Sales Teams

Apr 06 2020

Reducing Sales Ramp Up Time

One of the unfortunate truths of the sales landscape is the amount of turnover that occurs within sales teams. Reps typically stay with one company for less than two years before moving on to their next endeavor. For this reason, reducing your sales ramp up time is one of the most important aspects of maximizing your sales potential. The cost of employee turnover can take a toll on a business that isn’t prepared and maximizing the time each sales rep has with the team. There are a few things that you can do to really reduce that ramp up time and make sure you are getting the most out of your sales team.

Reducing sales ramp up time

Reducing sales ramp up time means you are reducing the time it takes reps to produce their first dollar for your company. When you take on a new rep, they will obviously need to be trained on the product they will be selling, general sales coaching, and the voice you want your sales team to take on when selling your product. Developing ways to streamline this process will be huge for your ability to maximize each rep’s time with your company.

While this initial training is an important step in getting the new hire up to speed, there is more to it than the simple onboarding process. Everboarding, or the ongoing learning of each rep while on the job, as well as live coaching for reps during sales interactions, are other methods we will discuss.

Effective onboarding and training

One of the most effective things you can do when developing training habits for new hires is to make the training process easily consumable for your reps. When a new sales rep is added to a sales team, they are expected to learn a vast amount of information in a short period of time. This inevitably means they will forget most of this information once they need to put it into practice. Training and onboarding your new sales reps is more effective if you break up the information and deliver it in small doses, over a period of time.

With this strategy, it will be easier for your reps to digest the smaller amounts of information instead of having to labor over huge binders full of details about your company’s process. We’ve all had the experience of having to cram for a test, trying to consume as much information as possible in order to do well. A week later, that information is typically forgotten. In sales, your reps need to retain the information they are consuming in order to remain confident through all sales interactions.

Everboarding

Everboarding refers to the ongoing learning for sales reps. This is where taking those smaller pieces of content and introducing it to reps over time comes into play. It allows the reps to really focus on certain portions of their learning while putting it into practice. For a lot of people, learning by doing is the best way to get a grasp on something new. Everboarding allows this to happen seamlessly and keeps your reps learning throughout their ramp up time and beyond.

Continued sales coaching

New hires will need more than just feedback from sales managers. They need to know how to reverse some of the shortcomings they may be experiencing so that they can continue to improve. Too many sales managers take the simple approach of just handing out feedback to their reps with no substance behind it. Instead, managers should take this feedback as coaching opportunities.

Sales coaching is too often looked at as a “nice to have” luxury and not often enough as a necessity for maximizing a rep’s abilities. As the sales manager, you want to develop your reps skills and be able to show them exactly how they can improve. This is where live coaching can be a huge factor in reducing ramp up time and developing your reps.

At SalesTalk Technologies, we offer our Coaching4U™ module to help with this. It allows for real-time coaching opportunities, within sales interactions. It has the added benefit of remaining a non-intrusive way of developing your reps in live situations. Again, putting things into practice is one of the best ways to reduce the time it takes to get up to speed. Sales coaching will inevitably accomplish this.

Offer updated training videos

A variety of teaching methods always makes for a more effective learning experience. Consider using training videos to supplement the manuals you hand out to new hires and the live coaching that you utilize. Videos are an easier medium to consume for most people. It’s good to have the documents there to reference and read through, but having actual video available is a more digestible form of training for most.

The key to these videos is to keep them updated and relevant. When your product updates and analytics start showing certain trends, videos should be updated and swapped in for the old videos. Customized content will be a huge factor in reducing ramp up time for reps.

Practice makes perfect

You can hammer home all of the information and content you want to sales reps, but actually allowing them to put all of this into practice is where reps will really start to progress. By practicing, reps will retain information better because they are seeing what they’re learning being put to use. Off the bat, it may seem counterintuitive to give your reps time to practice as this isn’t producing revenue. But in reality, you are giving them the opportunity to weed out mistakes that may result in a loss of sale on the backend. By taking the time to sure up any shortcomings in a reps repertoire is going to get better results when it counts.

The right technology

Sales enablement technology is an overarching solution to reducing ramp up time. It sures up every aspect of the sales process and makes it easier to provide relevant information, consume that information, and put it into effective practice. A 2019 study showed that 42% of sales reps felt as if they did not have enough information going into a sales call and 84% of sales executives refer to reps’ content searching as the top impediment for sales. Having the right technology in place to circumvent these issues is going to reduce the ramp up time for new reps. Giving them the ability to reference the relevant information before going into a sales call and reducing the time they need to seek out answers will get them to where they need to be in order to start making money.

