When a team works together to achieve a common goal, everyone wins. As a result, your team, your business, your clients, and your customers all succeed. That should go without saying, but creating a unified team is much easier said than done. How do you create one? Maybe an even bigger question to consider is: how do you maintain such a successful team?
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It has been proven time and time again that success often leaves many clues behind to tell the story of how it was achieved. A wide variety of factors play into a team’s success, but arguably the biggest clue left behind is culture, especially when you’re referring to teamwork and team spirit. If you look at any sports team that has won a championship, they all have one thing in common: excellent culture and team spirit.
To effectively create and continually maintain the upkeep of an excellent team culture, you will need to answer the questions outlined above. The most successful teams are often the most cohesive and unified, and this can certainly lead to success in all industries. With this in mind, below are some ways in which you can answer these questions to achieve optimal results as a leader in the new home sales industry.
Know Your Team
To answer the first question regarding the initial foundation of excellent team culture, a successful foundation for any team requires a few things. The first is a clear vision and purpose. Everyone must know the role of each team member, what they’re responsible for, and what resources they have at their disposal; the team must be held accountable and simultaneously empowered to utilize the resources available to them. Another critical piece of building a strong foundation is to know your team. You have to be able to identify each and every team member who is contributing towards reaching that common goal, and in some cases, who is not. It’s important to know your team’s strengths and weaknesses, but it is arguably even more important to know each individual’s strengths and weaknesses. As a leader, you’re responsible for putting people in a position to maximize their strengths while also helping to mitigate some of their weaknesses.
Lead By Example
Furthermore, in order to ensure that your team is consistently behind you, you must lead by example; any team that has proven to be successful will have strong leadership. This means that communication is always open and proactive and that you, as a leader, are always willing and able to receive, accept, and even encourage feedback (even the negative kind) from your teams. Strong leaders will also need to celebrate every achievement as a result of the whole team’s efforts; this is key for helping to raise your team up and celebrate their accomplishments as a whole. Doing so will enable you to maintain morale year-round. Keep in mind that your team will need to understand that you’re working alongside them and not above them if you want to maintain the culture you have built. Provide constructive feedback to team members and look for ways to develop and improve each individual constantly. This will keep the team engaged in their growth and motivated to always reach new heights. If you can achieve all of these things, which may certainly take some time, you will be able to properly build a successful culture and foundation for continued success.
Empower Your Team
Once you have developed a strong foundation of excellent team culture, you can now consider the second, and arguably more challenging, question: how do you maintain the excellent team and culture that you have carefully crafted? While there is a wide variety of approaches you can take on a consistent basis, at the forefront of your approach should be to empower your team and those around you to carry the torch. As you develop and help your team grow, you will begin to watch as natural leaders rise to the occasion. We see this time and time again with our natural leaders, as they volunteer to help run the sales meeting, stay after hours to learn more behind-the-scenes management processes, or when they apply for our organization’s leadership programs. This natural transition will inspire and encourage others that might not be natural leaders to do the same.
Showcase Appreciation
In addition to empowering your team, it is vital to showcase your appreciation to them. It’s an important responsibility for the leader to recognize success, but it’s also the whole team’s responsibility. Typically, when individuals receive recognition for their efforts, they will continue to go the extra mile to produce high results. Appreciation and recognition go hand and hand, and it truly has a positive impact on team members– especially in the sales environment. Giving them props for closing a deal on the last day of the month, taking the initiative to ensure they have all of the tools they need, or even presenting a very well-planned business plan presentation are ways that you can recognize them while showcasing your gratitude for their efforts.
While there are certainly different approaches to building and maintaining successful teams, almost all top-tier teams are comprised of the factors above. On a surface level, all stages of team development and the maintenance of success involve team engagement, support, recognition, clear communication, accountability, and appreciation, but there is much more to it– solid leadership and dedication are pertinent to the process. Building successful teams will not happen overnight, and you can lose the trust of your newly built team just as quickly as you gained it. With this in mind, it is important to always ensure you’re taking a proactive approach as a leader to improve on all aspects of your leadership. With the right steps and the right mindset, you can build and consistently maintain elite sales teams in an award-winning organization such as ours.
