Getting More From Your Sales Team
Growing your business usually means growing your sales. If you’re looking for increased sales, it pays to look at how you might get more out of your sales team.
It seems like an obvious starting point for increasing sales, but many businesses overlook what’s happening with their sales teams when considering how to grow sales. Instead, business owners can focus on broader advertising and marketing efforts in the hopes of creating new leads but, there are many layers to a sales role and, each provides opportunities for improvement. Below we’ll touch on some of the key areas you might want to review if you think you could drive more performance from your sales team.
Seven considerations for optimising sales team performance
Growing your sales, means making sure your sales team are firing on all cylinders. We think there are seven key areas to review your business against in relation to your sales team, which can help improve your overall sales results. The seven sales considerations are outlined below.
1. Sales Targets
It seems obvious, but many businesses don’t have simple, easy to understand and measure sales targets in place for their sales teams. Without a clear target, how will sales staff know what they’re working towards?
2. Sales Incentives
Related to having targets, it’s also important to consider sales incentives for your team. If you want them to really hit some big growth targets, think about what it’s worth to you and incentivise accordingly.
3. Sales Management
For many salespeople, guidance and support are key to achieving great outcomes (i.e. meeting or exceeding targets). If your style is hands-off, that may work for some, but many salespeople will need more of a push. Whether it’s focusing attention on the most productive use of their time, defining activity targets or support form technical experts within the business, there’s plenty of ways you can help your sales team to thrive.
4. Sales Processes
This is about giving a clear understanding of what your businesses sales journey looks like. You should have clear steps that you take prospective customers through, along with specific actions or targets for each of the steps. Ideally, this process will be based on what you know works – converts – well for you. A clear sales process helps to provide your team confidence, while giving your customers a consistent experience of your business.
5. Sales Structures
It’s important for salespeople to be clear about the structure their working in. Are they completely autonomous and self-sufficient, or do they work as part of a bigger sales team? Can they sell all products or services, or do they just focus on a few? Do they need to have expertise or, can they draw on others to fill specific gaps? Being clear about where the sales lines are drawn in your business can help your team to focus their attention on the most productive use of their time.
6. Sales Resources
From product related items like samples, brochures or price lists, to typical tools of the trade such as phones, vehicles, or CRM systems, it’s important that your team have the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. See if your team are as equipped as they should be and, if not, focus on getting them what they need to do the job.
7. Sales Training
As with all professional jobs, the world of sales changes constantly. It’s important that you keep your sales team up-to-speed with new developments in your business and industry, but that they’re also kept up-to-date with sales training opportunities that will help them to improve and refine their craft.
How do we help our clients improve their sales teams?
Our approach to supporting our clients is to work through their current sales approach and help to identify any areas for improvement. It’s very rare to find a company with their entire sales process buttoned down. In most cases, this will identify specific sales related actions that can be applied but, in some instances, there might be supporting activity required, such as clarifying the business position or refining your offering via your business website. The goal is to identify the actions that can improve sales, ranking them in order based on what is likely to have the greatest positive impact.
Is it time to look at getting more from your sales team?
We can help you to identify ways to get more sales from your sales team. To find out more, arrange a free chat with one of our team today.