A well-run sales team is the most integral aspect for the long term success of a company. By connecting and setting your sales team up for success, you will give them more ability to thrive and achieve better results to grow your business.
Empowering your sales teams
Sales effectiveness is key. Your customers will not wait around for the process to occur or for your sales team to give them the answers and information they need to make their decision. With a streamlined program like SalesTalk, each individual sales rep will have the relevant content that they need when selling your product by providing them with “What2Say” and “What2Send.” on every sales call.
"50% of customers have left a brand for a competitor who was able to stay more relevant and better satisfy their needs."
-InMoment, inmoment.wpengine.com
What does a sales team do?
A sales team serves as the front lines for your business. They are there to develop relationships with prospective customers and grow that relationship from prospective to a converted customer or client. The sales team members are there to bridge the gap between your company’s products and services and the customers themselves, providing the information necessary to promote what you are selling. Ultimately, the goals of your sales team should be to sell your product, retain your customer base, and to continue to grow your business.
Why are sales teams important?
Your business has a product to sell. But how can you effectively put that product out there so that people want to buy it? Your sales team is put into place to sell your product by identifying and building customer relationships with the right people at the right time. This is why a sales team is so important to a growing business.
Not only is your sales team going to be effective at closing deals, but they should also be adept at identifying individual customer needs. A quality sales team will look for these small details to keep your customers coming back for more of your product, instead of looking elsewhere to meet their needs.
How to build a sales team
Hiring the right sales people for your company is essential to growing your business and keeping it thriving. If you don’t have the right people in place to sell your product, it will be almost impossible to develop or continue a successful business model.
Determine the types of sales people you need
To be effective, your sales team will need to have members willing to go to bat for your product and deliver the message your business is intending to deliver. It’s recommended to go after those sales people who have experience landing deals and show that they have the eagerness to continue doing so. You want your product sold by people who are enthusiastic about what they do. The customer should feel this enthusiasm when hearing about your product from your sales team.
Have an effective training process in place for your team
Giving your team continued access to relevant sales training will get and keep everyone on the same page. As a sales leader or sales manager, you have the knowledge that is needed to convert potential customers into real ones. Developing a training program that takes this knowledge and distributes it to your entire sales team will keep everyone using the same proven model. Consistency, in this regard, will ensure that your customers are getting the right information at the right time.
Give your team the tools they need to succeed
Your team can be made up of the best sales people out there - but if they don’t have the tools they need to sell your product and be successful growing your business, the amount of talent won’t matter. This is one of the most important parts of developing your sales team. Having a streamlined, effective process in place with all of the content your team needs to sell your product will speak volumes to the sales numbers you see for your business.
Giving your sales team the information needed on “what to say” and “what to send” in terms of content will ensure your customers are receiving information that is relevant to their specific needs. This allows your sales team to create a more personal experience for your customers, making it more likely they stick with your product in the future.
What to look for in a candidate
Since the sales team is one of the most important aspects of your business and its sustained success, you need to find the right people to sell your product. You want those who have a track record for success, are confident, a natural people person, and are continuously trying to get better at what they do.
When going through the vetting process of hiring salespeople, you want to look for those with passion and ambition. Your sales team can consist of all the talent in the world, but if they aren’t self-motivated and passionate at what they do, that talent will go to waste. When going through the interview and hiring process, take a look at your candidates’ accolades. Encourage them to discuss what they’ve achieved during their careers, in terms of successful sales, awards, etc.
Quick Tip!
The interview process is a great time to gauge how your candidate handles natural interactions. If you feel during the interview that they are trying too hard to connect, or maybe there isn’t that natural flow of conversation, that could be a red flag. You want a team that has high levels of ability in connecting with people and the ability to seamlessly flow through a conversation with customers.
Everboarding - Onboarding for peak productivity
The onboarding process for your sales department is an integral part of their success. This is where they learn all of the nuances of your business and the voice you want to portray to your customers. It also allows your team to take in the intended culture you’d like them to adopt in order to get the best results along with the best quality of life in the workplace. The everboarding process is the continued efforts you make to keep your team constantly learning and improving in their roles.
Supporting
It’s important at this early stage of each member’s experience with your brand to understand you will have their backs in terms of support. During onboarding, it should be obvious to new team members that their problems will be answered, the tools they need to succeed will be provided, and that there is an inherent culture that they will be a part of. Having these things in place makes for a better environment for success, and keeps your team motivated to sell and grow.
Training
The training of your employees shouldn’t end after their initial introduction to the team. There should be a continued effort to train your employees and help them to improve. Whether this includes new sales techniques for them to utilize with customers or new content to share with potential customers, there should never be a feeling of status quo. There is always room for improvement and including this into your sales team culture will go a long way in sustaining growth.
How to structure a sales team
The way you structure your sales team will affect the way your business continues to grow. It’s not enough to merely put your team together and let them do what they do with no sense of direction. There are three main structure models for you to choose when determining the direction of your sales team.
The Island
This is the more traditional model for a sales team. It basically leaves each member of the team to their own devices. They generate, qualify, nurture the leads and, eventually, close the sale on their own. Essentially, you provide them with the training they need, the products they need to sell, and they do the rest.
The Assembly Line
The assembly line is a structure that breaks members of the team off into smaller sections that handle specific aspects of the sale. Usually these sections include a lead generation team, a sales development team, an account executive team, and customer success team. This structure allows groups of people to dedicate their efforts to specific parts of the buyer’s journey.
The Pod
The pod is the next step after utilizing the assembly line and as your team continues to grow. It essentially borrows the same idea and structure of the assembly line model, but instead uses a smaller scale assembly line to make up one “pod” or team. You will have multiple “pods” that make use of the assembly line structure.
How to motivate your sales team
In order to maintain a healthy work environment, one with continued growth and passion, you need to motivate your team. Giving them reasons to continue to sell and promote your product is necessary to sustaining your business.
Set goals
It’s important to set goals for your team to meet and surpass. Knowing they have a bar they need to reach and ideally want to go beyond, goal setting allows members to be in the loop in terms of your expectations. It also creates a sort of competition with their colleagues, which can encourage a natural incentive to perform better. This type of culture is typically a healthy one for your team and will promote the continued growth of their skills and performance.
Be flexible with the sales process
You hired the members of your team because you believed they were talented enough and possessed the traits necessary to sell your product. While you do want to have a sense of culture and a general voice for your business, you don’t want to hold your team back in any way. Be flexible when giving your team the guidance they need.
Realizing that you have a team made up of individual personalities that all have different roads to success will be an important part of managing your team and keeping them motivated.
Provide feedback and reward results
No one likes their work to go unnoticed, and this is no different for your sales team. Providing them with feedback, whether this is praising their work or just providing constructive criticism, your team will appreciate knowing that you are taking an interest in their performance.
You also want to reward your team’s results. This is paramount to keeping your employees motivated to continue to sell your product. Knowing that they will be rewarded for their hard work will keep the team pushing to sell and succeed.
Help your team increase sales with SalesTalk: Sales Relevancy and Sales Enablement Technology
Providing your team with the tools they need to sell and grow your business, and doing so in an efficient manner, is one of the most important aspects of your business’ success. SalesTalk helps you to accomplish this by guiding your reps through personalized conversations that are relevant to each prospective customer. By tracking interactions and automating certain steps along the way, you can be sure to empower your sales team in the most effective way possible by using SalesTalk. Request a demo today and let us help take your sales team's performance to the next level.