Find out how SalesTalk Technologies can improve your sales ramp rate

At SalesTalk Technologies, we have a suite of sales enablement tools to help you with your entire sales process. This includes the process of taking on new sales reps and getting them up to speed quickly and efficiently. Through tools like Coaching4U™, What2Know™ and What2Say™, you have what you need to keep the learning process going in the right direction. Head over to our website and request a demo to start reducing your sales ramp up time, and start maximizing your sale opportunities.

Mar 30 2020

Selling Smart with Sales Enablement Tools

Now more than ever, it’s important for businesses and sales teams to utilize the power of sales enablement tools. The way consumer buying power has increased and with the amount of competition there is out there on the market, the sales process has had to become more complex and involved in order to appease the customer with relevancy. Sales enablement tools give sales teams the ability to conveniently maintain relevance with each and every sales interaction. Keep the customer’s attention and start selling smart with sales enablement tools.

What are sales enablement tools and how can they help?

Putting it simply, sales enablement tools help salespeople sell more effectively and more confidently. These tools give sales teams the content that they need in order to stay relevant in every single sales interaction. This can come in several different forms, depending on that specific interaction and which step in the sales pipeline that prospect is currently on. Each tool provides content that is easy to consume for the sales rep using it. This way, that rep is able to come off as confident when selling to a prospect.

Prospective customers want to get clear answers to their questions about a product they are interested in. If your sales team isn’t able to provide clear, confident answers each and every time, that prospect will probably look elsewhere for services. Sales enablement tools are used to circumvent that and provide your team with what they need when they need it.

Sales enablement tools examples in action

As we mentioned above, there are a variety of different sales enablement tools to increase lead conversions. Here are a few examples of sales enablement tools and how they can help your sales team improve.

Sales Scripts

If you took an honest poll of sales reps and their preparedness for sales calls, chances are the majority of them would say they aren’t fully equipped to go into a sales interaction. Sales scripts allow you to lay out the talking points for sales interactions so that you can ensure that each rep has the necessary information to bring to the table during a call.

Email Templates

Too many sales teams use generic, unpersonalized emails to follow up with clients. In order to stand out from the pack, creating personalized templates that your team can use to follow up with prospects after a sales call will go a long way in keeping you at the forefront of their mind. Sales enablement tools can allow you to create an efficient process for this, having the information discussed during the sales interaction ready to go for you to include in these follow up emails.

Live Coaching Tools

As part of our suite of sales enablement tools, we at SalesTalk Technologies offer the Coaching4U™ module. This tool allows you to coach your sales reps in real-time, during sales interactions. You won’t have to worry about being too intrusive with the sales process either, as this tool gives you the ability to coach your reps while still staying in the background as much as possible. Coaching tools are a huge factor in keeping your sales team strong and confident in their sales efforts.

Sales Intelligence

We touched on this previously, but your sales reps need to come across as really knowing the product they are selling. You wouldn’t buy from someone who wasn’t able to answer the questions you have about a product, so why would your prospects be any different?

Each sales rep needs a broad knowledge base about your product and the talking points that they should be hitting with each individual sales interaction. The reality is, this can be a lot of information for a sales rep to remember. This is where sales enablement tools can really shine. Providing easily consumable content that highlights these talking points as well as the ability for you or a sales manager to coach a rep through difficult questions in real time will make your team more knowledgeable through each interaction.

Sales Analytics

Tracking the data of each sales interaction is important, you’ll need that information in order to develop effective sales strategies in the future. It also allows your reps access to vital details into what are proving to be successful sales interactions and which aren’t working as well. Being able to reference this data empowers your team as well as yourself as the sales leader. Just as you want your sales reps to remain confident in their interactions, you need to be confident in the strategies you are developing for your team. Without proper data and analytics, you’ll have a more difficult time accomplishing this.

Sales reps are inherently competitive. Seeing what their colleagues are doing to outperform them will only serve to fuel that competition and make them want to get better. They are more likely to borrow ideas and strategies from peers than anyone else, so having a peer’s sales analytics for them to reference will keep everyone on the same page of what is working.

Lead Generation

One way sales enablement tools really shine is in lead generation. This is perhaps the most important part of the sales process. You can’t sell to people that aren’t there, so you need an effective way of generating leads and bringing in the most prospective customers you can. It’s simple: the more leads you generate, the more chances you have to land a new customer.

Sales enablement tools allow you to generate contextual content that will bring in the type of leads that are valuable to your business. It allows your team to be more organized in the way each lead is categorized and how they move along through the sales pipeline. Remaining organized is key to being effective with your sales interactions. You don’t want to provide old information to a lead who is in a different stage of the buyer’s journey. Sales enablement tools can keep this information relevant.

