If your sales team isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped and you’re racking your brains trying to find out why, it may be worth looking outside your business to see what other businesses are doing.
Below are just some of the secrets of highly successful sales teams, all of which you can and should implement in your company. Your revenue sheet will thank you!
1. Specialisation
Your sales team need to spend as much time as possible focusing on selling. They don’t need to be bogged down with admin and paperwork, or any other task related to the job but that doesn’t actually generate revenue.
You can help your sales team by creating other specialist teams, such as lead generation, project management or proposals. This enables your business to have specialists focusing on and excelling at what they do best. For your sales team, this means selling and bringing in revenue.
2. Motivation and rewards
Each member of your sales team should be paid adequately for their work. However, what attracts the very best talent and pushes sales professionals to go above and beyond in the name of their work is rewards.
Corporate reward programs make use of clever psychology to get the very best from the individual, to turn corporate goals into personal targets. These schemes offer just the right incentives at the right times to keep sales people highly motivated and focused on their goals.
Those working within this industry expect more than just a standard salary for the extra work they do to hit targets. If you want to attract and hang on to the best and brightest sales professionals, you’ll need to offer a highly competitive rewards package.
3. Time management
Every second of a sales person’s time means money for your business. As well as the salary you’re paying them, it is the revenue they could potentially be generating with new contracts and orders.
The very best sales teams have time management down to a fine art. They use software, time trackers, CRM systems and project management programmes to plan out and manage every minute of the day. Not only that, it is vital to look at types of systems that manage company knowledge, so that every salesperson can seek for answers from a centralised system, rather than bugging their team leaders with questions asked elsewhere in the company.
The aim is to minimise wasted time and make the sales team as efficient as possible. If you can master time management, your team will close more deals.
4. Communication and team work
With sales professionals often being pitted against each other, it’s easy to forget that team work is actually a vital part of the profession. A strong sales team is one that works together, shares tips and advice and also provides support.
Salespeople face rejection virtually on an hourly basis, so they need team support in order to keep their motivation, morale and commitment from wavering. A good sales department is encouraging, communicative and inspirational for each member of the team. This makes for a positive culture and working environment, which can be just as motivational as a package of rewards and benefits.
Takeaway
Different people are motivated by different things and for some, motivation means more than just money. Successful sales teams are moving the needles not because of the monetary reward, but because of all the “intangibles” – the sense of camaraderie, the sweet taste of achievements and the inspiring company culture.
Working toward the adoption of the secrets will allow your sales teams – along with your profits – to soar. The time for adopting those is now. Let’s get it done.