TSE 1245: How To Create An Environment Where People Thrive At Work

The Sales Evangelist

How To Create An Environment Where People Thrive At Work

A healthy work environment allows people to thrive and grow. But what can we do to create that environment where people thrive?

Kingsley Grant is focused on helping leaders get better results by using a framework of emotional intelligence and leadership. He helps sales leaders create environments that support positive output.

Reasons why salespeople don’t thrive at work

The research group, Aussie Tanner, interviewed people who left their companies. Based on that research, it showed that people leave because they felt unacknowledged, under-valued, and unimportant. The best way to address these problems is to create an environment that supports employees and allows them to feel they are part of the team. This engagement can be a challenge for many leaders.

Another reason why salespeople fail to thrive is they don’t feel safe to share their ideas. There is a fear that sales leaders will use those ideas against them. Sales leaders need to create an environment where their team can share ideas they know will at least be considered. When employees feel they’re in an environment that offers room to experiment and make mistakes, these salespeople grow and thrive.

How does thriving look like?

A salesperson who is allowed to unleash their talents is a person who thrives. For example, L’Oreal is a huge cosmetics company that wanted their people to thrive with their company. They had some of their salespeople trained in the area of emotional intelligence. The rest of their sales team weren’t given the training. What they found was that their trained personnel and sales staff were able to sell more. Their value increased and their net revenue rose to $2.5 million in just a month.

Helping salespeople acquire emotional intelligence can greatly impact the company. Allowing your sales team to learn self-awareness is a powerful tool to build their confidence and increase revenue.

Defining emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and regulate your emotions. It is the ability to have a level of awareness of how you feel and manage your relationships around you. Every salesperson is building relationships around them, whether it’s with their team or their customers. Having emotional intelligence provides the ability to manage a variety of relationships.

A sales leader plays a huge part in building their sales teams’ emotional intelligence. The leader must be sensitive to the needs of the members of their sales team. This includes an awareness of what their team is going through, what the sales reps need to learn in order to make better sales decisions, and more. When the sales leader is tuned in to the feelings of their sales team it helps them have a feeling of belonging. This helps the sales reps stay motivated, thrive, and bring in more sales.

Building a safe environment for salespeople

The sales team should be encouraged to share suggestions they think will help the company. Kingsley shares an experience he had at a previous company when he wasn’t supported. He wanted to help the company by sharing an idea he had and brought the idea to his coordinator. When his coordinator didn’t agree, instead of talking to Kingsley, the coordinator went to the vice president of the company. As a result, Kingsley could no longer trust his coordinator. After his idea was received so badly, he didn’t share other ideas he wanted to offer and quit the company six months later. He could no longer work for someone who would shut down his ideas and talk to the executives behind his back.

Sales leaders are often focused on the bottom line, only seeing the end results, and they fail to acknowledge the people who are delivering those results. They fail to see their most important resources, the sales team. The way teams are treated can determine whether or not goals are met. Salespeople have to feel safe. They need to know if they don’t make a sale, they won’t be reprimanded but instead, be mentored about how to be more effective next time. It doesn’t mean a sales leader ignores a sales rep who can’t or refuses to learn but unfortunately, sales people leave a company long before the company realizes their true skill set. People don’t leave organizations. They leave bad bosses.

When salespeople feel heard, and their ideas matter, they will stay at a company longer and make more money. Win-win! #SalesWin

Reprimand at the right time

Sales leaders are effective when they praise publicly and reprimand privately. A sales rep should never be embarrassed in front of the team. Tough love isn’t going to work.

As a mentor, build an environment where you can watch your sales team interact and help them modify any actions that aren’t working. Help them to overcome and face a variety of situations that may be keeping them from success. You are learning with them and will see some skill sets you didn’t know they had. It’s these very skills that will prove to be useful in the sales process. You may even be able to reposition them to areas they are even more effective for the company.

Be the thermostat and the thermometer of your organization. You are not only setting the temperature in the environment but also making note of the temperature so you can adjust your team accordingly.

“How To Create An Environment Where People Thrive At Work” episode resources

Kingsley Grant is also a published author of the book, The Emotilligent Leader: The Story Where Others Failed. You can check it out on Amazon. You can also check out his website, kingsleygrant.com.

Do you have sales questions? Suggestions? You can also talk to Donald about it via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.

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Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.