Beyond Quotas: Increasing Employee Engagement With Your Favorite Function—Sales

BY Jessica Swenson | March 06, 2025

“What if I told you that your company already has a massive untapped sales force?” Alexandria Warren, VP of solutions consulting at Velocity Global, launched her thought leadership spotlight From Day One’s Houston conference with this question.

Research shows that organizations with revenue-focused cultures experience significant increases in sales productivity, profit margins, employee engagement, and cross-department collaboration. By putting the customer’s experience and the company’s revenue goals at the center of everything, you enable all teams—not just sales—to reimagine the impact of their daily work, creating an environment of empathy, innovation, and retention.

Sales teams used to rely on in-office camaraderie to celebrate their wins and commiserate over their losses. Today’s hybrid and remote environments remove that built-in connection. Combine that with a sustained pressure to perform, and you get a sense of isolation that reduces resilience and can lead to burnout. 

Additionally, companies have historically limited revenue awareness to sales and marketing teams. By expanding this focus across teams and functions, you create safe, collaborative environments where everyone shares both the responsibility and benefits of growth. This is key to building a sales-driven, audible-ready culture that can flexibly shift to meet customer and business needs.

Warren shared seven unexpected ways to facilitate this transformation and drive a cross-functional sales focus in your organization, some of which have already been implemented at Velocity Global.

First, empower your workforce with sales intelligence from day one. It’s important for people in all phases of the employee lifecycle to understand the customer’s pain points, the solutions that the company provides, and how their role impacts both. They also need visibility to how the company is performing and the influence their work can have on that performance. 

“Forrester found that when workplaces have a common vocabulary rooted in customer value, and they empower teams with that, they generate 2.4X higher revenue growth and 2X higher profitability growth than [companies] without that alignment,” said Warren.

Velocity Global starts this integration as soon as their new hire onboarding program, giving new employees a very early indicator of how they fit into the organization. Team members are also trained to identify paint points and turn everyday conversations into an opportunity for business growth. Additionally, the company hosts quarterly brown-bag lunch events where employees learn about new product use cases, customer case studies, and the impact of their work.

Next, teach employees to sell without selling by being good problem-solvers and storytellers. Training an entire workforce to center resolution of the customer’s pain can require a total, yet vital, mindset shift. Business opportunities increase when everyone is accountable for revenue growth and armed with the language, understanding, and ability to have an intelligent conversation about customer pain points and company offerings, says Warren. 

Alexandria Warren, VP of solutions consulting at Velocity Global, led the thought leadership spotlight 

“The best lead and the most authentic intro is from a non-salesperson who has the same pain that their friend, colleague, or industry partner has,” Warren said .“Everyone wants to help someone in their network, right?” Providing employees with the skills, knowledge, and language empowers them to elevate a simple conversation into a potential business partnership.

Designing cross-functional KPIs and incentive programs is another key point, says Warren. Velocity Global recently implemented a program that requires its R&D and products teams to engage directly with sales partners to identify pain points and increase efficiency within the customer sales process. “When we have mutually aligned goals, we are all working towards the same vision,” she said. 

Finding ways to link goals and KPIs across teams allows the entire organization to share in the wins and losses of the sales team. Incentive programs like awards and recognition for customer-facing service leads, driving exceptional deal cycles, and making strategic connections help demonstrate the value of everyone’s contributions.

Create mutual empathy through job shadowing experiences, says Warren. Customers and prospects give frontline sales teams feedback on products and solutions, an experience which can be challenging to truly understand without seeing it firsthand. Job shadowing programs allow non-sales teams to gain customer-facing sales experience, providing a more robust perspective on the daily work of their sales partners. A 2021 SHRM survey demonstrated that a majority of organizations (89%) with some type of job shadowing program also reported improvements in their employee experience. 

This expanded visibility provides a more robust perspective on the daily workflow of their partners and how their own role can impact that sales lifecycle, creating relationships based on mutual empathy and trust. It also positions the organization to be more flexible for out-of-scope requests or accelerated project timelines.

Next, create a loss library that’s accessible to all teams. A shared resource tied to key performance indicators (KPIs) can encourage cross-team analysis and brainstorming, leading to fresh insights and sales breakthroughs. Bringing in different perspectives strengthens collaboration and innovation.

Warren also encourages promoting friendly competition across departments. Fun, low-stakes internal contests can build camaraderie and expose sales teams to new ideas from experts in other business areas, sparking creative approaches to problem-solving. Finally, empower sales staff to turn away work from misaligned clients. Taking on the wrong clients can drain energy and create frustration, while allowing sales teams to focus on high-quality leads fosters engagement, respect, and stronger cross-functional trust.

“Imagine the power of a company where everyone plays a role in revenue generation,” she said. “The result is faster growth, more deals, a competitive edge, with [the entire organization] consistently attuned to what the customer needs—and a wholly supported, passionate sales organization to carry the bag.”

Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Velocity Global, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. 

Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.

(Photos by Annie Mulligan for From Day One)

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