How to Create a Winning Company Culture with Core Values

By Pino Vallejo

Early on in any startup organization, the leadership is often focused on the tactical elements: customer acquisition, building vendor relationships, setting up monitoring tools, establishing metrics and accounting. 

As the company grows and you start hiring to fill the various roles throughout the organization, you need a good base of values, a company mission, and a vision to create a winning culture. 

Most importantly, you need to create core company values. 

Company values help define a company culture. Your company values should communicate what is important to your organization, influence behavior, and inspire people to take action.  Core values should exemplify the fundamentals of your organization and its beliefs. 

We are often asked what makes our organization successful. The answer if simple – our company culture and core values play a huge role. 

From a sales leadership perspective, here are some forward-thinking examples to consider when creating your core values. 

Motivate to innovate. To innovate is to challenge the status quo and introduce new methods and ways of doing things if the existing system is broken. Employees that say yes more often and work hard for their customers are the ones closing the deals and creating loyalty. 

Advocate for your colleagues and customers. When your customers need support, it is essential to be there, answer their questions and offer advice that will improve performance. Anticipating your customers’ needs is what it means to go the distance. From an internal perspective, your colleagues know they can depend on you. 

Elevate your performance. Do everything you can to raise your game and the game of those around you. This includes education around new programs and product lines so you can help inform your customers. Gaining more education is part of what it means to create more value for yourself and your organization.

Celebrate your wins. Last but certainly not least, when you get those big wins, it is important to celebrate. If you have a team of people that tend to stay heads-down most of the time, working to maximize their potential, they need a break too.  Rewarding their hard work will promote a positive culture that attracts the right type of talent.

The Pax8 sales organization has nearly doubled in size in less than four months. This fast and furious growth must be managed properly or else it can hinder rather than help the company. Our company established core company values early on because we believe that it drives positive behavior and creates an ecosystem where our employees can truly thrive. 

Nick Heddy oversees the Pax8 sales team, as well as the company's sales processes.

He is an experienced IT and telecommunications sales executive who combines expert strategic planning, business planning, technology, and leadership skills with a track record of delivering strong financial results and profitable growth within highly-competitive markets. In addition, Nick has a long track record of developing sales team members into sales leaders and leveraging the talents of the team to achieve success.

Most recently, Nick served as director of sales for Cbeyond, a national Cloud and Communications provider, where he played an integral role in the implementation of Cbeyond's highly successful sales model. He directed the daily activities in the Denver market, leading sales representatives, sales management, and support staff.

Nick holds a BA in Entrepreneuring from Central Michigan University and an MBA from the University of Colorado Business School.