GKB Week

Last week, we celebrated Good Karma Brands 24th anniversary. Every year for one week in late August, GKB Week, we celebrate what makes GKB special with our teammates. We take pride in our workplace, and we give back to the communities we serve. The week was filled with team bonding, teammate podcast series, community service projects, and daily challenges to unite those who work across all of our markets.

Celebrating and recognizing the team who makes it all happen is a key part of winning as a sales professional. Many salespeople feel like they’re essentially operating their own business, and although this is true, success does not happen without the team behind them.

When I think back on our first 24 years as a company, it all starts with the team and their representation of our core values. For 24 years, we’ve had 5 Core Values: Be Honest, Listen, Work Hard, Follow Through and Over Deliver. GKB’s core values are non-negotiables for being a great teammate. For the first time ever, we added a 6th core value: Teamwork. To win bigger and more often, we know we have to work better as a team than we ever have before. This begins with an appreciation of the support team who makes it all happen. As a salesperson, how can you do this?

1.       Treat them like your most important customer: Do you know their likes and dislikes? Do you know their favorite sports team or type of music? Their favorite food or something they do in their free time? The team that supports you are just as, and often more, important than your customers when it comes to winning. Take them out for a meal—lunch or dinner, coffee or drinks.

2.       Involve them early and often: Make sure they know what’s coming. A big win in sales often creates a ton of urgency for the support team. If it all gets dropped out of the sky it feels like they’re not a part of the process. If you keep them informed, they will feel like they’re a part of the win as they should be.

3.       Thank Them out of the blue: If you spent time getting to know their FORD, you will know the best way to thank them. It is great to be creative when thanking them, but you can also take the simple approach which may be just as meaningful. An email, phone call or a post on social media are all efficient ways to thank them. One creative way to do it is using Vidyard. It is a free, easy to use platform that allows you to record a video and then put the thumbnail and link of the video into an email.

I’d like to end this Time to Win thanking two teammates, Dan Carlson and Debbie Brown. It is because of their encouragement to me and advocation internally that Time to Win exists.

Vidyard Recording