Name the rules your sales culture reinforces and tolerates

1. What culture is

The aim is to make culture something you can operate. The definition here: culture is the set of rules deciding what gets reinforced inside an organization. A rule is a conditional: if someone takes this action, this follows. A reinforcer is whatever follows that gives them a reason to take the action again. Put the two together and culture reads: in this organization, do this, and you will be given a reason to do it again.

How many of those rules does an organization have? Hundreds, it is claimed, and most of them are never spoken.

Examples from one team. Nobody on one sales team has to work out, yet the reps do. Working out belongs to the culture there; the reps care about their health and about winning. Nor has anyone had to be told to be in by a certain time. The reps watch the leaderboard, and each knows that anyone at the bottom is not going to be there, so they turn up earlier and work very hard. If this, then that.

Allowed, praised, tolerated. Is it all right to be late to a meeting? In some companies it is. Culture, in sum, is every rule, whether anyone has said it or not, about what a business allows, what it praises and what it tolerates.

A version of the definition worded as the rules for good and bad behavior is in section 1 of SOP 88 — Pay and rank reps on show rate. That culture is what keeps a trained team performing at a high level is section 7 of SOP 243 — Control the conditions, keep every step congruent and clear.

2. Why training fails without it

None of the sales training matters, in this view, unless the culture is in place.

What the team around them does. In one team's way of bringing reps in, the team's handbook shows a new rep how to win. What makes it believable is what the rep sees once they arrive: while they shadow and listen to calls, everyone around them is doing what it says. A lot of the time, telling people to do a thing is not enough; if you are not doing it yourself, they do not believe it. New reps read it and think it is very well worked out. Then they look at the best reps, and really at every rep on the team, and see them actually doing all of it. That makes a place where everyone is keen to push: reps want to open up more of their calendar and keep working longer, since that is simply what the others do.

3. Read the rules your team runs on now

Start with this question: which rules is your sales team governed by right now? It has some already. Here are some it might be running on without anyone having said so:

• Maybe one is that a rep who closes really well does not have to follow the script.
• A rep who is above target might not have to come to training.
• A rep who closes a lot might get to complain about the quality of the leads.
• Maybe a rep who closes really well no longer has to listen to the boss.
• Maybe a rep who has a bad month of sales still gets leads.

Whatever you put up with is what the rules are.

Count the net. Think about what you are reinforcing, allowing or tolerating, and what each of those tells people. What matters is the reinforcement left over once everything is counted. A rep who is paid whether or not they work has a large reinforcer in that alone, a reason to carry on the same way. So check that every incentive points the same way.

That who you hire, promote and fire says almost more than anything you say, and that tolerating someone who does not live the values says more than claiming them, is in section 8 of SOP 168, on repeating the values as a company grows.

4. Culture, not pay

When people think about incentives, they think about pay, yet most incentives have nothing to do with pay. The position here, stated flatly: culture, not pay, is what will drive the team. A team that pay drives has a bad culture.

Keep at it. Keeping a culture is like looking after a garden. You pull out the weeds and plant good flowers, and then you keep pulling weeds, because they grow back. People get lazy and slack off, which is exactly why the culture matters so much.

Pay for salespeople, and the steps by which they are promoted, are set out in SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps. Rewards that are not money, and how a team reinforces the right behavior with them, are section 4 of SOP 88.

5. Changing it

When people will not change. Say you want to change the culture and the people on the team will not listen to you. The answer here: part with them. Either people change their ways or they go. That might cost you a short-term drop in business, accepted as the way to repair the team's culture.

Once it is fixed. Keep bad fits from coming in. Once the culture is big enough, it is obvious the moment someone new arrives: they either adapt and join in, or the culture spits them out, and it happens very fast. A stronger culture does this more strongly.

What it takes. Turning a mediocre team around, in this view, is easy if you will accept a fall in sales: remove the mediocre people. What you want is maniacs, people set on improving; if you have them, you can win. The last word on the subject, stressed: you might have to fire half of a mediocre team in order to build one that is world-class.

Firing so that it never comes as a surprise, and covering the work first, is SOP 153 — Fire without surprise and plan who covers the work. A rule for cutting someone who has been trained properly and is still below expectations is section 6 of SOP 43 — Document, demonstrate, duplicate.

