A short coaching monologue by a sales leader arguing that salespeople set the cultural tone for client relationships and internal team morale. The speaker emphasizes that attitudes—positive or negative—are contagious, affecting how teams perceive and treat clients and shaping organizational climate, especially because sales often represents a large portion of staff.
We set the tone. We set the tone in how much we love and care for our clients. The degree to which we're excited about helping others out in the world, our prospects, our clients and those people, is the degree to which our people will also be excited about that. I'll tell you the inverse of this, and I'm guilty of it. I've done it. You ever had a brand new fresh sale, right? You got a brand new sale and you're going to the office to turn this thing in, and you slap that sale down on the desk and you're like, that customer is going to suck. Anybody done that? The only thing, none of your team has met this person. They don't know them, but what do they know of them now? They suck. You think that might impact the way they treat them? We just contaminated their view of that person with our attitude towards them. We also set the tone internally. In sheer numbers. Sales departments are typically in the top two or three largest parts of an organization. Generally speaking, they're one of the biggest. And so if we've got one Grumpy Gus who walks into the office with a bad attitude, eh, we can deal with that. It is what it is. But if I got 30 Grumpy Gus's rolling in and out of my office, what do you think that's going to do to my team? Just consistently reinforcing a bad attitude, One guy after another after another after another. That's what makes sales so neat. You guys heard that statement that really nasty stuff rolls downhill. Guess who's at the top of that hill? You guys are.
