Culture plays an important role in creating a high-performance SaaS sales team. With the right culture, you can transform your sales team into a high-powered sales operations center.

Here are 9 simple yet powerful best practices to help you establish a winning SaaS sales culture.

1. Start with why.

You need to be clear with the whys. Everyone in the sales team should know the reasons why they should always strive to perform at their best. Knowing what they are working so hard for will give your salespeople a stronger sense of purpose. It doesn’t matter if it is to earn bonuses, to build merit for promotions, to acquire perks such as extra time off, etc. What matters is that you make it crystal clear from day one.

2. Build an awesome leadership team.

The character, energy, and competence of your leadership team can make or break the entire SaaS sales department. Choose your leaders wisely and make sure they will be worthy examples for those beneath them. Your team leaders will be the primary agents of the culture you want to create. Make the hiring bar extremely high. Hiring an incompetent leader is often more disastrous than not having a leader at all. You should also make sure that you thoroughly train your leaders for skills and product knowledge before deploying them.

 3. Choose your words.

Every word matters when trying to communicate about the culture you want to build for your SaaS sales team. Be clear and concise and get rid of any unnecessary fluff. Every slogan and guideline should be clear and without risk of misinterpretation. They should be easy to remember and tonally consistent. Convey clearly what the core purpose of each player is when it comes to building the right culture.

4. Communicate about culture.

Aggressively communicate the details of your department culture. When processing applicants for your sales team, you should inform them immediately about the culture they’ll have to adapt to if they’ll get hired. This will help set their expectations. Create a page explaining the culture of your SaaS sales department and make sure jobseekers read it before they decide whether or not they should apply to your company. You may even want to have the team leaders recite the core tenets of the department culture during the weekly meetings.

5. Be customer-centric.

Putting customers first needs to be one of the core tenets of your department culture. The SaaS landscape is getting more and more competitive every day and the quality of your customer service may very well become the deciding factor for a potential client. Helping customers should be the primary purpose of every member on the sales team. Don’t pressure them to make sales. Sales will come naturally if they build rapport by focusing on helping consumers. Putting emphasis on providing help will also help the members of the sales team take pride in what they do.

 6. Be generous.

Don’t be stingy. Your SaaS sales team is the lifeblood of your business. Make sure effort and sacrifice are rewarded appropriately. Morale is important in such a high-pressure department such as sales. You want to avoid creating burnout as much as possible. You need a fair reward system to help keep your salespeople motivated. Be extra generous when requiring your sales teams to render overtime work.

 7. Encourage team bonding

Your SaaS sales culture needs to foster camaraderie among your salespeople. Establishing a hierarchy system based on merit may lead your salespeople to cannibalize each other to say ahead. You can avoid this if you can help them create deep bonds. Instead of trying to pull the others down, they should focus on lifting each other. You can facilitate this by giving opportunities for your salespeople to learn from each other. Reward the entire team when one member improves significantly.

 8. Foster career development & skill mastery.

There are only a few things more discouraging to an employee than seeing his/her career path reach a dead end. Give your employees the sense that they are constantly growing and improving and that there are ample opportunities for career advancement. Create programs that help your salespeople improve their existing capabilities or acquire new skills. This will also help them develop a deep loyalty to your company.

9. Establish a complete sales floor ecosystem

Improve the efficiency of your SaaS sales department by making everything they need available on the same floor. Have multiple roles (SDR, CSM, AE, SEs) close to each other to reduce red tape. Give them direct lines of communication with other departments they frequently work with. Create facilities such as call booths, meeting rooms, video-conference rooms, and recreation rooms. You can even install sleeping quarters for when you require overtime work.

There you have it, 9 surefire ways to create a SaaS sales culture that will move your company forward. For more SaaS-related tips, please visit us at SHOPerones.