A good sales team can be a crucial factor in propelling your business ahead of your competition. Sales drive revenue and if, on the other hand, your sales team is lacking, your business could suffer. Even when nothing dire is happening, it is not uncommon for sales practices to become stagnant overtime as employees and managers alike fall into familiar patterns and get stuck in a rut. So whether you know it or not, there’s a good chance that your sales team could do with a slight rejuvenation. Here are some things you can do to give it a boost.
Punch up Your Hiring Process
Cultivating a good sales team starts at the very beginning of the whole process. Take a look at your hiring process and consider if you are really getting the best recruits out there. What avenues are you using to find people? Are you ruling out good candidates too early on because of unnecessary educational requirements? How is your onboarding process? When people start working for you do they tend to stick around?
Focus on Culture and Engagement
Speaking of onboarding, one of the most important things that you can do hold on to top talent is to focus on culture. How engaged are your employees? This goes especially for new employees — do they feel welcome right away? People are more likely to perform at their best level if they are motivated to do so by love and connection to the company for which they work.
Insert a Level of Friendly Competition
One way to engage employees is to introduce a level of friendly competition. It’s important to note here that this should not be the kind of job-threatening, cut-throat competition that raises stress levels and resentment between employees; rather, it can just be friendly competition that encourages your reps to meet new goals, and elevates everyone in the process.
Implement a Rewards System
One way to step the competition up a notch is to introduce a rewards program. This is also a good way to implement something that encourages individual competition (reps receive rewards for meeting certain goals) rather than in between coworkers.
Use Smart Data
Consumers are easier to understand than ever before, and that is thanks to the vast amount of data available. Tapping into all of that data used to be incredibly difficult, but now thanks to any number of tools, it is relatively easy to track customer habits online, and understand how to best reach them.
Sales Training
Any good sales team should be constantly striving to be the best they can be. A good way to punch up your methods is to require everyone —including yourself — to undergo corporate sales training. This can help you to pick up some new techniques, freshen up your knowledge of old ones, and perhaps introduce something different to your sales team.
Wanting to improve is already the mark of a good sales team; putting in the effort to make it better is what makes a great sales team. And your business will reap the benefits in no time.