The data you collect through your sales enablement tools will also be important in the process of lead generation. Fall back on what the data shows as effective strategies when generating leads. Your tools will make it easy to see which strategies these are and can give you a more efficient process in determining this.

SalesTalk Sales Enablement Tools

At SalesTalk Technologies, we offer our clients a suite of sales enablement tools that will help with every aspect of the sales process. Our easy to use, effective modules will give you insight into what is working in your sales interactions and what isn’t. If your sales team finds that they aren’t equipped with the content they need to succeed, or if you as a sales manager are looking for ways to better coach your team to more conversions, SalesTalk can provide a solution. Get in touch with our team to request a demo of our modules, and start converting more leads.

Jan 14 2020

How to Run a Successful Sales Team

In the simplest terms, managing a sales team consists of hiring talented sales people, giving them the information about the product they’re selling, giving them the tools they need to sell, and watching the customers filter in. However, there’s a lot more that goes into running a successful sales team than that.

Managing sales takes a lot of hard work on the part of the sales manager in order to see their team hit the goals set for them and continue to grow the business. In the following blog, we will detail how to run a successful sales team and keep your business growing.

How to run a successful sales team

It takes planning, strategy, dedication and execution to run a successful sales team. You will need to provide your reps with more than just the tools to sell. Expecting to hire the right people and hope they figure out how to sell effectively and efficiently won’t get you very far. It takes participation on your part to ensure your team is bringing in customers and maintaining all important business and customer relationships.

Have deliverable goals

Expectations and accountability are important aspects to any position in a company. Without knowing what they’re aiming for, how can a team measure its success?

You should be providing your sales team with goals that are both detailed and attainable. Your team shouldn’t be left guessing on what they’re expected to achieve. This means having your expectations for your team readily available and properly communicated to them.

Perhaps the most important aspect of setting goals for your team is making them both challenging enough to push the envelope but also realizing these goals need to be realistic. This means putting in the legwork to figure out the numbers your team will be able to hit and what will promote business growth.

You should be looking into and researching things like the business you’re in, pricing of similar products, realizing how long you’ve been in the game when compared to your competitors, your client base, and how many leads you produce in a given time period.

Looking back at numbers of previous quarters will also help you develop the proper goals for your team. As a rule, if a few members of your team aren’t meeting the goals, chances are the responsibility falls on those individuals. However, if a majority of your team are consistently missing the goals you’ve set, your goals may need to be altered as they are probably not realistic.

Continue training and development

We mentioned that simply having the tools in place isn’t enough to breed success within your sales team. You want your team to be constantly learning how to better utilize these tools. This means that training and development sessions should be used to empower your team to perform better and more efficiently with what they’re given.

Give your team access to consistent training on things like product information, prospecting, time management, strategizing, role-playing, and effective communication so that they can constantly be learning and adapting. Continuous learning should be a part of your business’s culture.

Communicate regularly

Communication is one of the most important parts to any aspect of a successful business. When it pertains to sales and managing a sales team, proper communication can directly affect how your team performs for your business. Your team needs a constant flow of information covering product changes, industry trends, company news, etc.

Keeping a good communication flow with your sales team will keep each individual in the loop and on the same page as everyone else. This will cut down on mistakes made due to misinformation while also keeping your team engaged in their goals and expectations. Effective communication also helps to eliminate any wasted time trying to dig up information or correcting mistakes that were made by a misinformed team member.

Understand & clarify customer needs

Making sure your sales team has a full understanding of customer needs puts your business in a position to give the customer what they need, when they need it. In order to gather this information to communicate to your team you should be utilizing things like focus groups, researching keywords in your industry, and being present on social media to identify what your customers are looking for.

By understanding all of this, you can create the content needed to provide your sales team with the most effective tools to sell. By having these tools in place and encouraging your team to be in touch with their individual customer needs, you can anticipate future needs.

Encourage quality sales conversations

The sales world has changed over recent years in terms of where customers are getting their information. Chances are, when your sales team members have their first conversation with a customer, that customer will have already done some basic research on the product. This means that your team needs to be immediately and sustainably relevant to that prospect, because if they aren’t, the prospect will disengage – quickly.

By encouraging your team to be properly prepared for what the customer needs before going into a call will greatly improve sales conversations. Have your team do the research on what typical customers are looking for in terms of information by the time they are in contact with your team. Having a goal in place before a call is made, and having information ready for customers that align with that goal, is going to inevitably improve the quality of your team’s sales conversations.

SalesTalk Technologies: Successful sales teams, successful sales

SalesTalk Technologies gives your business the tools they need to ensure you’re able to effectively run your sales team. By streamlining the sales process and providing relevant content to your team, SalesTalk helps you build a successful sales team that will lead to successful sales. Head to our website to request a demo and get your sales team on track to growing your business.