and more time in missed-quota land as reps get up to speed).

So the big question has become “How do we keep our reps happy at work?” (Followed closely by “How do we help them perform to their fullest?”)

We recently had some time to sit down with long-time Ambition friend -- and two-time Ambition customer -- Kevin Dorsey, the VP of Inside Sales at PatientPop, to talk all things culture and performance (he knows his stuff -- it’s worth watching the two-minute video below!). 

Kevin has a two-pronged approach for driving the strong culture that not only keeps his reps loyal to him, but also drive the activity and performance he wants out of his players.

Public Recognition

As a sales field, we put a lot of emphasis on clubs and prizes. But at the end of the day, we are all just humans. Things like praise and recognition actually do go a long way. Kevin says his reps “...look forward to saying they did something good. It’s brought a buzz and energy to the floor”

Now, we often hear customers talk about “the buzz” they want on the floor. Let me be the first to say -- we don’t want buzz for the sake of the buzz. We want it because it signals that key activities (such as calls made, voicemails left, and team collaboration) that lead to results. The results Kevin’s teams have seen over and over again are proof that the buzz actually works.

1:1 Sales Coaching

Too many sales coaching conversations are held around water coolers, or the first 20 minutes are small talk about the weekend or latest Cavaliers game. Sound familiar?

Kevin leads the industry when it comes to smart, effective sales coaching, ensuring that his managers are equipped with tools needed to ask and answer questions in advance of 1:1s and focus proactive conversations around KPIs and goals.

“Our 1:1s become more impactful, which lead to better results. A lot of 1:1s are unstructured - but not with us. We’re running them the right way.”

At the end of the day, Kevin says “Culture trumps strategy. Start with the culture you want -- the results take care of themselves.” And we couldn’t agree more.