Posted by Paul Anderson
Your recipe to a successful sales team
In 2015: you started your business with renewed strategy and planning. While what you did then was essential, it’s imperative that you do not become rigid and stick to the same strategies. Rather you need to continuously develop strategies as you move with time. This holds definite importance for the most important aspect of your business development puzzle which is SALES.
So what are you doing to build your sales team?
If you are still unsure, take a step back and read the below-mentioned pointers. You may just find something relevant that can be added into your existing strategy.
# 1 Share Best Practices
Research suggests that people are more likely to perform better in an environment where they witness the winning experience of others. This applies to sales teams too. If you share your winning experiences with the team, inevitably your team is bound to feel motivated and push their limits in the job.
So make it a regular practice with your team. Share your stories on what actually works in the field; become their role model; and inspire them to show the same steel.
And remember – it can just not only be about you. Whenever any of your sales rep outperforms or cracks a really hard deal – make him share his experience with all.
When coming from someone like them, sales reps are bound to get influenced in the positive way.
# 2 Analyze Your Wins
A successful sales culture always thrives on counting the wins more than the failures. So you need to look more upon the won opportunities than the ones that got struck off in the middle of the sales process. Also merely mentioning the success is not sufficient. In-depth analysis of the success (i.e. the closed sale) is imperative. For instance –
How the relationship was built with the prospect?
How the prospect’s problems were identified and solved?
How was the product/service pitched in the conversation?
Basically a walk-through of all the elements that drove the successful sale.
Remember, sharing and understanding success builds confidence in both the successful salesperson and the team. So share wins and flow positivity throughout.
# 3 Show the value
Do not merely tell your salespeople WHAT they need to do. Rather increase the effectiveness of your training by making them understand the value behind doing it. Give them compelling reasons that convince them to take the suggested actions or develop the required skills.
The best way to do this is to align your organizational sales goals with their individual rewards and incentives. Reflect on each salesperson in the team and ask “how can this person be naturally motivated to get the results?”
Let’s say if you have implemented a few enterprise software applications for sales process. To ensure that you get the best ROI out of them – you need a complete user adoption.
For persuading the sales reps to use the software you can do something like this –
Incentives to the reps that stringently use the software for executing their work!!!
This announcement can itself be a BIG reason for your sales reps to get motivated.
# 4 Chunk down the work
Train your reps to break down the work. Looking at piles of work makes any sales person overwhelmed that often mars the confidence. On the contrary chunking down the work into small pieces benefits. It enables the sales person to focus on different areas of the work one at a time. Based on the work assigned, the sales person can develop the sub-skills; let’s say each for each segment.