6. The bad fit that is hard to see

Obvious and less obvious. Some bad fits stand out plainly, and those you should have removed already. The ones that are harder to see are decent: the five-out-of-ten salesperson who simply does not try to win.

Effort over talent, as a view. The preference here is for a rep who hustles and scores three out of ten over one who scores six and just clocks in and out each day. The claim is that the three reaches an eight in 30 days, stated as something one team just knows. The ground given for it is the process: once the process is king, everyone comes second to it. The 30 days belongs to that claim about a rep who hustles. It is not a deadline for keeping or cutting anyone.

Made, not found. In this view, the belief that you have to find star salespeople comes from not knowing how to make them.

Screening for grit before skill, and when to stop trying to teach a trait someone lacks, is section 5 of SOP 43. The case that selling can be trained is section 7 of SOP 243.

7. The process above everyone

When the process is king, nobody stands above it, and nobody stands above the script. The reason is the source of the script and the process: they distill the lives of many more salespeople, taken together, than any one person could get through in a lifetime, the accumulation of everything the team has learned. So no single rep should think their own experience outweighs all of that. That is the view one team takes with its reps.

Putting the process above everything, with nobody above it, is also one of the team sayings in section 3 of SOP 88.

8. The rules one team runs on

One sales team's rules, which hold for that team, in this order: training, practice and timeliness; then work ethic; then the process above everything; then no prima donnas; then one more, not established on this page; and last, everyone starts at the bottom.

What starting at the bottom means on that team, where every hire sets before closing, is section 7 of SOP 255 — Onboard a new rep in phases, with a test to pass each.

9. It starts with the leader

The leader makes it. The leader creates the culture. Departments, especially as a business gets bigger, grow cultures of their own, and each rests on how strong its leader is. One owner reports having to clean up cultures all the time, and not enjoying it.

Starting over. Asked whether others also feel they have to tear everything down and rebuild from the foundation, the answer is that this is, honestly, an uncomfortable truth for a lot of businesses: once you see clearly, you find that everything was wrong from the start, and growth is blocked because there is no team and the culture in place is poor. And that applies to every part of the business, not only sales.

It comes from you. In one example, a sales team is judged unlikely to work as hard as it does if it did not think its owner worked hard. That team plays to win; the view here is that this comes from the top, from you, and that you cannot fake it.

10. A closing word for every new hire

In one example, an owner has written a letter for the sales team that kind of embodies its culture, and gives it to each salesperson as a final word once they are hired. The letter itself is not on this page.

The practice is what carries over. You can do the same and hand each person you hire a last word from you as they begin. That owner's letter, in plain terms, tells them that the road in front of them is hard, that the people already on the team came along the same road, and that getting through it pays off.

Treating something hard as a skill you do not yet have is SOP 193 — Treat hard as a skill you lack and chunk it down.

11. What this page does not decide for you

• How long to give people to change. They change or they leave; how long to wait before letting someone go: Not established on this page.
• The size of the dip. This page gives no figure for the short-term drop in sales.
• One of that team's rules. One item on the list in section 8. Not established on this page.
• The 30 days. It is part of the claim about a rep who hustles, not a test. A deadline for cutting a rep who does not improve is not covered on this page.

12. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Ask what rules govern your sales team now, spoken and unspoken
2	For each, ask what it reinforces, allows or tolerates, and what that tells people
3	Count the net reinforcement and check that every incentive points the same way; pay that comes whether or not someone works rewards not working
4	Let culture, not pay, drive the team
5	Where people will not change, let them go, knowing it might cost a short-term drop in business
6	Keep bad fits out once the culture is fixed, including the decent ones who do not try to win
7	Put the process and the script above every person on the team
8	Do what you ask of the team yourself; the culture comes from the top
9	If it suits you, hand each new hire a last word from you as they begin (section 10)

13. What this page does not cover

Setting pay and a career path is SOP 251. A new rep's first weeks are SOP 255. Daily and weekly training for a team already on live calls is SOP 256 — Run ongoing daily and weekly training for sales reps. Letting someone go well is SOP 153.

Employment law is not covered on this page.