Stories are born every day in simple ways and some grow to be legends. Here is our story.

Sales Tribe gathered for the first time on November 26th 2012– a fresh Monday start, where a gathering of our small team (a mix of 5 women and 1 man) of sales, marketing and one industrial design professionals resulted in something quite magnificent, no need to be modest here – our final, collective brand which you all now know as Sales Tribe.

So there we were in Maya’s living room, the official ‘board room’ for Corporate Coach Australia and above the sales office for Sales Inventory Profile, gazing into the bamboo trees that shot to the ceiling.

Maya called the meeting because of our growing frustration that neither of our official names really sums up who we are. Our company is called Corporate Coach, reflecting our starting point as Australia’s first professional coaching service back in 1994. Now in 2012 we have grown and do so much more than Coach. Our second identity Sales Inventory Profile (SIP) is one of our products – a sales IQ technology. Problem is, that doesn’t reflect the total service that product is a part of – hiring people that can actually sell – does it?

It’s time for a new brand that captures all of our services equally. We are all pretty clear on who we are and what we do for a living- helping our clients build High Performance Sales teams…but that’s way too wordy, urgh.

So there we were, on this Monday morning, brainstorming what we should call ourselves?

Something that encapsulates who we are and what we do – or something simple and completely random (we were inspired by Virgin and Apple for example)? Most of us loved the random, every day mundane type of names that are easy to spell and create curiosity and impact.  Maya threw out “Frog” just as an example, which had enough impact that it made it to the final round of evaluations – was it that Maya was in charge of the marker pen?.

We debated over whether we should position ourselves as “smart” or “team-oriented” through our brand. Should we call ourselves something that screams intelligence and performance like “Smart”, “Avance” or trend more towards building teams, and towards collaboration? Or perhaps something young, fun, feisty, female? Someone, I think it was Eliza, threw out Bamboo – strong, durable, fast-growth and something that presents our history, this was inspired by the bamboo trees at Maya’s. Nonetheless, Bamboo became another favourite.

So there we were that Monday. 15 minutes walked by, 30 minutes ran by, 90 minutes flew by as more and more names were added to our burgeoning list. People were on their phones, searching up words in the thesaurus, adding to our inspired ideas. Time came when we were rounding down to the Finals.

It came down to “Tribe” or “Smart”. It was a 3 to 2 for Tribe. Tribe it was.

Then came problem #2: upon searching online we quickly realised that we weren’t the only ones to love this exotic, primal title. Tribe.com was taken, and after searching other domains we settled on Sales Tribe – blending both a hint as to what we do (selling the World’s First Sales IQ Technology!) and what we build for our clients: Tribes.

After our 2 hours of our creative branding meeting, the “geek” (Maya’s word not mine!) in Maya did some background research on tribes. That night, our inboxes received a small email from Maya about why Sales Tribe really is an awesome and suitable name for us.

So what is Tribe – and why does it fit us like sun-and-shine?

Here’s what Maya found and why she adores our new identity:

“This last one really appealed to me as I am a Taurean and that is symbolised by a boy cow (yes I know what they are called and that also has lots of negative selling connotations, ie BS) but the idea of growth and lineage based on the female genetic line and the other meaning of tribe being one third of the Roman empire seemed a great name for a huge organisation (soon to be empire) lead by a woman, a mother and a Taurean.”

That is the story of how Sales Tribe first gathered in an office in Sydney. No birds or bees – just great ideas from great minds. November 26^th, a Sagittarius. Just a small side fact; Beethovan, Churchill, Maud the Queen of Norway and Tina Turner (and Eliza Doueihi) are/were Sagittarians too. That’s definitely saying something about Sales Tribe’s future; look out for us!