How to Build a Strong Sales Team
Sales. It can be the part of your company that determines the success or failure of your business.
Meeting your sales goals can be easier said than done. In 2020, about 40% of businesses did not meet their sales goals.
Companies that were able to do this did a few things right. One of those things was having an efficient sales team.
How do you build the best sales team possible? This guide will give you some business tips.
Clear Communication
One thing you want to make sure you do as a manager is having clear communication with your sales team. Doing this will allow you to tell them what your expectations from them are and what the goals are from all of their hard work.
This helps make sure that everybody is on the same page. It also gets everybody more motivated to work together to accomplish the same goal.
Having good communication is supposed to make somebody's job easier because there should be no confusion about what each person is supposed to do. This should help avoid people from getting frustrated and should help avoid there being any miscommunications.
Rigorous Interview Process
Before you even get to communicate expectations with your sales team, you should have screened them through your interview process. This is the perfect time to get to know your potential team better and to make sure that they are getting involved for the right reason.
Ask them questions to see if they are proactive, see if they are considerate to other people, give them a sample sale and see if they have the skills to close a real sale. These are all things that you can do during the interview process.
Another thing that you can screen during this stage is if your sales team has the proper motivation for wanting this job. Are they all about the money and having one foot out the door? Or are they looking to help build a culture here and be a team player?
Screen these candidates during the interview process and mold your team based on which candidates impress you the most during the interview stage.
Create a Culture
The next thing that you are going to want to do is create a culture that emphasizes success. You need something that your team is going to buy into and is willing to work harder to achieve.
Does your culture center around wanting to be the best? Does it center around being the most courteous to your customers? Does it center around helping your company expand?
These are all things you need to consider as a manager before you announce what type of culture you are trying to create for your employees. When you speak to your sales team for the first time and make that first impression, you need to have a clear goal and a clear vision in mind.
That is what will make your sales team buy-in and help build a positive work culture for your company.
The Right Tools
Something that you should not overlook when it comes to sales is having the proper tools to make sure that your team is running efficiently. Look at some of these tools for b2b prospecting to see what we mean.
There is one tool that helps you scan business cards and allows you to put notes next to each of them. That can help you keep track of important information that you need to know about each of your clients.
Then, there is a tool that assists you with writing and scheduling your emails. This can allow you to write out emails in advance while waiting to send them out at the time that you think most people will be ready to see them.
Besides that, another tool allows you to gain email addresses simply by linking a URL that the email address is attached to. It can save you a lot of time when it comes to gaining contacts.
All of these tools can help your team run more efficiently, leaving them more time to generate sales.
Give Incentives
Finally, there is little that can motivate the sales team more than a reward for all of their hard work. There are many ways that you can do this.
One way is to give a prize to the salesman that does the best in sales for a certain period. This can be the most overall sales in one month or whoever does the best job of upselling a new product in the first two weeks of its release.
Regardless, offer a prize that will appeal to your entire team, such as a small cash bonus.
Another way that you can approach this is if you offer a team incentive. Force your sales team to work together and tell them if they meet a combined quota, they will get a reward as a team. An example of this can be going on a team retreat to the Bahamas if they perform well enough.
Build Your Sales Team
These are just a few of the ways that you can help strengthen your sales team. While the best way could be to offer a reward for their hard work, you can do things like build a culture, communicate clearly, provide them with the right tools, and screen hard.
If you do all of this, your sales team should improve in no time. For more sales tips, read some of our other articles.
